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Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

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Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#411

Post by Gaelan »

feanaro wrote: post #342
statictype wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sync thing was overblown. The cookies thing was a bit more concerning to me. Not so much from a privacy angle but from more of a 'Chrome has lots its way' angle. A lot of our software's more complex interfaces are Chrome-first since its faster to develop - yesterday was the first time I made a serious consideration to change that approach. Glad to see they are listening to user feedback and reacting quickly.

I disagree the sync thing was overblown. A website's cookies and the internal functionality of the browser are conceptually very different and (up to now) well differentiated concepts. Mixing them up and blurring the lines between them is just a portal to confusion of the average user, who is already confused enough. I fear that changes like this will eventually make it impossible to effectively explain to an average…

Google's claim (which I'm inclined to believe) is that the previous state is more confusing to the average user. While we think in terms of "content" vs "browser", apparently the average user does not, and finds it confusing that part of the browser is signed into Google, but part isn't.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#412

Post by joshuamorton »

commoner wrote: post #364
crummy wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why do we trust them when they say this, when we don't trust google when they say it?

Data in Firefox Sync is end-to-end encrypted, while data synced to Chrome is subject to Google's privacy policy. "The security model of Firefox Sync ensures that your sync data is encrypted before it ever leaves your machine, and that the password to unlock this encryption is never transmitted to the server. Not even Mozilla can access your sync data, so while we transmit it all over TLS for additional security, we d…

There is also the option to e2e encrypt your chrome data.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#413

Post by joshuamorton »

cm2187 wrote: post #276
derefr wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be looking at the choice of opt-in vs. opt-out from the perspective of a user who actually cares about the feature. Much more common, though, I'd say, is the type of user who will accept whatever the default is, because they just don't care . Compare: the organ-donor registry. When it's opt-in, most people don't opt in. When it's opt-out, most people don't opt out. Most people just don't care. If you thin…

It’s not just that the user doesn’t care. I don’t want to have to monitor constantly hackernews to find out what new invasion of privacy google will sneak in discretely, even if there is a switch somewhere to opt out. I want to be able to rely on the tools I use.

The issue with this line of thinking is that this change isn't really a privacy invasion. Account consistency didn't at all affect privacy. You still had to opt in to syncing, which did affect privacy.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#414

Post by walterbell »

School-Cotton wrote: post #409
walterbell wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The URL hiding change is NOT reversed or shelved, only delayed: > Thanks for the feedback so far. We plan to collect additional feedback, particularly about the enterprise use case, before launching the feature. We will not be launching the "www" elision in M70. Note: “before launching” the feature post-M70.

Maybe it’s just a vocabulary quirk — to me, “shelved” implies “postponed indefinitely, but might come back someday”, not “cancelled forever”. So it is “shelved” according to how I understand that word. As you correctly point out, it’s not necessarily cancelled forever.

Launching in M71 (i.e. delayed by a single release) would remain consistent with the Google statement.

The statement applies to any delay within the range of "soon" and "not forever".

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#415

Post by Ntrails »

ajross wrote: post #397
TekMol wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are genuine benefits when you're working with laptops, desktops, phones and tablets. I work with all of these devices. Yet I don't want any of that syncing. The thought that Google wants to send my 'recently opened tabs' to their servers makes me shudder. So they get the whole browsing history of every one of their users? Of all the pages that have nothing to do with them? Same with passwords. So they have a gi…

> I work with all of these devices. Yet I don't want any of that syncing. So... you're happy that they're giving you the option to turn it off then, right? I mean, you appear to concede that someone users want this. You want the option to turn if off, which you're getting. That seems like good news. Except your tone doesn't seem to match your logic. FWIW: I use Firefox too. But... I mean come on folks. They messed up…

The issue is that trust breaches can't just be rolled back. You put people in a situation where they don't want to get caught out by the next change that the press doesn't pick up and/or you don't hear about.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#416

Post by fghtr »

carapace wrote: post #407
jfk13 wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could think of some reason to believe that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World-population-in-extre... It's a straightforward extrapolation from data.

This is not poverty. It is "extreme poverty", very different thing.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#417

Post by toast0 »

snaky wrote: post #215
toast0 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A web search engine requires a huge amount of computing resources to crawl the web, make sense of the connections, and to serve the resulting indexes. You'll need some people too probably.

Yes, it's not so easy. But using Google web search only would not be particularly harmful, especially through the Tor.

I'm really confused here. Earlier you were asking why open source couldn't build web search, like it built Firefox (sort of); and now you're saying just use Google? Open source can build a page that just uses Google, but that doesn't get you off a dependence on Google.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#418

Post by crysin »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #345
RossM wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But what is the user facing benefit? Syncing bookmarks, recently opened tabs, passwords, autofill(?). These are genuine benefits when you're working with laptops, desktops, phones and tablets. Whether they're worth the cost of data mining is another matter of course.

IMO syncing the state of your user account between devices is the responsibility of the OS, not the browser.

Well unfortunately Microsoft and Apple don't appear to be working on a account sync feature at the moment so Chrome offering synchronization between my Windows, Mac, and iPhone is the next best thing for me, personally. I like having my bookmarks and history shared between my devices.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#419

Post by [deleted] »

ajross wrote: post #397
TekMol wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are genuine benefits when you're working with laptops, desktops, phones and tablets. I work with all of these devices. Yet I don't want any of that syncing. The thought that Google wants to send my 'recently opened tabs' to their servers makes me shudder. So they get the whole browsing history of every one of their users? Of all the pages that have nothing to do with them? Same with passwords. So they have a gi…

> I work with all of these devices. Yet I don't want any of that syncing. So... you're happy that they're giving you the option to turn it off then, right? I mean, you appear to concede that someone users want this. You want the option to turn if off, which you're getting. That seems like good news. Except your tone doesn't seem to match your logic. FWIW: I use Firefox too. But... I mean come on folks. They messed up…

[deleted]

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#420

Post by bholley »

gpm wrote: post #169
muizelaar wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) I'm running a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015) 2) My display options are set to "more space" 3) I loaded this hackernews thread. 4) Firefox and it's child processes are using If I aggressively scroll this page I can push the cpu usage up. We have a variety of fixes in the pipeline that will help with this ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1429522 , https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1…

4.7% of your users, but what percentage of web developers? If that second number is substantially higher (and I personally suspect it is, but I don't have data backing that up) I think it would be very reasonable for Mozilla to prioritize MacOS. Getting web developers to use firefox makes firefox work better for everyone because it makes more sites work well with firefox.

Yeah, we do prioritize Mac disproportionately to its market share for that reason. It does sometimes happen that we have to make hard calls though, and that's what Jeff is referring to.

On that note, one of the key motivators behind WebRender (our new graphics backend) is that it provides hardware acceleration across all platforms, including mac (whereas our current Direct2D acceleration works only on Windows). So Mac graphics performance should generally improve once we get that shipped.

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