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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

#181

Post by iczero »

darth_avocado wrote: post #142
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…

I just use Arc, it already has all of this

> I just use [yet another closed-source Chromium fork developed by some strange startup which forces you to sign in before you can do anything and will likely not even bother to continue supporting Manifest v2 APIs], it already has [such a long list of antifeatures that it could practically double as marketing material for the FSF]

ok?

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#182

Post by paulryanrogers »

michael9423 wrote: post #95

The way I see it, there was a time when FF had the chance to not accept the google contracts and go 100% independent with their own search engine or something similar. This would have resulted in FF actually siding with users. It would have resulted in FF radically rejecting ads, and this would have changed the entire web because people would have flocked to Firefox. But Mozilla leadership did not have an interest in…

> ...this would have changed the entire web because people would have flocked to Firefox.

One cannot compete with those who hold the choke points. Google owned the Web when they launched Chrome. Microsoft and Apple own desktop and mobile defaults. With three major competitors setting defaults, nagging users, and aggressively developing their browsers, Firefox was doomed.

Only unskippable browser ballots, with random order, and outlawing promotion of owns own browser from a dominant business would help.

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#183

Post by NegativeLatency »

Intralexical wrote: post #176
0x_rs wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're talking about the mobile application, where only a small subset of extensions was available for a few years. Access to about:config was disabled in official builds (but forks and custom builds such as some on F-Droid still have it). https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/21276

> Access to about:config was disabled in official builds (but forks and custom builds such as some on F-Droid still have it). From your link, there are problems that are specific to `about:config` only on mobile, due to Android OS and GeckoView API specifics: - There are preferences that …is reset when the app restarts. - There are many preferences that …do nothing. - There are preferences …which breaks interacting w…

Hide those options then? I can imagine many ways to "fix" the issue of having all those bugs without ham-fistedly removing the entire feature

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#185

Post by leoc »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #41
gamepsys wrote: post #14

As a Firefox daily user, this list makes me better understand why Firefox has such a low market share. Reorganizing menus or adding alt text to PDFs won't make any impact on user adoption/churn because users don't care. The alt text specifically sounds like resume engineering for some developers that want "on device generative ai" as a bullet point on this LinkedIn. Bullet points like this wouldn't be a problem if Fi…

> I think they should pick 2-5 things and focus on those, such as multi-device sync, privacy, speed, battery life performance, customization, etc. They did; they've been pushing on speed and privacy for a long time. It mostly turns out that the problem isn't usually technical superiority, unfortunately. (The problem is that Microsoft shoves Edge in users' faces every chance they get, and Google has been giving Chrome…

Didn't they fire the Servo team?

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#186

Post by finack »

gamepsys wrote: post #14

As a Firefox daily user, this list makes me better understand why Firefox has such a low market share. Reorganizing menus or adding alt text to PDFs won't make any impact on user adoption/churn because users don't care. The alt text specifically sounds like resume engineering for some developers that want "on device generative ai" as a bullet point on this LinkedIn. Bullet points like this wouldn't be a problem if Fi…

Firefox has a low market share because Chrome is the default browser on so many systems and in IT departments everywhere. 99% of people don't think about which browser they want to use.

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#187

Post by finack »

tredre3 wrote: post #165
cpeterso wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "PWA support" that people are clamoring for is the option to open a web page shortcut in a browser window without an address bar.

That's a big part of it, but PWA offers more than that! For example it has facilities for caching the web application so that it can work offline. They can also register URL handlers on the system, which is very useful.

Programs that don't require an entire web browser to run can already do all of those things.

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#188

Post by finack »

mateusz_ wrote: post #184

Priority feature could be, well... Catching up with the standards? It hurts my meow meow when i have to run chrome to use bt or usb api

Those web APIs aren't actually standard (WebUSB, for example, is still in draft status), and they have some gnarly privacy implications. Google steamrolls over standards bodies, and then somehow people believe their browser is the standard. I'm not sure if this is a concerted marketing effort by Google, or simply intellectual laziness. Either way, though, Firefox is not at fault for not supporting non-standard Web APIs.

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#189

Post by AnthonyMouse »

Intralexical wrote: post #176
0x_rs wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're talking about the mobile application, where only a small subset of extensions was available for a few years. Access to about:config was disabled in official builds (but forks and custom builds such as some on F-Droid still have it). https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/21276

> Access to about:config was disabled in official builds (but forks and custom builds such as some on F-Droid still have it). From your link, there are problems that are specific to `about:config` only on mobile, due to Android OS and GeckoView API specifics: - There are preferences that …is reset when the app restarts. - There are many preferences that …do nothing. - There are preferences …which breaks interacting w…

These seem like bugs that could be fixed, but it also seems like there should be relatively simple ways to work around them without disabling about:config, e.g.:

If some settings can cause a crash (and you don't have a complete list), create a separate launcher that only edits the settings in about:config without ever trying to run other Fenix code, so the user always has a way to revert settings if they're causing a crash on startup.

If some settings can be applied but are reset the next time the app runs, save the setting value itself and then re-apply it on each startup.

Other problems like settings doing nothing or breaking websites are just ordinary bugs. Until they're fixed, the user can just refrain from using those settings, or revert them if they cause problems. These sorts of issues are acceptable for users knowingly mucking around in about:config, it's fine, fix the bugs when you get time. It's no reason to disable access to the other settings that actually work in the meantime.

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