Firefox 3: I want to know ...

[unixronin]

... Why does Firefox 3 have no scroll bars?  Do they just assume that everyone has a wheel mouse by now and scroll bars are obsolete?  Is there some hidden configuration setting somewhere to enable scroll bars, lacking which they're not displayed for the sake of artistic cleanliness or something?

Firefox 3 seems to have several annoying "features" that, as far as I can see so far, cannot be turned off.  Perhaps the most annoying I've found so far is that if you view an image directly with multiple tabs open, FF3 will replicate the entire image in the tab.  Which, if it's a large image, means your tab bar suddenly takes over the entire Firefox window.

I'll grant the improved speed is very nice, and video integration seems much better.  But I think there's major interface functionality issues with Firefox 3 that need to be addressed before it's ready for prime time.

(Seriously ... disabling scrollbars by default?  Whose stupid idea was that?)

Update:

It appears I unjustly blamed Firefox 3 RC2.  Something in my profile — a setting, an add-on, I don't know yet — that works fine in 3.0RC1 is causing problems in 3.0RC2.  Started in safe mode, RC2 works as expected.  I haven't had time to isolate the problem yet, but I'm going to start with add-ons.

Comments

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Hunh?

Is something wrong with your install? I've never seen either of those quirks.

Crashing lots, yes. Missing scrollbars? not so much.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I don't know ... both of these showed up yesterday after I installed a brand new download of RC2.

[glitch25.livejournal.com]

heh.. think you need to reinstall. The only pages that don't have scrollbars are the ones that are scripted to not have them. Otherwise, they work fine for me. I've been playing with the beta for a while on Ubuntu and its worked great.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Huh. I just installed RC2 yesterday, which was when I started seeing this. RC1 wasn't doing either. (This is on Windows, I haven't tried it on Linux yet.)

Having just noticed that the installer put RC2 over the top of RC1, I just blew it away and reinstalled RC2 cleanly. No change in behavior.

If no-one else is seeing it, I wonder if they're symptoms of some add-on that claims to be 3.0 compatible but isn't?

[glitch25.livejournal.com]

I believe I'm running rc2 on XP at work.. and again, no issues...

strange...

Keep a blank profile handy.

[zeekar.livejournal.com]

I had scads of problems with all the FF3 release candidates until I made a new profile with no add-ons or nothin'. Been adding things back, but slowly.

And there are still pages I have to use for my job (e.g. our time reporting system at work) that don't work at all in FF3. Nothing like filling out a form and clicking "submit" just to see the entire page (not the fields, the whole page itself) go blank and take all the data you've typed in with it.

Re: Keep a blank profile handy.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Where does Firefox hide the profile manager these days?

I tried starting it up in "safe mode", and yeah, like that, scrollbars are back. So it's something interfering with them — and oddly, something that wasn't a problem in RC1.

Re: Keep a blank profile handy.

[zeekar.livejournal.com]

Pass -P to firefox to bring the profile manager up. On Windows you might have to make your own copy of the shortcut and edit the command line...

[http://users.livejournal.com/crossfire_/]

Your scrollbar problem is probably due to an incompatible add-on. Have you tried a plain vanilla install?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Funny you should say that. I just made that discovery. Next item on the agenda: Figure out which one is the problem.... (and wonder how long it'll be before most of the extensions I use are updated to be properly 3.0 compatible, and wonder which ones will just never be updated, just like it was with the 1.x-2.0 upgrade)

[http://users.livejournal.com/crossfire_/]

And this would be why I won't be using FF3 as my primary browser for a little while at least. We'll have it for testing our web apps, but I won't switch to it as my primary for a bit yet. :)

[darthgeek.livejournal.com]

I had similar problems. Turned out to be the theme I was using (Grey Modern). I switched to the default theme and they came back. Not being a huge fan of the new default theme, I went looking for another one and found Metal Lion Andromeda. It worked well until I installed the latest RC and my bookmark toolbar went missing. Switched back to Grey Modern and it re-appeared.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Ah, I didn't think of checking the theme ... I'm using Modern Pinball (http://mozilla-themes.schellen.net/firefox.html), which Johannes Schellen has already stated will not be updated beyond the 2.x series.

So I need to find myself a new theme anyway ...
(Reluctantly, because the last time I looked, there wasn't another theme out there as clean and compact, or anywhere near as attractive.)