Slashdot Mirror
Places Feature Cut From Firefox 2
segphault writes "Apparently, the new bookmark and history system (called 'Places') scheduled for inclusion in Firefox 2 has been removed from the roadmap and disabled in the builds. An article at Ars Technica discusses some of the implications: 'Since Firefox 2 (and all alpha builds from here on out) will use the conventional bookmark system, those of you that have been using Firefox 2 alphas (the Gecko 1.8 branch) will have to export your bookmarks to HTML in order to preserve them. As a Firefox user and a software developer, I am personally very disappointed with the removal of this innovative feature.'" Update: 05/01 01:16 GMT by Z : Ars link updated.
This feature was cut from Firefox2 because it was unpolished and unacceptably buggy still. It is now on the "trunk" for inclusion in Firefox3, so it's still on the roadmap.
In fact, it remains enabled on the Trunk nightlies for Firefox3.
I'm suprized about two things: 1.) Firefox alpha didn't have a converter for favorites to places/places to favorites so IE favorites could be transfered. 2.) The alpha testers aren't getting one after this incident.
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
Only one number off. So close, and yet so far.
1 .html
Features cut from Firefox 2:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060430-670
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
The correct arstechnica link is here: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060430-6701 .html
why not just create a new fork and include the feature in that branch
arnt you supposed to be able to do that with open software
The difference is Microsoft charges you for the feature whether or not it is included (and, if included, whether or not it even works).
The only new feature will be the UI. Windows Vista anyone?
Well I'm disappointed the damn first link doesn't work! I expect to see the fix soon ... anytime now ...
In case someone is looking for more information about the actual implementation of the "places" concept: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Talk:Places:Design_Overvie w
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Places:Design_Overview
I tried the Firefox 2 beta briefly and wasn't impressed. There's very little in the way of real differentiation from 1.5 and 1.5 had very little differentiation from 1.0. Prior to this improvement was obvious, now it seems like there are a few cosmetic and stability/security changes but nothing serious. If you take out Places for 2.0, what's really left? The close button'll be on the tabs, but that seems about the only user-visible improvement.
Just like Microsoft, Firefox developers have gotten stuck on the feature-creep treadmill. Instead of fixing incessant crashes and debilitating memory leaks, they add more whiz-bang features to compete with the "enemy". Instead of adding features to make their browser more robust and responsive, they add more crap to make it bigger, slower, and buggier.
Firefox is no longer about doing the right thing. It's now all about one-upping Microsoft at their own stupid game, and the users are suffering for it. Open Source developers, apparently, are no more ammune to this competition attitude than the proprietary vendors. There is no longer anything special about Firefox. What's more, they suffer from the syndrome many open source projects suffer from, which is that they prefer to work on the "interesting" bits, rather than spending time adding some polish to make things work WELL.
The other day I decided to try Epiphany instead of Firefox. It is much "snappier" than Firefox, has a smaller memory footprint and has a smarter topic-oriented bookmark system. Those who are disappointed about this functionality being removed from Firefox should seriously consider Epiphany.
Disappointing, yes, but this is what makes excellence in software. They recognized the problems, realized the time it would take to fix, and decided on a "better safe than sorry" approach. This will make the eventual release of "places" that much better!
How is this better than the existing bookmarks system?
When a new major release is pending and a feature is pulled from the release, you have to believe there's a really good reason for it.
Some people have compared this to features removed from Vista. Really bad analogy. The motivation behind the two projects are very very different. And so far, this is but one project.
From a rough understanding of these situations, you just have to assume that it wouldn't be made 'good enough' for the next release and keep it on schedule. There might be some differences of opinion about which is more important -- the quality of the release if it is on time, and the timliness of the release with all of the intended features. I don't have any particular leaning in this instance. However, I am rather happy with the Firefox that I run now, so I'm in no hurry to upgrade to Firefox 2.
I think perhaps it would be interesting to simply put it to a vote and let the community decide. Which is more important: The inclusion of this feature or a release made on schedule.
I really like the way Epiphany handles bookmarks with it's "Smart Bookmarks" features... Basically, you just tag your bookmarks with arbitrary tags e.g. "Work", "Sport", "Geek", and you can search for them dynamically.
I would like to see an extension of this (and I know work is in progress)... With meta-tagged files. God knows why browsers do not store bookmarks as files in a "Bookmarks" folder.
I remember a time when Linux and Mozilla on an older system would breathe new life into it. Retired business systems would be a safer and snappy web surfer for "Less Technical" relatives. No more. Try a new full featured distribution (The kind you could expect a non-tech to use) on old hardware, and it is as slow as XP. Good thing MS is coming out with a slower operating system to lower the bar for the OSS advocates.
- Places is still in the roadmap, just not for v2.0. (maybe 3.0 if not earlier)
- Places was too buggy to work with. Nightly testers report far "too many" bugs with it... even if they were fixed, imagine all those bugs that would be uncovered if used by the masses (nightly tester build bugs are a good indication of how many bugs will be found if open , it's somewhat proportional).
More to read at MozillaZine
Not when the time of the other post is exactly the same!
In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. - Paul Harvey
The right link is this one.
I guess I am a little confused what the rush is. Can't they just hold the release until they get this feature correct? It is not like they are selling a product and need the churn to make revenue.
You start with 1000 awesome features, and end up implementing 2.
I'm demanding my money back!
From the announcement:
From Ben Goodger's weblog:
So which is it? You can hardly drop a feature to meet your release date target while still claiming that you aren't driven by release dates.
I've felt for a while that Firefox's development has suffered and taken a back seat to marketing, and every so often, something like this happens to reinforce that belief. When faced with the choice between finishing a feature and releasing on a certain day, I believe most other open-source projects would choose to finish the feature. Whatever happened to "release it when it's ready"?
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Personally, 1.5.0.2 has been the buggiest version in a long time.
Closing firefox without a zombie process? No happening since 1.5.0.0...
Firefox using 350Mbyte after a few hours? Well, seems to be 50Mbyte more with every version...
Firefox freezing spontaniously when dealing with embeded media files? No problem in earlier versions, but recently everything goes bolloks.
During a normal day, the typical "oh, clicking on links doesnt work anymore->close firefox->open task manager->kill zombie process->restart firefox" procedure happens at least once, sometimes 3 or 4 times.
But downgrading otoh isnt adviceable anymore considering that nowadays there are exploits for firefox in the wild..
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
He's not kidding, take a look at my history.dat file:
// (f=iso-8859-1)R eferrer)n t)(87=Name)
: //www.google.ca/)(4B70=1146443053431000)(4B71
=http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=slashdot&btnG =Google+Search&meta=)d ot.org/)(4B77=slashdot.org)3 0/2128229.shtml)o rg)(4B7C8 4502&cid=15234094)^ 4B72)]^ 4B71)(^87^4B75)]^ 4B77)(^87^4B78)]^ 4B7B)(^87^4B7C)]^ 4B7B)(^87^4B7F)]}
// <!-- <mdb:mork:z v="1.4"/> -->
< <(a=c)>
(8A=Typed)(8B=LastPageVisited)(8C=ByteOrder)
(80=ns:history:db:row:scope:history:all)
(81=ns:history:db:table:kind:history)(82=URL)(83=
(84=LastVisitDate)(85=FirstVisitDate)(86=VisitCou
(88=Hostname)(89=Hidden)>
<(4B6E=LE)(4B6F=http
=google.ca)(4B72=G$00o$00o$00g$00l$00e$00)(4B73
(4B74=1146443064149750)(4B75
=s$00l$00a$00s$00h$00d$00o$00t$00 $00-$00 $00G$00o$00o$00g$00l$00e$00 $00S\
$00e$00a$00r$00c$00h$00)(4B76=http://slash
(4B78
=S$00l$00a$00s$00h$00d$00o$00t$00:$00 $00N$00e$00w$00s$00 $00f$00o$00r$00 \
$00n$00e$00r$00d$00s$00,$00 $00s$00t$00u$00f$00f$00 $00t$00h$00a$00t$00 $00m$00\
a$00t$00t$00e$00r$00s$00)(4B79
=http://developers.slashdot.org/developers/06/04/
(4B7A=1146443070774750)(4B7B=developers.slashdot.
=S$00l$00a$00s$00h$00d$00o$00t$00 $00|$00 $00P$00l$00a$00c$00e$00s$00 $00F\
$00e$00a$00t$00u$00r$00e$00 $00C$00u$00t$00 $00F$00r$00o$00m$00 $00F$00i$00r$00\
e$00f$00o$00x$00 $002$00)(4B7D
=http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1
(4B7E=1146443122321625)(4B7F
=P$00l$00a$00c$00e$00s$00 $00F$00e$00a$00t$00u$00r$00e$00 $00C$00u$00t$00 \
$00F$00r$00o$00m$00 $00F$00i$00r$00e$00f$00o$00x$00 $002$00)>
{1:^80 {(k^81:c)(s=9)[1(^8C=LE)]}
[3ED4(^82^4B6F)(^84^4B70)(^85^4B70)(^88^4B71)(^87
[3ED5(^82^4B73)(^84^4B74)(^85^4B74)(^83^4B6F)(^88
[3ED6(^82^4B76)(^84^4B74)(^85^4B74)(^83^4B73)(^88
[3ED7(^82^4B79)(^84^4B7A)(^85^4B7A)(^83^4B76)(^88
[3ED8(^82^4B7D)(^84^4B7E)(^85^4B7E)(^83^4B79)(^88
That's one way to kill interoperability.
...you might see that Ryan Paul wasn't just turning his nose up at FireFox:
"As a Firefox user and a software developer, I am personally very disappointed with the removal of this innovative feature. With over 1,000 bookmarks to keep track of, I was really looking forward to being able to leverage the SQLite database engine for bookmark organization and management. That said, my disappointment is tempered by my capacity to appreciate the rationale for such a delay. In the world of software development (both open and proprietary), such delays are common and they typically result in software that is more polished and reliable. As long as inclusion of the feature isn't delayed indefinitely, the consequences of this particular decision will most likely be positive ones."
It is early adoption folks. It's an alpha. Not a big deal.
Please allow me to hate the creator of the 120-character limit: *HATES*. Thank you.
i havnt tried the new bookmarking system but i havnt found anything wrong with the current one :o. I'd prefer that they spend more time working on making firefox run faster and use less memory (would be nice for my xdmcp workstation anyways)
Is there really anything left to improve in Firefox 1.5 that isn't going to bloat Firefox and turn it into another Mozilla?
I know the folks at Mozilla are sitting on $75 million in cash and don't know what to do with it, but I'm hoping this isn't going to lead to bloat. (And the circumstances are ripe for some sort of embezzlement scandal unless there is greater transparency with how the money's being spent).
I suggest we take the best extensions and incorporate it into the code base.
As for the money, I suggest hiring people to do stuff that volunteers don't like to do.
The world has been spared a feature with a vague, incomprehensible, metaphorically incorrect, and just plain stupid name.
n
-- Watch the REAL Jon Katz.
How many more pointless Microsoft "jokes" can we expect from you?
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
There's some enlightening dev notes on the Mozilla Wiki (I don't have a link at the moment, google it :p). Two of the more interesting highlights were a universal search function, and filters for bookmarks that work like Vista's Smart Folders (pop in some parameters, and any content matching that appears in the folder).
So I guess I could make a History folder that holds all the slashdot articles I've visited. I would include a Page Title filter of "Slashdot |" and then it would show every article Places has seen me visit.
With online tools like del.icio.us or simpy or probably a dozen others around?
I don't know anything about this format, so I probably shouldn't comment, but off the top of my head, it seems to me that for url bookmarks a human-readable format is prefferable and easier to convert or otherwise process.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
"I'm going to disable your access to my site"
I doubt you're smart enough to do that.
But good to you. I mean, it's' such a fascinating site (rolling eyes).
All I want, and I'm betting so do a great deal of other people who work with the web, is a browser that follows the standards for HTML, XHTML, CSS 1 & 2 (maybe even 3), Javascript, and DOM.
Extra features are nice, yes, but the top priority should be putting out a browser that follows the standards, first and foremost.
What good are extensions and themes and fancy bookmarking tools if the core program for seeing information on the web cannot render pages which have been correctly created?
His name is Robert Paulsen...
"Make the number bigger and people will buy. "
Well that explains penis pills. At this rate pills will require a c-note, and that wang thang will need a zip code.
I've wondered in the past if the traditional web-browser bookmark system will be replaced with a web-service (like del.icio.us?) or maybe even a combination of a web-service and firefox extension.
The ability to use the mozilla bookmark file as an ordinary html file, is a very nice feature that I would miss if they used a database engine instead.
If they should use a database engine, they should use some kind of client server solution so that bookmarks could be shared between multiple machines or users. Preferrably they should use some abstraction layer such as JDBC or ODBC, so that users could have a choise of what database engine to use.
There is also a need for standardization in bookmark storage. Free and open source browsers should agree on a common standard, regardless if it includes databases or not.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
Sorry for shouting, but I'd be happy if they did *nothing* but fix the memory leaks.
Memory leaks are unforgivable.
Ian Ameline
id rather have functionality than features
Three things.
1-Standards that are incomplete.
2-Standards that are ambigious.
3-Standards that are conflicted.
Oh, and four. Standards that don't meet real-world needs (that's why MS CSS box model, and everyone elses is different).
Fixing Firefox's memory problems might be an unglorious task, but many commercial projects are plagued with the same problems. An ambitious developer could turn Firefox's problems into the beginning of a lucrative career as a performance analyst and bug hunter, if he managed to make a significant difference and get credit for his work.
the problem is this was supposed to sync the history and the bookmarks (and at the same time enable some neat things)
and if you want to talk "brain damaged" speak to the developers about MORK
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Putting close buttons in individual tabs is nothing but evil, wrong and stupid.
One mis-click on a tab (which is very common when managing a dozen or so tabs) and you've just closed an important page with no confirmation dialog.
See http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=335453 for the current gnome-terminal fiasco.
Just don't do it.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
It's okay, though, because they assure us that the WinFS^h^h^h^h^h database engine will be in the next version of Firefox along with the other Longhornfox features.
Wow, Mozilla really is matching Microsoft feature-for-feature, even down to cutting major components to meet arbitrary ship dates!
FYI SQLite is small, fast and stores everything in a file. it's not like they want to store your bookmarks in a fucking Oracle installation. SQLite is embedded and fits the purpose quite well. perhaps not very boner-inducing from a user standpoint, but a programmer can clearly see the benefits of such a thing: easy access, searching, management, etc. even for third party tools.
a vast improvement over the current XMLish kludge (i won't even mention the MORKiness, plenty of other slashdotters did). if you ever tried to do anything else with an XML file (besides transforming it) you know how *fun* that is.
Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
Wherever there's a page I want linked to I just drag it to my desktop. Then if it's worth going back to it gets copied to a dir where it's always at for whatever the flavor of the month browser is best.
So we're at 2.0 already.
If it's anything like the jump to 1.5 I'll take my time updating my machines. A few interface tweaks isn't a major version revision. Are we on track for heading IE off at the big eight point oh?
SQL, as in file based, not server based. I mean, it isn't like you have to run MySQL to store your bookmarks. It is really just a file format and an access library (SQLite). Like Berkley DB, but way better.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
In Safari the tabs have close buttons and I find them really handy - a lot of times I am usingthem to close tabs I am not even on, which is why I like them because they make it quicker to close off a few tabs all at once.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In safari the close button takes up only a very small part of the tab and I've never hit one by accident. I have to not seen the new Firefox implementation of close buttons on tabs but I would say don't kill the whole feature because the targets are a bit too large. It does not seem like the author of that bug wanted the feature removed, just the buttons made less obtrusive.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You don't need stats to design your site correctly, that's nonsense. And google tracking the details of everything you do on the thousands of sites that use urchin is certainly something worth blocking.
For example, the just-launched iFaves is a very nice system with support for tags, RSS, sharing, image thumbnails, etc, and a very friendly UI. The problem with it as a browser built-in is that you're stuck with what's there. As a web service, you have your choice of which site to use, and you can access your bookmarks no matter where you are in the world, and no matter which browser you're on.
I hope the close button on tabs is an option because I hate that feature in browsers like Opera. Some other programs, like Azureus, do it that way too. It makes it to easy to accidently close a tab and it makes you keep moving your mouse to remove multiple tabs. In general it's just not a good UI choice. You make it slightly easier for newbies but make it harder for everyone who actually uses tabs.
If you want to copy a good idea from Opera instead why not make pop-up windows open as virtual sub-windows or tabs. There are existing FF extensions that do this and it's such an obvious good idea that FF would be better off using that than making some extension to add close buttons to tabs mainstream. And make the extension that suppresses loading new pages/tabs for blank pages (such as happen with some downloads) a default. I've yet to see any reason anyone would want those blank pages to appear. Oh, and the extension that opens downloads in your choice of a tab or a sidebar would be a good mainstream change if you polished it up a little.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
It looks like its days as a "community organization" are numbered. :(
Best regards, A.C.
Maybe so, but it's pretty clear to many of us that Jim Allchin needs to be removed from the FF dev team, perhaps forced to retire early.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Is FF2 going to have a multi-threaded UI? I keep waiting, and keep getting disappointed. I've looked through the lists of what's coming up, but have yet to notice this. For heavy tabs users like myself, that would have a MASSIVE impact on performance.
"So, some early data coming back from cognitive modelling done by Google and NASA's HCI group is showing that the liklihood of accidental close in cases where there are 1-5 tabs is less than 1%. It hits 2% around the time tabs hit 135px."i refox/browse_frm/thread/626a60dd0e21082e/4ce85210c 4c46fb3?tvc=1&hl=en#4ce85210c4c46fb3
http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.apps.f
The Mozilla employees have looked into this issue and feel that with the current information and with the additon of features such as undo close tab and a tab overflow soloution that close buttons on the tabs stay.
These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based upon the order I joined. -Homer Simpson
A "feature" of the browser has been cut! It's fucking crippled! It's shit! I knew those fucking assholes couldn't make things come together on schedule! This is bullshit and someone should be beat to death!
Oh, what? It's not a Microsoft product? Sorry... Carry on, nothing to see here.
Me thinks, me smell a patent infringement. Possibly? Anyone? Anyone? Don't know for sure, will go looking.
This is news for nerds? Let the FF dev team do what they want.
Yes yes yes, I know what SQLite is. It's still a monumentally dumb idea. The current format is simple, machine-and-human parseable, portable and reliable. SQLite is none of these things. This is a non-solution to a non-problem, brought to you by the usual bozos who always think that adding a database to something makes it swoopier, without considering the real-world failure scenarios for a heartbeat.
Aside to the moderators: my "flamebait" comment is essentially the same opinion as the guy who wrote Communicator 1.0 and 2.0 for linux, so kindly bite me.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
if i writeit works fine in ie, but not firefox
it's not a security issue, i mean if you consider it a security issue then you are also saying firefox shouldn't process css files. whatever security is set up for css (such as, from the same domain as the html) can apply to external entity processing too
this bug/ failure to support standard xml is a major bummer and has prevented me from adopting firefox
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Mod me down and call me trolly, but if Firefox slips to a 2010 release with half its features removed, you'll know that delivering large projects out the door ain't easy, maybe we'll have more pitty for Microsoft's poor Vista then. ;)
I haven't used the Places feature personally, but it DOES sound cool.
... until someone else picks up the code and starts hacking on it.
The way I see it, if the current developers think it's a cool feature, they'll keep developing it as an extension. And if not, it'll become abandonware
Gee, ain't open source wonderful? =) Nothing ever disappears as long as there's someone willing and able to keep developing it!
My bicyles
'Places,' which appears to be nothing more than a URL cache and storage, seems to be a rather lame feature for people to be stressed about. Better to worry about SVG, XForms and dynamic rendering. Give inifnite user control over how content is rendered. What about a page that refuses to render without popups? Let the user tweak the xhtml, client side, to override that. Refuse redirects. Send the headers in the request however the user wants. That would be a feature.
i liked this. i really did. golf clap.
and it's turned me off of firefox
9
look:
http://copia.ogbuji.net/blog/2006/Mar/06
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6979
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Why hasn't anyone else noticed that compared to the IE7 that FIREFOX with a dozen extensions is just plain BUTT UGLY SLOW. I like FIREFOX for a few web sites but as I learn more and more about some of the hidden improvments and the abilty to extend IE7 with custom features I have switched back to IE as the default browser. I also like the fact IE7 is FAST to start and fast to render pages.
Let me get this straight. The developers have realized that the time frame to the 2.0 release is not enough to iron out the several bugs related to the UNBELIEVABLY IMPORTANT bookmarks and history storage system and decide to give themselves more time on this by leaving it out for the next release... and that is a bad thing?
Can anyone say: Whooops! Firefox has lost my bookmarks!
To err is human, but to forgive is beyond the scope of the Operating System...
The Firefox bookmark system is very much the same as Netscape 4.5. This is very outdated (people had about 20 bookmarks then) and going on my nerves. I see the point of removing buggy stuff from an alpha release, but still I expected a better bookmark system for FF 2 then the current one.
If they ship it with the old sytem, why do the call it 2.0 then? It should be called 1.6 or so.
NoScript extension will allow you to whitelist by hostname (or by partial hostname), and block by default. For example on this post page I'm whitelisting slashdot.org and google-analytics.com but forbidding tacoda.net and falkag.net.
You can just fork off.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I use Win98 extensively - in fact, if I set up a network for a friend or non-profit (using only junked and salvaged computers) that isn't Internet-connected I use Win98 for all desktops (linux on the server, though).
It's not worth the increased amount of time I'd have to spend finding and supporting another OS that would meet the same performance and compatibility targets. With w98 the end-user can even do their own re-install if I'm out of the country on business - something they sure can't do with Fedora, for example.
He is seriously confused. Does he really think that someone working on, say, user interface features, will suddenly jump over to working on the actual core and standards support? Of course not. Different developers generally have different tasks.
Clever signature text goes here.
Does anyone know if FF2 comes any closer to ACID2 compatibility? How does it compare to IE7?
Thanks
The bookmark system is grossly antiquated. It's time for something new. For example, flexible backend storage such that bookmarks can be stored and retrieved from LDAP, MySQL, et al.
I believe the Cyrus project has ACAP defined, which never flew (http://asg.web.cmu.edu/acap/), but it's a good idea.
It's time for a change, the old system is no longer optimal for today's growing environment.
*sigh*
My mouse selection is also limited by a requirement for wireless. *sigh*x2
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
What best-of-breed applications have YOU made, Mr. The New Stan Price? What's that?
I thought so.
People can complain even though it's free. Example: you.
The coders do worry about losing money since the Mozilla Foundation does in fact make money.
Firefox is one of the best browsers available.
I'm sorry, did you have a point worth reading?
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
(Full disclosure: I'm a developer at Jeteye)
If you're looking for another way to manage links, images and notes across multiple machines, check out http://jeteye.com/. We have a Firefox extension that lets you drag and drop all sorts of web content into packages.
We just released a new version, so, yah, check it out and let us know what you think.
http://www.jeteye.com/getjeteye/download/
-James
p.s. We should have a developer API based on Atom Pub rolling out in the next few weeks...stay tuned.
Linux is slower than windows 98 with anti-virus software (which is silly not to have under windows)?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
From TFA:
Although the bookmark and history system will not be included in the next major update, the underlying SQLite-based MozStorage engine, which was built for the new bookmark and history system, will be included for use by plug-in developers.
Didn't firefox get popular because people wanted a lightweight browser (which mozilla wasn't)? Now they are bundling a db with the product???
I liked firefox beacuse it was a lightweight browser with good support for plugins. I was looking forward to see it run on $100 devices, celphones and so on... Looks like it will not happen because of all the bloat that firefox was supposed to stay away from.