I don't find it confusing and I can't help but wonder what should be confusing about it at all. But I guess it is a thing that is different from person to person. I use my browser like I use my desk. I can have stacks of books, articles, drawings, magazines and stuff and still manage to find what I'm looking for very fast. I can normally find an article by remembering the look of it (e.g. header was a 3 line block, header beneath was 2 lines of italics font, 2 columns) instead of the date. The same goes for finding the right tab. I know where my GoG general discussion tab is, because I know the look of it and the look of what is on the sides of it. I think it's a visual recognition based on colours and form, instead of text. I have no idea how other people do it, I just know what works for me :)

But the latest firefox changes (29.0) makes it almost impossible for me to continue using my old way of navigating and I had to install Classic Theme restorer. It works now, but it looks less neat.

Oh, absolutely. I have used Tab Mix plus for ages and Tab Control (this one seems to have lost its function in this update). But even with these two installed FF 29 has done some overriding of what they could do, so they don't work quite as well as they used to.
I don't mind installing add-ons, but I haven't found anything yet, that has enabled me to get what I had before back :)

I think I should take a look at that Pale Moon thing. I'm not sure I dare go back to version 28, it will only be a matter of time until it will be a security risk, if it isn't already.

It's not as bad as it seems, expecially with tab group. (but FF must not load all tabs at start!)
At the moment I have 50 tabs for work and 60 for entertainment in 5 groups.
Even if you forget where is something, you can just search it.
I find this very comfortable for loading the same sites each day, more than using favs\bookmarks.

Tab Mix is simply gold, it should be the default in FF.
I'll try Pale Moon too in the future, but for the moment I'll stay on FF26 as I'm totally fed up about upgrading\migrating.
I want a effin' unmodified browser for at least 2-5 years, am I asking too much? : |

Do you still feel FF26 is secure enough to use?
I most often update blindly because I fear using outdated software. So I haven't really checked my FF updates to see what was updated. But I can't help but wonder how many FF updates are purely UI 'upgrades' and how many contain security upgrades?
And imho you are not asking for too much :)

Blech.

Tabs are on top now, and are so grayed out I can hardly see them.

Worst part? Double clicking on an empty area of the tab bar used to open up a new tab; now all it does is max out the browser window.

Blech.

Migrating from Firefox to Pale Moon took me about 2 minutes, including the download and install times. Just install Pale Moon, run their migration tool, and start using Pale Moon with every part of your Firefox profile transferred to it (it was particularly nice that it also transferred all my whitelist settings in NoScript and Request Policy).

Also including how my own Pale Moon setup currently looks.

I did customize the look of my browser. The problem is that firefox 29 nullifies everything I had done to the UI. Now I need to spend several hours to figure out how to get it back the way it was. That's just annoying.

I agree, setting everything up from scratch may be inconvenient and annoying. But isn't "hours" an exaggeration?

My homepage is google - when I start browser (Firefox 29 / Pale Moon) page loads and then freezes for 1-2 seconds and then runs ok. With AdblockPlus disabled such freeze do not appear. Does anyone has similar issue (I don't remember having this on FF28)?

That depends on how easy it is to find replacements for broken add-ons. It took many hours to do it the first time I set it up. And I don't remember how I did most of it, so I'll have to figure that out as well.

Every time Firefox redesigns it gets a little worse. This was a pretty big leap, though. Definitely would not have wanted this if given a choice. I have an older netbook where I haven't updated it since 2010/11 is and it's so much better (even though the netbook itself is not).

I'm currently running the latest version of Pale Moon with ABP and I'm not encountering any such freeze when I load up Google. Might be some other extension you have interacting with ABP, or some general browser or system setting that's leading to the issue.

I had this exact same issue when my Firefox updated. It was a few versions ago, though, possibly updating from 25 to 26. Also I didn't notice it immediately. Possibly it was some Windows update or one of my addons.

Load it up in safe mode (all addons disabled) and you should find it works fine. If that is the case then it sounds like the exact same issue. In which case, to fix it I had to load up Firefox normally, disable all addons then quit and restart it before turning on the addons one by one. After that was done it was then working fine and has been since. Currently I'm on version 28.

Thanks for the links, it seems to be exactly what I'm looking for. I've nerver heard about this and it seems really interesting : exactly what I wanted when I installed Firefox at the beginning (when it was at version 3 almost :) ).

Of course, a software must evolve. But since chrome's beginning, Firefox seems to go more and more on the "google way" (but it's my opinion), and I don't like this. For each UI change, for me it was a new search for "Will I be able to switch this back ?" (because it's when you loose something that you discover how much it was useful for you) and after "How can I switch this thing back ?". Because before, it was efficient for me and I had habits.
The status bar disappearance (which was really useful for me), the new downloading window (which did'nt provide me informations I had with the older and that I was using), the loop (and disappearance) of the menu...
And when you finally find the solution and become again confortable, when you expect it least : new update with that "minor thing" which can be really annoying if you used it.

But of course, a lot of people is happy with this changes, and I understand them ;) New versions are "litgher" in term of space, and everybody is not using a browser the same way (in which firefox is good : it enables to go more on "our way" to use it).
I'm just tired too of this new "Chromefox" we begin to have, and of all this "new versions".

About Pale Moon, I just wanted to ask : the latest version is based on the latest firefox "source" ? (asking for the safety side)

new firefox is faster for me, but It is the only positive thing

Their release schedule departed from Firefox a while ago, but my understanding is that updates to Gecko (the engine both Firefox and Pale Moon are based on) get rolled in almost immediately, while Firefox specific updates get rolled in based on whether or not they fit with the vision of the project (with bug fixes and security fixes getting rolled in pretty quick). Their latest release was on April 25, and the release notes can be found here (the security related changes all point to bugs reported to Mozilla, so again it seems that security related changes are getting rolled in pretty quick).