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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.
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.
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!
I don't want to start a flame war, but maybe there's more going on under the hood than at first glance. For example, imagine a Windows 2000 Professional box and a Windows XP Professional box with the regular Windows Classic theme. They both look a little different, and they both act pretty much the same, but they're quite different.
/. crowd would have been Linux and *BSD with X/KDE one each, heh.
Maybe a better example for the
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
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.
Because marking a post 'redundant' is a punishment. That's the system that we have. A person trying to help out the community by providing a proper link shouldn't be punished and their comment doesn't need cleaning up. We do have to assume the intentions of people and that's why this post shouldn't be marked redundant (at the time they starting typing, the other 'redundant' post didn't exist). If it's rated high when a previous post does the job, then you can rate it 'overrated'. That follows the spirit of the rules, IMO.
In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. - Paul Harvey
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...
Sorry for shouting, but I'd be happy if they did *nothing* but fix the memory leaks.
Memory leaks are unforgivable.
Ian Ameline
In my opinion that's not really an improvement. I prefer having the close button on the side like it is now, because that way it's always in the same place, instead of having to find which tab is active and then home in on a new place for the close button each time I have to close a tab.
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
in order to convince users that updates are worthwhile you need visible differentiation.
I hate visible differentiation. It's disruptive. Especially change for the sake of change, I can live with it if it actually improves something. Once I've figured out how to do stuff, where the menus are, what the shortcuts are, maybe customize the toolbar a little to get the functions I actually use up there, I resent it when the developers mess with it just to say "hey, look at what we can do, aren't we cool!". Then I spend a few hours figuring out how to put as much as possible back to the arrangement it was in before.
Maybe I'm an anomaly. Or just an old fart. I rarely change the GUI from the default unless it's to make some feature easier to use. And if I do make those changes, I want them to carry over to the upgraded version. The only software I use skins with is where the default eyesore verges on unusable (for some reason, media players tend to fall into this camp). Just give me the improvements under the hood, please.
if I have to stare at a blank page while my status bar says "waiting for google-analytics.com" then either I'm going to block google-analytics.com, or I'm just going to get fed up and stop visiting your site.
It really bugs me just how often I have to sit and wait for my browser to contact 5 different ad and stat sites when viewing some web sites - slashdot being one of the big offenders.
I have no problem with you providing (tasteful and discreet) ads, I have no problem with you collecting stats. I do have a problem with having to wait for that to happen, when I could be reading your site.
Advanced users are users too!