How to revert to old responsive design?

Developer Tools
#1

I’m trying to revert to the old version of responsive design without reinstalling an older version of Firefox. I’m currently using: version 58.0 (64 bit).

As per this question: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1197929#answer-1068387 I have tried the following:

about:config
browser.tabs.remote.autostart = false
browser.tabs.remote.autostart.2 = false

That did not revert the responsive design to the old version.

It did however prevent me from resizing the window because responsive design was only available for remote browser tabs.

I then tried the following:

  1. Type about:config in the browser’s address bar and hit enter.
  2. Right-click and select New > Boolean.
  3. Name it browser.tabs.remote.force-enable.
  4. Set its value to true.

That simply allowed me to resize the window, but I was still stuck with the unusable new design. (Did you know you can’t type an apostrophe in these resized windows? And that is just one very tiny minor annoyance.)

I then tried undoing all that and following the advice on this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/695bov/is_it_possible_to_go_back_to_the_old_responsive/

about:config
devtools.responsive.html.enabled = false

I created a Boolean for that because it did not exist. But that didn’t work either.

So I deleted that and went back to the browser.tabs.remote.autostart = false and browser.tabs.remote.autostart.2 = false method

I tried setting browser.tabs.remote.autostart to true and then back to false, and then setting browser.tabs.remote.autostart.2 to true and then back to false, then switching them up and then deleted the newly created Boolean. Then I pulled at my hair and cursed a plague upon the Mozilla developers, but none of it helped.

My work requires me to interact with the responsive design for hours and hours a day and it is currently unworkable.

Here are a few of the most annoying annoyances of the new design:

1: When you open two tabs and set them to responsive design, only the first tab will direct to a web page. The second will not.

2: Previously you could paste the dimensions of a resized page into the responsive design, but now you can only paste the first part of the dimensions and then have to manually type in the second.

3: Previously you could open a second tab and use a keyboard shortcut to resize the window to the same dimension. Now it reverts to some preset screen dimension, neither reflecting the other open tab or remembering the previous settings.

4: When using cntrl+F within the responsive design… well that’s just a whole seething hive of scum and villainy.

5: You cannot type an apostrophe on a webpage form in responsive design. WTF, why? (Actually many keystrokes will shoot the cursor off the page and into some mode I was too livid to take note of.)

Anyway, insane ranting aside, any help that does not involve me having to figure out github would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

#2

First of all, thanks for your feedback! Diving into the details…

The old RDM has been removed as of version 58. It is no longer possible to revert to it. Instead, we need to work together to make it be what we want. Please file bugs in Bugzilla for issues that you see and contribute patches if you are able to do so.

In addition, the prefs you have tried flipping to disable remote tabs might cause e10s / multi-process mode to be disabled, which would disable important Firefox security and performance features. Disabling e10s is no longer a supported configuration for Firefox, so please reset all such prefs about remote tabs to their original values.

I am not sure what you mean here. I tried opening two tabs in RDM and they both navigate to new pages as expected. Please file a bug about this with more detail on your steps.

Ah, that’s an interesting feature request. I believe you are the first to mention this. Could you file a bug about it? I am interested to hear more about the use case, such as where you are copying dimensions from. There might be a better solution. We can discuss in more detail on the bug.

Hmm, I believe you’re the first to mention a desire to have two separate tabs synchronized to the same size. I’d like to hear more about that use case. As far as restoring the previously used size, that’s commonly requested improvement. I hope it can be added soon. Please follow the existing bug for this.

I am unsure what this means. There are some known issues with find in RDM, but the basic action of Cmd/Ctrl-F and searching appears to search the content as expected. Please file a bug about this with more detail.

There is a known issue where a few keys can trigger “quick find” mode when RDM is used. If you are seeing something else, please file a bug.

#3

We’re not happy with the new responsive design, I’d like to see someone, anyone, make a strong argument of how the new design is better than the old.

Point for point the old design is better. Please bring it back already before we all leave to Chrome. (because that’s what it’s turning into)

Here are some simple points I highlighted in this video:

The new design is a slap in the face with it’s downgrade in functionality. Please someone from Mozilla explain to me how it’s better than the previous design?

#4

@joshfromlondon Thanks for your feedback. I have replied with more detail in the separate thread you created.