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Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#161
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's old, but "ftp://" is a valid uri scheme that has established use, and lots of valid links on existing, live web pages. Browsers removing support are breaking part of the web that was working fine.

You can configure Firefox to open "ftp://" links with the client of your choice. This is a non-issue.

>> You can configure Firefox to open "ftp://" links with the client of your choice.

My choice has always been Firefox.

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#162
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perfect? No. Living up to the expectations and principles [0] that they themselves established? Yes. [0] Principle 6: The effectiveness of the internet as a public resource depends upon interoperability (protocols, data formats, content), innovation and decentralized participation worldwide. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/

Why is FTP all of a sudden an important interop protocol when we have HTTP, HTTPS, rsync, scp, etc? Why is the browser responsible for maintaining this legacy FTP support when there are command-line utilities and dedicated GUI clients for it?

The issue isn't that FTP is all of a sudden an important protocol. It has been chugging away in the background without much fanfare for decades. The issue with Firefox removing it largely comes down to convenience: it's been included in browsers for so long that it's now the primary means (in some industries) for non-technical users to access files.

This whole ordeal kind of reminds me of IE8. Whether good or bad, companies stuck to what they knew and what tools they used to carry out their day-to-day. I can easily see updates being avoided to keep FTP functionality at the expense of newer security issues being patched.

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#163
post #129
post #36

I don't understand all the negativity around this. People complained when Firefox added Pocket, in part because they took a browser extension and made it a feature that was ostensibly unrelated to web browsing. Now they're taking an old feature that's definitely not related to web browsing and removing it, and people are still complaining? Firefox can't be everything. It should focus on being a great browser and not…

FTP has been related to web browsing since the beginning of the web 31 years ago. For maybe a decade (the first third of the web so far), most of the WWW was on FTP servers—not just most software downloads, but also most HTML pages. Web browsers are a much better interface to FTP servers than dedicated FTP clients, because you can click a link on an HTML page (either a statically generated directory, possibly on the…

> but FTP is still a widely used protocol.

I cannot for the life of me remember the last time I landed on a page with FTP or had to use FTP in any way. Even lists of file downloads are http pages where I just click on the file.

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#164
post #129
post #36

I don't understand all the negativity around this. People complained when Firefox added Pocket, in part because they took a browser extension and made it a feature that was ostensibly unrelated to web browsing. Now they're taking an old feature that's definitely not related to web browsing and removing it, and people are still complaining? Firefox can't be everything. It should focus on being a great browser and not…

FTP has been related to web browsing since the beginning of the web 31 years ago. For maybe a decade (the first third of the web so far), most of the WWW was on FTP servers—not just most software downloads, but also most HTML pages. Web browsers are a much better interface to FTP servers than dedicated FTP clients, because you can click a link on an HTML page (either a statically generated directory, possibly on the…

I'd just like to add to this that ftp is a relatively simple protocol, not particularly complicated to implement. It's not a constantly fluctuating standard that requires a team of 50 developers to keep pace with. Supporting FTP isn't some big technical challenge. The code has been there in the firefox codebase for nearly 20 years now, running just fine. All you need to do to continue to support ftp is nothing at all. If having the small amount of code to do FTP support in there is making your job really hard, that would seem to indicate to me that you're not very good at your job.

I also find the incredibly vague and nonspecific "but security!" scaremongering language to be quite hyperbolic, a repeat of the borderline lies mozilla peddled when they decided to dump xul for webextensions.

It seems to me that the removal of features like this amounts to "I don't use/understand it, therefore I'm going to assume it's not useful to anybody".

Of course, Mozilla being out of touch with its user base is hardly news, so this comes as no surprise at all to me.

(While I'm talking about browsers and particularly mozilla, I'd just like to take a moment to congratulate them on finally getting their market share down below that of edge. They've been working hard at driving firefox into the ground for a long time now, and I'm sure they must be feeling very proud to have finally achieved this important milestone in their seemingly unending quest to achieve that holy grail of 0 users. So I'd just like to say: Nice work, Mozilla!)

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#165
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we are at it, let's remove the domain name and replace it with something readable and maybe just default to Google without the ability to change your home or maybe Facebook. /s

You could have said that, too, about universal TLS.

Is there a solution yet for universal TLS with offline "IoT" (but not on the Internet) devices?

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#166
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTP has been related to web browsing since the beginning of the web 31 years ago. For maybe a decade (the first third of the web so far), most of the WWW was on FTP servers—not just most software downloads, but also most HTML pages. Web browsers are a much better interface to FTP servers than dedicated FTP clients, because you can click a link on an HTML page (either a statically generated directory, possibly on the…

> but FTP is still a widely used protocol. I cannot for the life of me remember the last time I landed on a page with FTP or had to use FTP in any way. Even lists of file downloads are http pages where I just click on the file.

So your argument is that because you haven't used it lately, nobody does?

Seems legit.

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#167
post #36

I don't understand all the negativity around this. People complained when Firefox added Pocket, in part because they took a browser extension and made it a feature that was ostensibly unrelated to web browsing. Now they're taking an old feature that's definitely not related to web browsing and removing it, and people are still complaining? Firefox can't be everything. It should focus on being a great browser and not…

> People using FTP can use a dedicated client, of which there are plenty on every platform

FTP is used often in my field. The removal of FTP from both Chrome and FireFox has been very inconvenient. I tried a few free FTP clients with GUI. They are huge and clumsy in comparison to browsers. For example, cyberduck zip is as large as firefox and I couldn't copy-paste a ftp:// URL in FileZilla. I wonder why these FTP clients don't adopt a browser-like interface. It would be more friendly. Now I mostly use command-line lftp, which is better than the GUI clients I have tried but still not as convenient as browsers.

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#168
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is FTP all of a sudden an important interop protocol when we have HTTP, HTTPS, rsync, scp, etc? Why is the browser responsible for maintaining this legacy FTP support when there are command-line utilities and dedicated GUI clients for it?

The issue isn't that FTP is all of a sudden an important protocol. It has been chugging away in the background without much fanfare for decades. The issue with Firefox removing it largely comes down to convenience: it's been included in browsers for so long that it's now the primary means (in some industries) for non-technical users to access files. This whole ordeal kind of reminds me of IE8. Whether good or bad, co…

Is it really the responsibility of Firefox to maintain FTP support when everyone else has dropped it, just so that a tiny fraction people don't have to learn a new tool and/or modernize infrastructure that's out of date?

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#169
Firefox 90 has terrible usability with the new "Photon" interface. Has no one read The Design of Everyday Things? I just don't understand what they're trying to do - they need to keep and increase their userbase, not push away the few users they have left.
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