Does the in-tab page not work correctly, or you just prefer the separate window? If there are bugs, please let us know.

If you prefer to switch back to the old dialog for now, there is a way to do that.

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste pref and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the browser.preferences.inContent preference to switch it from true to false

Note: I don't know whether that will be in Firefox forever or is a transitional feature. As you've probably noticed, the long-term trend is to remove things that pop up.

Thank you Bless You!!!!!!! It worked!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am glad that the advice worked. Thanks for replying and marking the thread solved.

May I ask again:

• Did you discover some bug or problem with the new in browser tab.

We do know the change did cause some problems and need to know if any other new problems are discovered.

I did not have any bug or problem. I simply wanted to have it open in a box. Actually, there was a problem - when I open the box, it opens to the Advanced Network setting so I can clear the cache manually. That's why I like the pop-up box. The pop-up box goes to the last tab that was used. The browser page does NOT restore it to the last opened subset; it instead opens to the default General tab.

That defeated the purpose of why i use the Options box in the first place.

Again, thank you for solving my problem.

phasetex said

... The pop-up box goes to the last tab that was used. The browser page does NOT restore it to the last opened subset; it instead opens to the default General tab. ...

OK if that is what you want it is as quick or quicker to use the Privacy tab of the webpage. Consider bookmaking it. Enter this into the location bar.

about:preferences#privacy

Then navigate to it by using the arrow or hitting the Return|Enter key

jscher2000 said

Does the in-tab page not work correctly, or you just prefer the separate window? If there are bugs, please let us know. If you prefer to switch back to the old dialog for now, there is a way to do that. (1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button promising to be careful. (2) In the search box above the list, type or paste pref and pause while the list is filtered (3) Double-click the browser.preferences.inContent preference to switch it from true to false Note: I don't know whether that will be in Firefox forever or is a transitional feature. As you've probably noticed, the long-term trend is to remove things that pop up.

This worked a treat. However, that long term trend stinks. It accomplishes nothing for computer users and by sticking prefs in a browser page it's making it easier for a novice user to mess up his settings...they need to stay in something distinct and unique. However, I suspect this will fall on deaf ears much the same way it took months to give back a 'bottom tab' location option without having to use a plug in...

I suspect this will fall on deaf ears

It's not deaf ears, it is the lack of relevant persons. It has probably been discussed, debated fully & decided long ago.

If you need to ask or discus this then speak where the developers and decision makers will hear you. This support forum is only fellow Firefox users helping one another.

Try looking at some of the main fora

• List: https://www.mozilla.org/about/forums/
  • Possibly try posting in #wishlist

You can see that this process started years ago in 2012 and still isn't finished.

• bug 718011 - [meta] Move preferences from a window/sheet to in-content

Please do not comment in bug reports
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html

It's really kind of obnoxious that the Mozilla developers feel the need to fix something that isn't broken. It'd be nice if they'd just stick with making a good, efficient browser for people to use. It often feels like the developers simply change things on a whim because they want it to be that way, not because it really benefits anyone. To be honest I kind of feel the same way about the addons UI and other stuff. Just because they decided to change things doesn't make those changes an intrinsically good idea or even helpful at all.

One really annoying aspect of this webpage style of UI for software configuration is that stuff that formerly neatly fit in a small, separate window now doesn't fit on one screen of a webpage.

P.S. Could someone write some serious, useful documentation on what the about:config options do. We need like a "missing manual" book for that, because none of it is explained nor is the user provided any help with that on installing. And then to top it off, they are scared off messing with it by the bogeyman of their software not working. It's almost as bad as the way Microsoft hides the vast majority of it's the console commands from the users. I once found a book on Windows XP (several years ago) that listed twenty or thirty more commands, at least, that didn't show up when you type 'help' in the command prompt.

jnharton,

"Could someone write some serious, useful documentation on what the about:config options do." There is this old and very incomplete MozillaZIne KB page which got an update of something on 25 June 2015. http://kb.mozillazine.org/About:config_entries

There's an extension - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/config-descriptions/ - that shows the source comments from inside Firefox, where the developers provided a comment for the preference.

Before that extension was available I would search the source code - http://mxr.mozilla.org/ - and read the comments to learn what I could about prefs I couldn't find info about anywhere else.

Beyond that, this forum and the mozillaZine fora are the best places to ask about specific prefs in about:config - or search the MDN pages - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/ which are cited frequently in this forum.

If you don't like change for the sake of change with Firefox, you should look into the SeaMonkey and PaleMoon browsers. Both are based upon Firefox but have an older UI that hasn't changed in the past few years.

John99 said

• Did you discover some bug or problem with the new in browser tab.

We do know the change did cause some problems and need to know if any other new problems are discovered.

I am not the OP, and I know it's been awhile since you asked, but I found myself searching for how to do this just now, which is how I ended up here (I applied the aforementioned setting previously, but it is no longer working, and I wanted to make sure the pref had not inadvertently been reset). It was just as I thought... yet another pref I like removed.

I don't like the inline prefs because they don't respect my user-defined colors. My eyes can't handle the glare of a white background, which is a really common issue (as I have found many other people saying the same thing in my efforts to tame it). It causes me actual physical pain to look at, and if I try to cope with it globally by simply adjusting the display contrast and brightness, some elements (outside of the browser) get darkened to the point that they are hard to see.

As much as many people despise them and find that they harm accessibility, the non-optional white backgrounds are everywhere... most web sites, various applications, entire operating systems (looking at you, Windows 10). That leaves it up to us to try to deal with it.

I used to simply set Firefox (or Moz suite prior to that) to use my colors instead of the web page colors, but this has never worked very well. A lot of things I need to see disappear when I set this option, and a lot of things become transparent instead of darker. Any images that are set to a background type vanish, and even though I suspect this is faulty web design, very often the background images are the actual content, not just disposable decoration.

As such, I have looked for addons that will selectively replace the retina-sizzling white with something more eye-friendly (I like #E1E1E1), but none of them worked completely either. The user script I tried fired before the page was completely finished, so some elements (and dynamically created ones) still caused eye pain.

Thus, I have had to settle for an addon that overlays a transparent gray layer over the entire page display. It does darken images and other content, but it's the best I have found.

It works on every web page I have used... but not the inline FF settings pages.

It is not a huge deal-breaker for FF, as I am not in the settings that often... but there's my reason for wanting the old way back. The old way obeys my color prefs, simple as that. I could edit the #FFFFFFs myself, but that gets undone every time I update. An addition to userchrome.css, perhaps? I'm not up to the task of making an addon to do it myself.

Maybe I can find yet another addon to add the old windowed options back in, or to at least make the inline settings stop overriding my settings... I end up with more and more addons as Firefox "improves" (Classic Theme Restorer, prime example of this).

The good news is that I have always been able to fold, spindle, and mutilate Firefox to get the results I want. Can I have an IE, an Edge, a Chrome that I can force back to the classic browser layout like I have now with CTR and FF? I have not tried, but from what I understand, there's no way.

ascaris said

As such, I have looked for addons that will selectively replace the retina-sizzling white with something more eye-friendly (I like #E1E1E1), but none of them worked completely either. The user script I tried fired before the page was completely finished, so some elements (and dynamically created ones) still caused eye pain.

On my Windows (this may have something to do with system settings), the background of the about:preferences page is #FBFBFB which is very light. You can override that using a custom style rule, either in userChrome.css or in the Stylish extension. The following example also covers the about:config page:

@namespace url(http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul);
@-moz-document url-prefix("about:preferences") {
  .main-content {
    background-color: #e1e1e1 !important;
  }
}
@-moz-document url-prefix("about:config") {
  #configDeck, #configTree {
    background-color: #e1e1e1 !important;
  }
}

Example screen shots attached.

Thanks Jscher! I thought there might be something like that.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to get this to work with userChrome.css... it has no effect there. is there a difference in syntax between that and the Stylish CSS? I can (re)install Stylish if necessary, but if I can do it with one less addon, I'd rather go that way. I have so many as it is...

Thanks!

Hi ascaris, I use Stylish because of the Preview feature, so I can see the effect (or lack thereof) immediately. I haven't used a userChrome.css file for so long that I can't recall the differences.

Style rules for about pages usually go to userContent.css and not to userChrome.css, so try to place the code in userContent.css instead.

@-moz-document url-prefix("about:preferences") {
  .main-content {
    background-color: #e1e1e1 !important;
  }
}
@-moz-document url-prefix("about:config") {
  #configDeck, #configTree {
    background-color: #e1e1e1 !important;
  }
}

That was it, Cor-el... once I put those lines in usercontent.css, it worked! I was so stuck on thinking of this as a browser dialog (and thus chrome) that it didn't even dawn on me that it was actually content here, even though now it seems obvious. Thanks! And thanks again to Jscher too.

it no longer works. it used to work. but my settings are set to false and i am still getting the tab. i tried changing it, and it still opens in tab. nothing i do works and i hate it opening in a tab. i want my pop-up window back

The browser.preferences.inContent is no longer supported in Firefox 42 and later, so it is not possible to open a standalone window by setting this pref to false. Bug 1140495 - Remove support for windowed preferences

You can possibly create a button on the Bookmarks Toolbar to the about:preferences page and hold the Shift key and left-click to open the page in a new window.

You can look at the Classic Theme Restorer extension.

• General UI (1): Open options page (about:preferences) in a window
• https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/

Hi. I started this theme, and thought it was resolved and was just reading updates for interest. But having followed the most recent post to this theme, I am now hesitant to update my version 41 to 42 because without the separate box, I view this browser as inferior, harder to read, navigate, and manage. The box opening up NOT as a browser page is so much more convenient and I am not an MS/Apple-Idiot who likes apps and hidden embedded controls but likes to have a box that opens right up to the control I want without having to open a slow-to-open-and-transfer-to webpage.

To whomever is writing the version 42 code, you need to change it back so that the box opens up. As it does now for me in V-41 thanks to the solution ("False") offered way way above. I want Tools/Options to open as a box and not as a webpage. Obviously, I am not alone. Improvements that reduce choice are not improvements. They are detriments.

Thank you.

You can install the Classic Theme Restorer and tick the above mentioned box to open the Options/Preferences in a standalone window.

• https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/