How to combat creeping firefox enshitification?
I deal with a lot of VMs for varying purposes, and it seems frequent that my purpose for opening firefox is derailed by some kind of nag. For example, I frequently get the "you haven't used firefox in a while" in vms that I rarely use firefox and have to go disable the "meta refresh" option in the "about:config".
Now, I've started seeing this one... it's not even one of the passive banners but a full-page stop-the-world w/ semi-transparent background and right-click prevention.
Before I invest too much time trying to figure out how to disable these, or templating profile options en-masse, or the like... I thought I might ask... is there a way I can tell firefox that I only want it to only be a web-browser? i.e. an effective tool and not an attention sink or exciting video-game-like challenge of exploration and closing popups and suggestions while trying to remember why I launched it.
Somewhat relatedly, there is some kind of irony with firefox prominently offering to copy a URL without tracking for other sites, but when it is their own ad (however benign it might seem) that they disable right-clicks and load up on the trackers. The above button links to:
That's why it would be nice if there was just a "go away and stop showing helpful tips" button when you first start up a fresh browser install.
But then how do you handle the very users who would need it in 5-8 months clicking that option reflexively?
The same way video games handle it when you skip the tutorial.
Oh, show a main menu on opening each and every time (and a few creator credits screens before that of course) where you can select that you want to start over new including all the popups instead of where you left of?
Yeah that sounds like a brilliant idea! :o
Make it a key combo that shows it or something like that.