Gratuitous Firefox Changes: Wider Minimum Width in Firefox 144 (Shallow Thoughts)

Gratuitous Firefox Changes: Wider Minimum Width in Firefox 144

I just updated to Firefox 144 and discovered that when I narrow my Mastodon window to its minimum size, it no longer fits in the space between my mail and IRC windows. I suppose I could reduce the IRC window even further, but I don't want to; the sizes I was using yesterday were fine.

I ask you, what was the compelling reason that Firefox users had to be prevented from using a 450-pixel wide window? What is up with Mozilla developers? (And why do I still put up with random time-wasters like this? That's another question, for which I don't have an answer except that I'm not sure any of the other browser options are much better.)

Anyway, it turns out there's an easy fix, explained in this Reddit thread. Edit userChrome.css (in the chrome subdirectory of your browser profile; create it if you don't already have one) and add this:

:root { min-width: 450px !important; }

or, of course, some other number if you want something narrower than the previous value of 450.

Sheesh. I just love gratuitous changes that require that I go web searching to get back functionality I had yesterday.

Tags: firefox
[ 12:00 Oct 17, 2025    More tech/web | permalink to this entry | ]