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Lightspeed – A Browser Experiment

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Lightspeed – A Browser Experiment

#71

Post by weavie »

troymc wrote: post #25
bane wrote: post #9

At first I thought "oh no, another distraction for Mozilla", but then I sat through the presentation and thought there was some really cool ideas (amazebar!). In fact, I think it can be simplified and paired down even more. Even better, some of the assumptions here even make the software portable (as in doesn't really need to be installed and could just run off a usb drive/out of my dropbox). Automatically being in a…

I agree with not defaulting to saving downloads in the "downloads" folder. Many people don't really know how to use their file manager. (For years, my mom would open Microsoft Word and organize files there.) Why not default to saving downloads on the Desktop? Where did that file get saved? Oh, there it is!

What happened to just asking the user where they want to save it? To download a file I now have to download it, then open Finder, navigate to Downloads and copy the file, navigate to the folder I want to place the download, paste the file. Then navigate back to the folder and delete the file from Downloads .. because Macs don't give you a Cut option.

Re: Lightspeed – A Browser Experiment

#73

Post by mkohlmyr »

I was surprised to see this rise on the front page. Am I the only one who didn't get excited at all by this?

When I see a post titled "a browser experiment" from mozilla.org I tend to think I'm going to get more than some wireframes and talk about "busybees". It will be an experiment once some (any) of it has been built.

In any case from what I did see in the video I would say: 1) Bookmarks are broken, but removing them is probably the wrong approach. Tagged searchable bookmarks would be more useful - they don't need a bar in the ui, but make them full-text searchable and put them at the top of auto-complete options.

2) Tabs are an ingrained key-part of how people interact with browsers. They need to be (obvious) in the ui and easy to use. Do not go the mobile route if that is the plan. Tabs on mobile are the way they are because of constraints of the form - not because it is good ui.

There are quite a few other suggestions I would take issue with but I realise I am not the target market. E.g. I don't want or need huge tiles of sites I love - I can enter their url and autocomplete. If its a site I frequent it should be at the top of the list - navigating to it is not a problem that needs solving with more ui.

Re: Lightspeed – A Browser Experiment

#74

Post by Svip »

lucb1e wrote: post #68

Something about the "there are no settings to adjust" makes me want to fork Firefox and only apply security updates from the version before this new UI gets out of beta. And tabs a click away? That's a nightmare. Mixing what I type with search results, history and suggestions? Hello Chrome lookalike. I thought the separate search bar and awesomebar was one of the killer features for Firefox. Once that's gone, odds ar…

But this Lightspeed experiment is at first, just an experiment. Moreover, it is heavily implied it is not going to be the new Firefox. He also suggests that the idea is targeted at more simple Internet users. As in, not us.

I am not concerned.

Re: Lightspeed – A Browser Experiment

#75

Post by userbinator »

murali89 wrote: post #49

I don't know why this is getting up votes. This looks like a browser for bimbos. No, seriously. I don't want the browser telling me what sites to go to and while doing that, blocking my view when the address bar is in focus. 10 minutes (well, 6) wasted!

It's getting upvoted because it's interesting to discuss as well. A lot of users here don't seem to agree with the choices made in this UI either.

Re: Lightspeed – A Browser Experiment

#76

Post by yeukhon »

masklinn wrote: post #42
yeukhon wrote: post #13

The no setting part is not really an option. No matter how simple you want to the browser to be, if you want this to be the one browser for the personal use, you need some settings. * setting search engine - this should be dead simple to implement and totally should be customized. I don't mind using Google but some people just don't like that. Actually I don't get why Firefox search engine customization is the way it…

> A user click on "manage search engine preference", press "Add", gives a URL of the search engine (e.g. https://google.com ) and then OK. Firefox should just take whatever user types into the search bar / address bar That means you don't ever get suggestions or autocompletion in the search bar. > I can even imagine this useful when I want firefox to do code search. Imagine instead of me going to dxr.mozilla.org to f…

Auto-suggestion: that's fine if I don't have it because when I search, I expect to see result displayed on the web page, which means I will spend most of my time on google.com rather than that looking at that tiny search bar.

> You know you can add keyword shortcuts to search engines and just type `dxr query` to send the query to dxr right?

You know why this Lightspeed idea exists? Because users don't need to consult you or a user guide to find out these fancy shortcuts. I am sorry, but true story. Actually, sample 20 Firefox developers randomly and ask them a bunch of Firefox shortcut and "hidden" features questions, I bet there is a high chance many of them can't answer or don't remember the syntax.

No. I don't want to do bookmarklet or bookmark. It's a simple feature.

My proposal is simple. Any real security risk? No. Privacy? You choose the search engine you want. Just because solution x y z exists, doesn't mean we can't make things simpler for both end users and power users.

Re: Lightspeed – A Browser Experiment

#78

Post by tinco »

lucb1e wrote: post #68

Something about the "there are no settings to adjust" makes me want to fork Firefox and only apply security updates from the version before this new UI gets out of beta. And tabs a click away? That's a nightmare. Mixing what I type with search results, history and suggestions? Hello Chrome lookalike. I thought the separate search bar and awesomebar was one of the killer features for Firefox. Once that's gone, odds ar…

Maybe you should RTFA..

Re: Lightspeed – A Browser Experiment

#79

Post by userbinator »

Svip wrote: post #74
lucb1e wrote: post #68

Something about the "there are no settings to adjust" makes me want to fork Firefox and only apply security updates from the version before this new UI gets out of beta. And tabs a click away? That's a nightmare. Mixing what I type with search results, history and suggestions? Hello Chrome lookalike. I thought the separate search bar and awesomebar was one of the killer features for Firefox. Once that's gone, odds ar…

But this Lightspeed experiment is at first, just an experiment. Moreover, it is heavily implied it is not going to be the new Firefox. He also suggests that the idea is targeted at more simple Internet users. As in, not us. I am not concerned.

>As in, not us.

The concern here is that this sort of dumbed-down UI is going to lead to there being less of users like us in the future, since by removing options and choice, it makes it easier to use, but also reduces the incentive to find out more about how things work. The browser turning into something like a TV, for consuming content and nothing more.

Re: Lightspeed – A Browser Experiment

#80

Post by Pacabel »

Svip wrote: post #74
lucb1e wrote: post #68

Something about the "there are no settings to adjust" makes me want to fork Firefox and only apply security updates from the version before this new UI gets out of beta. And tabs a click away? That's a nightmare. Mixing what I type with search results, history and suggestions? Hello Chrome lookalike. I thought the separate search bar and awesomebar was one of the killer features for Firefox. Once that's gone, odds ar…

But this Lightspeed experiment is at first, just an experiment. Moreover, it is heavily implied it is not going to be the new Firefox. He also suggests that the idea is targeted at more simple Internet users. As in, not us. I am not concerned.

It may just be a thought experiment at this point, but I think it's pretty clear now that all of the major browsers are unfortunately headed in this direction.

This rush to target "more simple Internet users" hasn't gone well for Mozilla and Firefox so far. All they've managed to do is create a dumbed-down UI that's harder and less efficient to use, and this has alienated a lot of Firefox's existing users. This is a big part of why we keep seeing Firefox's share of the market sliding lower and lower.

Users can forgive Chrome for its bad UI experience because it offers quite good performance and resource usage. Firefox, unfortunately, does not offer that (I know, I know, Mozilla has benchmark results that will show the opposite, but these aren't indicative of actual user experiences). When faced with two browsers offering basically the same flawed UI, then users will use the one that offers the best runtime performance and the lowest resource usage.

Going forward with this sort of a design, or even continuing down the existing path that Mozilla has been taking, ultimately won't be successful. Users have very obviously been rejecting Firefox because it now no longer offers a usable UI, nor does it offer acceptable performance and resource usage.

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