I've recently updated to 33 (on Linux and Windows) and had my startpage altered - hid a lot of the site links, added an unwanted search form. It did add a new cog, which usually means settings but in this case is a toggle for the pinned sites (completely breaking the expected standard-through-use, offering no affordance as to it's action, contradicting the use of the cog to access preferences).
Since the Firebird days I've been using FF (on and off, I had a dalliance with Opera, Chrome, some other variants) and even I had to first search what the newtab page was even called (I forget now, it doesn't tell me anywhere in the UI) then having read a few posts I noticed that some people had different size site links and tried scroll-zoom and so returned to my default of 3 x 5 sites shown.
It's tiny things like this - you open your browser and newtab has been altered (to make way for adverts in this case) and smack there you are. It's not "your" browser it's the company that offered the upgrade, it's theirs now .. until you can claw it back again. Then the next upgrade comes, some security fix and you apply it with trepidation.
Is it really 2 years since the addon bar was removed, the big orange menu button was removed and the new "burger" menu link was added, the new config for the menu link, the streamlined tabs, the removal of the menubar, tabs moved above the address bar. Time flies?¹
¹ - I genuinely don't remember. I also used to use fixes/addons to have a compact menu with chrome removed (using KDE settings) so I'm not clear on default UI.
Since the Firebird days I've been using FF (on and off, I had a dalliance with Opera, Chrome, some other variants) and even I had to first search what the newtab page was even called (I forget now, it doesn't tell me anywhere in the UI) then having read a few posts I noticed that some people had different size site links and tried scroll-zoom and so returned to my default of 3 x 5 sites shown.
It's tiny things like this - you open your browser and newtab has been altered (to make way for adverts in this case) and smack there you are. It's not "your" browser it's the company that offered the upgrade, it's theirs now .. until you can claw it back again. Then the next upgrade comes, some security fix and you apply it with trepidation.
Is it really 2 years since the addon bar was removed, the big orange menu button was removed and the new "burger" menu link was added, the new config for the menu link, the streamlined tabs, the removal of the menubar, tabs moved above the address bar. Time flies?¹
[Looking it seems the major Australis changes (removal of addon bar for example) came in 2013, this thread is full of rants against changing the UI and moving towards Chrome https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2013/05/27/major-compatibili...]
¹ - I genuinely don't remember. I also used to use fixes/addons to have a compact menu with chrome removed (using KDE settings) so I'm not clear on default UI.