Firefox's Drag Space Customize Option will be removed for most users

Martin Brinkmann
Apr 12, 2021
Firefox
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80

Mozilla is working on a visual refresh for the organization's Firefox web browser. Called Proton internally, it is an attempt to modernize the user interface of the web browser. Tabs, the address bar, menus, modals and other areas are changed visually. The organization plans to release the visual refresh in Firefox 89, out in June 2021, to the stable population.

Besides adding a different kind of paint to Firefox, Mozilla engineers are also removing features from Firefox, mainly the customize menu, that they believe are not popular and not used by many users of the browser.

We covered the removal of the compact mode density already. Mozilla wanted to remove the option completely from Firefox initially, but changed plans after a massive user backlash. The decision was made to keep compact density for Firefox installations that use it, but hide the option in the customize menu for others. Firefox users who want to use the mode need to flip a preference switch to do so or enable it right away, also in the preferences.

firefox drag space

A new bug on Mozilla's bug tracking site Bugzilla@Mozilla suggests that another customize option will be hidden if it is not enabled. It is the Drag Space option that users may check to add a small horizontal line on top of the tab interface; this line improves the dragging ability, e.g. using the mouse to drag the Firefox window.

Without it, Firefox users need to use areas with blank space in the browser's main toolbar to move it around. The title bar customization options remains an option, however, and it could be used for improved drag & drop operations.

The latest Nightly version of Firefox comes without the Drag Space option in the browser's customize interface.

firefox nightly no drag space

The preference that Firefox users need to configure is browser.tabs.extraDragSpace. It is not available yet in the latest Nightly, and it is possible that it will change before it lands. Setting the preference to TRUE manually does not add the Drag Space option back to the browser.

It is unclear how widely Drag Space is used in Firefox, it is probably one of the lesser used customization options.

Now You: Do you use Drag Space?

Summary
Firefox's Drag Space Customize Option will be removed for most users
Article Name
Firefox's Drag Space Customize Option will be removed for most users
Description
A new bug on Mozilla's bug tracking site Bugzilla@Mozilla suggests that another customize option will be hidden if it is not enabled. It is the Drag Space option.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. Dmitri Zdorov said on February 15, 2023 at 4:24 am
    Reply

    Why it’s do difficult to leave a config option for that?
    browser.tabs.extraDragSpace TRUE – should just work.

  2. yanta said on August 18, 2021 at 2:30 pm
    Reply

    Absolutely use the drag space. I have 250 Pcs that use it.

  3. CarolTech said on June 23, 2021 at 12:50 pm
    Reply

    More and more reasons to drop FireFox. Ugh. There’s a reason why only 3% of the people use FireFox now.
    https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share

  4. Peter Meinl said on June 4, 2021 at 7:15 pm
    Reply

    I use drag space all the time to move browser windows between multiple monitors. It is a great productivity feature for me.

    It would be fine with me if one could enable it via about:config only. But even with the option “browser.tabs.extraDragSpace” enabled there is no drag space.

    As a workaround I added a “flexible space” between my url-box and search-box.

  5. Anonymous said on May 28, 2021 at 2:26 am
    Reply

    I used to use this feature, its very useful manipulating more than a few windows on a screen. I’m sad seeing its going for no clear reason. (rounded pills for tabs are irrelevant, enlarged font in hamburger menu is ugly and rubbed)

  6. Tony said on May 15, 2021 at 8:29 pm
    Reply

    Can somone please remind the development team of the old saying – IF IT AINT BROKE DON’T FIX IT.
    I am using FF82, reluctantly, because some web sites no longer worked with my older version. I have used regedit to prevent FF updating and deleted the maintainence service. After a lot of hacking of about:config and installing add-ons it now works well, appart from its tendency to open links over the top of the current tab – yes I have done all the patching.

    I have just bought a new laptop and it has come with FF88. After the same degree of hacking I have now discovered WEPB files. If you drag one onto the desktop in V82 you can open it with Irfanview. With V88 you get a message saying the file is corrupt. This is an improvement is it !!!!! It still will not handle new tabs properly, but at least the tabs on bottom hack still works.

    I do not want a “progressive” interface, I want something I am familliar with and happy with. Which is, I am sure, what the vast majority of users want. Yes, I have done my time in computer support and witnessed the amount of wasted time and discontent caused by Microsoft changing the user interface in Office.

    Mozilla – stop trying to justify your salaries and support the vast majority of your end users.
    We used to say about Office – 80% of people use 20% of the functionality, I believe this has now changed to 95% of people use 5% of the functionality. It is development for developments sake and gulable corporate management fall for it.

    Have a nice day :-)
    Tony
    MCSE, CNE, TComp, ATC, ASE, AppleTech etc. – I am not a Ludite.

  7. Kenny said on April 14, 2021 at 10:17 pm
    Reply

    I have used Mozilla since the Netscape days, and this is a BAD MOVE!

    I am just about done with Firefox! Just like Progressives, chipping away at your rights a little at a time, they are now doing the same thing to the browser. FF was once the most customizable browser, but they are slowly taking away that away. They don’t need to be EXACTLY like Chrome (which sucks)! Brave Browser is looking more and more like an option

  8. matthiew said on April 14, 2021 at 6:42 am
    Reply

    That Drag Space feature is poorly implemented at the moment, so it makes sense to remove it. The extra space is too small to be useful, and it completely disappears when the window is fullscreened!

    I have also noticed a lot of haters in the comments, but not one of them have said that they actually use this feature. This proves Mozilla’s point that energy is being wasted on this feature nobody wants.

    1. Lemegeton said on April 15, 2021 at 1:59 pm
      Reply

      @matthiew
      >That Drag Space feature is poorly implemented at the moment, so it makes sense to remove it.
      If the option is poorly implemented at the moment, it makes sense to IMPLEMENT IT GOOD, not to remove it.

      >The extra space is too small to be useful, and it completely disappears when the window is fullscreened!
      There is no point in dragging a window in full screen mode – it’s full screen. Everything makes sense here, unlike your idea of how it should work.

      >I have also noticed a lot of haters in the comments, but not one of them have said that they actually use this feature. This proves Mozilla’s point that energy is being wasted on this feature nobody wants.
      Yeah, well, “no one needs it and no one uses it”. The question remains to be answered, then how did this option appear if no one needs it.
      Perhaps here you could notice some inconsistency.

  9. Tony said on April 13, 2021 at 6:50 pm
    Reply

    You don’t need telemetry,offer a forum like the Vivaldi guys,and actually interact with the people that use your browser.Instead of taking the lazy road.There used to be a time where there was no relying on telemetry,it’s time to have a browser without telemetry again.

    1. jobbautista9 said on April 17, 2021 at 6:57 pm
      Reply

      There’s already one: https://www.palemoon.org/

  10. abondonware said on April 13, 2021 at 4:59 pm
    Reply

    Can’t wait for the day when firefox finally turns to ash, no more whining on ghacks. I was a hardcore fanboy, encouraged everyone to use it back in the golden era.But that was a decade ago when it truly was customizable and privacy oriented. It is neither of those things now.

  11. hg said on April 13, 2021 at 10:46 am
    Reply

    I’d never noticed the “drag space” option before, but now having tried it I quite like the highlight line it adds to the top of the active tab. I do use compact mode though.

    Mozilla seems to wants their users to be sheep – actually that’s probably offensive to sheep. Such a good browser, which they seem to want to ruin.

    Never tried Brave or Opera etc though. May be time to have a look.

  12. owl said on April 13, 2021 at 9:50 am
    Reply

    Again, those who are not actual users of Firefox are shouting anti-Firefox campaigns. Without knowing what’s going on, they just want to shout “hatred and disgust” to justify their preferences (what they choose and what they exclude). Enough is enough!
    https://www.ghacks.net/2021/03/30/vivaldi-explains-how-it-managed-to-speed-up-the-browser/#comment-4490346
    https://www.ghacks.net/2021/04/07/mozilla-decides-to-hide-compact-mode-in-firefox-for-new-users-but-keep-it-for-existing-ones/#comment-4490859
    https://www.ghacks.net/2021/04/10/mozilla-postpones-firefox-89-release-date-by-2-weeks/#comment-4491172

    > Now You: Do you use Drag Space?
    I don’t use it, nor do I have a need for Drag Space.
    As far as I know, no one needs it. It really is a useless and wasteful feature and its removal would be justified.

    Precept: by Successful Business “Great Founders”
    Steve Jobs (Apple Inc.)
    ● Stay hungry, Stay foolish.
    ● It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.
    ● It’s not just what you add, but what you remove that matters.
    ● Complexity should be organized, brought to order, and made into a simple product.
    ● Being simple is more difficult than being complex.
    ● Common sense? Ah, rules for ordinary people to live by to get along!

    In many cases, “removing something” rather than “adding something” can be a better way to solve a problem. For example, in some European cities, the “Shared Space” approach of removing traffic lights and road signs has been adopted to improve road safety, which is the opposite of traditional traffic design.
    Shared space | Wikipedia
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_space

    Adding is favoured over subtracting in problem solving | nature
    https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00592-0
    Our Brain Typically Overlooks This Brilliant Problem-Solving Strategy | Scientific American
    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/our-brain-typically-overlooks-this-brilliant-problem-solving-strategy/

    It’s clear that companies and organizations tend to complicate (add elements) rather than simplify (remove elements) when solving problems, because people tend to appreciate solutions that complicate things, explains Tom Mavis, a consumer psychologist at New York University.

    1. bat said on April 13, 2021 at 1:52 pm
      Reply

      You can try as much as you want to attribute problems to ‘ill-wishers’, but users are leaving Firefox – this is objective.
      But you can keep convincing yourself that there is no problem with the browser’s developing vector.

    2. Avatar said on April 13, 2021 at 11:36 am
      Reply

      As long as Mozilla is not officially issuing an apology for all the classic users who loved features and customization… The users Mozilla left in the dust… A as long it’s hard to have any respect for them.

      No morals, no integrity, no honor. No thanks!

    3. Kano54 said on April 13, 2021 at 11:25 am
      Reply

      @owl Does not change the fact that Mozilla is a notorious sell-out, they are a copycat company and Google Cheerleaders who remove everything as they are jealous of Chrome’s success.

      Mozilla cares more for “diversity and political correct way to write code” instead of quality and real feature diversity to make Firefox different from Chrome.

      More people will leave with this crippling of Firefox ability to be customized. No whitewashing of Mozilla from your side or other notorious well known Mozilla fans will change that.

      Mozilla is and stays a humiliation for every honest and serious Open Source company.

    4. owl said on April 13, 2021 at 10:17 am
      Reply

      I was initially uncomfortable with the “Proton project”, but with timely news at gHacks Tech News and progress at Bugzilla@Mozilla, I am now sympathetic to the Proton project. It has also been favorable received by the user community (forums.mozillazine.jp).

      1. owl said on April 13, 2021 at 10:55 am
        Reply

        Dear Martin,
        the Proton project will be a stimulating release for existing users. (most average home users don’t read the release notes and aren’t interested in the official blog.)
        Please write articles on gHacks Tech News whenever possible about features and changes you plan to remove, even if they are trivial to some people. This is one of the articles (mission) that I (we) expect from gHacks Tech News.

  13. John C. said on April 13, 2021 at 8:47 am
    Reply

    Most power users turn off the ability of Firefox to send browser usage telemetry back to Mozilla. In so doing, they effectively cancel their vote regarding the features they like to use. The end result is Mozilla “modernizing” the UI in a direction that power users don’t like by removing features. Just sayin’.

    1. Citizen said on April 13, 2021 at 1:52 pm
      Reply

      @John C. That’s the point! Comment of the year! Finally someone has noticed it! Power users disabling telemetry, then complaining about the changes. Disabling telemetry results that there is no feedback towards the developers.

    2. Lemegeton said on April 13, 2021 at 1:31 pm
      Reply

      If they know that many users turn off telemetry (and they know), but still continue to rely solely on the incomplete telemetry available, then they do not know how to use telemetry data.
      Just sayin’.

  14. Anonymous said on April 13, 2021 at 7:07 am
    Reply

    Mozilla stopped caring about their users the moment they laid off hundreds of employees so their CEO can keep receiving a salary of millions of dollars. Mozilla stopped caring about their users when they allowed Google to pay more or less all bills, but kept pretending they’re fighting for users’ privacy.

    Firefox’s design changes will be the smallest problem in the long term. Firefox’s market share keeps going down.

  15. Steve S. said on April 13, 2021 at 4:33 am
    Reply

    I’m on Firefox 87. I always have the Menu bar on since I use it quite regularly. There is a huge amount of empty space on it to grab and drag using the mouse. So I don’t need any additional ‘drag space’.

    Curiously, the ‘Customize Toolbar’ tab shows the ‘drag space’ checkbox but it’s greyed out and can’t be checked! I’m wondering if this is Mozilla leaving the equivalent of a cheshire smile as they proceed to make the feature disappear? ;-)

  16. John Adams said on April 13, 2021 at 2:26 am
    Reply

    I love Mozilla, I love Firefox, and I love progressiveness. My experience is primarily bigots dislike progressiveness, but they will rarely admit their hurtful prejudice to others, or even to themselves.

    The #1 reason I use Firefox is because of the fact that it is the most customizable browser in existence (if you know how to program, and I do). Vivaldi is more customizable for non-programmers, but Firefox is still leagues beyond any other browser in regards to customization if you know how to program. Besides Firefox and Vivaldi, no other browser even comes close.

    So when Firefox starts removing customization options (instead of adding more), it is concerning. I get the sense they now want to the UI to be as empty as possible, with as few options as possible. That’s fine, but create an “advanced mode” or “advanced options” page with good UX to set more unique options. The about:config page is a good start, but the UX is beyond weak for that page. There are no descriptions for any of the hundreds of items, and default values are only visible when you reset an item. Also, the developers are too willing to change about:config settings names across releases without realizing the implications to all the users who actively use the settings. And don’t get me started about some of their naming conventions!

    In summary, I love Firefox because it is customizable, and I hope it continues to be the most customizable browser available.

    1. Anonymous said on April 15, 2021 at 6:17 pm
      Reply

      >Vivaldi is more customizable for non-programmers, but Firefox is still leagues beyond any other browser in regards to customization

      Probably you are referring to the user chrome.css file present on Firefox, yet vivaldi has a bundle.js, common.css and a browser.html file that you can modify alongside an option to load all the css files you want from a folder of your choosing.

      You can create “extensions”using those files or vivaldi hooks beyond what web-extensions can do, so pretty much vivaldi is as much, if not more, configurable than Firefox, and only behind browsers that still support xul/xpcom extensions like palemoon or waterfox.

    2. Kano54 said on April 13, 2021 at 10:14 am
      Reply

      @John Adams i would people who love and support revenge/reverse racism against the European part of the population not progressives.

      They hate themselves and their culture and deny every right of people of European heritage to control their countries.

      And i would also not call anyone Progressive who demonizes the political middle ground or Conservatism. All legal point of views. Again, please clean up your front door first.

    3. Anonymous said on April 13, 2021 at 7:28 am
      Reply

      Agree re: “love Firefox because it is customizable, and I hope it continues to be the most customizable browser available”.

      I use both these options (the dragging is handy for organizing research); I hope I can continue to enable these options.

      (First time commenting.)

  17. Anonymous said on April 13, 2021 at 12:09 am
    Reply

    The writing on the wall. Uninstalling Firefox from all my devices and going Edge! https://i.imgur.com/aQ3XMYQ.png

  18. DrKnow said on April 12, 2021 at 11:27 pm
    Reply

    Any Firefox users that like to tweak settings and configure things to their liking should spend a bit of time getting to know Vivaldi.

    The Vivaldi devs actively encourage tweaking and mods and they have official forums for it which are friendly and helpful.
    It’s also refreshing to see Vivaldi employees actively posting on their forums.

    Has a far better business model than say Brave… *Waits for IronHeart to beat his chest again*.

    1. Iron Heart said on April 13, 2021 at 7:05 am
      Reply

      @DrKnow

      > *Waits for IronHeart to beat his chest again*.

      No need to. Promoting, and directing traffic to, a search engine is the easiest, dare I say, “default” way to fund a browser. It’s not hard to do. Means that you will be beholden to an outside entity always.

      Brave is the only small browser standing on its very own feet thanks to BAT. Plus, users also profit in the process if they choose to (it’s disabled by default). How is that inferior? Only in your mind…

      1. DrKnow said on April 13, 2021 at 11:55 pm
        Reply

        How is Brave funding BAT? Guess what it’s beholden to? And that is worse.

      2. Iron Heart said on April 14, 2021 at 7:32 am
        Reply

        @DrKnow

        You do realize though that Brave Rewards is not a privacy issue, right? This is what matters to users in the end. Read up on how it works:

        https://brave.com/intro-to-brave-ads/

        Don’t see why this would have to change, it seems to work out for Brave Software so far. But hey, anything to smear the project, I guess…

      3. DrKnow said on April 14, 2021 at 6:42 pm
        Reply

        @IronHeart
        I know how Brave works for making money for Brave and pretending it’s really for web sites and users.

        https://portableapps.com/node/60580

        Once people realise how little it generates…

      4. Iron Heart said on April 15, 2021 at 9:42 am
        Reply

        @DrKnow

        The feature is 100% opt-in. You are criticizing this? LOL. Let the users decide.

        Firefox does the same thing for Pocket internally, generating zero money in the process. How do you like that? Hypocrisy much?

      5. DrKnow said on April 17, 2021 at 12:06 am
        Reply

        @Iron Heart

        We were talking about Vivaldi’s revenue model not Firefox’s.

        I prefer Vivaldi’s model to Brave’s and personally don’t think untargeted advertising is what most advertisers want. It’s why Google’s model is so damn efficient.

        Given the histories of the two company’s managements, again I’ll take Vivaldi’s.
        Brendan Eich (Brave’s CEO) is a bigoted individual and was a major reason he left Mozilla.

      6. Iron Heart said on April 17, 2021 at 9:26 am
        Reply

        @DrKnow

        > We were talking about Vivaldi’s revenue model not Firefox’s.

        They are identical there. Search engine leeches not standing on their own feet.

        > I prefer Vivaldi’s model to Brave’s and personally don’t think untargeted advertising is what most advertisers want.

        It’s not untargeted in Brave’s case. The targeting is happening via local machine learning. You have no clue.

        > Brendan Eich (Brave’s CEO) is a bigoted individual and was a major reason he left Mozilla.

        And this is relevant for me as a Brave user exactly how? I do not expect that the people behind products I use align with myself politically (= totalitarian mindset, btw), as long as they don’t push their views on me, and the browser itself is, so far, apolitical. Plus, in how far I am supporting someone by using a free(!) product is debatable, I think.

        After Mozilla forced out Brendan Eich, one of the fathers of the web, for essentially maintaining the Catholic view of marriage (just saying it as it is), they have installed Mitchell “Ma” Baker (B.A. Chinese Studies, no code contributions ever) as CEO who milks the company before leaving the sinking ship:

        https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html

        They also occasionally abuse Firefox for propaganda purposes ( https://www.ghacks.net/2020/07/25/mozilla-used-firefoxs-notification-system-to-push-the-facebook-boycott/ ) and at times channel donations (Of which they only rarely clarify that they will never reach Firefox development anyway, how many of those donating are made aware of this?) to RiseUp = Antifa communications. If this is what you align with, fine, but the fairly obvious difference is that Brave Software (the company) is not actively political and does not drag their product into this by pushing certain views on users. Hey, you do you. I just don’t want you to be a hypocrite about it…

      7. DrKnow said on April 17, 2021 at 5:18 pm
        Reply

        @Iron Heart

        > It’s not untargeted in Brave’s case. The targeting is happening via local machine learning. You have no clue.

        The reason it is a poor model is it can’t respond to new requests.

        eg A user searches Google for “Garden Furniture” and Google can respond with relevant ads that advertisers are willing to pay for. That is extremely well targeted.

        You can’t locally machine learn if the user hasn’t done it before.

        We’ll just have to agree to disagree.

  19. max3 said on April 12, 2021 at 9:59 pm
    Reply

    I have been using ESR 68.12 for months. I have 78 and 87 installed but always fall back to 68 because, with a handful of safe and stable addons and some about:config mods, it works well, looks good and gives me no grief. Calling home (or anyone else) is blocked except for updating extensions. It does nothing that I need to do any worse than 87 and cooperates much better than Brave, Safari or Vivaldi. There are very few things that I need to do that require any other browser. So, 89 and it’s unneeded and unwanted appearance update? Doesn’t bother me in the least.

  20. Iron Heart said on April 12, 2021 at 8:40 pm
    Reply

    I am getting trashed for being too negative about Mozilla around here, but I am not taking that one anymore. So instead, in this sea of hellish negativity, I will be the positive voice:

    Go, Mozilla, go-go-go! Go, Mozilla, go-go-go! Olé! Olé! Olé!

    Best browser! Don’t listen to the whiners! Dew it!

    1. jobbautista9 said on April 13, 2021 at 5:30 am
      Reply

      I unironically want Mozilla to remove everything users love actually. I’d respect them if they finally stop pretending to care about their users.

  21. Microfix said on April 12, 2021 at 7:13 pm
    Reply

    Code reduction in favour of better performance?
    I’m all for it, never used the function anyway, just tried it, waste of space, minimalism FTW!
    I’d rather see ‘drag space’ go south over ‘compact density mode’

  22. Anonymous said on April 12, 2021 at 6:21 pm
    Reply

    I point and laugh at Mozilla.

  23. Zelanium said on April 12, 2021 at 4:48 pm
    Reply

    And another reminder that “visual refreshes” add nothing of value, but take features away.

  24. semce2 said on April 12, 2021 at 3:50 pm
    Reply

    I never used that option anyway so won’t affect me. FF is a crappy browser, except for all the others. I’ll keep using it because with the right add-ons it’s the most private and secure and I’m familiar with it. If someone doesn’t like it there are plenty of other browsers but I personally will stick with FF.

  25. Jeff M.S. said on April 12, 2021 at 3:23 pm
    Reply

    Wow have to add a preference for keeping a drag space. Mozilla hits a new low. Removing features for making it “modern” – first Microsoft did it and now Mozilla. Note that this won’t be the first time. Mozilla has been repeatedly doing it.

  26. max said on April 12, 2021 at 3:21 pm
    Reply

    lol
    Nothing else, just lol.

  27. DhulK said on April 12, 2021 at 3:10 pm
    Reply

    For those like me who didn’t get it at first and thought Mozilla is removing the ability to drag around icons on the toolbar, this is what they’re talking about: https://thumbs2.imgbox.com/51/1f/pDqpfLxK_t.png
    A 9 pixel high area above your tab name where you can click to drag the entire FF window. Ask yourself when was the last time you used that tiny space to drag FF instead of some other larger area, for example, between the Minimize Window button and the downward pointing arrow of the tab list.

    1. Emil Brausewetter said on April 12, 2021 at 6:36 pm
      Reply

      True, but it doesn’t change the ghacks pundits grim desire to talk any theoretically conceivable “design problem” to the bitter end before examining whether and how it arises in practice.

      1. Honorius said on April 13, 2021 at 12:49 pm
        Reply

        @DhulK
        @Emil Brausewetter

        Don’t worry, “pundits” are moving more and more to other browsers. Gradually all of them will leave and you will have nothing more to worry about. All the more so, by that time it will be harder to see Firefox than the “other” line on the graph of the market share of browsers.

  28. Anonymous said on April 12, 2021 at 2:32 pm
    Reply

    The main appeal for Firefox to me is customization. Firefox is not the only browser with privacy. For years I preferred it to Safari and [definitely!] Chrome.

    I moved on. I hate the blocky look. I hate the constant Mozilla ads instead of my home screen upon opening. I prefer Opera’s sidebar. I prefer how integrated Safari is with my iPad and iPhone, and the iPad’s Opera over Firefox.

    Firefox’s customization allowed me to set the downloads icon as always present. It allowed me to remove anything I found unnecessary. It allowed me to make the icons and font bigger. It allowed me to choose any odd private search engine, which Safari and Opera don’t. Google may have the best search engine overall, but I get shivers over its tracking features. I like etools.ch (although the display is old-school and visually distracting), millionshort [but based upon Bing], and private.sh [the simplest].

  29. DeadBrowserz said on April 12, 2021 at 2:21 pm
    Reply

    I’m officially done with Firefox. I moved on to another browser since last week.

    What the point of the customize area anymore if they are removing everything? It seems like the current dunce developers at Mozilla are trying to sabotage Firefox. Good job you done it.

    1. osoba said on April 12, 2021 at 10:35 pm
      Reply

      Firefox has been internally sabotaged since 2017. And as you can see – effective.

      1. Anonymous said on April 13, 2021 at 2:26 pm
        Reply

        @osoba

        They have a ‘director of trust and security’ – a cia guy, promoted and refilled by a google exec lmao. Their marketing employees use google chrome. Their head tech guy is an nsa collaborator who tried to backdoor crypto standards with margaret salter. So 2 or 3 top employees at least worked high up in the us gov., thats in addition to the ExtendedRandom plant who (woopsy) broke tor browser security from the cozy MozHQ by letting certs expire and also sits on certs at lets-encrypt, strange, you can thank him for the webrtc mess too btw. Theres a smattering of Google employees here and there as well with a cross over to government.

        Too much expertise for incompetence so yeah sabotage fits better. Way before 2017 though.

    2. osoba said on April 12, 2021 at 10:34 pm
      Reply

      Firefox has been internally isolated since 2017. And as you can see – effective.

  30. jobbautista9 said on April 12, 2021 at 2:20 pm
    Reply

    Classic Mozilla. Crusading against user choice since Australis.

  31. Anonymous said on April 12, 2021 at 2:02 pm
    Reply

    Very simple question……

    WHY?

  32. Gunther said on April 12, 2021 at 1:43 pm
    Reply

    I really wish they would stop removing customization options, though I don’t use this particular feature since I always have the menu bar enabled anyway. Just because absolutely everyone doesn’t use a feature is no reason to remove it though. Customization is really one of the main things this browser still has going for it and it seems like they’re trying to take that way.

  33. Tom Hawack said on April 12, 2021 at 1:29 pm
    Reply

    I’ve never used the ‘Density’ nor the ‘Drag Space’ features so from a personal point of view their alterations don’t concern me. But as many of us I remained stunned by the very idea of changing Firefox’s UI components for the sake of what exactly I don’t know and for the cost of code implications brain-storming BugZilla and obviously bothering more than one of us users in the perspective of their impact on our use, related to habits, of Firefox.

    It’s as if Mozilla focused on new users and didn’t care less of others.

    Browsers are becoming increasingly complex and this offers two alternatives to the developers : evolution or revolution; it seems the company entertains a permanent revolution, Che Mozilla so to say.
    We all have a part of conservatism should it be in our need of references, those which ease our relation to whatever environment because they allow automatism which in turn free up brain space and time.

    Having to face once again a saloon’s hysterical eagerness for what it considers as modernity is becoming a pain, may attract lesser new users than it will trigger the departure of old ones.

    Personally I’ll have to check ‘Proton’ once factually on my screen. I fear hours of work to free up what I consider as the essentials in terms of user (mine at least) interface. it may take hours, even a day or two but at the end I still won’t consider this as an argument to shift to another main/default browser. But that’s because I’ve had the time to weigh what I like with what bothers me in Firefox. The ratio is narrowing but remains above 0.5

    I’d really like to have a Firefox developer explain me why, say, why he and the team are so comlmited to changing what works nicely? Why remove a player from a winning team? Sounds as the behavior of a freshly graduated and appointed manager bringing his academic storm to a company that has years of success, for the sake of “innovating in order to stay in line with the march of progress”. BS.

  34. Anonymous said on April 12, 2021 at 12:40 pm
    Reply

    I’ve just starting using it as I hadn’t realised it was there until I read this article.

  35. walker said on April 12, 2021 at 11:53 am
    Reply

    after years of FF today I definitively uninstalled it, I got bored of lately news and approach.

  36. beemeup5 said on April 12, 2021 at 10:58 am
    Reply

    Australis came about because Mozilla was trying to “modernize” the Firefox browser UI, and now Proton is coming to do the same nonsense all over again. In another 5 years or so Mozilla will be feeling the itch to “:modernize” once again.

    Eventually this will be pushed to ESR builds and Waterfox will be dragged into this as well since they’re not a true fork they were forced to split branches in two: Waterfox and Waterfox Classic.

    Pale Moon is the only true fork which carries the spirit of Firefox, a spirit which sadly waned rather quickly after the dethronement of IE 6 and replaced with a corporate mindset of removing as much user choice as possible via “death by a thousand cuts”.

    I’m not a fan of Chrome, but at least Chrome is able to maintain a consistent UI philosophy since the beginning. Not once have they needed to radically change the outward appearance of the browser and that’s the only Chrome development tactic Mozilla should be trying to imitate.

    At least back when they decided to move from tabs on bottom to tabs on top by default Mozilla tried to justify their decision with logic, but now they’re just moving the cheese around to screw with users.

    1. Dumbledalf said on April 12, 2021 at 12:00 pm
      Reply

      That’s what I’ve been saying about Chrome too – aside from that nasty change they implemented recently about outright blocking “unsafe downloads”, Chrome has been practically the same thing since 2008.

      If I have to give Google credit for one thing, that’s being able to create a good UI and change it only when it’s needed.

      What Mozilla are doing in my opinion is just simulating activity. Their browser, Firefox is garbage on all fronts – Android, iOS (where it doesn’t even use Gecko), Windows, Mac, Linux and they are desperately trying to reinvent the wheel just in hope they will attract new users with a new UI. Except everyone who has used Firefox for a while, knows that deep down under the new ugly UI, it’s the same outdated garbage. They still haven’t implemented History in a tab for so many years and so much of Firefox is legacy code from like 2003.

      Firefox has lost the browser war, soon they will lose market share to niche browsers like Vivaldi and Opera.

      1. Anonymous said on April 13, 2021 at 12:53 pm
        Reply

        Opera is going nowhere in market share,neither is Vivaldi.

  37. bsod said on April 12, 2021 at 10:24 am
    Reply

    I use Firefox since … forever … but I don’ see where they are going. They seem to very often focus on useless things, hide settings, wrong (imho) defaults … Who in the world would stop using FF because there is an option to drag space in the customization menu? New/novice users won’t go into customization. Really, Firefox?

    Thank you @ghacks for following the changes, I could have lost 1 hour looking for this option one day!

    1. Lemegeton said on April 12, 2021 at 4:31 pm
      Reply

      They went into “development for developers” mode:
      When considering options (changes, deletions), they no longer ask “what user problems does this change solve?” or “how does this change improve the user experience?” but instead ask “how will it be easier and easier for us (developers) to develop?”.
      This leads to the fact that the answer is always either “remove this option” or “simplify” (like replacing the old featurerich about:config with new HTML-based).

      1. owl said on April 13, 2021 at 11:52 am
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        @Corky (said on April 12, 2021 at 2:46 pm),
        @Lemegeton (said on April 12, 2021 at 4:31 pm),

        Your views are at the heart of the matter.
        Factors that impair the performance of a program (browser) should be removed, and to don’t actively remove impractical, redundant, useless, and unnecessary features, you may end up with a buggy, bloated, and hopelessly under-performing program like Vivaldi. My friends and I have witnessed this reality with Vivaldi. From that experience, I and user community (forums.mozillazine.jp) sympathize with Firefox’s “program simplification”.

      2. Lemegeton said on April 15, 2021 at 1:29 pm
        Reply

        @owl
        You and your friends can sympathize with whatever you want, but the steadily decreasing market share of Firefox demonstrates that the constant simplification of Firefox by removing options and features leads to Firefox becoming a “Chrome clone with a different engine”. Except that users don’t need a Chrome clone with a different engine. Such users are more likely to choose Chrome itself.

        To put it simply: users who want a simplified browser are more likely to choose Chrome than Firefox.

        And, by the way, the forum dedicated to Mozilla products is a non-relevance sample. I can show the “popularity” of any browser this way – just need to find a forum dedicated to that particular browser.
        Just think about the representativeness of your forum sample: “登録ユーザー数: 6648”.
        And I was not lazy and found and compared: this “投稿数: 57871” with Vivaldi Forum. There are 7 times more posts on the Vivaldi forum.
        And here’s an example on Brave forum: more than 25000 users and three times as many posts.

        P.S. And about Vivaldi: Firefox has a decreasing market share, while Vivaldi (even with all its shortcomings) has a growing market share. That’s something to think about.

    2. Corky said on April 12, 2021 at 2:46 pm
      Reply

      At a guess i would assume it’s to cut down on code complexity.

      1. Kano54 said on April 14, 2021 at 12:01 am
        Reply

        @Corky and @owl

        There is no code complexity anymore. Customization removal was foremost justified by Mozilla (starting with the first big feature removals in 2013) that it is a “hindering reason” for simple users aka Chrome users to use Firefox instead of Chrome.

        Mozilla is jealous, desperate and grumpy. They have spit into the face of every honest power user, add-on or theme developer and serving no longer their own core users but instead the Google Chrome user-base.

        How low can it further go? Only Mozilla does know that.

  38. ShintoPlasm said on April 12, 2021 at 10:10 am
    Reply

    Are they removing it because it was ‘unsafe’?

    The massacre of any customisation option continues apace at Mozilla HQ.

    1. Kano54 said on April 12, 2021 at 1:04 pm
      Reply

      @ShintoPlasm What do you expect from a developer which cares more for “social justice” and “political correctness” instead of serving their origin target users.. the power users who made them who they are.

      Most Progressives are simple minded beings with a non-existing tolerance for any non progressive point of views and they only use simple things. And they have a love for the Chrome design.

      Which explains Mozillas desperate attempt to imitate Chrome as much as possible and also Google’s ideology – they want to absorb all that progressive users. And for this they sacrifice everything advanced and good inside their product, including the users who loved Mozilla in the past.

      Its a damn shame and utterly sad.

      1. jobbautista9 said on April 13, 2021 at 5:32 am
        Reply

        I don’t think they are progressives at all. They are a huge insult to the left.

        They only pretend to be progressives. They are leftist-wannabes. Pseudo-leftists.

      2. Kano54 said on April 13, 2021 at 10:02 am
        Reply

        @jobbautista9 They are simply hating all people who have European ancestors and question the right of that kind of people to rule their own countries, while they have no problem with people from other parts of the non-European world doing basically the same.

        Its what i personally call hypocrisy

      3. Jacob Alexander Tice said on April 12, 2021 at 9:57 pm
        Reply

        > Most Progressives are simple minded beings with a non-existing tolerance for any non progressive point of views
        So disliking bigotry is a bad thing?

        > and they only use simple things. And they have a love for the Chrome design.

        So that’s why I, a Progressive, spent 2 weeks installing and setting up Gentoo Linux? Because I only use things that are simple to use? That is nonsense. I use Vivaldi and Firefox because I like them, not because of any political viewpoint.

      4. Kano54 said on April 13, 2021 at 10:00 am
        Reply

        @Jacob Alexander Tice

        So much about being tolerant… Calling everything else… including the political middle ground bigotry?

        For your information – Non-Progressive opinions (also includes Conservatism) are 100% valid and have nothing to do with bigotry. Would you call others who support borders or the police or support the right of the European heritage part of the population to control their own countries as bigotry too?

        Before you consider others as bigots, please clean up your own front door first.

      5. Anonymous said on April 13, 2021 at 8:29 am
        Reply

        Don’t mind him, he’s just being a conservative * [Editor: removed, please stay polite]}that only knows how to generalize.

        Typed from Vivaldi on my Arch desktop.

      6. Kano54 said on April 13, 2021 at 12:15 pm
        Reply

        @Anonymous You make a big mistake in your assumptions.

        First i am no Conservative. I also never have voted for any political party my whole life as i belief the whole system is corrupt beyond repair.

        But it is hard to overlook the drivel of some Progressives… Its always the same..

        Collective guilt, Reverse/Revenge racisim, reparations, CRT, bullying people who do not add pronouns on Twitter, riots and looting, abolishing everything western institutional – and calling all others who are not like them bigots.

        I never have met similiar extremists and hateful people from “the other side” – as they can be found on the Progressive side. Honestly, its hard to overlook. No offense, but its the absolute truth.

        And now enough of this, its a tech blog and i do not have the interest to talk with actual intolerant people like you and similiar.

      7. Avatar said on April 13, 2021 at 11:53 am
        Reply

        @Anonymous Pretty courageous from you to hide behind this handle?!

        It’s better being either in the middle or being Conservative than being rude and without manners. Most non-left people have more respect and integrity as most Progressives. And they do not believe in speech policy and censorship.

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