Firefox users criticized the permanent ‘List All Tabs’ button introduced in version 131.0, leading Mozilla to make it removable.
The button, designed to manage hidden tabs and prevent add-ons from hiding them, received backlash for being unnecessary alongside Firefox View.
Mozilla responded with a fix in version 131.0.3, allowing users to remove the button through toolbar customization.
That never bugged me too much, but I’ll at least be glad it can be disabled for people who really dislike it.
Agreed. Being able to customize all elements of the top bar is one of the great things about Firefox.
I don’t see a reason why it shouldn’t be possible to remove newly added elements. Even the “Open a new tab” button can be removed, as well as the recently added “View recent browsing across windows and devices” button.Customizability, and most importantly portable customizability, is non-existent in most modern software. Even highly configurable FOSS products like Firefox take time, effort, and above average technical skills to mirror configs between not only clients, but identical clients, and even just keeping them in sync. You shouldn’t have to log into their cloud or jump through hoops; just export a config file(s) and import it onto another machine; if versions are identical, the state of the product and its feature-set should be identical (e.g. not temp, session, or 3rd party data; though in the case of Firefox all extension configs should apply too, as they are part of its ecosystem/feature-set).
As a consumer, I often wish that there were a requirement for ALL digital product software and services to export/import their current config, including all “user” data, to open-source compatible, lossless formats — this would be the most effective method to free consumers and businesses alike from vendor lock-in and monopolization — but as a developer I’m aware that would be a nightmare, especially for all pre-existing software.
… who the hell are these special users that Firefox apparently pander to, and what mass of people do they constitute to make them so powerful?
More importantly, how do I join this special club?
It’s probably the nature of the change, too.
- It’s easy to add a switch to disable the button.
- It doesn’t cut into their bottom line.
- It’s damn good PR.
Other stuff that people have been complaining about, like the massive backlash against baking in 3rd-party AI, won’t make the cut.
Relatively benign things like tab grouping are challenging, so despite being much more popular, the easier-to-implement AI features were given a fast pass to Release versions of Firefox.
