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Firefox 15 now supports in-content preferences

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Re: Firefox 15 now supports in-content preferences

#21

Post by keeperofdakeys »

hello_asdf wrote: post #6

I really don't care for Firefox's new versioning scheme. I'm still on Firefox 10 on Gentoo, and I don't feel much of a reason to upgrade. I felt that incrementing that number should be reserved for major changes. I didn't intend for this to be taken as a complaint about the Mozilla development team. It's just something I've found unusual in the development community. It's been confusing me, and I never understood the…

Major changes are occurring, especially regarding memory usage (and security bugs, so I seriously suggest you upgrade). Your main gripe is there isn't very many of them at each release, since they have changed development style. This kind of development style is what I'd call rolling release, "ship changes when they are ready", instead of the usual "ship changes in the next version". The classic version numbering fails with this kind of development style, since the differences between major/minor start to fall apart. Look at something like the linux kernel, which follows a rather similar system. Every new version adds major features, just not very many, but they build up over time. In fact, the major-minor meaning was so useless Linus could just change the version from 2.6 to 3 without any significant changes.

As a gentoo user, I would expect you to be very familiar with the rolling release paradigm. Personally I think it works well for something like Firefox. I'm pretty sure I'm getting way more major features per unit of time now then before, since the waiting time between releases was so long. There are definitely some disadvantages to this approach though, but the advantages are worth it.

Re: Firefox 15 now supports in-content preferences

#22

Post by idleloops »

mhansen wrote: post #10
crazygringo wrote: post #9

For me, this is step backwards, because it breaks existing UI paradigms. Why is it a good thing for the preferences pane have to appear in a different place from where it does in every single other application on my OS ? And this deliberately confuses application content versus Internet content. Do you have to scroll down to click "OK"? What if it isn't visible? Or should it be labelled "save"? Why learn a new dialog…

I daresay by now users are more familiar with web-based UI paradigms than traditional OS paradigms. I think they'd spend more time interacting with web-based applications than traditional OS applications. If that's the case, then Firefox is actually adapting to people's expectation of the UI.

While there is room for innovation with web-based UIs, they are just really inconsistent. In fact Firefox sticks out like a sore thumb compared to other apps on my OS. And I find it a real annoyance. That's why there is a niche for a browser like Camino, that feels more native than Firefox on OSX.

When I use MS Windows I really notice this, installers, application control panels, window titles and controls - seem to be all over the place. It's a minefield. Linux desktop suffers this too with different GUI toolkits - QT, GTK etc. There's a part of you that just adapts and gets used to it. But ultimately it's a pain.

Compare the popular web browsers. Despite their convergence, the UI's are quite different.

Re: Firefox 15 now supports in-content preferences

#23

Post by hello_asdf »

keeperofdakeys wrote: post #21
hello_asdf wrote: post #6

I really don't care for Firefox's new versioning scheme. I'm still on Firefox 10 on Gentoo, and I don't feel much of a reason to upgrade. I felt that incrementing that number should be reserved for major changes. I didn't intend for this to be taken as a complaint about the Mozilla development team. It's just something I've found unusual in the development community. It's been confusing me, and I never understood the…

Major changes are occurring, especially regarding memory usage (and security bugs, so I seriously suggest you upgrade). Your main gripe is there isn't very many of them at each release, since they have changed development style. This kind of development style is what I'd call rolling release, "ship changes when they are ready", instead of the usual "ship changes in the next version". The classic version numbering fai…

Thank you for the detailed explanation of it. That's actually kind of fitting for them to do away with major/minor versions. I like the idea that they implement major changes quickly, and I'm currently compiling the latest Firefox.

Re: Firefox 15 now supports in-content preferences

#24

Post by idleloops »

gcp wrote: post #16
Aloisius wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a Mac at least, the Preferences window is not modal. You can still interact with Firefox even though it is up. Is that not the case on other OSes?

On Windows it's modal. Dunno about the others.

Not Modal on Nightly Linux.

Re: Firefox 15 now supports in-content preferences

#25

Post by gcp »

hello_asdf wrote: post #19
BCM43 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't feel much of a reason to upgrade. Security updates? IIRC they are not releasing security updates for non-current versions.

Perhaps, I hadn't thought that any significant security issues had been found in recent versions. Are there any I should be concerned about? If not, my reasoning is that I don't want to break what is working perfectly fine for me as is. After looking at https://www.mozilla.org/security/known-vulnerabilities/firef... there doesn't seem that there are any to be concerned about. However, in case you are right, I'm recom…

Vulnerability can be used to run attacker code and install software, requiring no user interaction beyond normal browsing.

There's several of those. They're also fixed in the ESR (10.x) releases.

Re: Firefox 15 now supports in-content preferences

#26

Post by joenathan »

SaulOfTheJungle wrote: post #13

I like this because the current options window is modal and often I need to change an option while browsing the web. I hope they do the same with the downloads list.

They already have, the new download manager landed in the nightlies about a week ago, no more download window to get lost.

screen http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pjn0wvYUwbk/T5FWuH_MLUI/AAAAAAAAIj...

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