FireFox 25: new Find Bar



  •  As example see

     

    Firefox Find Bar

     

    The "highlight all" and "Match Case" options are now on the far right side includign the close button. Now in above image this looks ok but imagine this in a 1080p or higher res screen. 

    You know have to move the mouse all the way to the other end of the screen.

    This is just baffling. It is in every way worse than how it was before. There is 0 benefit to this. OMG Mozilla, you are retared. 

    Luckly there already exists an Add-on that fixes this issue. 

     



  • I think the search feature is too advanced for most users, people could confuse searching in the web page with searching the web. All this advanced search stuff should be offloaded to an extension or to an about:search command.



  • @Ronald said:

    I think the search feature is too advanced for most users, people could confuse searching in the web page with searching the web. All this advanced search stuff should be offloaded to an extension or to an about:search command.

    As long as the term "find in page" is used, I don't see an issue. I do agree that there are better ways searching within a page could be integrated, however, I don't think it's something worth removing because it isn't getting in the way and isn't complicating any other process. Certainly, it would be a lot more painful for a user who decided they DO need to find within a page only to discover they now have to learn how to install extensions and then spend a lot of time browsing the extension market to find one they like.



  • Could be much worse. Try the VS2013 search box options for Match-case and Match-Whole word - when selected a pale, 1px orange border is applied. It's so subtle it's almost invisible



  • Could be much worse. Try the Outlook 2013 web interface - when your notifications pop up, no border is drawn whatsoever, and in those white-on-white color schemata it's very hard to see which part of the screen is showing you what exactly. Especially for the visually-impaired (including yours truly).


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @beginner_ said:

    The "highlight all" and "Match Case" options are now on the far right side includign the close button. Now in above image this looks ok but imagine this in a 1080p or higher res screen. 

    You know have to move the mouse all the way to the other end of the screen.

    Could be worse - they could have left the whole bar at the top of the screen like they did for a while in the nightlies.



    Incidentally, do the keyboard shortcuts (Alt-A/Alt-C) work for you? They don't here, but I'm presuming that's either an add-on interfering, or it's a bug someone hasn't picked up on yet.



  • Firefox misses a lot of possibilities for subtle UI improvement. I used to use a derived browser, Camino, which put the focus on the search/filter boxes as soon as you opened a bookmark list, history, cookies, exceptions, etc. That makes it pretty fast. Firefox, OTOH, just makes you click extra, and doesn't even have a way to search through e.g. cookie exceptions. You need some extension for that. Not great.



  • beginner_, you forgot to mention the "Previous" and "Next" buttons have become teensy-tiny, and lost their keyboard shortcuts.

    You also forgot to post a link to said add-on.



  • Also unmentioned is that Match Case has changed from a checkbox to a toggle button, which compounds with the fact of it being on the opposite side of the screen to make it harder to tell when it's accidently on.

    And I may be misremembering, but shouldn't there be a "match whole word" in there somewhere?



  • @Zecc said:

    Filed under: Meanwhile their development tools still suck

    Huh, looks like they're working on it. "Edit as HTML" is particularly welcomed.



  • @PJH said:

    Incidentally, do the keyboard shortcuts (Alt-A/Alt-C) work for you?
     

     What are they supposed to do? That's no feature I'm familiar with.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @dhromed said:

    @PJH said:

    Incidentally, do the keyboard shortcuts (Alt-A/Alt-C) work for you?
     

     What are they supposed to do? That's no feature I'm familiar with.

    Erm... From the screenshot itself:

    [Highlight All] and

    [Match Case]?



    Or am I missing some subtlety in your question?



  • @dhromed said:

    @PJH said:

    Incidentally, do the keyboard shortcuts (Alt-A/Alt-C) work for you?
     

     What are they supposed to do? That's no feature I'm familiar with.

    Try "ALT-A Grumpy".



  • @PJH said:

    Erm... From the screenshot itself:

    [Highlight All] and
    [Match Case]?

    Or am I missing some subtlety in your question?
    Nice for you Windows folks, but on OSX they're just two buttons...

     



  • @PJH said:

    Erm... From the screenshot itself:
    [Highlight All] and
    [Match Case]?

    Or am I missing some subtlety in your question?
     

    Alt+Key to hit a button is not something I have ever done ever (well, maybe once or twice) so I was thinking about menus and other features and could not think of a thing.

    It's clear now.

    In any case, they're both functional here. Maybe something else on your machine is trapping those keys?*

     

    *) To illustrate how crazy this can get: Photoshop with Aero (Vista, 7 and 8) traps and throws away the Escape key for the entire system, unless it has a modal dialog open such as the palette. I think Adobe cried WONTFIX and claimed it had to do with the video card.



  • @Ronald said:

    Try "ALT-A Grumpy".
     

    That highlights your post.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @beginner_ said:

    Luckly there already exists an Add-on that fixes this issue. 
     

    Great. So now you can install that add-on on every single installation of Firefox you use or support (friends and family), plus every new installation of FF you do.

    Along with

    • Status Bar 4 Ever
    • Old Default Image Style
    •  SuperStop (to restore "ESC to stop animations")
    • Customizable Shortcuts, to bring back some shortcuts and to support some other add-ons

     All to just restore functionality the FF removed. Because that's why extensions are for, these days. Not extended functionality beyond core-- but for restoring the core because Mozilla are retardeds.

    Actually-- that list was just off the top of my head. What other extensions do you need to restore basic functionality?

    OH, and let's not forget each rapidly changing version may or may not break those extensions. And if you ever want to file a bug, you'll have to do a O(N^2) disable/enable trial of every extension with every other extension to see which one Firefox has fucked up.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Lorne Kates said:

    What other extensions do you need to restore basic functionality?

    AdblockPlus?


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @boomzilla said:

    @Lorne Kates said:
    What other extensions do you need to restore basic functionality?

    AdblockPlus?

    I think they were asking about restoring basic functionality to Firefox, not the internet/web in general...



  • @boomzilla said:

    @Lorne Kates said:
    What other extensions do you need to restore basic functionality?

    AdblockPlus?

    For some reason Adblock Plus on FF sometimes blocks stuff that is not an ad. A client of mine has a menu at the bottom of their website with 5 icons; in FF when Adblock Plus is enabled two of the icons don't show up. However they do show up on Chrome with AdBlock Plus, or on FF without Adblock Plus. I blame FF.



  • @Lorne Kates said:

  • Status Bar 4 Ever
  • Old Default Image Style
  •  

    I don't understand these two.

    What do you use the status bar for?

    What could possibly better about old style image display?

     



  • It says "default image", which leads me to think it restores the "image missing" icon instead of letting Firefox pretend there was never any image in the first place.

    Personnally I googled a bit and found this firefox built-in CSS override to do it.



  • @beginner_ said:

    OMG Mozilla, you are retared.
     

    Did you only discover this now?

    @beginner_ said:

    Luckly there already exists an Add-on that fixes this issue.

    Is there any extension that completely replaces Firefox? Why does Mozilla still ship a GUI over they extension system*?

     

    * Well, I think I know the answer to that. They must keep FF developers ocupied, or else they'd try to improve xulrunner.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @dhromed said:

    What do you use the status bar for?
     

    1) Hovering over hyperlinks to see that "http://legitlink.com" is actually "http://legitlink.com.analrape.ru"

    2) Icons for various other tools I use that would take up too much space in the address bar row (or that I'm just plain used to being there)

    • Greasemonkey
    • NoScript control & indicator icon
    • Stylish
    • Adblock Plus control & indicator icon

     Given that Mozilla re-arranges the upper bar on a whim, and never obeys the user's settings, I can't rely on anything that I put up there staying up there, in its current position.

    @dhromed said:

    What could possibly better about old style image display?

    Everything. Let's compare and contrast (see image below rant)

    1. Old style is a white background, providing sufficient contrast to the image itself
    2. Also because it's a white background, it is very clear where the image borders are
    3. Regardless of the size or shape of the image, it will always be upper-left, where a page starts. As opposed to centered, which may or may not work properly if it's a screenshot taken by Ben L.
    4. It is yet another unneeded UI change. Forever and ever on every graphical browser ever, viewing an image was on a nice white background, in the upper left, period. There is no benefit from the change. In fact it makes it worse. So that was Mozilla time wasted on a useless UI change when they could have been fixing bugs or making actual improvements.
    5. There is no about:config option for this. A 3rd party plugin was required to, once again, restore basic functionality.


     


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @Medinoc said:

    It says "default image", which leads me to think it restores the "image missing" icon instead of letting Firefox pretend there was never any image in the first place.

    Personnally I googled a bit and found this firefox built-in CSS override to do it.

     

    Not what I meant, but bless you for finding that. Fucking Firefox-- makes it near impossible to test webpages with.  I just have to HOPE I notice a missing image, as opposed to getting a nice obvious "[X]" like in IE.

     



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    as opposed to getting a nice (...) like in IE.

    That's one of the phrases you never expected to hear.



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    Fucking Firefox-- makes it near impossible to test webpages with.  I just have to HOPE I notice a missing image, as opposed to getting a nice obvious "[X]" like in IE.
     

    These things are meant for users, to be used, not developers. If you want development, make sure you have a toolkit. Mozilla believed showing only the alt-text was a better option than showing an ugly broken-image icon. I don't know if I agree 100% of all cases, but it's not their job to please your group over the regular users.



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    @dhromed said:

    What do you use the status bar for?
     

    1) Hovering over hyperlinks to see that "http://legitlink.com" is actually "http://legitlink.com.analrape.ru"

    2) Icons for various other tools I use that would take up too much space in the address bar row (or that I'm just plain used to being there)

    • Greasemonkey
    • NoScript control & indicator icon
    • Stylish
    • Adblock Plus control & indicator icon

    1) Doesn't your FF come with a tooltip that appears below when hovering a link? You know, like in Chrome?

    2) Isn't that the addon bar? You don't need an addon for that.

     



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    1) Hovering over hyperlinks to see that "http://legitlink.com" is actually "http://legitlink.com.analrape.ru"
     

    The url display on hover is still there. Try it now!

    @Lorne Kates said:

    2) Icons for various other tools I use that would take up too much space in the address bar row

    I suppose. I find no significant space taken up with 4 addons' buttons in the top bar, but eh.

    @Lorne Kates said:

    Old style is a white background, providing sufficient contrast to the image itself

    A dark background generally provides better contrast with images, and increases visibility of darker ares of the image.

    @Lorne Kates said:

    Also because it's a white background, it is very clear where the image borders are

    This is not the case for roughly half the images, assuming that half of all images ever have light backgrounds themselves.

    @Lorne Kates said:

    Regardless of the size or shape of the image, it will always be upper-left, where a page starts. As opposed to centered, which may or may not work properly if it's a screenshot taken by Ben L.

    Ben L's screenshots do not factor in this decision. Centered is better.

    @Lorne Kates said:

    Forever and ever on every graphical browser ever, viewing an image was on a nice white background, in the upper left, period.

    This is not an argument for anything.

    There is no benefit from the change.

    I experienced increased visibility of images, witout that bright are burning my eyes out and reducing visbility in dark areas of the image.

    @Lorne Kates said:

    So that was Mozilla time wasted on a useless UI change when they could have been fixing bugs or making actual improvements.

    I agree in general (tumblr and twitter are doing the same thing lately: "WE STILL HAVE MONEY BUT NO IDEAS WHAT DO WE DO"), but this is definitely not one of those things.

    @Lorne Kates said:

    There is no about:config option for this.

    Fair enough. Since it's all CSS, however, I believe you might be able to use Stylish to fix the image display and ditch the extra niche-addon. @Lorne Kates said:

    I don't understand the point of this image.

    I do prefer the dark background, obviously.

     



  • @dhromed said:

    @Lorne Kates said:

    1) Hovering over hyperlinks to see that "http://legitlink.com" is actually "http://legitlink.com.analrape.ru"
     

    The url display on hover is still there. Try it now!

    @Lorne Kates said:

    2) Icons for various other tools I use that would take up too much space in the address bar row

    I suppose. I find no significant space taken up with 4 addons' buttons in the top bar, but eh.

    @Lorne Kates said:

    Old style is a white background, providing sufficient contrast to the image itself

    A dark background generally provides better contrast with images, and increases visibility of darker ares of the image.

    @Lorne Kates said:

    Also because it's a white background, it is very clear where the image borders are

    This is not the case for roughly half the images, assuming that half of all images ever have light backgrounds themselves.

    @Lorne Kates said:

    Regardless of the size or shape of the image, it will always be upper-left, where a page starts. As opposed to centered, which may or may not work properly if it's a screenshot taken by Ben L.

    Ben L's screenshots do not factor in this decision. Centered is better.

    @Lorne Kates said:

    Forever and ever on every graphical browser ever, viewing an image was on a nice white background, in the upper left, period.

    This is not an argument for anything.

    There is no benefit from the change.

    I experienced increased visibility of images, witout that bright are burning my eyes out and reducing visbility in dark areas of the image.

    @Lorne Kates said:

    So that was Mozilla time wasted on a useless UI change when they could have been fixing bugs or making actual improvements.

    I agree in general (tumblr and twitter are doing the same thing lately: "WE STILL HAVE MONEY BUT NO IDEAS WHAT DO WE DO"), but this is definitely not one of those things.

    @Lorne Kates said:

    There is no about:config option for this.

    Fair enough. Since it's all CSS, however, I believe you might be able to use Stylish to fix the image display and ditch the extra niche-addon. @Lorne Kates said:

    I don't understand the point of this image.

    I do prefer the dark background, obviously.

     

    Does it also show the mouse pointer in the old style? Maybe it's hidden by the white background.



  • @dhromed said:

    Try it now!
    I'm somewhat surprised that domain isn't even parked.



  • I still think Firefox does find-in-page better than any other browser, for one simple reason:  you can access it with one keystroke.  It always throws me for a loop when I'm in Chrome and I try to hit / and start typing something, and nothing happens.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Mason Wheeler said:

    I still think Firefox does find-in-page better than any other browser, for one simple reason:  you can access it with one keystroke.  It always throws me for a loop when I'm in Chrome and I try to hit / and start typing something, and nothing happens.

    That is nice. I'm used to using that with, e.g., less. Though by far, my biggest problem with searching a page in chrome is that if you select text and then Ctrl-F, the selected text doesn't show up in the search box.



  •  It's the little things.

     

    Chrome never spontaneously brings home flowers, for example.



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    @beginner_ said:
    Luckly there already exists an Add-on that fixes this issue. 
    Great. So now you can install that add-on on every single installation of Firefox you use or support (friends and family), plus every new installation of FF

    I just don't understand what the fuck is going on with these Mozilla people. It takes more and more extensions to restore features that have been removed. And that doesn't even take into consideration the various other features (like the Find in Page search function) that have been changed and made shittier. In addition to now having to install more extensions, you have the additional problems of:

    • You have to depend on some random person to create the extensions you need
    • You have to hope that the random person continues to update the extension so that it works with future versions of Firefox
    • Or you can spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to write extensions yourself just so you can restore functionality that never should have been removed in the first place
    • Installing too many extensions is well known to cause performance and/or stability problems with Firefox.

    Before FF 25 came out I made the mistake of ugrading from 21 to 24. Suddenly, every website was huge, as if I had zoomed in, and, the UI was farked -- the text of all the menus was much larger than before. A little Googoling turns up a new "feature" that was introduced in FF 22.

    Firefox 22 is now respecting the pixel density you've set on a system level in the windows control panel > appearance > display.

    If you want to set the text size/pixel density in firefox different from that of your system's settings like it was handled in prior versions, enter about:config  & search for the preference named layout.css.devPixelsPerPx.

    Hey wait a minute, what do you mean "like it was handled in prior versions"?  I have a better idea. How about you QUIT FUCKING WITH EVERYTHING. As an added extra bonus, changing the setting in about:config doesn't completely fix the problem. Everything still looks just a little bit off and no amount of fudging around with various settings can get things back to the way they were. All my configurations to get everything just the way I want it, flushed down the toilet. Fuck you.

    So I had to reinstall FF21 and restore my profile from a backup copy so I could get things back to a usable state. It appears Firefox has joined the list of programs that can never be updated because the new versions suck shit.

     



  • As usual, Opera was the only one to do images right.

    Always centered, white background when windowed, black background when fullscreen (works pretty well, though I'd prefer always dark), AND most importantly, when zoomed in you could navigate by dragging the image with your mouse (like in google maps).

    Oh, and you could edit the source of the page and see the result immediately.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @El_Heffe said:

    So I had to reinstall FF21 and restore my profile from a backup copy so I could get things back to a usable state. It appears Firefox has joined the list of programs that can never be updated because the new versions suck shit.
     

    I'm stuck at 20.1, because if I upgrade any further, I have to see that godawful new flat icon. It's a small thing, but the last of a huge pile of small things. 18.1 works good enough, and I know that only woe awaits me if I turn automatic updates back on.

    This means I have to live with the results of their shitty QA. For example, open their "redesigned" download manager (CTRL-J).  Right click on the taskbar tab for that window. Click close.

    Notice the download manager didn't close? Don't know how they managed to fuck up basic windowing, but there you go.



  • I'm really disappointed. I thought you'd found something that would locate the nearest place to drink.



  • @dhromed said:

    To illustrate how crazy this can get: Photoshop with Aero (Vista, 7 and 8) traps and throws away the Escape key for the entire system, unless it has a modal dialog open such as the palette. I think Adobe cried WONTFIX and claimed it had to do with the video card.

    Argh.

    In fact, it turns out that (in the case I was involved with) terminating Catalyst Control Center made the bug go away. I did read somewhere that someone had the same problem with a PC with an NVIDIA card, though. Good thing I've stuck with Photoshop 7!



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    For example, open their "redesigned" download manager (CTRL-J).  Right click on the taskbar tab for that window. Click close.

    Notice the download manager didn't close?

     

    It closes fine. Problem seems to be on your end, my friend.

     


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @dhromed said:

    It closes fine. Problem seems to be on your end, my friend.
     

    I'd dredge up the Bugzilla bug, but fucking Bugzilla. FUCKING BUGZILLA!



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    FUCKING BUGZILLA!
     

    True.



  • @beginner_ said:

    As example see

     

    Firefox Find Bar

     

    The "highlight all" and "Match Case" options are now on the far right side includign the close button. Now in above image this looks ok but imagine this in a 1080p or higher res screen. 

    You know have to move the mouse all the way to the other end of the screen.

    The mouse? Why the fuck would you move the mouse at all? After pressing Ctrl-F to display the search bar, the Alt-A, Alt-C, and Esc shortcuts all work perfectly well.



  • Actually, TRWTF is that with that giant empty space in the middle of the find bar, the text box doesn't expand to fit its contents.



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    @dhromed said:
    It closes fine. Problem seems to be on your end, my friend.
    I'd dredge up the Bugzilla bug, but fucking Bugzilla. FUCKING BUGZILLA!

    Thankfully, Firefox still has a setting that will suggest you need to migrate your old profle: @greprefs.js said:

    // the amount of time (in seconds) that must elapse
    // before we think your mozilla profile is defunct
    // and you'd benefit from re-migrating from 4.x
    // see bug #137886 for more details
    //
    // if -1, we never think your profile is defunct
    pref("profile.seconds_until_defunct", -1);

    bug #137886 is from 2002 and "4.x" refers to Netscape 4.x

    I'm sure glad they didn't remove THAT.

     



  • @anotherusername said:

    Actually, TRWTF is that with that giant empty space in the middle of the find bar, the text box doesn't expand to fit its contents.

    In case you need to check for certain whether someone has surreptitiously embedded a copy of War & Peace somewhere on the page, amirite?


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @anotherusername said:

    The mouse? Why the fuck would you move the mouse at all? After pressing Ctrl-F to display the search bar, the Alt-A, Alt-C, and Esc shortcuts all work perfectly well.
    No. They don't.



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    @anotherusername said:
    Actually, TRWTF is that with that giant empty space in the middle of the find bar, the text box doesn't expand to fit its contents.

    In case you need to check for certain whether someone has surreptitiously embedded a copy of War & Peace somewhere on the page, amirite?

    Or a password.



  • @Mcoder said:

    Well, I think I know the answer to that. They must keep FF developers ocupied, or else they'd try to improve xulrunner.

    Every time I read "xulrunner" I mentally substitute "Cthulu". Does anyone else have this problem?

    @El_Heffe said:

    @Lorne Kates said:

    @dhromed said:
    It closes fine. Problem seems to be on your end, my friend.
    I'd dredge up the Bugzilla bug, but fucking Bugzilla. FUCKING BUGZILLA!

    Thankfully, Firefox still has a setting that will suggest you need to migrate your old profle: @greprefs.js said:

    // the amount of time (in seconds) that must elapse
    // before we think your mozilla profile is defunct
    // and you'd benefit from re-migrating from 4.x
    // see bug #137886 for more details
    //
    // if -1, we never think your profile is defunct
    pref("profile.seconds_until_defunct", -1);

    bug #137886 is from 2002 and "4.x" refers to Netscape 4.x

    I'm sure glad they didn't remove THAT.

     

    Well I'd say they're well on course to remove that within the next decade (assuming Firefox still has any users by that time).



  • @TGV said:

    <font size="4">Firefox misses a lot of possibilities for subtle UI improvement</font>
     

    <font size="7">Understatement of the century </font>


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