Mozilla to Remove Several Unnecessary Options from Firefox Preferences Window

Personally I love using Firefox web browser from Mozilla. As most of you already know that I use the Nightly build of Firefox which works absolutely fine for me. I prefer to use it because it gets updated frequently with new features and updates. Whenever Mozilla adds something interesting to Nightly build, following exclusive AskVG article gets updated with the new information:

Mozilla Firefox Nightly Build Updates

Recently I found that some options in Firefox preferences window are missing. First I thought that Mozilla is experimenting with these options position but thanks to AskVG reader “Ahmad” I came to know that Mozilla has permanently removed those options from Firefox.

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According to Alex Limi (product designer at Mozilla), there are many old options present in Firefox preferences window which are useless for most of the users. These options were added long time back and now these options are unnecessary and can make Firefox unusable if a user accidentally turns them on or off.

Today in this topic, we are going to list all the options which Mozilla is going to remove from Firefox preferences window. Most of these options have been already removed from latest Nightly build and the rest of these options are scheduled to remove from future builds.

If you are using the stable version of Firefox, you’ll find these changes in Firefox 23 and later versions.

So without wasting time lets share the list of options which are going to be removed from Firefox preferences window:

1. Load Images Automatically and Enable JavaScript Options

Currently these 2 options can be found in “Content” tab of Firefox preferences window.

Images_Javascript_Firefox_Options.png

Mozilla decided to remove these options because if a user accidentally or intentionally turns these options off, it might break several webpages as most of the websites use JavaScript and images to show their content.

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I often use these options when I’m working with a slower Internet connection. Disabling these 2 options speeds up webpages loading time and I’ll surely miss these 2 options.

2. Override Firefox Cache Space Management

This option can be found in “Advanced -> Network” tab of Firefox preferences window.

Firefox_Cache_Options.png

This option helps you in setting a limit for Firefox cache space. By default Firefox automatically decides how much space should it use to store browser cache files on your hard disk drive. But you can override this automatic cache management and restrict Firefox to use only given hard disk space to store cache files.

Mozilla is going to remove this option as restricting the cache space may slow down browser performance and Firefox can automatically reduce its usage if you are low on disk space. So you don’t need to worry about it.

3. SSL and TLS Protocols and Certificate Manager

These options can be found in “Advanced -> Encryption” tab of Firefox preferences window.

Security_Protocol_Certificate_Firefox_Options.png

Mozilla decided to remove options to turn SSL and TLS protocols off as it might break many websites such as Gmail, etc because these websites use these protocols for enhanced security. If you disable these options, you’ll not be able to view many websites.

Certificate Manager is an advanced tool present in Firefox which is used rarely by people. Mozilla has decided to remove it from Firefox and to create a new add-on or about:config preference to access some of its feature.

4. Turn off Navigation Toolbar

This option can be found in following places:

  • Right-click on Firefox titlebar or tab bar
  • Firefox button -> Options
  • Firefox menubar -> View -> Toolbars

Firefox_Navigation_Toolbar_Option.png

If you uncheck the option, it’ll remove the navigation toolbar from Firefox window and you’ll not be able to type any website URL, etc. Normal users might find it difficult to restore the toolbar if they accidentally turn it off. That’s why Mozilla has decided to remove this option.

5. Always Show Tab Bar

This option can be found in “Tabs” tab of Firefox preferences window.

Firefox_Tabbar_Options.png

This option allows you to show or hide tab bar in Firefox window if only a single tab is opened by you. Mozilla has removed it from Firefox.

What do you think about this move? Are you happy with the removal of these old options or will you miss them? Feel free to share your comments…

Published in: Mozilla Firefox

About the author: Vishal Gupta (also known as VG) has been awarded with Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award. He holds Masters degree in Computer Applications (MCA). He has written several tech articles for popular newspapers and magazines and has also appeared in tech shows on various TV channels.

Comments

NOTE: Older comments have been removed to reduce database overhead.

  1. Browser makers these days like to think their users as idiots. I was happy about Mozilla till now because they weren’t one of them. Now they are moving in the same way. After reading this article I have a feeling that Firefox will not be as customizable as it used to be in the coming days which would be a big drawback for me.

  2. great info VG!
    Option number 2 is very handy option that also helps to reduce disk defragment.

  3. I usually toggle the JavaScript frequently… as long as they have that option in the about: config page, I think I’ll be alright…I wish they didn’t remove it from options though… the other options, I never used them. Will that sort of improve the performance of Firefox though?

  4. Wow! I use all of them a lot. I guess I can see them being removed for the “average” user, but those who know what they are doing I hope there is a way to still access them. Either by a hidden menu, or from the config options.

    10:15 AM EST
    4/11/2013

  5. OMGG i have been a proud and loyal Firefox fan and user ever since v4 and now i just cannot believe that Mozilla is going to strip down its browser until its rendered useless…

  6. Eh, I feel like those options were barely used anyway. But I do agree that customizability, one of the biggest points for Firefox, has been limited a bit.

  7. I don’t understand Lord Patrick. I’m firefox user since I got internet and I’m pretty fine with what they’re going to do.

  8. Removing them is a good thing but they should be moved to the about:config section for power users so that they can still be used if needed.

  9. As a PC maintenance guide I have often been thouroughy irritated by being called out to “internet does not work” or variations on the theme to find that the user has disabled Java or turned off all the toolbars. Often trying to talk them through it on the phone is an entirely pointless exersize same goes for getting them to install Logmein or teamviewer.

    So thanks Mozilla for curing users fiddling with settings factor.
    OTOH a £30.00 call out to fix a browser setting is money for old rope but on balance I would rather stay home and watch the footie.

    I can do anything that has been disabled with about:config, browswer extensions or a custom shortcut anyway so I think it is a good thing

    Thanks

    Jonah

  10. I just looked and my nightly still has option to remove navigation bar and still lets me set a cache size. All the other options mentioned are still gone though.

    I find it funny all the people griping about these things on here when just because it’s in the nightly doesn’t mean it’s permanent.

  11. Removing options 4 and 5 is okay for me. But Mozilla should not remove options 1-3.

  12. Carbonize makes a damn good point.

    Besides, after 15 years of Internet use – I also have zero use for those options.

    However the one that does piss me off is the new download thingy in FF20 onwards.

    I liked my download manager – it handled multiple instances visibly and now it no longer functions.

    Size 12 boot to glutinous maximus time!

  13. I can understand why FF have implemented that changes. But they are insulting the advanced user.
    They could include in an Advanced Tab where the advanced users can set settings. and have an option to set FF settings to Default if a user has stuffed it up and can’t remember what they did..

    The About Config option better not disappear!

  14. The removal of option 5 in version 23 is a reason for hate. I’m not at all fond of tabs, and there should be higher priorities on the list than messing around with the user interface features like that.

  15. I, for one, am severely pissed off that certain changes are being made in the IT world in general that screw over some of us in big ways. I recently was forced (kicking and screaming) to abandon my XP machines at work, and yet both Windows 7 and 8 are flaming piles of doggie-poo. They have made my life so much more miserable!

    And while in this mood, I get an upgrade to Firefox 23 for security reasons… Tab bar is now forced on us (I hate tabbed browsing as a methodology, and screen real estate is extremely important to me due to the volume of data that I have to have up on my screen at the same time!)? Cannot disable image auto-loads if the web connection is slow (i.e. satellite connection in the rurals of Montana here, for instance)? Making it even more difficult to clean-out browser cache by removing manual control of disk space limits (what about my old computers with a tiny hard drive, for instance)? WHO MAKES THESE DECISIONS FOR THE GENERAL POPULUS!? I mean, this is the kind of “We’re just going to dumb this down for most people to use” crap that forced me to get the hell away from using Microsoft. I shudder to think that I’m being forced to switch to some other browser, but that may be the case…

    I was already seriously irritated with the arbitrary, complete removal of the status bar, probably the single most useful and important feature of any browser. Now more options join that rank. So now, instead of these being a single-click option to enable and disable a feature that some of us NEED, we are relegated to utilizing someone’s hack (add-on) to get it working again, and that has to be modified and updated each time a new FF update comes out. Seriously?!

    Bottom line: Don’t dumb things down and make them shiny just to make them simple and shiny! Usefulness is most important!

  16. I just updated to firefox 23 and I am very dissapointed. Always show tab bar is NOT an useless option. I like my firefox with minimal view and the tab bar is annoying there on top of the page! I never enable that before and now I cannot disable it! I was looking on internet and I see poeple already started to use add-ons to hide the tab bar. Removing this option was very stupid.

  17. The removal of the Firefox “Allways show the tab bar” now means that if the user is looking at a single page there is less of that page viewable and a significant wasted area within the browser. On small notebooks and laptops its bad enough trying to see web pages wihout Firefox trying to copy chrome and force us all to use tabs all the time.

    I really wish they wouldn’t dumb down applications like this. People should just learn how to use something instead of developers removing functionality for everyine. Put the options in the advanced section but don’t remove them !!!

  18. And this is how users switch to other product. I uninstalled Firefox after 8 years of using and switched to Safari.
    Hope, the developers are happy now, since the option of hide tabs is removed.

  19. Damn, you are doing bad thing with removing ability to hide tabbar with only one tab. My screen height is only 600px and I hate you.

  20. It’s very annoying, that firefox remove the javascript option, and image options in contents.

    I occasionally find it useful to temporary turn off javascript.

    I think I was also blocking urls in images.

    I am very seriously considering going back to firefox 22.

  21. 1. disabling javascript is useful for sites that insist on using it in annoying ways. Being able to disable javascript move/resize/menu modifications applies here too. What is this limi idiot thinking?

    2. disk cache is a privacy issue. enabling private browsing should not use the cache at all, at least.

    3. I could see the point about the SSL disable option, but the cert manager is needed. Just because something’s complex does not mean it’s not needed.

    4. I have the url bar on the menu toolbar to minimize footprint. I disable all the other bars and move just the buttons I need to that one toolbar. same goes with the ‘always show tab bar’ feature. I like the tab bar disappearing when I only need one open.

    I’m tired of these design 2.0 idiots deciding to waste my desktop real estate with all kinds of whitespace.

  22. What? How is restricting the size of the cache unnecessary? Please think of something better like “[X] I know what I am doing and am not going to blame Mozilla for too many options at all” and keep these. If I didn’t want to have these options I’d go chrome or something, please…

  23. Bug 851702 – Remove “Enable JavaScript” checkbox from Prefs

    1st off thank you for those that said this should be in the release notes!!!

    most of the time I leave JavaScript on and I disable JavaScript as needed.
    but I use a plug-in called “Toolbar buttons” to selectively enable or disable things. mostly for when I run into weird websites that don’t like right clicking. like comment forms and song lyrics websites!! ( I can see it and I can retype it by hand, but I can’t copy and paste it!? and to mention the fact that this one site with a blog protect system prevented me from reposting and “quoting the source”, because the JavaScript completely! broke! the website “until it was disabled”. )

    2nd right clicking is the thing that’s mostly what I uncheck. I don’t like sites that would Replace my right-click menu and remove it altogether and sites that pop-up windows that block the entire screen. ( dropbox.com and box.com both replace the context menu, but then you lose the ability to copy and paste text and all the other functions. disabling the checkbox allowed me to have both menus and then click past when I really wanted to access the other functionality. )

    so I am all right with the “Enable JavaScript” checkbox being removed.
    but I just think that there should have been a message during the update much like the way incompatible add-ons are handled, similar to what comment 30 said (Bug 851702 Comment ).

    and I don’t want to have an add-on like “remove new tab button” for every single feature that Would need to be turn back on or off, because Enabling a lot of add-ons will slowdown functions of actually using the browser for a.. browser.
    and guess what is now part of the UI edit menu and now I’m stuck with a plug-in that I can’t get rid of because it breaks things when I remove it.

    i will be heading over to about:config for this one at least, until that gets removed!
    if not, maybe Google Chrome or an outdated! version of Firefox will be next.

    I’m glad navigational tool bar removal didn’t make it to the mainstream release.

  24. Unfortunately I am 79 and my mind is slowly fading. Simply, it is difficult to learn new methods. It’s a bummer that windows XP will not be maintained. When I tried using tabs, I almost always deleted all the open tabs when trying to delete just the last one. My open pages are listed on the screen bottom where I am used to seeing them so I don’t need them. I also prefer to have more screen available since I do not use tabs.

  25. Google “Firefox” and look at the description on Mozilla’s site:

    “Firefox is created by a global non-profit dedicated to ***putting individuals in control*** online.”

    Really?

  26. If you’re going to head in this direction, why not just make a “Firefox for Dummies” as a totally new browser, and let the rest of us keep the older functional stye that’s actually useful to someone with an IQ over 80. The for dummies model could just have a box in the center of the screen for typing in misspelled pointless questions, such as “whers catelyns fcebook?” The Mozilla/Google behemoth could then feed them back some approximation of what their mind conceives of as pretty or funny and they’d be satisfied.

  27. I have firefox 9.1, and windows XP SP2, and have NEVER let it do ANY updates, PERIOD.

    Both are stripped down to stop all the spying on users, that Microslop and the others are doing.
    Microslop Windblows is a giant KEYSROKER which gathers data on you and emails it
    to themselves in the background while you’re using your PC.
    If you know what to hack and disable, you can stop them. (Remote Help,
    Remote Desktop et al. )
    I have hacked XP and Firefox- about:config nearly to death to speed up web pages.
    Using dial-up and the web pages load plenty quick.
    I have NO problems.
    My PC has 3rd party software I installed that nabs everything that tries to
    surreptitously connect to the web, the greatest offender being the SEARCH feature
    on XP. It tries to connect to the web invisibly ( 137.117.86.84 ) while you use it, but my
    connection guard stops it.
    I also re-route that IP to my 127.0.0.1 hosts file which stops it cold.

    Long Live XP SP2
    My PC is stable.

    One day the Gang At Redmond will send a virus out over the web that will seek and destroy all XP machines.
    XP SP2 is costing THE GANG a lot of dollars in upgrade sales.
    I love being part of that.

  28. @ Billy Hilly

    Wow, you have a lot of paranoia. I understand, but seriously, you shouldn’t be using an OS that predates the first iPod. XP is getting old, and you’re missing out on a lot of features.
    YouTube, Gmail and even MySpace didn’t exist when XP was released. They were all released after Windows XP. But anyways, it’s all up to you whether you want to move on or not.

  29. Quote: “XP is getting old, and you’re missing out on a lot of features. YouTube, Gmail and even MySpace didn’t exist when XP was released. They were all released after Windows XP.”

    Wow, abstract much? “They were all released after Windows XP” what the @#$% is that supposed to mean. Just because YOU say software is quote “old” doesn’t make it so. Failing to do software right the first time, and FORCING software to become obsolete are both WRONG ways of doing things in the current industry. Quote “missing out on a lot of features” – features that many people DO NOT WANT or did not ask for as well as “change” that many people did not want or did not ask for. Software arrogance does not work, Windows 8, case & point.

  30. Hi fellaz.

    I do agree with all who said that Firefox should preserve all of these options in an “Expert mode” or whatever they call it. As I maintain student labs I often face strange faces and statements that people do not know what to do with this or that option, so hiding complexity is a modular and good thing – but this should not cripple advanced users . Probably “one size fits all” policy is flawed …

    There are still lots of pages with broken Javascript for example, and there will always be some of that kind – that is, broken or – worse – hostile.

    Same with Java applets I suppose.

    Hope this helps.

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