Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Firefox to regularly nag users to change their default browser

bugzilla.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 98 posts

Re: Firefox to regularly nag users to change their default browser

#71

Post by slig »

bobthechef wrote: post #33
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just stop shooting yourself in the foot It's just non-stop with Mozilla, isn't it? They have the curious pairing of technical excellence, and a long history of awful non-technical decision-making. * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14754740 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22616740 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23391659 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10680925 * https://news.ycombinator.co…

Which is a shame because the technical is entirely subordinate to and for the sake of the non-technical ultimately.

Kick the technical and keep the bureaucrats. What could go wrong?

Re: Firefox to regularly nag users to change their default browser

#72

Post by perryizgr8 »

walrus01 wrote: post #5

Still nowhere near as bad as Windows popping up a system level notification on consumer configurations of Windows 10, with a big advertisement for Edge and trying to get people to change their browser to Edge.

It's so disheartening to see Windows fall to such anti-user practices. But I guess this is par for the course for modern OSes. On apple systems I get a permanent system notification about Safari every few days. I have to dismiss it manually every time.

Re: Firefox to regularly nag users to change their default browser

#73

Post by perryizgr8 »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #26
tyingq wrote: post #2

Does that complete the circle now, where you'll have a nag from one of the top browsers no matter what you install?

Basically, every browser now has to copy Chrome's incessant nagging, or continue to lose ground to Chrome.

> Basically, every browser now has to copy Chrome's incessant nagging, and continue to lose ground to Chrome.

Even with all the dirty tricks, Firefox is not able to claw back any user share.

Re: Firefox to regularly nag users to change their default browser

#74

Post by floatingatoll »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #30
terracatta wrote: post #25

I think this zero-sum game thinking, where Firefox is either the default browser or it isn't, is antiquated. While I'm not necessarily representative of a broader population, I find that I prefer different web browsers based on what I want to do in my browser. For example, I really like Safari for shopping because of its first class support for Apple Pay on my Mac. I just tap my finger on the sensor, and I'm done. Wh…

Well, the zero-sum game isn't really Mozilla's fault. This is just how the OS works. There is only one default browser per user. It's the one that handles hyperlinks coming from other apps. What is their fault is bugging users with no way of turning it off.

I’m annoyed by this new notification because Firefox doesn’t recognize macOS Choosy.app as a multi-default browser router, which I use to control the directions of various links into the right places in my collection of browsers. I expect my use case is too rare to be of interest to the browser team, but it’ll serve as a useful reminder to me of why nothing is every fully correct at humanity scale.

Re: Firefox to regularly nag users to change their default browser

#76

Post by tempest_ »

dralley wrote: post #46

I don't get anyone who is using this as a cudgel to claim that Chrome is better (and there are some in these comments already). Google don't deserve any credit for having stopped doing that after achieving near-total dominance through using those tactics. How much of Chrome's current marketshare can be attributed to: 1) Bundling Chrome with Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Reader, Java, and multiple free antivirus suites, w…

This is part of the problem with courting the privacy/niche user group. They routinely make the perfect the enemy of the good.

While they scream constantly about these particular issues I have yet to see someone post a viable solution to FireFox's increasingly shrinking market share and there will be a point when the google search box either wont or cant pay the bills any longer.

Re: Firefox to regularly nag users to change their default browser

#77

Post by piatra »

aetherspawn wrote: post #43

5 weeks is 35 days .. I don't think that I would even remember spending 3 seconds to dismiss a bar every 5 weeks. But it would definitely help someone less tech-savvy who doesn't know how to set their default browser.

And even then Windows doesn't offer you a straight forward API. Firefox can only open the Settings page for you, user has to change it from the dropdown. After you change, Windows makes you confirm with an "Edge is new and great" prompt.

Re: Firefox to regularly nag users to change their default browser

#78

Post by walrus01 »

perryizgr8 wrote: post #72
walrus01 wrote: post #5

Still nowhere near as bad as Windows popping up a system level notification on consumer configurations of Windows 10, with a big advertisement for Edge and trying to get people to change their browser to Edge.

It's so disheartening to see Windows fall to such anti-user practices. But I guess this is par for the course for modern OSes. On apple systems I get a permanent system notification about Safari every few days. I have to dismiss it manually every time.

I mean no disrespect whatsoever - but how old are you? Because from a longer term perspective, having seen what Microsoft was up to in the mid to late 1990s, this is just them being consistent with how they've always been... It just has a new shiny friendly face on it with 'free' onedrive services, outlook webmail and such.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_litigation#Antitrust

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

Re: Firefox to regularly nag users to change their default browser

#79

Post by mehlmao »

aetherspawn wrote: post #43

5 weeks is 35 days .. I don't think that I would even remember spending 3 seconds to dismiss a bar every 5 weeks. But it would definitely help someone less tech-savvy who doesn't know how to set their default browser.

This is after you've already unchecked "Always check if Firefox is your default browser". People uncheck that because they don't want to be nagged. This is just Mozilla not respecting user choices.

Re: Firefox to regularly nag users to change their default browser

#80

Post by piatra »

smarx007 wrote: post #31
zeta0134 wrote: post #9

Heh, this won't annoy me in particular since Firefox is already my default. Instead, it'll specifically annoy web developers who prefer some other browser, but are being good netizens and testing in Firefox too. I'm not really okay with making Firefox more annoying for these developers. It's their preference, and the checkbox in settings that is meant to control this prompt should actually control this prompt, all th…

Actually, it will annoy me in particular even though FF is my default browser. Technically, Choosy ( https://www.choosyosx.com/ ) is my default "browser" on macOS and FF is the preferred browser in Choosy. I hope there will be an about:config preference to disable "nudging".

So if you enable `browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.asrouter.devtoolsEnabled` you can navigate to `about:home#asrouter`, look for `INFOBAR_DEFAULT_AND_PIN_87` (that's the ID for this message) and click BLOCK. It's best to flip the pref back cause it might cause issues (and this won't revert the block).
Post reply on HN