A new reason for me to stay on Firefox ESR 78

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I have stayed on Firefox ESR 78.15.0 for the past year or so, knowing that it is “outdated”, because I cannot stand the “Proton UI” introduced in Firefox 89 and now Firefox ESR 91.

Just a few weeks ago I finally was satisfied that I found a way of changing the bookmark spacing in the bookmark list (which was enlarged in the Proton UI to the point I consider unacceptable) back to one that I can accept, by using a userchrome.css file. I tested the workaround in VMware virtual machines and I have since updated to Firefox ESR 91.11.0 (and now 91.12.0), the most updated version at this time.

But, and this is one of the nice features of Firefox, I have kept 78.15.0 installed in another folder together with 91.12.0 (using different profiles so that the two browsers can coexist) so that I can still switch back to the older version when necessary.

I have now just found out that Firefox ESR 91 had removed the “Text Encoding” option from the View menu (still present in Firefox ESR 78) and instead replaced it with a mostly useless “Repair Text Encoding” option.

I frequently download text documents written in Traditional Chinese and/or Simplified Chinese, and I would often want to see if they are OK by loading them in Firefox to see if they can be read. In the past, if the documents cannot be read (showing garbage), I can choose a different Text Encoding from the View menu until I hit on a suitable one. But now with Firefox ESR 91 (and presumably later) I can no longer do that. I am at the mercy of “Repair Text Encoding”, which more often than not does NOT work.

I am aware that there is a “Override Text Encoding” addon for Firefox which claims to replace the functionality of the original Text Encoding option, but unfortunately my testing shows it fails more often than it works in my case.

So I am going to keep Firefox ESR 78 around, both in virtual machines and in a different profile with Firefox ESR 91. That way I can launch the two different versions (can be at the same time) as necessary.

This seems to be just another example of Mozilla following Chrome, which apparently also does NOT have the option of changing Text Encoding. I don’t like it. I am not happy, not at all.

Incidentally this page on Google directs the user that to fix “garbled text” he/she could either use a suitable extension for Chrome or user another browser like Firefox (which now due to the removed Text Encoding option is no longer viable). The old and abandoned Internet Explorer has a similar option available.

Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Cybertooth

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the only drawback of using old Firefox ESR 78 is that some modern web sites (especially certain online banking web sites) complain about using that outdated Firefox 78.x version and will recommend upgrading to newest version

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Surprisingly, I could not get into my banking online today using a still up to date Firefox ESR 91. My last log in to the bank, I was warned to update Firefox. Plan to update to newest version of Firefox ESR 102.

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James Bond 007 wrote:

I am going to keep Firefox ESR 78 around, both in virtual machines and in a different profile with Firefox ESR 91. That way I can launch the two different versions (can be at the same time) as necessary.

Have you considered using the portable FF versions? I won’t argue against VMs as they’re a sound security strategy, but if all you’re after is to be able to switch back and forth, portable FF will fit that purpose quite well.

I always have multiple versions on hand because some websites seem to work better in one version and other websites work better in another. I keep one Proton version and one pre-Proton version. I also use portable versions of Chrome, Brave, Opera, PaleMoon and Waterfox, as well.

Unlike your configuration, I can’t launch two versions simultaneously, but I’ve never needed to do that anyway.

 

Sueska wrote:

I could not get into my banking online today using a still up to date Firefox ESR 91. My last log in to the bank, I was warned to update Firefox.

Have you tried Ray’s “User Agent Switcher and Manager” extension? With it, your browser can mimic an assortment of various OSes, browsers, and browser versions.

My bank’s website used to regularly complain about “unsupported” configurations when logging in, but it seems to be happier since I reconfigured User Agent Switcher to mimic a later version of FF.

 

3 users thanked author for this post.

Sueska, SueW, satrow

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Have you considered using the portable FF versions? I won’t argue against VMs as they’re a sound security strategy, but if all you’re after is to be able to switch back and forth, portable FF will fit that purpose quite well.

I always have multiple versions on hand because some websites seem to work better in one version and other websites work better in another. I keep one Proton version and one pre-Proton version. I also use portable versions of Chrome, Brave, Opera, PaleMoon and Waterfox, as well.

Unlike your configuration, I can’t launch two versions simultaneously, but I’ve never needed to do that anyway.

Thank you for your suggestions. I may look at the portable version of Firefox later.

But I want and need to have the ability of launch two different versions of Firefox at the same time, and the profile method and my VMware Workstation virtual machines (Windows 7 / Windows 8.1 / Windows 10 / Linux Mint, also Windows XP and Windows 98 for playing old games) will allow me to do that (currently on Windows 8.1 host). If the portable Firefox versions will not allow me to do that, that is a limitation I don’t want to have.

Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.

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