goodbye tabs and customization

[karenanne]

Cr*p. I thought I had set firefox to not update without asking me, but apparently not or it did it anyway. A few minutes ago I started firefox and it congratulated me on having the up to date version.

Gah, but so far so good at least it wasn't crashing, except it lost my customization to have the url bar above the tabs bar. A few minutes later I closed firefox and later restarted it, and all my tabs were gone, so it must have lost the keep context setting (or whatever that's called.) There go the reminders of the various things I was working on. I wonder what else it's wiped out.

And developers wonder why people want to prevent updates.

Is there some way I can prevent updating once and for all? I reset the ask me about updates setting, but I now see from my notes that I had actually set ask me when I got this laptop, so that is apparently useless.

[karenanne]

I should add, I went through some horrible mess to get the url bar above the tabs bar. Unfortunately it was so horrible and chaotic that I didn't save the steps. Is there some decent way to do this? I just looked on the web and people are suggesting giant modifications to a control file and other people are saying those don't work.

[karenanne]

I went back to my XP system and found that that firefox, which has the bars in the right places, is 49.0.2. So I hope to be able to install that on my new Windows 10 system.

I am looking at https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/49.0.2/ Is what I have to do:

uninstall firefox
download one of the two zip files (I assume the 64 bit one) and unzip it.

I assume I should then click on some obvious file which will start the installation...

[morat]

The DisableAppUpdate and ManualAppUpdateOnly policies should work in Firefox 94 which was released in November 2021.

Other thread:

How to turn off update nagging? (with Firefox 94.0.1 installed)
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... &t=3084245

[morat]

If you are trying to install Firefox 49.0.2, then download the "Firefox Setup 49.0.2.exe" file.

I don't remember if the 32-bit or 64-bit build is more stable on Windows 10 64-bit.

Releases
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/rele ... n32/en-US/
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/rele ... n64/en-US/

You shouldn't run a profile created in Firefox 94 with Firefox 49. The mismatch between the profile version and app version will likely cause problems.

A really poor choice running such an old version. Firefox 49 was released in September 2016.

[karenanne]

If you are trying to install Firefox 49.0.2, then download the "Firefox Setup 49.0.2.exe" file.

I don't remember if the 32-bit or 64-bit build is more stable on Windows 10 64-bit.

Releases
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/rele ... n32/en-US/
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/rele ... n64/en-US/

You shouldn't run a profile created in Firefox 94 with Firefox 49. The mismatch between the profile version and app version will likely cause problems.

A really poor choice running such an old version. Firefox 49 was released in September 2016.

Thank you. I will look at this tomorrow.

I would be happy to run a more recent version, but I am not aware of one that has a fix or some way for a user to fix the problem of the tabs bar and url bar being in the wrong places. From the web it looks like people have been trying unsuccessfully to get this fixed or at least optional for years, and the developers have made it harder and harder to do.

[karenanne]

I am a retired developer (not mozilla related) and if users kept telling me something was wrong, I would at the very least put in a way for them to avoid it.

[dickvl]

It is not that difficult to use a userChrome.css file with CSS code to place the Tab bar below the Navigation Toolbar.
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... #p14894237

More info about userChrome.css/userContent.css in case you are not familiar:
https://www.userchrome.org/what-is-userchrome-css.html

In Firefox 69 and later you need to set the toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets pref to true on the about:config page to enable userChrome.css and userContent.css in the chrome folder.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/ab ... or-firefox

[dickvl]

Note that it is quite possible (likely) that since you used your profile with the current release that this profile is no longer compatible with an old pre-Quantum version like Firefox 49.

[karenanne]

I will look at that but some people were saying on the web that the developers had changed things to ignore part of that file.

I would be installing firefox cleanly. I don't even know what a profile is, so no chance I would be keeping an old one around.

[LIMPET235]

Karenanne,
Just uninstalling the Firefox program will not remove/delete the Profile.
For reference... > http://kb.mozillazine.org/Uninstalling_Firefox & check this section > "Removing user profile data."

You'll have to remove it manually.

Close Firefox & do a cold start.

[morat]

More info on uninstalling Firefox
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... #p14956696

[redwolfe_98]

i don't tweak firefox's GUI. no hassles. no problems.

firefox's new "proton" GUI, with its default settings, is perfect, as is.

with the default settings, the "menu bar" is not enabled. enabling the "menu bar" wrecks the aesthetics.

[James]

I would be installing firefox cleanly. I don't even know what a profile is, so no chance I would be keeping an old one around.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/pr ... -user-data
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/pr ... x-profiles

[Adolf Stalin]

Going to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Mozilla\Firefox

and setting

DisableAppUpdate

to 1 has worked for me 100% for the last 3 years.