Firefox 25 is released

Preface: I wrote the following from a more general perspective. Perhaps Mozilla can and will speak to the specific changes under discussion in this thread (e.g. keeping the majority of "non-technical" users on the right/current release).

A bit like the so-called "Chromification" of the UI: I don't want to see too much "power" obscured or sacrificed for the sake of usability. Keep things sane, also, for the "power users".

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When I see patterns like this, too often as I look further, I become convinced they are deliberate. I suppose one can argue as to motive and intent. Nonetheless, they seem to be forcing all users toward a more dependent and opaque pattern.

Therefore, I consider them "dark patterns". If you want to label that as my personal perspective ("you're weird"), then so be it.

If say 5% of your users want a stand-alone installation package, is that too low to add the description and/or provide a link to "stand-alone installer"? Is it really going to destroy usability if you do so?

And that's where, once again, I -- in my opinion -- start to bump up against today's "designers". Where pages and everything else have to be "streamlined" to the point of excluding any and all minority usage patterns.

"The web" used to be about choice. TIMTOWTDI. Some of us have atypical patterns, sometimes for good reason. In my opinion, that diversity breeds robustness. Things get examined from different angles. And no single pattern becomes irreplaceable.

Large downloads dramatically decrease the number of users who get from a download page to actually running an application, even for web browsers. As a result, any steps you can take to make an install process faster or easier will have a tangible impact on the number of customers you have (and any revenue potential that results). Mozilla, like any other company, has salaries to pay, so they would be foolish to make things worse for the majority of users just to make them slightly easier for theoretical users who want to install in a networkless VM and can't figure out that the stub is a stub.

It's a complication, but it eliminates the need for the user to come back after waiting for some dozens of megabytes to download and then interact. You can download a stub near-instantaneously, do things like pick your install directory, and then forget about the install process entirely as it completes without your supervision. That's a good thing, and it isn't possible with offline installers.

Browsers like Firefox and Chrome already need network access after installation anyway. They update on a regular basis, and pull down optional packages like Chrome's software WebGL rasterizer, malware blacklists, and Firefox's GPU blacklist. So, in practice, it is already impossible to do a true offline install of either browser; you just may not be aware of the things that are left out of the installer.

You are missing his point that it's not easy to find.

"Systems & Languages" doesn't tell me anything about being able to find the offline installer there. Either changing the phrasing to something more explicit like "Other downloads", and/or adding a title attribute explaining what can you find there could be a good improvement.

Also, giving a hint at the "thank you" page (ex. Having trouble? Try the offline installer) would be a nice addition.