Firefox 34 feels rushed

Mozilla released Firefox 34 yesterday after delaying the release for a week. If you look at user feedback here on this site, on discussion sites such as Reddit or on the official add-ons repository, you may notice that users report quite a few issues in these places.

This article looks at common issues that users experienced after their version of Firefox updated to version 34.

There has been some confusion about the actual release itself. Mozilla worked on Firefox 34.0 and 34.0.5 at the same time and users did not really know which release to get.

Mozilla itself seems to have delivered the 34.0 version to most users though but it is still not clear if some received 34.0.5 instead.

Firefox 34.0 issues

The new search bar

This search bar feels rushed in many regards and appears to be the number one complaint that users have. There are always users who criticize change but the new search form changes how search works and lacks features that the old search supported.

Probably the biggest issues from a user point of view are that you cannot reorder or remove search engines, or set or modify search keywords. Existing keywords work just fine but there is simply no way to edit or set them anymore.

This seems temporary and underlines that the new search form seems rushed. If you remember, it was pushed directly to Firefox Beta and not Nightly.

While there are no information available as to why, the most likely explanation is that the new deal with Yahoo played a role somehow.

Good news is, you can turn it off. Simple set browser.search.showOneOffButtons to false and you have the old bar back.

It is unclear however if this is just a temporary workaround or if the old interface will remain part of the browser.

Another option that you have is to load chrome://browser/content/search/engineManager.xul directly. This displays the old search management page that you can use to edit keywords.

Mozilla is working on getting keyword functionality back and from the looks of it, will integrate it on the new search preferences page under options. See bug 1106055 for additional information.

Firefox Hello not appearing as an icon

Firefox Hello is a new real-time communication feature that Firefox users can make use of to make audio or video calls right from the browser without third-party software or plugins.

Several users reported that the Hello icon, which is needed to use the functionality, is not appearing in the customization menu of Firefox.

Update: it appears that the feature is launched gradually. If you set loop.throttled to false it will appear immediately after a restart. The reasoning behind this is to avoid server overload.

Flashblock not working anymore

The popular Firefox add-on Flashblock which provides you with the means to block Flash contents in the web browser stopped working in Firefox 34.

Users are reporting that the add-on stopped working in Firefox 34 and the main reason for that appears to be that the extension is no longer maintained actively.

The last version released by its author is version 1.5.17 released March 23, 2013.

Alternatives that Flashblock users may want to try:

• Click to Play per Element - Improves the built-in click to play functionality.
• Flash Control - whitelist Flash.
• FlashDisable - A simple button that enables and disables Flash.
• FlashStopper - Designed to stop autoplaying Flash contents.

To be fair, this seems to be a neglect issue by the author and not really something that one can blame Mozilla for.