You can use extension to modify the Firefox user interface.

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/common-questions-after-updating-to-new-firefox
• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/learn-more-about-the-design-of-new-firefox
• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/how-to-make-new-firefox-look-like-old-firefox

You can search for styles if you want to modify the appearance.

• http://userstyles.org/help/stylish_firefox
• Stylish: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/stylish/

Although the Classic Theme Restorer plugin is an option, it does has some possibly unwanted side effects, For example many of the icons such as the Bookmark button/menu (typically near the address box) change their function.

Plus as other comments say, you shouldn't need a plugin to change the look and feel.

Well it's no surprise to me, but two or three days ago when I downloaded the Classic Theme Restorer and left a post (somewhere) advising Mozilla that the fact that 54.5 thousand people who had downloaded it had to tell them that they were doing something wrong, I have seen today that number has has gone up to 90,500 - I mean what more do they need as proof that they made mistakes?

Hi Fejinwales, I don't know whether you should count my two installs; I'm just testing...

But to be serious for a moment, yes, many users miss some of the old interface features. Each user's individual needs should be considered and, to the extent possible, accommodated; that's why we have tech support. Hopefully everyone who wants the missing features back will find the extension.

But if you look at 90,500 extension installations relative to the number of installs and updates, what ratio would you guess that represents?

It's hard to know for sure, because I haven't seen a specific number, but here's some back-of-the-envelope math. The Web We Want site shows over 100,000,000 events, based on a combination of new and update installations of Firefox 29, plus people visiting the Web We Want page and providing input. If we assume the page is incredibly popular and speculate that only one fifth of that number were installations and updates, that's at least 20,000,000 users getting Firefox 29.

So I am not shocked by the number of people who sought out and installed the extension when I consider how widely Firefox is used.

I also prefer the tabs on the bottom. Another member suggested these and the first one worked for me.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fdgueux-tabs-on-bottom/ or https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tabs-on-bottom/

There is another fix if you want more definition for the tabs.

@MisterBee. Nice find. These are great and a lot simpler doing just the one thing. Have forwarded them on to three of my friends who find the biggest annoyance is the Tabs on Top feature but 'can live with' the other stuff. The CTR add-on of course will correct a whole other host of messes Australis has to offer. Thanks.

@jscher2000. It's is a fair point you make and there's always going to be this gap in figures, it's obvious. Most people unfortunately are apathetic when it comes to their software, they take it as it comes. There are others who are developers, my nephew, who considers himself as being one of them, believe that no-matter what is done, FF is perfect and all the reasons for changes - logical, after all, no-one likes to have their baby criticized. In between are the rest of us, a lot of like being able to find and do things in a simple way that works perfectly as it always has, we get used to it and don't really mind change as long as it makes it better or easier to use, Australis has not done that with some of these changes. I don't know when Australis was released or how many updates have been made since that event, what I do know is that I put it in on Saturday and thankfully found CTR when I tried to find a solution to the mess, and that in the three days since more than 10,000 people a day have felt the need to install this add-on. It may be a small figure in comparison to all the people that use FF, but nevertheless it is a big figure considering Australis was to be 'more user-friendly, productive and efficient'.

I have 17 friends who use FF because a long time ago I told them to switch to it, Last night I phoned them, four of them hadn't updated while the remainder had. Out of these thirteen then, three had put back v28, three said they 'supposed' they could get used to it' while the remaining seven were really happy I sent them the link for CTR.

I also came across an interesting short article stating that 80% of users do not like Australis. Yes it was only from a base of 190 feedback items but they were random. Yes, more people are likely to complain if they are not happy with something but 80% is a telling figure.

In the end those of us who hate the stupid changes can restore them with CTR, the rest can live with the new FF or are happy with it. I am happy now, I have my favourite browser with all the buttons where they should be, tabs where they should be and everything is fine - shouldn't have needed an add-on to do it though.

exactly: we should NOT need an add-on to do the trick and have our tabs and more in the places we want. FF developers should have given options to make us do it. Why "Chrome" FF? they should STOP developing FF, if they want it to look like another browser.

Fejinwales,

"I also came across an interesting short article stating that 80% of users do not like Australis."

Very poor example.
ghacks.net By Martin Brinkmann on November 23, 2013 in Firefox

Written over 5 months prior to the release of Firefox 29, when it was still in pre-Nightly development.

Poor example indeed. We are talking about now, not five before the release as a nightly tester, Now, when it is available to everyone. Must've taken some work to find it though, or you kept it knowing Australis was going to get a bad reception. Whatever the reason you dug it up no-one likes a smart arse and I'm done with this conversation. They made mistakes, tens of thousands of people do not like them, the add-on fixes them, Mozilla won't listen anyway so why are we wasting our time here? really, someone always has to get pompous and sarcastic.

Hi Fejinwales, sorry if we don't seem to be listening, but actually, this forum is for tech support and not discussion of future features/changes to Firefox. Mozilla is collecting that kind of input here:

https://input.mozilla.org/feedback

That's also where Help menu > Submit Feedback leads.

I was able to get the tabs back to where they are just above the webpage, below the bars. You can see the picture here

In the userChrome.css I added the following code, which is what moved the tabs:

#TabsToolbar {

  -moz-box-ordinal-group: 10000 !important;

}

I got it from: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/997126

For around 4 years now I have had to train and show many hundreds of people how to make forefox work properly with addon features like Tab mix plus and how to put there tabs below so they could improve there work productivity becouse they just didnt know any better way existed. With over a million people now having downloaded the new classic restore addon in order to get just ONE FEATURE "TABS BELOW" It defies logic that the Firefox Developers either dont know how to use a browser properly or dont care. They are sheep following Internet explorer and google down a black hole of stupidity. I use Firefox becouse its different and its able to work the way I like with TABS BELOW. Firefox 29 lasted aproximately 5 minutes before I went back to FF 28. I would happily use FF 29 but ONLY if tabs are below. This should not require an addon. Tabs below should be the standard and it would be the defining feature that makes firefox stand out. The inability to have tabs below is the very reason I Dont use other browsers. If a petition to get tabs below is made just how many signatures do we need to get the developers to listen. What does it take for the developers to listen to its users. I just dont get why this has gone down the path of becomming more and more like crome and internet explorer both of which I utterley hate becouse I cant put tabs below and organise things in the same way I have always been able to do in Firefox. Where has the difference gone. May as well rebadge as "crome clone" or "baby IE". Please listen to your users and fix this issue as some of us do know a better way and its TABS BELOW

Classic theme restorer is now on 146,000 downloads.

The thing that I think developers have to remember is the vast majority of software users have no idea how to change and customise things. They're probably not even aware it is possible.

So when a major UI change like this is made, the vast majority of people just have to lump it.

I've just spent the last hour since Firefox updated trying to tweak my layout back to something that doesn't look horrendous, with lots of wasted space, random lines, and weird shadings. And I'm about on the edge of just giving up and moving to Chrome.

Major failure Firefox, I'm not impressed at all.

I LOVE Classic Theme Restorer.

For a minute, I thought IE or Chrome was going to revert to being my best friend! Of course, before that, I was going to go to: www.oldapps.com and go back to a Firefox version where the tabs were at the bottom...I have no idea why they keep tinkering with the design. Who has the time to fiddle around with it every time a new version comes out? Leave well enough alone!

So, I can create a chrome folder in the profile folder, create a userChrome.css file in notepad containing only

@namespace url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul");

1. TabsToolbar {

-moz-box-ordinal-group: 10000 !important;

}

or use Classic Theme Restorer and get the tabs in the sensible place (but I don't expect 99% of your users to have the confidence to do either). However, if the Mozilla team can't guarantee that allowing the tabs to be in the sensible place now can be supported, how do we know that these workrounds will work in the future? If, as suggested, tabs in a silly place was made the default at (about) v4, it was presumably agreed on the basis that there would be an option for moving them to a sensible place.

However, there is perfunctory separation between tabs, so unless there is an icon they run one into the next and it is difficult to tell one tab from the next. This is particularly bad on my Win XP PC (still a very popular OS). For my wife it's black text is on a dark blue background with dark blue tab separators, not a great choice for readability. For me (for some reason, no deliberate change from default) it's white text on a fawn background. The tab separator is visible - but the text is totally undecipherable! I had hoped v 29.0.1 would correct some of these cock-ups but apparently not!

NB, why is it important to rush through version numbers, normally integer increments even for minor changes rather than 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, etc, changing the integer only for major changes (as for 29)?

Copy stuck on feedback page

Such a workaround to reposition toolbars has always worked and will work as long as all toolbars in one container, in this case the #navigator-toolbox toolbox.

See also:

• [/questions/807135] How can I move my toolbars up and down?

But it still seems perverse to make the stupid tabs position the default and to select poor (or no) contrast tab text/background colours! Does Mozilla want to turn users away? Only a very small percentage of users would go to the trouble to go to the forum.

Just did a quick search on Google for the terms "Firefox 29 sucks"

Google Search firefox 29 sucks About 3,200,000 results (0.12 seconds)

Anyway another possible option is the Sea Monkey Project http://www.seamonkey-project.org/ they dont have as many addons available but tabs are below by defult but no multi row tab support that I could find. No tab mix plus add on available.

Hi henryfm, you wrote:

But it still seems perverse to make the stupid tabs position the default and to select poor (or no) contrast tab text/background colours!

Some of the problems with lack of color contrast were caused by a bug in Firefox 29.0 that was fixed in Firefox 29.0.1, particularly on Windows with a dark system theme.

Personally I like to see some shape for the inactive tabs, so I am using a custom style rule for that. In other threads, users requested some variations on that theme. You can see the results here: http://userstyles.org/styles/101036/brighter-background-tabs-australis-firefox-29 (and related style rules linked on that page).

Although I use Stylish for custom style rules because it has a convenient Preview feature to instantly check changes, if you don't need to modify style rules, you can add them to your userChrome.css file instead.