31–40 of 205 posts
Firefox has come a long way and I as a developer I don't like how Chrome hides everything.
It's also super easy in Firefox to turn off automatic updates and only update manually when you are ready (help -> about firefox)
I hate firefox updates because I use it infrequently enough that I have to update just about every time I open it. Also on this list is my Playstation3, which wants me to do system update and a software title update on the rare occasion I try to use it. Makes me not even want to turn the thing on. So, note to developers: Frequent updates drive your infrequent users crazy.
> Also on this list is my Playstation3, which wants me to do system update and a software title update on the rare occasion I try to use it. The Xbox 360 also does constant updates that need a reboot. Since most people leave it connected to the power socket, I wonder why they don't wake it sometime and do all the updates and go back to being powered off.
Site seems to be down. It would be very nice if someone made a service like Mirrordot for HN.
"There's no UI better than one you already know, and no UI worse than one you thought you knew but now haver to relearn." This just isn't true. In a web browser, sure, the UI barely matters. Going through the menus in Firefox or Chrome is rare, enough so that Chrome tends to look different every time I do it. But for real programs, the UI defines the workflow, and that should be optimized, even at the expense of fami…
I have not had an extension break since FF7 (now on FF14) Firefox has come a long way and I as a developer I don't like how Chrome hides everything. It's also super easy in Firefox to turn off automatic updates and only update manually when you are ready (help -> about firefox)
It's been my experience that extensions don't 'break' (i.e. stop working as expected) as much as they self validate against the currently running version of FF and refuse to load unless the developer has flagged it as workable.
Every time a major release comes out, half of my plugins are disabled. Then, I go and download the compatability reporter plugin (which gives you the option to override the version check), and 9 times out of 10, every single plugin works fine.
Also, what did you mean "how Chrome hides everything"? I'll admit the plugin system isnt near as robust, but for web development, I'm in passionate love with the Chrome/ium developer tools.
A lot of agreement. Some disagreements. Yes, frequent updates, especially those that break plugins, suck massively. Each update is a huge leap of dread into the "well, what's going to break this time" sea. The biggest single fault I've got with Firerfox (running FF13) isn't updates, it's memory usage. It still leaks massively, and pretty much requires a daily restart. State preservation is good enough that this doesn…
And if you use Firebug, you are screwed as well, only quicker.
I never really liked Chrome, but it's so fast and snappy, and Firefox has still not catch up in that area.
I think the takeaway from this should be slightly different than the one the author found: don't fight users' expectations of what your product is. When Chrome came out, it was a new product; users had no expectations of "what Chrome is." So Google could do with it essentially whatever they wanted. Firefox was in a completely different position. When Mozilla moved Firefox to rapid release, the product branded "Firefo…
The other thing is that Chrome updates work. They've only broken something once in I think 3 years of daily use at this point (some update unchecked "warn before quitting"). They also don't generally create popups and the update process itself is literally invisible. Firefox on the other hand... sigh. I really liked that browser, but the updates, and the broken plugins, and the shit memory management, and the develop…
if you don't use addons, the memory management in Firefox is pretty good - actually measure it competitively against Chrome sometime
I wrote about this at length last year: https://plus.google.com/u/0/105636695715347097518/posts/G9hb...
A prerequisite to a non-annoying rapid release cycle IMO is silent update. It's why we spent the time to get that part of the technology stack working first. I predict user frustration with Firefox will decrease now they've implemented this.
The takeaway quote: "After years of aspiring to improve software usability, I've come to the extremely humbling realization that the single best thing most companies could do to improve usability is to stop changing the UI so often!" I wish I could ink this command onto the right hand of programmers (and program managers) everywhere.
Very few user interfaces have withstood the test of time. There are notable exceptions, of course - the iOS UI, uTorrent, and the Chrome browser immediately come to mind. Other applications and operating systems have continued to evolve their user interface over 18-24 months. In some cases, the evolution is necessary for the sake of usability. Take Android for instance: The UI update in ICS dramatically enhanced usab…
There's a good reason "Do Not Track" is unchecked by default. If it was checked by default, then advertisers would have the perfect excuse to ignore it: "oh, that's not really the user's preference, they're just sending that header because their browser sends it by default; let's go ahead and track them."
By making it opt-in, we ensure that a site receiving a do-not-track header knows for sure that it represents an active choice on the part of the user.
You may remember that IE was going to turn it on by default. But then Mozilla and the rest of the do-not-track collaborators explained this principle to them and they went back to off-by-default.
The third-party cookie thing, though, I don't have a good explanation for. When I worked at Mozilla I spent a lot of time trying to convince people that we should block third-party cookies by default. (Especially after I started working on Collusion and saw how prevalent they are.) I kept getting the same response: "We can't block 3rd party cookies, it would break the web."
I don't agree with this, obviously. Before pop-up-blocking became the norm in all browsers, you could have made the argument that pop-up-blocking would "break the web" too. I believe 3rd party cookies are a giant security hole, and breaking sites that use them would be a small price to pay for closing it.
But, I couldn't convince Mozilla of that. It's one of the reasons I decided to leave.
> Are curved tabs really better than rectangular ones?
IIRC from the UI design talk where the new "Australis" redesign was introduced internally, the motivation behind the curved tab redesign was to look "friendlier" and more "organic".
One thing the Australis redesign does which I do think is important is that it finally provides a consistent location for add-ons to add buttons. (The status bar used to be this, but it was hidden in Firefox 4 to recover screen space for content.)
I think the takeaway from this should be slightly different than the one the author found: don't fight users' expectations of what your product is. When Chrome came out, it was a new product; users had no expectations of "what Chrome is." So Google could do with it essentially whatever they wanted. Firefox was in a completely different position. When Mozilla moved Firefox to rapid release, the product branded "Firefo…
The other thing is that Chrome updates work. They've only broken something once in I think 3 years of daily use at this point (some update unchecked "warn before quitting"). They also don't generally create popups and the update process itself is literally invisible. Firefox on the other hand... sigh. I really liked that browser, but the updates, and the broken plugins, and the shit memory management, and the develop…
We've had a project called MemShrink running for about a year and it has been making steady progress. and that progress has been shipping to users.
The current Aurora channel release even has a fix for most add-on bad behavior.
Firefox actually stacks up really well in memory usage (even in third party tests).
(I work for Mozilla but was not involved in MemShrink. Also, I wrote this on my phone, so I hope there are no embarrassing misspellings. )