I didn't think I'll ever get to see native vertical tabs in FF.
What We're Working on in Firefox
221–230 of 274 posts
Re: What We're Working on in Firefox
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
> End users do not care about the browser engine.
But that's the problem, isn't it? Google controls Chromium, everybody uses Chromium, so Google controls the web.
Re: What We're Working on in Firefox
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
They changed the extension model which broke the extensions using the old model. Many of the developers didn't have the resources to rewrite the extension from scratch, or the new model had restrictions that made what the extension was doing difficult to impossible, so they disappeared.
That was the switch from their own API and unsandboxed model to the standards-based one, right? I think all in all getting sandboxing as well as making it easier to provide cross-browser extensions was worth the breaking change.
Mandatory sandboxing increasingly seems like a misfeature. Now you can't install an extension that does a lot of things that are useful, ostensibly to protect you from malware.
Optional sandboxing can be good because users can have more confidence that something can't hurt them. But it can also be bad because users will have more confidence that something can't hurt them, and then it does anyway.
Meanwhile the ability to exercise arbitrary permissions given the user's authorization is something we've lost. And what have we gained, when the user just runs how_to_actually_uninstall_mcafee.avi.exe and gets the malware regardless?
Re: What We're Working on in Firefox
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 tha…
> They just haven't had anybody to spend engineering time doing so yet.
But this has been the other major criticism of Mozilla. They take the money they get from Google and spend it on not-Firefox when Firefox market share should be their top priority, because if that number goes to zero they're defunct.
Re: What We're Working on in Firefox
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> End users do not care about the browser engine. But that's the problem, isn't it? Google controls Chromium, everybody uses Chromium, so Google controls the web.
Not really. If everyone would use a chromium version that radically blocks trackign and ads, google wouldn't control anything.
Re: What We're Working on in Firefox
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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
Bookmarks are completely irrelevant as they require intentional curation and are mostly useless to me.
Re: What We're Working on in Firefox
#227Looking at the comments, I'm not surprised about FF's low market share. They chose to target geeks and nerds, and let's face it, we tend to be whiny about almost everything and complain about any new change. Meanwhile, Google Chrome doesn't even need to pretend like they care about privacy, so they automatically target the other "ordinary" people who are not so picky about every new release note. This kinda teaches y…
No, it's worse than that - they chose to target geeks, then decided to throw out the geeks in an attempt to target a more mainstream audience[0] and then failed to actually get the mainstream userbase, leaving them with neither the nerds nor the normies. [0] Firefox has always been at its strongest as a power-user's browser, chock-full of extensions and tweaks. Mozilla met this advantage with... two extinction events…
No, Firefox never targeted geeks. It's just that, when it came out, the only people who used a browser other than Internet Explorer happened to be geeks. The audience came to them, rather than them going to the audience.
Re: What We're Working on in Firefox
#228> More streamlined menus
For everyone here complaining about this, have you ever looked at how many ways there are to access your history on Firefox? At my last count, there were 4 different ways to do it, depending on which menu you picked first. Cutting down this kind of inconsistent, and repetitive flow is something that we should be applauding.
Re: What We're Working on in Firefox
#229The 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 they certainly care about the search engine. I remember several years ago when Firefox changed their default search from Google to Yahoo, so many clients that we supported complained that IT's response was just to switch everyone over to chrome.
To be fair the biggest issue was that yahoo was worse with dangerous ads in their results then Google was the time.
Re: What We're Working on in Firefox
#230> More streamlined menus that reduce visual clutter and prioritize top user actions so you can get to the important things quicker Oh no, more of this. What about less used options? How much slower? How much less discoverable? Desktop applications are already for power users almost by definition, let’s not slow them down for the sake of reducing “clutter”. Absolutely annoying trend of the last 15 years or so.
I hope this means they're changing the main menu back to functioning like an actual menu instead of a weird panel thing, but somehow I doubt it.
I don't know if you know this, but you can still get the traditional kind of menu if you tap the Alt key. It won't stay permanently visible if you change focus back to the content page though.