The most sigificant regressions since the move to Fenix from Fennec

[mzso]

Hi!

These stuff are the most annoying missing features and negative changes I found while using Iceraven for a bit. I think all of them come from Mozilla's foolish changes.

• Cannot enqueue incoming tabs. So if I open an url from gmail or such the browser always pops to the top.
• The search keywords from the desktop browser doesn't work, even though I have sync enabled. A huge loss, I have a number of them.
• I can set the the urlbar to be on top as it is normal, but the newtab button remains on the botton. Which is a very inconvenient location this way.
• Cannot feed suggestions to the urlbar by pressing and holding. Very annoying, I use that to add the suggestions and type more for them to be more accurate search terms
• The convenient button from the urlbar to open the page in its respective app is now missing.

(The lack of about:config and addon support is also a big loss, but I think these are re-added. )

[CharmCityCrab]

Here's a potential workaround for the new tab thing:

1. Type your first URL into the URL bar. That page should load.
2. Type the URL you want for your second tab in the same URL bar without loading a new tab (This would send you away from the first page and away from the second page on desktop, but it doesn't quite do the same on mobile).
3. Enjoy the result of having two tabs open. The second tab is "on top", but you can click the number to the right of the URL and get to the tab selection screen that shows all open tabs (In this example, both URLs you typed).

I realize that this isn't as good as just having the new tab button where you want it. However, it may fit your workflow better than what it sounds like you're having to do now.

I'm pretty sure the placement of the actual new tab button comes from upstream (In this case Firefox/Fenix, though upstream can refer to more than one upstream sometimes. For example, if we were a fork of two products meshed together, or if we were forking off a fork of Firefox (Both different ways of having two upstreams).

So, if Iceraven were to change it, Iceraven would have to maintain it. I agree that it'd be a good option to have, but I don't know enough about coding to be able to tell you that it's an afterthought that they could code once and mostly forget unless Firefox/Fenix makes another major change to the way tabs work, or if it's the sort of thing that would require a disproportionate amount of effort on every update to do.

Even if Iceraven decides not to tackle it itself, and I'm not saying that they should decide not to tackle it, but if they did decide not to, and if Firefox stable/release later "fixed" it, the fix would filter down to Iceraven on the next Iceraven update after that. So, there are a couple of paths to where you want to go, potentially, both of which would land on Iceraven eventually.

My guess is that it wound up this way because A) Firefox, though it provides more options than Chrome, has been on an article towards providing fewer and fewer options over the years (Especially when Firefox for Android jumped from v68 to v69) and B) My guess is that the Firefox for Android devs all have their tabs at the bottom and/or all do the things the way I mentioned as a potential workaround (There were rumored to only be six Mozilla employees dedicated to Fenix in 2020 [I assume they can sort of flex in others at times for big stuff- last I heard Mozilla had 750 employees total], so the idea that all six might have the same option set is not as much of a stretch as it sounds.).

I have my tabs set at the top. I like that we have the option to have them at the bottom, because, why not? I like options, even the ones I don't use, it helps add users to encourage people to keep developing the browser, which includes options I do use. :) However, I have noticed that sometimes when something is just left in by Firefox or whatever as a reluctant concession to a way of browsing they want to move past, they don't always make using their disfavored option a very cohesive experience with the rest of the browser- they just implement it and say "There's your option" and don't always change ancillary things like where the new tab button is to match an option like "URL Bar on Top" (Speaking of Mozilla/Firefox, not Iceraven, though of course any small fork is partially dependent on upstream).

Iceraven used to have a ton of custom new tab options, but the guy who added them was the only one who knew how to maintain them, and he left, so we were able to keep them for a while, but eventually the project founder hit a snag when Firefox was updated in a way that he couldn't get most of the options to work with. So, Iceraven had to fall back. Fortunately, Firefox had picked up some of the code from Iceraven (with changes), as open-source projects do (Totally legit), and so we didn't fall back to our pre-tab options stage, we fell back to some options based on Iceraven's own code.

I do kind of wonder if some aspects of the old code could be used to solve issues like yours, though (Dropped in Iceraven v1.5 [Iceraven's version numbers are more like traditional software where they start below 1.0 and don't make big version jumps, though the developer has started including Fenix version equivalents next to the actual Iceraven version numbers on the releases page to be more informative to users and potential users], IIRC. The version number could be off, though. ). The gentleman currently doing much of Iceraven's development wasn't involved when we had to drop a lot of the custom tab stuff, so it's possible he might be able to figure something out. As I said, though, with limited personpower hours in a small shop, unfortunately inevitably choices have to be made and they can't just "Yes to all" everything because they'd need at least a few core full-time workers and probably more rather than 1 or 2 part-time volunteers.