I CLOSE THE PAGE DOWN AND GO SOMEWHERE ELSE.

It’s not your business to tell me to upgrade, it’s your business to show me stuff whatever I’m using.

If some companies insist on my upgrading, they will lose my custom.

Maybe I’ll upgrade in my own time, at a later date. Maybe I won’t.

As an older user, any changes to what I’m used to — the location of toolbars or of items on the toolbars, or the addition of unnecessary items (i.e., putting Google search in the toolbar), or changes in browser functions — slow me down drastically, and it takes a VERY long time to adjust — by which time another new version with still more changes is likely to be out. This is why I’m not only still using Firefox 2, but also Internet Explorer 6. And why I’ll be clinging to Windows XP until they pry it out of my cold dead hands (and I probably wouldn’t have switched to XP if they hadn’t included the Windows Classic option). I suspect if people were offered an upgrade that looks & acts exactly like the old version but has the enhanced security, you’d get more of us reluctant upgraders to upgrade.

I do want to add, however, that I greatly appreciate all the time and energy that developers devote to providing and improving the Mozilla products, and the fact that you are all here discussing these issues and listening to user feedback. Thank you for your efforts!

As to some specifics of why I didn’t like Firefox 3:

-Firefox 3 uses a combined history for the Back and Forward button. If you just want to go back to the first page you looked at, or just go back 3 pages, etc., you have to stop and read the history to try and figure out where you were. I can see no reason for this, since if you want your whole history in one list you can simply use the ‘History’ button. I can right-click on the back button for history, but again, that is not what I’m used to doing. There is also an add-on that will add a regular back history button, but it puts it on the left rather than the right of the back button, again forcing me to stop and adjust automatic motions, learned from years of having the back history button to the right of the back button. Also, even with this add-on, the forward history button still contains the unified history.

-New version completely changed how ‘Organize Bookmarks’ works. I found it very confusing.

-An improvement I would like to see is a return to the OPTION of automatic filling in forms like we had on Netscape 7.

-Would also like to see Mozilla browsers start up as quickly as IE.

-I’m another user who doesn’t like the ‘awesome bar’. I’m the only one with access to my computer and I’m not looking at porn or anything else I feel the need to hide, so I’m not concerned with the privacy issue. Rather, I had the same problem with the new bar as Arne described in his post (‘With the old address bar, when I want to go to an often-visited site, it’s in most cases enough to just type the first 2-3 characters, and hit return.’).

I’m currently trying out the latest version of SeaMonkey and have to say that so far I like it much better than the latest Firefox, because it is more like FF2 and also more like the old Netscape which FF superceded. Except now that I’m entering this post I find it is spell-checking my entry – grrrrr! Like Rosanne Rosannadanna used to say, It’s always something!

Firefox 3.5.4 disabled every extension I have. I will now destroy 3.5.4 and go back to something that works _now_.

Rule #1: These are people’s PERSONAL computers.
Rule #2: This is MY computer and it is CAREFULLY configured in exactly the way that I want it to be.
Rule #3: An automatic update should never change the appearance or configuration without user intervention.
Rule #3a: Breaking someone’s theme or plugins with an update is bad, bad, bad form!

My browser is a seriously-customized work horse that I depend upon for all manner of activities (work, play, blah). I have a physical handicap that makes these customizations all the more important to me (the one-handed computer user here). If I cannot fit the drop-down menus and the navigation/wonderbar into only two rows, then I’m not likely to want to upgrade, ever. I do not want to have to mouse all over the place to get things done!

If something changes from one version to the next and I didn’t personally change it, then there is a problem. My workflow stops until I can figure it out. I am an incredibly patient and flexible computer power user (since 1978), but change something in my application without allowing me to review it/accept it with an explanation (browser, specifically) and I get very angry/disgusted. _I_ configured this on my time and I don’t need some developer coming along changing things willy-nilly just because they can or they somehow think it is important and I should just buck-up and listen to their wisdom on the subject.

Let ME decide on MY computer.

So, that is the curmudgeon-in-a-nutshell view (my personal view), and as someone who was a tech and then service manager at a computer repair store, my experience is that you don’t change things on a person’s computer…EVER. That computer is a very _personal_ physical extension into the ether.

It doesn’t matter than if you were to look at their computer and see that everything was simply default/default/default…people have their computers set up exactly the way that they want to (yes, even if they didn’t set up a thing). In nearly every computer “problem” that has ever come across my desk, the main culprit was a change or something that created unfamiliarity on their _personal_ computer. People are creatures of habit. People rely on things being in the same place, not out of choice, but out of motor memory.

So, yeah, I’m just jumping in with both feet, no parachute and still smoking from re-entry.

I have sessions of web-browsing, e.g. website-development where I need several manuals of a site and not any of the (generalized / specific off-topic) bookmarks. When I start a new session, the bookmarks shown (based on bookmarks) give me the ability to quickly adapt to a new situation and build a new history for this session. In the sidebar the entire history must be available to go to the complete history.

This implementation actually uses a wide-screen more effectively (sidebar is more useful in a wide-screen environment in my opinion) and history isn’t a huge list (in the beginning of a session) so one has a nice clean workflow.

For version 4.0 please follow Apple Snow Leopard: no new features, just improvement of the back-end. This is a part of Firefox that needs LOTS of love!