The application of lateral thinking
I got up this morning.
Well, that’s pretty obvious as I wouldn’t be tapping this out if I was still in bed?
Anyways I did all the usual chores and eventually sat down with a fresh mug of tea and a freshly stoked pipe.
I fired up the laptop and did the laptop’s usual chores backing up stuff and the like. I fired up my mail [nothing interesting there] and finally fired up my browser.
Bugger!
A blank yoke appeared welcoming me to a brand new release.
I don’t mind new releases as generally they pass by largely unnoticed, but this one had really fucked things up. No bookmarks, no history no fuckin’ nuttin’. As the site gleefully informed me, this is a new generation of Waterfox that was supposed to be superb but all it was was a royal pain. It did give me the option of importing my old Waterfox settings but refused to find any files. I couldn’t create those files as I would need my older version to create them. Fucking genius thinking on someone’s part.
I pondered this. I opened up my file window. There were all my settings in a folder called “[dot]waterfox”. Why wasn’t the new version reading them? I pondered some more. Then I had an idea. I checked a folder called “[dot]mozilla” which is where Firefox holds its files. There was a new folder inside it called – surprisingly – “[dot]waterfox”. So I copied the files from the old to the new. I fired up Waterfox again. I was back to normality. Or rather I wasn’t.
I now had all my bookmarks and tabs but the tabs were at the bottom of the screen and barely visible. I went into settings and told it to move my tabs to the top. It doesn’t work The tabs remain resolutely at the bottom.
On top of all that I now have to login to all the sites once more and suffer all those really irritating fucking cookie notices on every site.
Have these twats never heard of backwards compatibility?
Backwards compatibility is good for the user. Not so good for the folks wanting to sell you more crap so you can actually use the “new and improved crap” they forced on you the night before.
I would normally agree, but all software involved is open source and free. Ergo there is no profit in it.
Ah yes, I didn’t make the open source connection.
May I recommend “I don’t care about cookies”? It’s freeware, blocks all cookie notifications. My version is integrated with Opera, no idea about Waterfox.
It doesn’t load in Waterfox.
Dammit but I’m sick of this. I have reverted to Firefox. It’s slower but the tabs are back on top. They’re still in the wrong place but at least I can see them.
I hate admitting defeat.
Your error is a fundamental understanding of what upgrades are. Once you have a working program and everyone is happy with it theoretically there is no reason for upgrades. Coders are traumatised. Either they won’t get paid or their unpaid hobby is finished.
So they all fiddle, make changes that are not really required and pat themselves on the back for their innovation making your working system stop working unless you upgrade. They have no interest in the end users, you.
This is the reason that Windoze is No.1 Linux should have replaced it decades ago but they can’t get their act together and come out with an easy to use working distro. There are so many different ways to connect Pcs together and geeks have the power to make you look small by not understanding how smb shares work. When in reality you don’t care. So we stick with Windoze because it just works.
It isn’t just software. Everyone seems to be moving on to Smart *spit* phones and soon you won’t be able to flush your toilet without an app.
In other words, it’s a bit like me messing with the layout of this site?