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A Firefox-only minimap (2021)

stefanjudis.com

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Re: A Firefox-only minimap (2021)

#51

Post by PurpleRamen »

RandomWorker wrote: post #21

The first thing I do when I work in an editor with a mini-map is -- turn it off. I find it mostly the most useless feature for coding, and for sites it seems to be equally useless. Why? 1. Stuff is too small to really make out where I'm going or navigating. 2. Short or long pages, both don't really benefit from the loss of screen real-estate. Or the distraction really. 3. Other tools like a proper index with descript…

For longer documents, especially with multiple different blocks like code or images, it seems to be actually useful. It gives a fast impression on the length of the site, where you are and where the interesting and boring landmarks might be. But this also demand that the content is centered, and hos enough free space on the side, which is not that uncommon these days.

Re: A Firefox-only minimap (2021)

#52

Post by jchw »

It also doesn't show up on Fennec F-Droid, even in Desktop mode, but maybe that's just because I can't get the width to be big enough for it to trigger. Looks great on Librewolf!

Of course, browsers will never be fully at parity with each-other until they're all based on Chrome, so it's no surprise there are the occasional features that are just easier to implement in one browser than the other... though this one just seems kind of wild, I'll be honest.

Re: A Firefox-only minimap (2021)

#53

Post by ilyt »

RandomWorker wrote: post #21

The first thing I do when I work in an editor with a mini-map is -- turn it off. I find it mostly the most useless feature for coding, and for sites it seems to be equally useless. Why? 1. Stuff is too small to really make out where I'm going or navigating. 2. Short or long pages, both don't really benefit from the loss of screen real-estate. Or the distraction really. 3. Other tools like a proper index with descript…

I can only think about one use, skipping the image/advertising bullshit but then those pages won't put minimap up exactly for that reason.

Re: A Firefox-only minimap (2021)

#54

Post by mock-possum »

RandomWorker wrote: post #21

The first thing I do when I work in an editor with a mini-map is -- turn it off. I find it mostly the most useless feature for coding, and for sites it seems to be equally useless. Why? 1. Stuff is too small to really make out where I'm going or navigating. 2. Short or long pages, both don't really benefit from the loss of screen real-estate. Or the distraction really. 3. Other tools like a proper index with descript…

Marking recent / uncommitted additions and deletions to your code, and linter errors / warnings, so you can jump right down to them - is super useful, especially if you just changed one little thing amongst a pack of similar little things. You can jump back and forth between two trouble points in code with a single click, and without having to remember anything.

Re: A Firefox-only minimap (2021)

#55

Post by KnobbleMcKnees »

mrweasel wrote: post #16
williamdclt wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I exclusively use firefox, have a pretty normal browsing pattern, and that almost never happens to me! Much less that once a month, maybe once every 3 months

Normally it's something else, like a plugin. To be honest I don't notice much, frequently I assume it's some tracking that's blocked which courses the site to not function and just move on. Between blocking tracking, with DuckDuckGos privacy plugin, and using Firefox I'd say that blocking tracking breaks WAAAAY more sites.

Agreed. I regularly have to do a little "disable for site" dance with uBO and Privacy Badger to even get certain websites to load. It's kind of convenient in that it gives me an inflection point where I can choose not to use that website or service at all.

Re: A Firefox-only minimap (2021)

#57

Post by _joel »

jacknews wrote: post #27
Hackbraten wrote: post #17

What am I supposed to see here? I’m using Firefox on Linux. All I see is a normal blog article about something called a minimap, but I fail to see any such minimap. Disabling the ad blocker didn’t help. What am I missing?

Not working for me on macos. otoh firefox has been really weird since the 115 update - rock solid before that, but now all kinds of weird graphic glitches and hangs.

Working fine here for me on macos, latest FF, uBlock enabled

Re: A Firefox-only minimap (2021)

#58

Post by Sharlin »

RandomWorker wrote: post #21

The first thing I do when I work in an editor with a mini-map is -- turn it off. I find it mostly the most useless feature for coding, and for sites it seems to be equally useless. Why? 1. Stuff is too small to really make out where I'm going or navigating. 2. Short or long pages, both don't really benefit from the loss of screen real-estate. Or the distraction really. 3. Other tools like a proper index with descript…

I don't use minimaps either, but I guess their utility much depends on what kind of documents you're editing. For programming languages where code is mostly structured inside functions, the "structure" view listing the types and functions in the file seems much more useful, as well as quick-search based on name and similar features.

But if the content is, say, HTML, or LaTeX, or a Word document, then I can see a visual representation being more useful. It would be interesting to know if there's some correlation between people liking/disliking minimaps and the type of content they tend to view/edit.

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