Why Firefox is so full of fail only geeks can love it

[flemmings]

You know, when I go to 'organize favorites (sic)' in IE, it automatically presents my favourites list in the order it appears when I click 'favorites': the order I've put the entries into by click and drag. I can then move things around easily from where they are to where I want them. When I go to 'organize bookmarks' in Firefox it presents my bookmarks list in 'unsorted' which means alpha order by default, and a lot of clicking and swearing is necessary to get it out of unsorted. To add insult to injury, organize bookmarks offers me many options- sorted by name, sorted by location, sorted by apple pie order. None of these is 'sorted by the order in which I've arranged my bookmarks list.' (schoolmarm voice) You must organize your bookmarks in bookmark organizer or we don't recognize your order. Yeah, the click-and-drag option is only there to fool me into using it so I'll learn it doesn't work in bookmarks organizer. Thanks.

Comments

[mauvecloud.livejournal.com]

In mozilla 1.7, bookmarks are both shown and managed the way you originally dropped them. And yes, in mozilla bookmark manager you can change the order anytime you want through drag-and-drop, too.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Confused. I thought Firefox *was* Mozilla by any other name?

[mauvecloud.livejournal.com]

1.x is the previous generation browser (http://www.mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x/), which gets shunted to the end of the list on the left side of the download page:
http://www.mozilla.org/download.html

There are reasons why I went back to 1.x (after trying Firefox, for like, 30 minutes).

[doire]

Umm, my Firefox does order bookmarks by where I last left them. I'm using 2.0.0.4.

If I click bookmarks they're in roughly date order with new ones going at the bottom and the ones I care about dragged into place. In "organise bookmarks" I can choose between unsorted and the others you mention, but unsorted is wherever I put them down. I only use organise bookmarks when it's time for spring cleaning as I do it all directly in the menu.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Yes, well, my unsorted *wasn't* 'wherever I put them': it was alpha order. I moved them around in organize bookmarks and *now* unsorted = where I put them. This annoys me almost as much as not being able to get rid of things I'll never use on the organize bookmarks menu, like 'subscribe to this page.'

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

What version are you using? It doesn't sound right.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Firefox 2 is what it says.

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

That should be right, the latest is 2.0.0.2. Hmmm.

[xsmoonshine.livejournal.com]

*vague* I never use favourites, or I don't remember/bother to use them after adding. Sites I frequent or want to remember I stick in the bookmarks toolbar at top, which can be sorted via drag and drop. Everything else I google as I need them. mikeneko knows about my mad googling habits. :)

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Far as I can see, IE favourites works the same as foxfire bookmarks. Also foxfire doesn't allow you to drag and drop everything- the dividers have to be done via organize bookmarks. Also the address bar is too narrow in my resolution and you can't get rid of the google window that takes up space next to it and even removing stuff from the toolbar doesn't make the address window any bigger and I do not like Firefox period. Except that it doesn't hang there like IE any time 300 people comment on a post.

[doire]

If I've understood one of the problems, and diagnosis at a distance is fraught with misunderstandings, you can get rid of the search box (= google window?)by dragging it onto the customise toolbars window. In my setup the address bar then expands to fill the available space.

I do remember having to drag it to the size I wanted, but I think that was 1.5? 1.7?.

I do worry that my lovely slimmed down browser is going the way of all bloatware.


In a spirit of experiment, I created a new toolbar on the menu bar and dragged the address box to it. That was pretty big. Hiding the main toolbar gave extra height so that's a bonus. But then I am a geek much of the time.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Ah! Perfect. Thank you. Good-bye google window, hello nice long address bar. (Still can't see why I'm not allowed to drag it around to the size and position I want as I can in IE but oh well. This way one doesn't accidentally drag it where you don't want it.)

Things bloat for a reason: people want the features available in bloatware. Human nature: fix it till it's broken.

[luxetumbra.livejournal.com]

This annoys me almost as much as not being able to get rid of things I'll never use on the organize bookmarks menu, like 'subscribe to this page.'

The Menu Editor (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/710) extension will let you tweak menus to your heart's content. :)

I remember first switching to Firefox and being annoyed at how it left out so many functions that I felt should be packaged with an internet browser "right out of the box", but when I saw the vast array of extensions available to tweak FF (e.g. Download Them All (http://www.downthemall.net/) - makes downloading a series of links on a website (like manga zips, for example ^_^;) a one-click operation; Moji (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/145); Rikaichan (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2471); Selectthing (http://selectthing.mozdev.org/) (though you need the Nightly Tester Tools Extension (http://www.oxymoronical.com/web/firefox/nightly) to enable it to work with FF 2 as it hasn't been updated in a while. And if you install the GreaseMonkey extension (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748), you'll have access to a ton of useful scripts, such as the LJ Thread Unfolder (http://dunck.us/collab/GreaseMonkeyUserScriptsSpecific#head-c973044666e18e05bd6a375a40395a46d6bd6abe) - no more collapsed comments *_*). The tweaking process is definitely time-consuming, which is annoying. But once you have FF set up the way you'd like it, it's hard to go back to IE.

[luxetumbra.livejournal.com]

Bleagh, please to forgive the grammatical errors. Need coffee.

[luxetumbra.livejournal.com]

Also, "I want a Firefox extension to..." (http://www.econsultant.com/i-want-firefox-extension/) might be of interest.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Erm- I installed menu editor and it doesn't give me the option of deleting the folder that displays things on the bookmarks toolbar, which I never use, or the subscribe line in favorites. In fact I can't see where menu editor is installed in FF at all. Shouldn't it display somewhere?

[luxetumbra.livejournal.com]

Extensions and their options are all stuck under Tools --> Add-Ons in Firefox 2.0 (yeah, not intuitive at all). After you install the Menu Editor extension and restart Firefox, click Tools --> Add-Ons and then scroll down your list of extensions, till you get to Menu Editor. When you click the row containing the name of the extension, a little box with "Options" on it will appear in the bottom left hand corner of that row (even more non-intuitiveness!). If you click Options, you should see the this box (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/images/preview/710/2) pop up. If you click the arrow next to the dropdown box, you'll see an option for the "Tools" menu. Once you get to that point, you'll see all the menus options under Tools. Just click the name of the options you no longer want and they'll "x" out. IIRC, there's an option to both hid the bookmarks folder and the subscribe line in Favorites. (Let me know if there's not, and I'll play around with it some more.)

Firefox UI: it's so obvious geeks coded this thing. :D