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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

#211

Post by michael9423 »

palata wrote: post #108
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 resulted in FF actually siding with users Sure, but would the users have sided with FF? I'm not convinced. The users use whatever BigTech tells them to use, that's how I see it. > Brave is trying to correct the mistake of FF Brave is Chromium. I don't see how this would even begin correcting the mistakes of FF. The one thing FF does right is that it is not Chromium.

End users do not care about the browser engine. But as I said, Brave is trying. It won't be successful in the way FF could have been.

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#212

Post by jwells89 »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #77
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…

> As a Firefox daily user, this list makes me better understand why Firefox has such a low market share As another Firefox active user, I say this has nothing at all to do with it. I use Firefox because it lets me control what I need to control to be productive, but I recognize this isn't why most people used Firefox at its peak. 99% of the reason Firefox got so big was that IE was so awful. Edge is serviceable, so t…

> Firefox isn't going to grow as big as it was before Edge came along unless one of the major consumer OS provides a broken default browser on its platform and allows Firefox to run on its platform (iOS fulfills only one of the requirements).

And even that “requirement” isn’t filled to anywhere the same degree — Safari has its issues but IE was on a different plane of existence in terms of brokenness, with some of the barest of basics being absent or needing hacks to make work (remember the DirectX filter hacks required just to have transparency support for PNGs?).

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#213

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

strken wrote: post #162
dralley wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>something that has pissed off people who have wanted to donate to Firefox specifically for ages Get pissed at tax law, not Mozilla. Mozilla Foundation cannot legally funnel tax-exempt donations into the development of products for a for-profit entity (Mozilla Corporation). That would be a crime.

Wow, if only there was a separate corporate entity which could accept donations but which wasn't the Foundation. I wonder what Mozilla would call such a Corporation.

IANAL - I kinda thought a company can't take donations? So obviously the answer is a Firefox Pro that is 99% the same but lets us give them money. Maybe give it crazy features like a compact layout and the ability to run extensions locally.

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#215

Post by Intralexical »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #189
Intralexical wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I don't think anybody's saying the issue is technically infeasible to fix or work around.

They just haven't had anybody to spend engineering time doing so yet. Perhaps:

https://codetribute.mozilla.org/projects/fenix

https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/setup/contributing_c...

We may disagree with Mozilla's priorities, but they do have finite resources. E.G. Should the extensions API have been delayed even more than it already was, to first build this separate `about:config` launcher as a kludge?

They're not being wilfully bullheaded in this case, is what I mean. The "P5"/"Enhancement" Bugzilla issue is open, but unassigned.

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#216

Post by 1oooqooq »

skydhash wrote: post #198
thwarted wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using multiple profiles in Chrome for years for keeping things separate… right up until my company started using Google's centralized browser/device management which infects the entire browser not just the single profile that is tied to my corporate Google account. Specifically, they forced a homepage setting browser-wide that can not be changed on a per-profile basis. So multiple profiles are seemingly dif…

> my company started using Google's centralized browser/device management which infects the entire browser not just the single profile that is tied to my corporate Google account Personal profiles on your work computer? That's a no for me. The only account I brought to my work computer was my Github's one. And I'd rather use Incognito Mode or another browser if I want to do something I did not want associated with my…

learn how to properly manage ssh keys and stop using your personal account.

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#217

Post by 1oooqooq »

jackson1442 wrote: post #97
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 really hope the profile management system keeps tab containers working the same. It's incredibly useful to have different containers automatically generated for AWS console sessions.

current implementation of container is terrible.

basically something a google PM thought of so you can shop incognito and not be incognito.

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#218

Post by 1oooqooq »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #124
chgs wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have 75,000 tabs open? I rarely have more than about 300 to be honest, how do you keep track?

> how do you keep track? I don't. I usually work with just the latest subset of a few dozen or so, the rest just sits there until I decide that it's time to close them all (like I did last week, so I'm at just 700 right now). I also use vertical tabs, see my other comment here for how it looks like. Keeping tabs open lets me quickly context-switch, which is super helpful when you get distracted and don't remember wha…

another case of someone refusing to use organized bookmarks. I've been there too

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#219

Post by iforgotpassword »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #34
iforgotpassword wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IDK, they're just following what Chrome has been doing forever now, and it has worked there. I guess that really is what the vast majority of normal people want. And considering how even among my most tech-savy friends and colleagues Chrome appears to be the browser of choice, it seems even these folks don't really care...

That doesn't necessarily follow; a person could easily argue that Chrome won because Google abused its search monopoly to push it, then kept winning because of inertia. Unless your friends specifically prefer Chrome because of UX reasons, it could be unrelated.

> That doesn't necessarily follow; a person could easily argue that Chrome won because Google abused its search monopoly to push it, then kept winning because of inertia.

Sure, for the average Joe I might buy this, but also it's the same kind of people who can't tell the difference between the address bar and the search field on the Google homepage, so I'm still kinda skeptical they don't actually refer a UI with as few options and buttons as possible....

> Unless your friends specifically prefer Chrome because of UX reasons, it could be unrelated.

... But I absolutely can't follow you here. What other reasons should there be? That that one or two websites they infrequently visit don't work? If you can't be arsed to just use chrome for these specific occasions and stay with the customizable, powerful alternative for the rest of the time, I don't believe you're someone who'd like a UI with more than three buttons anyways.

(And on that note I've yet to encounter a site that doesn't work in Firefox, but maybe that actually is a thing in places other than Europe...)

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#220

Post by 1oooqooq »

neilv wrote: post #61

Prioritization that I'd like to suggest for Firefox, driven by needs of society (from high to low): 1. Representing the public interest wrt Web -- especially fervent respect for privacy in the browser, almost as much emphasis on security, fighting commercial excesses around de jure and defacto standards, and social equity within the scope of what Mozilla does (e.g., software accessibility, encouraging all volunteers)…

curious about your motivations to typing all that here
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