Do we know how many people use the icon, even as something like "% of Firefox users"? It does seem a bit silly to remove the RSS icon without any data on its usefulness. Then again, maybe Mozilla has some data we're not privy to on how many people actually use that button besides Dave Winer.
Dear Firefox, please keep the RSS icon
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Re: Dear Firefox, please keep the RSS icon
#32Do we know how many people use the icon, even as something like "% of Firefox users"? It does seem a bit silly to remove the RSS icon without any data on its usefulness. Then again, maybe Mozilla has some data we're not privy to on how many people actually use that button besides Dave Winer.
Yes, we do. Heatmap from Mozilla [1], accompanying blog post [2].
Participants had to opt-in, the study collected data for five days from 9,667 people.
7.3 percent of all participants clicked the RSS button at least once in those five days. That places it behind the favicon (those seem to be accidental clicks [3], 9%), the Go button (11.4%), as well as the New Tab button in the tab bar (12.7%) and in front of the New Tab button in the toolbar (not displayed by default, 5.2%) as well as the Site Identity button for websites with SSL (4.8%).
A participant clicked the button 0.3 times on average, the 9,667 participants clicked about 3,000 times. Since we know that 7.3 percent of all those participants clicked the button, we also know that those who clicked the button did so about four times on average.
[1] https://heatmap.mozillalabs.com/mozmetrics/
[2] http://blog.mozilla.com/metrics/2010/07/01/firefox-main-wind...
[3] If a website doesn’t use SSL, clicking the favicon does nothing in Firefox except displaying a short note that the current website doesn’t use SSL. Since only 4.8% click when a website actually does use SSL (and when the favicon turns into the Site Identity button which is clearly identifiable as such) the majority of those who click on the favicon when it doesn’t look like a button which will display information about certificates seem to be clicking accidentally. Clicking the favicon selects the whole URL in some other browsers (Safari, Chrome, I don’t know about Internet Explorer) so my suspicion is that many of those 9% expect Firefox to do something similar. (I would and it drives me crazy.)
Re: Dear Firefox, please keep the RSS icon
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now in the good spirit of a designer in search of a solution to everything and everybody, add an option in preferences to show/hide the feed button. How about that?
The preferences in Firefox are already cluttered. Using about:config seems appropriate. Edit: Some are claiming that you can still add the button to the toolbar, it’s just off by default. That sounds extremely reasonable and confuses me at the same time because I don’t understand what all the fuss is about.
Because it's not an indicator anymore.
Re: Dear Firefox, please keep the RSS icon
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
The preferences in Firefox are already cluttered. Using about:config seems appropriate. Edit: Some are claiming that you can still add the button to the toolbar, it’s just off by default. That sounds extremely reasonable and confuses me at the same time because I don’t understand what all the fuss is about.
Because it's not an indicator anymore.
The button is grayed out (disabled) if the website offers no RSS feed. It’s still an indicator.
Re: Dear Firefox, please keep the RSS icon
#35Why not implement it as an extension, like Chrome does?
I'd be fine with an extension in Firefox, but like the author I use this ALL the time. And I'm not a fan of the Chrome extension. It doesn't even show the feed URL in the address bar.
Re: Dear Firefox, please keep the RSS icon
#36Do we know how many people use the icon, even as something like "% of Firefox users"? It does seem a bit silly to remove the RSS icon without any data on its usefulness. Then again, maybe Mozilla has some data we're not privy to on how many people actually use that button besides Dave Winer.
Yes, we do. Heatmap from Mozilla [1], accompanying blog post [2]. Participants had to opt-in, the study collected data for five days from 9,667 people. 7.3 percent of all participants clicked the RSS button at least once in those five days. That places it behind the favicon (those seem to be accidental clicks [3], 9%), the Go button (11.4%), as well as the New Tab button in the tab bar (12.7%) and in front of the New…
Thanks for the data. Seems like its a relatively underutilized feature.
Re: Dear Firefox, please keep the RSS icon
#37This may be an old school rant but I'm old school so... There has been a bothersome trend in software in general lately to strip things down. It used to mean that a new version of software contained new features on top of those you already had but lately there has been a push to remove things that are viewed as used by only a small percentage of the user base. Sadly many of those things are used by the more 'advanced…
> FF does let me put the tabs back down where I like them
I don't understand how putting tabs above the location bar can be equated to stripping the browser down. It just makes more sense, because the location bar is specific to the tab, so it should be contained "within" the tab.
Re: Dear Firefox, please keep the RSS icon
#38This may be an old school rant but I'm old school so... There has been a bothersome trend in software in general lately to strip things down. It used to mean that a new version of software contained new features on top of those you already had but lately there has been a push to remove things that are viewed as used by only a small percentage of the user base. Sadly many of those things are used by the more 'advanced…
FF4 did not remove the Feed icon entirely, it's been removed from the awesome bar, and defaulted to off, but it exists as a positionable toolbar icon, you just have to configure your toolbar, and add the icon whereever you want to regain access to it. My recommendation for the position is the very right end of the awesome bar, for familiarity's sake.
Thanks a bunch for pointing this out. I was annoyed they removed it but not yet to the point of searching for it (although I did hope for a comment like yours when coming).
Re: Dear Firefox, please keep the RSS icon
#39I installed the Firefox 4 beta.
It's crap.
I've now removed it and will no longer be using Firefox.
Seriously, it is that bad, and will probably never get any better.
RIP Firefox. We hardly knew ye.
Re: Dear Firefox, please keep the RSS icon
#40Do we know how many people use the icon, even as something like "% of Firefox users"? It does seem a bit silly to remove the RSS icon without any data on its usefulness. Then again, maybe Mozilla has some data we're not privy to on how many people actually use that button besides Dave Winer.
Yes, we do. Heatmap from Mozilla [1], accompanying blog post [2]. Participants had to opt-in, the study collected data for five days from 9,667 people. 7.3 percent of all participants clicked the RSS button at least once in those five days. That places it behind the favicon (those seem to be accidental clicks [3], 9%), the Go button (11.4%), as well as the New Tab button in the tab bar (12.7%) and in front of the New…
I'm surprised to see that as many people use the Back button as the Awesomebar.