Bring back FireFox to version 88.0

[Simpleguy60]

 I kept version 88.0 for the longest time until my roommate hit the update button and now I can not go back to that version.  I stayed at version 88.0 for the very reason I am posting this. I do not like ANY of the updated changes AT ALL!!!!!   Do not like the black background, do not like how it has effected my gmail coloring and layout, how it functions, do not like the forced 2nd page search bar at top instead of on the page, I do not like ANY OF THE CHANGES, NONE! How it functions is horrible!!!  And yet I am forced to deal with it.  There is one aspect that computer people (yes you developers and programing engineers) seem to have and that is a disconnect of how your updates may effect peoples lives.  It is one thing for the updates that deal with security or bug fixes, but when you change the way it looks or the layout, how it functions, change features, what is shown and what is hidden or moved to, but most of all how it effects other programs and website form programs on their website.  If there is a way to go back to how version 88.0 functioned, yet place the options of the look (I know a lot of people like the black background, but there are a lot of people like me that do not) other wise this version 102.0 is reeking havoc, I shake my head everyday with the thought going through my mind "what the heck were they thinking!".  The thought has come across my mind as to "self sabotage".

[lolrepeatlol]

> There is one aspect that computer people (yes you developers and programing engineers) seem to have and that is a disconnect of how your updates may effect peoples lives. It is one thing for the updates that deal with security or bug fixes, but when you change the way it looks or the layout, how it functions, change features, what is shown and what is hidden or moved to, but most of all how it effects other programs and website form programs on their website.

it's impossible to keep everyone happy. firefox developers cannot just make security update releases for every single version of firefox. that's ridiculous -- and choosing not to do so is not self-sabotage, but being realistic.

[Bitbeisser]

The problem is not updates that are necessary for security reasons!
It's those uncalled for changes in the way how Firefox is being used, it's layout changes, it color changes, using an address bar forcefully as a search bar, etc.
Sorry, but those UX folks that are behind all that nonsense are the ones that have a disconnect with real life.

[lolrepeatlol]

Mozilla developers are not going to keep the same exact styling and layout just to make a few users happy. The fact is that products modernize with time -- had they not, we'd still be stuck on a design reminiscent of the Internet Explorer days, with Firefox 1.0. It's time to move on.

[IvanDeTerrible]

But they should address the elimination of the option to not update at all. Something the the FF developers seem to be tone deaf too. If I feel I need to see if I need to update, then I can check, but the constant badgering for non-essential updates that do not apply to my OS is beyond annoying.

I also would like to know why FF feels the need to have 11 of their exes running at the same time? I mean really? Why?

[Bitbeisser]

Well, as for your last question, it seems that is (mainly?) due to the number of tabs that you might have open. Each one gets its own process (Chrome is far worse in that regards, but it seems FF is trying to catch up to them), probably so that you can have easier individual settings on each tab (like zoom level, just as an example) and possibly dynamic contents. On the bottom line, this doesn't make much difference to having one HUGE blob of memory with one single process, in fact sometimes it helps to close down a single, misbehaving tab...

As for the updates, well, as I mentioned elsewhere, security fixes should happen as soon as possible, but at the same time, they should stop screwing with the functionality (one thing that I noticed a lot today is that the spellchecking is still underlining words even after they have been corrected from the spellcheck's suggestions. It almost looks like they want to compete with Thunderbird in the number of regressions per new update...

[IvanDeTerrible]

In regards to updates about maybe 1% are security fixes, the rest are some functionality garbage for Mac, and cheese machines from what I have seen. And then there was that all importantly one to remove mail.ru from the list in order to I am guessing stand with the Ukraine. I mean really, but that is an obfuscation as to where is the option to pick, to update, or not.

And to address open process instances, I look when I open it with nothing going on. It automatically just throws a ton of resources to run this. I am about ready to dump it again, and I use nothing Google, they are Satan in my view. Well I have gmail for my spam, and to join websites, but my main email is proton, since it is secure.

[Ghimbo21]

Regarding the mutiple processes that Firefox needs to have: every page, extensions and some other components runs in another thread different from the main one, you can check what a thread is doing with the about:processes page.

Doing so, the browser can handle better the singular component, so if one of them dies only the crashed page needs to be closed. You can try this by selecting a random thread in the Task Manager and kill it. The memory usage is not impacted so much this way, the only real "issue" is the CPU that needs to jump from one thread to another (which is not a real issue in the real world, a normal Windows system have 5000+ threads running between some hundreds of processes).

[Bitbeisser]

Sorry, but that just doesn't make any sense. This has nothing to do with "moving on", with "styling" and "layout" but with totally screwing with 'functionality".

[KY4CT]

Being very realistic, why change the UI functionality of an application when there's ABSOLUTLY NO TECHNICAL REASON TO. It's a 'I like it this way, let them eat cake' mentality, and as a software developer who's actually paid, yea, no one can make everyone happy, but they just recently pissed of a 42 year old developer that's been using this codebase sense it was called Netscape.

There's no room for fanboys in this tread.

[Bitbeisser]

The problem is that in most cases, there are not even developers (as in actual programming) that coming up with these kind of changes.
IMHO, you need to take all those "UX" folks into a dark alley to dispose of them, that would some a lot of problems in a a lot of common software these days...

[Ghimbo21]

While I do not reccomend to use an outdated browser (there are a lot of security and compatibility issues involved), you can always download an old version with this link: https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/

Search for the version you were using before and install it. You may need to uninstall the current version first.

[KY4CT]

Legitimately, as a software developer, i 100% agree with your sentiment. I've used this on my phone for the past 3 years and they literally BROKE their password management as well as their sync functionality. I'm so close to just installing another pw manager app and switching to chrome. I do full stack development at that, and if it's any testament of why the world uses chrome it's the exact things you just touched on. while I'm a firm believer that there needs to be diversity in browsers, this latest generation of design language is crap, and removing functionality that others depend on is absolutely asinine.

[Blackcatprowl]

Bring back Firefox 56.0... [Aurora DE Beta]

The pinnacle of browser development~ & abandoned!

Still runs better than any other browser...

[IDT-Xodec]

Downgrade to Firefox 88.0.1 the downgrade protection thing just means you have to sign in again

Firefox 88.0.1 is the same as 88.0 but updated

[IvanDeTerrible]

I am still waiting for the Update or not choice to be put back in. Would be nice if they allowed us to selectively pick which ones we want, and which ones to never ask about again. But it seems the most high developers think we are too stupid to choose what steamy pile of dog droppings they offer. I am about done with tech anyhow.

To KY4CT I wouldn't install Chrome anything, they do not allow ad blocking on the platform,could it be they control the most intrusive ads on the web?