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What We're Working on in Firefox

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#61

Post by neilv »

Prioritization that I'd like to suggest for Firefox, driven by needs of society (from high to low):

1. Representing the public interest wrt Web -- especially fervent respect for privacy in the browser, almost as much emphasis on security, fighting commercial excesses around de jure and defacto standards, and social equity within the scope of what Mozilla does (e.g., software accessibility, encouraging all volunteers).

2. Competitive browser compliance and performance. To be viable as a daily driver, to have impact.

3. Forward-looking R&D on Internet public interest things not currently considered "browser", but potentially big in near term.

4. Fancy browser features that actually increase uptake and retention. (Much lower than the first 3.)

5. Designer's opinion/portfolio UX changes. (Could be improvements, and there's value in an appealing and moving-target modern appearance, but misalignment is a risk to be careful of.)

6. Necessary-evil money-making compromises. (Very, very carefully. Many past ones were negatives. And we still see arguable dark patterns around some of those, such as as Firefox updates sometimes reverting users' express Search-related preferences.)

A marketing challenge of these priorities would be that even most techies can't assess how well you're doing #1.

But that mix of things you do can include things understandable to your typical user, such as superior blocking of abusive ads. (But don't drop the ball on things that your typical user can't understand -- they're entrusting you as an expert to act in their interests.)

Educational outreaches can also help. And if you get to the point that you're generating an order of magnitude fewer security vulnerabilities than your competitor, then marketing people can run with that. But be careful with positioning, so that communications about smart, hard activities don't get conflated in people's minds with confusing mission drift and fluffy PR.

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#62

Post by amluto »

I have a suggestion for Mozilla: find use cases that benefit your users and are not possible in other browsers. For example:

Browsers are terrible at accessing devices on a local network. Make this work well in Firefox, extending protocols as needed.

Browsers are terrible at configuring IoT devices. It device makers are terrible at making apps for this purpose that don’t suck. Make Firefox (on desktop and mobile!) be the premier way to usable and securely configure IoT devices. Get device vendors to sign on: someone could (and probably would) sell a gadget where the instructions suggest installing Firefox to set up the device.

Leverage the same technology to go after enterprise users. Ever seen a piece of high-end, expensive networking gear with a web UI? Ever contemplated how pathetically insecure this is? Ever contemplated how unpleasant it to provision certificates to make it secure? Make this work, easily and securely, on Firefox, using new protocols as needed. Make everyone else play catch-up.

Heck, start small. Allow setting domain constraints on imported root certificates.

The moral: do something new and better.

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#63

Post by JohnFen »

kwanbix wrote: post #30

I really love Firefox. I even organized events for them on my home country, so don't get me wrong, wouldn't it be best for the web/devs that they switched to chrome's engine? They can still implement whatever changes to privacy and their changes just like MS does, and devs will only have to target one engine. Or am I missing something? Please discuss it if you agree or disagree, do not downvote. Thanks.

> wouldn't it be best for the web/devs that they switched to chrome's engine?

Why would that be best? I don't think the problem with Firefox is the engine (anymore), I think it's the design choices Mozilla continues to make.

If Firefox switched to the chromium engine, then why would I bother to continue to use it? Surely it would be better to switch to one of the "privacy-oriented" Chromium-based browsers that have been around for a long time now.

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#64

Post by babypuncher »

slobiwan wrote: post #9

Is anybody currently using Sidebery who could comment on how the Firefox "Tab grouping, Vertical tabs, and sidebar" compare?

They haven't actually shown off their vertical tabs yet, so there isn't much to say.

I am a Sideberry user though, and this excites me because a native implementation will likely look a lot cleaner, integrate better with your chosen theme, and actually allow the removal of the regular tab bar (you have to keep it with Sideberry because there is some functionality that cannot be replicated through an extension).

Theming in particular might be a big one, I had to spend a couple hours tweaking the Sideberry CSS to make it look nice with the skin I use in Firefox. Not having to do that sure would be convenient, especially for the average user who doesn't know what a stylesheet is.

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#65

Post by olejorgenb »

rurp wrote: post #52
blizdiddy wrote: post #5

> More streamlined menus that reduce visual clutter and prioritize top user actions so you can get to the important things quicker Oh no, more of this. What about less used options? How much slower? How much less discoverable? Desktop applications are already for power users almost by definition, let’s not slow them down for the sake of reducing “clutter”. Absolutely annoying trend of the last 15 years or so.

The amount of regressions Mozilla has inflicted on Firefox in recent years blows my mind. One of their few big advantages over Chrome is better user control, but they have been working continuously to destroy that. Getting rid of most extensions and removing about:config are two big wtf decisions. All that does is piss off power users, which are the main advocates for this browser. Plus so many other baffling changes…

> and removing about:config

What?

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#66

Post by aquova »

rurp wrote: post #52
blizdiddy wrote: post #5

> More streamlined menus that reduce visual clutter and prioritize top user actions so you can get to the important things quicker Oh no, more of this. What about less used options? How much slower? How much less discoverable? Desktop applications are already for power users almost by definition, let’s not slow them down for the sake of reducing “clutter”. Absolutely annoying trend of the last 15 years or so.

The amount of regressions Mozilla has inflicted on Firefox in recent years blows my mind. One of their few big advantages over Chrome is better user control, but they have been working continuously to destroy that. Getting rid of most extensions and removing about:config are two big wtf decisions. All that does is piss off power users, which are the main advocates for this browser. Plus so many other baffling changes…

> removing about:config

about:config is right where it's always been, unless I've missed something?

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#67

Post by speckx »

I would like Firefox to be able to set extensions to run only on click or allow me to provide a list of domains, like Chrome does, so every extension is not running on every page. See https://support.google.com/chrome?p=enable_extensions and https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/option-to-allow-extensi....

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#68

Post by raffraffraff »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #13

> We’ve been listening to your feedback, and we’re prioritizing the features you want most. > Tab Grouping, Vertical Tabs, and our handy Sidebar will help you stay organized no matter how many tabs you have open — whether it’s 7 or 7,500. > Plus, our new Profile Management system will help keep your school, work, and personal browsing separate but easily accessible. Wow, that ... actually is what users have been aski…

honestly, container tabs are way more useful to me than profiles every were. I can have 3 different Gmail accounts and a bunch of AWS accounts open in the same browser, with different colours for each so that I can figure out which is which.

How about it they continued to iterate on container tabs and make it possible to pattern match urls to containers without a 3rd party addon.

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#69

Post by mrandish »

rurp wrote: post #52
blizdiddy wrote: post #5

> More streamlined menus that reduce visual clutter and prioritize top user actions so you can get to the important things quicker Oh no, more of this. What about less used options? How much slower? How much less discoverable? Desktop applications are already for power users almost by definition, let’s not slow them down for the sake of reducing “clutter”. Absolutely annoying trend of the last 15 years or so.

The amount of regressions Mozilla has inflicted on Firefox in recent years blows my mind. One of their few big advantages over Chrome is better user control, but they have been working continuously to destroy that. Getting rid of most extensions and removing about:config are two big wtf decisions. All that does is piss off power users, which are the main advocates for this browser. Plus so many other baffling changes…

Yes! FF PMs and designers seem to HATE user customization, add-ons and power user capabilities yet those are the main reasons I came to FF and why I still use it. While FF is still the best browser for me (barely), it's only achieved this by all the alternatives enshittifying and dumb-ifying their browsers even faster than FF. As it is I have to spend significant effort under the hood customizing UserChrome scripts just to maintain minimal usability. (...and thank the heavens for Lepton (https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix), a regularly maintained, well-curated, all-in-one collection of essential Firefox fixes (which can each be turned off individually via flags.)

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#70

Post by drewg123 »

One thing I wish they'd work on is making saved credit card information work correctly and reliably. I use FF on Macos laptop and FreeBSD desktop, with multiple profiles on each. I have different profiles where CC saving work fine, and others that don't across both OSes. I'm so annoyed at having to pull out my CC that I've gone back to chrome a lot of the time when I need to buy things...
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