Firefox 55 working great, most extensions supported and containers working
Firefox 62.0 Released
141–150 of 275 posts
Re: Firefox 62.0 Released
#142> Removed the description field for bookmarks. Users who have stored descriptions using the field may wish to export these descriptions as html or json files, as they will be removed in a future release. Does anyone know if there's an explanation for this somewhere? Between removing live bookmarks (a simple feed reader) and this, it seems like they're paring down user-facing features. I don't think these are the feat…
If they remove tags supports later on, that will be the last useful feature I'm hanging on. The bookmarking system is being downgraded to the point of uselessness, at this point I'd switch back to Chrome.
Bromite [1] is promising, especially if someone begin to build it for desktop platforms.
Re: Firefox 62.0 Released
#143> Removed the description field for bookmarks. Users who have stored descriptions using the field may wish to export these descriptions as html or json files, as they will be removed in a future release. Does anyone know if there's an explanation for this somewhere? Between removing live bookmarks (a simple feed reader) and this, it seems like they're paring down user-facing features. I don't think these are the feat…
The Firefox bookmarking implementation is unnecessarily complicated and I'm guessing very few features are actually used. It's a maintenance burden, I'm not surprised they want to slim it down. To give you an example of a maintenance burden in the bookmarking system, the bookmarking system uses a bunch of synchronous APIs. Mozilla is trying to cut down or eliminate use of those APIs, to reduce UI hangs among other re…
"The Firefox X implementation is unnecessarily complicated and I'm guessing very few features are actually used" is exactly the same attitude from Firefox developers for any X since long ago.
Re: Firefox 62.0 Released
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've read somewhere that Firefox telemetry showed that hardly anyone used the bookmark descriptions. In that case, understandable they chose to remove them.
That's how I expect Google to make decisions, not Mozilla. I would like to say that I trust Mozilla to appropriately weigh pros and cons and make unpopular decisions when necessary, but it seems like the entire deliberation process was a few individuals in one of the bugzilla threads that jaas linked above: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1402890 (and I don't see any mention of how widely used it is, fro…
> That's how I expect Google to make decisions, not Mozilla
Exactly. There is no point to compete with Google for "browser for Uncle Joe", Google won that battle. The power user browser niche is what Firefox could take instead. But no, let's chase after the leader by his rules, look at how good is Blackberry doing.
Re: Firefox 62.0 Released
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've read somewhere that Firefox telemetry showed that hardly anyone used the bookmark descriptions. In that case, understandable they chose to remove them.
> I've read somewhere that Firefox telemetry showed that hardly anyone used the bookmark descriptions. > In that case, understandable they chose to remove them. It's not understandable. That logic leads to dumbed-down, point-and-grunt products because the "telemetry" shows most users aren't power users. Anyway, how much effort does it really take to maintain a text field on a bookmark entity?
I do kind of wonder how many power users are opting out of telemetry for privacy reasons...
Unrelated, but dear god that bug tracker was infuriating to read. As in I had a strong desire to reach through the screen and shake a few by the shoulders asking "What the FUCK is wrong with you people?!"
Concern over data loss nearly dismissed out of hand, a smug "you should have backups" response to intentionally caused data loss, and all this over what amounts to a property field on a bookmark... It's like I was reading the GNOME tracker!
All this over "maintenance burden". Is the "maintenace burden" of a non-searchable field that's only visible in a single context really that high? Really? It seems like this is quickly becoming the go-to excuse to eliminate power user features in a way that those users will not see until its too late. "Developer" is already a subset of "power user", and "developer who reads the bug tracker for unwanted future surprises" is an even smaller subset.
Re: Firefox 62.0 Released
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they remove tags supports later on, that will be the last useful feature I'm hanging on. The bookmarking system is being downgraded to the point of uselessness, at this point I'd switch back to Chrome.
While I do tag my bookmarks I barely use that feature. Some tag cloud for my bookmkarks would be awesome though.
Re: Firefox 62.0 Released
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
From https://firefoxgraphics.github.io/telemetry/ : Linux users are about 2.7% of Firefox users Windows users are 93.2% of Firefox users 27.7% of Windows users don't have Direct2D That means 25.8% of users "run windows on hardware without decent graphics hardware". So it's entirely reasonable to prioritize these 25.8% of users over the 2.7% on Linux.
How many Linux users disable telemetry collection vs windows users (who are most certainly used to spewing telemetry to external parties)? I definitely disable it on all of my (Linux) systems where I run Firefox. I suspect I am not alone.
> How many Linux users disable telemetry collection
Almost certainly a very small number.
Re: Firefox 62.0 Released
#148When are containers going to graduate to a built-in feature rather than an extension?
Containers used to be the other way around, baked into Firefox and then moved to an extension last year. It's better that a power user feature is not a part of the default installation.
Containers are the killer feature of Firefox over Chrome and the reason I recommend it to family and friends. In my opinion they're not a power user feature at all, everyone and anyone can get instant obvious benefit from them. Multiple logins on the same service, controlling how you are tracked, just to name a couple.
Attention and effort are expensive and 'install and just use' gets you a material percentage more users than 'install and then click through this menu system and install something else'. Containers should absolutely work out the box.
Re: Firefox 62.0 Released
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Came here with exact same quote in clipboard, ready to grumble. Not that this is in any way an essential feature to me, but the trend is one way, and one way only: The paring down of choice and useful public features. Firefox of ten years ago was UI-wise a far superior product to the sorry quasi-Chrome of today. I no longer use it with any kind of joy or excitement because it's somehow best . I use it because everyth…
> the trend is one way, and one way only: The paring down of choise and usefuls public features. ...and creating APIs so that extensions can handle the functionality instead.
Creating XUL, really?
You cannot create an restricted API for everything, the very point of extensions, plugins, addons is community is always bigger than your developers team, and much, much more diverse. The 'long tail' effect is what extensions community is about, not '90 per cent of users'. 90 per cent of users might need just a couple of the same extensions, the other 10 per cent of users need a thousand of different extensions.
Re: Firefox 62.0 Released
#150Firefox 55 working great, most extensions supported and containers working
Note that they will be removing legacy extensions from their store soon: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/mozilla-to-re...