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Firefox 23 is available

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Re: Firefox 23 is available

#101

Post by Gormo »

nsmartt wrote: post #97
Gormo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Non-technical users" is a contradiction in terms. If you're using technology, you're a "technical user". If you don't know how certain options work, you should leave them alone; but if you don't leave them alone and something breaks, it takes only common sense and not specialized knowledge to suspect that the thing you changed has some relationship to the thing that broke. De-featuring software for the presumptive c…

It's true that users should not break things without some mind as to how to fix them, but it's also irrelevant. If a user breaks your product, it makes no difference to him or her who broke it. It's still broken. Users will have a bad experience. This doesn't mean advanced options shouldn't exist, but it does mean that they should be out of the way for non-advanced users. In this case, the setting is moved to about:c…

Users will have a "bad experience" as a consequence of an action that they took, and can undo just as easily.

A good user experience can be achieved by providing users with an efficient way to understand and fix problems that they encounter.

De-featuring a product to prevent users from ever encountering a problem reduces the utility of the product, which produces a worse experience for everyone, not just the ones who would have had a problem they couldn't solve.

Those who would have had a problem they couldn't solve will still ultimately have a bad experience, because it's their own pattern of usage, and not any defect in the software, that's ultimately getting them stuck.

Moving an "advanced" setting to a different interface is fine, but the release notes don't say that the JavaScript toggle was moved to about:config; the notes say that it was removed (and that user-set values will be reset to default, which, IMO, is an unacceptable thing for an update patch to ever do.)

Re: Firefox 23 is available

#102

Post by nsmartt »

Gormo wrote: post #101
nsmartt wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true that users should not break things without some mind as to how to fix them, but it's also irrelevant. If a user breaks your product, it makes no difference to him or her who broke it. It's still broken. Users will have a bad experience. This doesn't mean advanced options shouldn't exist, but it does mean that they should be out of the way for non-advanced users. In this case, the setting is moved to about:c…

Users will have a "bad experience" as a consequence of an action that they took, and can undo just as easily. A good user experience can be achieved by providing users with an efficient way to understand and fix problems that they encounter. De-featuring a product to prevent users from ever encountering a problem reduces the utility of the product, which produces a worse experience for everyone , not just the ones wh…

>A good user experience can be achieved by providing users with an efficient way to understand and fix problems that they encounter.

Agreed.

>De-featuring a product

If I were building a browser today, I wouldn't want the option to be where Mozilla had placed it. I think of this more as a correction than as removing a feature. I don't think we're going to agree on this one, which is fine.

>produces a worse experience for everyone

Not at all. The majority of users do not need this feature, and those that do are likely to be sufficiently experienced to find it anyway.

>Those who _would_ have had a problem they couldn't solve will _still_ ultimately have a bad experience, because it's their own pattern of usage, and not any defect in the software, that's ultimately getting them stuck.

This is debatable. Good UX means preventing these kinds of pitfalls.

>the notes say that it was removed

This is a failure on their part to communicate the move, which sucks. It's also possibly a direct attempt to prevent people from using this feature for whatever reason, which is kind of sleazy.

>and that user-set values will be reset to default, which, IMO, is an unacceptable thing for an update patch to _ever_ do.

I'm pretty sure we're in agreement here. I take no issue with moving the option to about:config. I also wouldn't take issue with it being removed entirely, because add-ons such as NoScript are superior to that feature anyway.

Re: Firefox 23 is available

#103

Post by agumonkey »

blueveek wrote: post #98
agumonkey wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Nightly it's even better, it's aggressively compacting memory, it was running around 30% (2GB total) instead of 40+ a few weeks ago. Kudos for their effort. I wish they could replicate a tiny bit of it toward the GUI.

If you don't know already, a huge UI overhaul is planned to land sometimes between Firefox 25 or 26 [0]. As far as I know, better performance is a big reason for the change as well. [0] https://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/ux-presentation/ux-pr...

I didn't know they were trying to fix performance too. To me this was only a UX redesign. Which I tried not long ago, and I was disappointed, it doesn't add much actually. A few theme changes here and there, a nice configurable menu that personally I'll never use. I'm not sure what to think about it ... we'll see.

Re: Firefox 23 is available

#104

Post by bashinator »

Gormo wrote: post #83
smackfu wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your vision of users is so adorable. Real people just don't act that way.

So the people who do act that way are fake people? I've worked a helpdesk, and I know where the stereotypes are coming from. I also know that selection bias is selection bias, and that there's never an excuse to remove functionality from software.

Good thing no functionality has been removed, then.

Re: Firefox 23 is available

#105

Post by Gormo »

bashinator wrote: post #104
Gormo wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the people who do act that way are fake people? I've worked a helpdesk, and I know where the stereotypes are coming from. I also know that selection bias is selection bias, and that there's never an excuse to remove functionality from software.

Good thing no functionality has been removed, then.

The release notes did say "removed"; apparently, this is inaccurate.

Re: Firefox 23 is available

#106

Post by esalman »

aclevernickname wrote: post #99
esalman wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reset is not really an option when you have your chosen extensions installed and customized.

Considering extensions are the #2 reason (behind Flash) that Firefox crashes/beachballs, perhaps one would be wise to audit the (presumably) tons of extensions they have installed locally, to see if they conflict with other extensions?

Actually a handful of essential extensions (in my case those essential one for web dev) are enough to bring it down on my under-powered laptop.

Re: Firefox 23 is available

#107

Post by ck2 »

gecko wrote: post #66
ck2 wrote: post #54

Stuck on FF21 until they fix the scaling on windows xp Which might never happen :-(

Why on Earth would you not upgrade to at least Windows 7?

Why again do I need Windows 7?

I mean other than developers purposely breaking things that already worked under XP?

Re: Firefox 23 is available

#108

Post by aclevernickname »

esalman wrote: post #106
aclevernickname wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering extensions are the #2 reason (behind Flash) that Firefox crashes/beachballs, perhaps one would be wise to audit the (presumably) tons of extensions they have installed locally, to see if they conflict with other extensions?

Actually a handful of essential extensions (in my case those essential one for web dev) are enough to bring it down on my under-powered laptop.

If what you're saying is true, then your handful of extensions are conflicting with each other. disable one of the handful, and see if the crashes disappear. if not, disable another one.

currently using a netbook with an Atom N570. I appreciate under-powered computing. Firefox runs fine here with 5 extensions (two of which are for web development). 17 tabs are using 214.52 MB of memory. haven't had a crash or hang in a long time.

Re: Firefox 23 is available

#110

Post by aclevernickname »

ghostdiver wrote: post #95
negativity wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that inexperienced users are not well-informed of the option to disallow it, and might not understand that indiscriminate, promiscuous execution of JavaScript as a default behavior can be hazardous. ...at least as hazardous as connecting to unencrypted Wi-Fi. To whit: http://beefproject.com/ New users aren't even readily informed that JavaScript is a thing.

Didn't ever hear of pure JS browser exploit, only a mix of Flash or Java.

I have an omegle exploit that exists entirely in javascript. it was written for Chrome (Windows/Mac specifically), but still 100% javascript. I'd be happy to email a copy of it (in .zip form) to anyone interested.

Also, the recent Tor Browser Bundle exploit (RIP Tormail) was javascript-based.

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