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Have you noticed how this Firefox thing is becoming more and more annoying?

  • browser.enable_automatic_image_resizing
  • image.animation_mode
  • browser.tabs.closeButtons
  • browser.urlbar.hideGoButton
  • network.prefetch-next
  • ...

You are surely asking yourself WTF is this list, right?

Well, it is a growing list of options which are not accessible from the Firefox Preferences but only via about:config. What do they have in common? They are all set to an unreasonable default, which is different from what you have been used to so far. I guess someone is bored out there and has decided to piss people off this way.

Now let me explain why this is bad using browser.tabs.closeButtons as an example:

  1. Close button on each tab wastes space.
  2. Tabs are not fixed width so you have to aim at the close button.
  3. When you want to close multiple tabs it is mega-impractical to have to hunt the close button for each tab instead of having it sitting in one place and just clicking on it several times.
  4. If you are serious developer you don't make such a drastic UI change a new default. You make an option and allow people to switch it on if they want.
  5. Going to about:config, finding out about browser.tabs.closeButtons and figuring out proper numerical value for restoring previous default behavior is not something I enjoy doing after my browser gets updated automatically. It is a waste of time and it should be a checkbox in preferences.

There, five good reasons why not to do it this way and it took me only a minute to list them.

Oh, and I am so bored with those flat, Linux-style poor man's menus. I am itching to know which particular idiot decided for me that flat menus look better?

Wait, there is more! They have recently outdone themselves. Everytime Firefox gets updated it opens a window or a tab to tell me:

You've Updated To The Latest Version of Firefox

I mean, how useless that message is? I clicked on the "Restart Firefox" button you idiots, of course I know it has been updated. And if I somehow managed not to notice what I just did, your stupid message doesn't tell me any usefull details at a glance — for that I have to click on a link at the bottom of the page which is three times smaller than that useless poorly capitalized headline.

Unfortunately that is not all. You know those third-party extensions? Yeah, the ones in the Tools menu now called Add-ons but you still have to click on "Get Extensions" if you want some new Add-ons? Talk about paradoxes...

Well, some of those little bitches (FlashGot for example) are now following suit and popping browser windows/tabs loading content from the Internet without my consent or permission every time they update bragging how great they are and what has changed since the last version.

Well it's time for the reality check you morons! Reading "What's new" makes sense only before you perform an update, not after. If you read it before you can decide not to update if you don't like the changes, reading it after doesn't help at all because there is no rollback, just uninstall.

So Mozilla Foundation, you just keep up throwing in such garbage. You are this close to overthrowing some of the well established SUI champions.