hi b.ray, the browser.preferences.inContent preference was just in place temporarily for a transitional period. now that there were new features and settings going into preferences and old windowed interface was no longer maintained, its users would have missed out on them, so the support has been totally dropped in firefox 42.

if you still miss the old styling - the classic theme restorer addon from https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/ contains some tweaks to make the options-styling more familiar...

Thank you very much for your quick reply. Could you please tell me how to then have tools/options in a separate box as before, rather than in a new tab?

i think the aforementioned addon can do that as well.

I tried the suggested add-on; however, I couldn't find where to return the Preferences to opening in an OS X window instead of a Firefox tab. When trying to deal with websites, passwords, and logins, having the Preferences in an overlying tab is not helpful at all. Is there a way for Preferences to open in a separate Mac OS X style window?

You can find this feature in the Classic Theme Restorer extension settings.

• General UI (1): Open options page (about:preferences) in a window

I checked the "Open options page (about:preferences) in a window", relaunched FF, but the preferences are still showing up in a new overlying tab. Am I missing something? (The Classic Theme Restorer 1.4.2 is enabled.)

If you toggle this box in the CTR settings then this should apply immediately the next time you open Options/Preferences. It will not work if you open about:preferences directly (the appearance should look different), but should work with the Options/Preferences button in the "3-bar" menu button drop-down list and the Tools menu.

Attached is a screen shot of the way the CTR looks. I must be doing something wrong as it's not working for me. I have both restarted FF and also tried rebooting my Mac. When I go to the Firefox drop-down to the left of File I still get the preferences in a tab. When I try going to preferences (there is no "options") from the 3-bar menu button on the right side, it immediately opens a tab. I'm sorry if I'm being dense here, but I don't seem to be able to restore preferences to opening in a Mac-style separate dialog box like System Preferences, Word Preferences, Acrobat Pro preferences, etc. What am I doing wrong?

Are you using the default theme in Firefox?

• Firefox menu button/Tools > Add-ons > Appearance

If you use a custom theme then this feature may not be supported with your theme.

I believe I am. Attached are screen shots of my add-ons and appearance.

Thank you Phillip and Cor-el for your kind assistance. Its no longer a small box like before, but the tools box in a separate window is more convenient for me than in a new tab. b.ray

You can try to disable all other extensions and only leave CTR enabled or possibly test this in a new profile.

Create a new profile as a test to check if your current profile is causing the problem.

See "Creating a profile":

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Standard_diagnostic_-_Firefox#Profile_issues

If the new profile works then you can transfer files from a previously used profile to the new profile, but be cautious not to copy corrupted files to avoid carrying over problems.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Firefox

Does anybody know why Mozilla decided that opening things in windows is no longer an option. I am having the same problems as b.ray. I have checked the option in CTR to open the preferences in a new window; but, it still opens in a tab. I really want to have that separate window. With links, I can hold the right click button on my mouse down and get links to open in a separate window; but, I don't see a way to open preferences in a separate window.

If the option to open the about:preferences page in a tab isn't working then you might be using an unsupported theme or Firefox configuration.

See Quote from bug report

[Feature/regressing bug #]: removing windowed preferences, new additions were made to in-content prefs for 42 that weren't made to the windowed preferences. it would be good to make sure that all users see the new preferences, so this removes support for the deprecated windowed preferences in 42.
[User impact if declined]: some users who opted-out of the in-content preferences will not see the new features that are targeted for 42.

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

I've adjusted CTR preferences so that I;m now getting a preferences panel that is more like the classic panel; but, it is still opening in a tab instead of a separate window. I am using the default Firefox theme. I'd rather the Preferences open in a separate window; but, if there is no option to go back, then I will learn to live with it. My computer is old and doesn't handle change all that well. Can't say the same thing about my computer. It's old.

cor-el said

You can find this feature in the Classic Theme Restorer extension settings.

• General UI (1): Open options page (about:preferences) in a window

There is no such thing in General UI (1) as "Open options page (about:preferences) in a window" it's just not there at all - It's okay I found in underneath all the General UI 1, 2, and 3 list. Now how can I return the look of my browser to how it was before installing Classic Theme Restorer? For instance, the tabs all now have nasty blocky boxes around them, how do I get rid of those? I'd like to return them to how they looked before *See Image* and at the bottom of the screen there's and extra bit of wasted space: *See image*. How do I get rid of that? I'm not sure about the bright orange "FireFox" button in the top left corner of the screen, it's a bit intrusive - if I could reduce the colour of that to see-through, like everything else I'd be happy - is that possible?

philipp said

hi b.ray, the browser.preferences.inContent preference was just in place temporarily for a transitional period. now that there were new features and settings going into preferences and old windowed interface was no longer maintained, its users would have missed out on them, so the support has been totally dropped in firefox 42. if you still miss the old styling - the classic theme restorer addon from https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/ contains some tweaks to make the options-styling more familiar...

I tried it, and it broke more than it fixed. Which means I am stuck with a preferences tab that renders the entire preferences system utterly and completely useless and worthless for me.

This broke Firefox for me, and that was the ONLY browser I found even remotely useful. Why did Mozilla find it necessary to make this idiotic decision? Why did they find it necessary to remove a useful option, and instead lock in a system that breaks the browser for some users?

Firefox was the only useful browser, now it's as bad as ALL the others, and it has been for a while now.