View -> toolbars -> bookmarks toolbar (uncheck)

> menu-bar takes up another bar of space by default

View -> toolbars -> menu bar (uncheck)

Or even not trashing. When one tab asks for username/login with a pop-up ("Authentication Required" one) and you have it saved in some email opened in another tab you can't switch to email tab until you kill the login one. I call it "god window" (god tab in this case) pattern. Very typical for most old and some new Windows desktop apps.

Chrome handles it perfectly.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=613785 open bug for it

Also, I got the (subjective) feeling that Firefox was becoming sluggish as I had 6-7 addons. I might be wrong, but that would mean Firefox is sluggish in general.

Wayland matches the Windows/OS X behavior (probably because it's easier to just accelerate one big rectangular canvas the process draws on), so who knows what will happen as that catches on.

Firefox has had years to catch up to Chrome with these issues, why haven't they?

browser.tabs.closeButtons;2

You can move the nav buttons yourself: right click on a toolbar -> Customize.

I wonder if this is not available on my platform (MacOS).

Edit: aah got it. The OP mentioned that you have to use 'Nav bar on title bar' extension along with tree style tabs.

[1]: http://jelv.is/browser-screen-usage.png

Extensions require a restart to be installed, perhaps, but that doesn't seem to be a big issue: you only install any given extension once. If you want to install a bunch at the same time, you only need to restart once.

I agree the restart is a minor issue, as is the menu bar showing by default, as is the bookmarks bar being always/never there (rather than the more sensible Chrome behavior), as is the interruption of my workflow when Firefox decides to check for updates when I start it, as is the relative laggy UI, ... But these issues add up to a worse experience. Worse by enough that despite wanting to avoid Chrome, I came back to it :(

[1]: http://oxygenkde.altervista.org/

There are also some Firefox-specific extensions I can't live without any more, the main one being KeySnail[2] which gives me Emacs-style keyboard shortcuts.

[2]: https://github.com/mooz/keysnail

[1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/htitle/

Hacker News could've made their font declaration have a fallback (like "font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;") and things would look way better by default.

As for me, I solved it by editing userContent.css and adding a font-declaration for Hacker News myself. (or you could use something like the Stylish addon)

All in all, I'd say it's the fault of website creators.

So, yeah, I guess you didn't really try. Perhaps you're just attached to Chrome.

Also, checking for updates when I start my browser is the worst possible time UI-wise. I start my browser when the site I want to visit is at my fingertips, and my working memory is fading as I am waiting for my computer. How do you customize this away?

Sure, the bookmarks bar being always-visible or never-visible is a minor defect, but it is still worse than Chrome's show-in-new-tabs behavior. Showing menu bars and window decorations by default shows bad judgement, but indeed that wasn't the reason I couldn't stay with Firefox. It felt slower, had annoying wasteful window decorations, started with annoying extension version checks, and let bad web apps interfere with all my tabs.

Do you have actual responses for my actual points besides "you didn't really try"?

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/fx/?utm_source=firefox...

1) Chrome's behavior where you get bookmarks bar in new tabs is far more useful.

2) Even without the bookmarks' bar, I have 4 bars (window decorations, menu bar, tab bar, URL bar), whereas Chrome has 2 (tab bar + window decorations, URL bar).

Screen-space is still wasted compared to Chrome, and you don't get bookmarks in new tabs.

I have just two bars[2] for either browser, enough real-estate for me (wish I had a high resolution though).

[1]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/pinned-tabs-keep-favori... [2]: http://i4.minus.com/i4lX5yMWuwoGi.png

Slightly customized Firefox 24: 54 [1]

Chrome 31: 61

IE10: 55 [2]

Opera 12: 61

[1] http://i.imgur.com/eBiIZHc.png (Also, no close button on tabs and they shrink down to the size of pinned tabs. All other browsers do that shrinking stuff by default. There used to be a property for that, but one developer decided to remove it. Now you need a custom userChrome.css and other voodoo.)

[2] Sounds close, but 50% of that space are actually unused. There is a lot less room for tabs.

Also, Firefox requires losing the bookmarks tab completely, whereas Chrome has a saner default of having it appear in new/empty tabs.

Here is a screenshot of how my firefox23 window looks like under Ubuntu/KDE4.

http://i.imgur.com/KnLTDZJ.jpg

* to disable addon auto-update check - about:addons > wrench: uncheck "update addons automatically"

With browsers I think it's easy to become entrenched; not that that's necessarily bad.

Thanks for the second tip, if I try Firefox again I'll do that. Is it possible to get auto-updates at browser shutdown or in the background, when it doesn't interrupt my flow? I would probably forget to ever update them if it's completely disabled...