Firefox Accepting Feature Suggestions for Version 3

Krishna Dagli writes to mention an article over at Ars Technica discussing the Firefox team's call for feature suggestions. Version 3 of the software is already in the works, and the team members are looking to the community for ideas on where to go next. From the article: "The wish list is long indeed, and it provides an insight into the desires of the browser community, and a look at the open source development process. While closed-source projects often ask their user community for feedback on requested features, the process is not usually open to the public. For Firefox 3, anyone can both suggest new features and comment on other people's suggestions. The feature requests are divided into categories, such as browser customization, privacy features, security, history, download manager, and other areas. There are suggestions for features found in other competing browsers, such Safari, IE 7 beta, and Opera. IE7 seemed to be featured most prominently, with requests for "low-rights mode," as well as more cosmetic features like skins that mimic Microsoft's browser."

Comments

supress password popups with one click.

[krell]

All I want is a simple option on the "Do you want to remember passwords for this site?" popups that says "no, and never ask EVER for ANY site". The only way to get rid of these worthless annoyances is some obscure setting buried in a menu. While it would be even better not to ever have been asked this in the first place, an option to get rid of all of these on the popup should not be too much to ask for. Other than that, no complaints. Nice clean UI, especially compared to IE7 !!!

More focus on easy to use security will be nice

[also-rr]

Especially integration with things like GPG for automatically authenticating posts in web forms and web mail. Has anyone found an extension to do that? There's a encryption plugin for gmail I believe but no general extension for all web forms.

It could seriously kick off use of GPG amongst the non-geeks for authentication (mostly) and encryption (past a critical mass). I don't believe it would be that difficult to explain to normal IT literate (ie, already uses Firefox or Opera) the benefit of signatures in evading blame and establishing trust.

Semi-on-topic, on the security front Firefox 2 fixes the bug with tab icon handling that allows fingerprinting of Firefox 1.5 by tracking isolated .ico file requests.

History: When I closed a window

[twoshortplanks]

I'd like to be able to browse my history by when I closed, rather than opened, a page.

I can't count the number of times I've closed a tab and then wanted it back later in the day, but been unable to find the url because I've actually had it open on my desktop for several days (so it's not in yesterday's history.) Being able to sort history by "close time" as well as "open time" would be really useful.

Maybe this could be a firefox extention. Hmm.

Firefox needs some work on the popup front.

[krell]

"How about having system prompts popping up in tha status bar instead of popup. And put the contents of the Bookmarks on the menu at the top."

In keeping with my request to allow for intuitive suppression of the nasty ""do you want to remember password for this site?" popups, they should put an option on the system prompts that you can click to make them go to the status bar from then on: "Do you want future such popups on the status bar instead?"

I love how Firefox nicely diminishes popups that come from intentional design of web programmers, but the way Firefox itself throws annoying hard-to-get rid of popups needs some work.

Less = More

[binaryspiral]

Firefox is a great browser - the extensions and skins available let me make it work exactly like I want it to.

They're feeling the heat from IE7, and loaded v2 up with many of the features I already had using some extensions. But not everyone wants the extras...

So I say on to FF devs:

Less equals more, remove the bloat and bring back our lightweight, secure browser and let us customize it how we want it to be.

my suggestions

[oohshiny]

-- better Gnome desktop integration (currently, Firefox feels like it is trying to force Windows conventions down Linux users' throats), including better support for cut-and-paste and drag-and-drop of HTML, images, and other content

-- figure out some way of supporting drag-and-drop file uploads better

-- better editors for textareas (maybe support Mozex officially and find some way of letting users embed their favorite editors right in the page)

-- integrate better with Thunderbird and other Mozilla applications

-- replace the cumbersome XPCOM programming model (IDL compiler and all that) with something that's more like the Objective C object model and runtime

Re:Stability.

[Anonymous Coward]

3. Ability to save any browsing session. That is, save everything you are presently doing in Firefox to a big file. After that, Firefox can be closed, your computer can be shut off, etc, and later you can come back, open Firefox, and load your browsing session from the saved file.

Re:OS Logo?

[also-rr]

Hello to the person who modded this down! (As overrated no less.)

The above comment is funny. In fact, it's geek humour. This being slashdot we like:

Geek humour.
Corrections to the article.
Massivly technical explanations on related subjects that enlighten us.

Things we do not like:

Moderators who are too used to Digg and mod down anything they personally don't like, even if it's factually correct and/or relevant and/or insightful humour, having the gall to cancel out the mod points of someone who, despite only getting given points every few months, still thought the comment was funny enough to mod up.

May I direct your attention to the setting which allows you to apply a penalty of -lots'o'points to anything marked as "funny" so that you personally never see anything entertaining again.

Thank you for your attention. That is all.

Per-plugin memory accounting

[Jimmy_B]

Provide a way to get a list of all the loaded extensions and plugins, and how much memory each is using. That will silence all the people who install memory-leaking extensions and complain that FF itself leaks memory, and also force the authors of those extensions to fix the leaks.

Re:Keep it simple ...

[onion2k]

And, as an addendum to that, make extensions run in some sort of "protected memory" area so they can't take the browser down with them. If that's not possible at least make instances of the browser run seperately so a crash doesn't take down the whole lot.

4 things

[Anonymous Coward]

1. A fix for this javascript DoS attack:
for(;;) alert("Please restart your browser.");

2. Make hotkeys work everywhere, all the time. (You know when you hit CTRL+L and nothing happens)

3. Make it possible to open javascript links in new tabs.

4. Support for soft hypens.

Moving forward, not standing still

[sane?]

OK, given that IE7 will be here soon, Firefox needs to move forward substantially to maintain its interest for the general public, so here's my list:

• Full SVG support, integrated and sorted (should have been done before)
• X3D built in (getting 3D content working is the obvious next step)
• Interpolated image resize (smooth the damn images)
• Antialias all text & transparent GIFs (obvious, surely)
• Whole page zoom (particularly useful when your display size and the designers expectation don't match)
• Startup Tabs (you usually go to the same round of sites when you turn on in the morning, so...)
• Task based bookmark histories and easy note taking (keep research in order and reproducable)

Webmail?

[xant]

Check out Freenigma.

No need to thank me, it was a Slashdot post that tipped me off. ;-)

Re:Keep it simple ...

[Cl1mh4224rd]

By default, build in functionality to hunt down every little extension that covers all that extra functionality.

By default, include the functionality... as extensions. That way you can disable or uninstall a feature you don't want. Maybe the installer (in Custom mode) could even ask which of these features you want installed initially.

Apparently

[The Cisco Kid]

only from people who are willing to register and login at their wiki, not from 'the public'.

My two biggest requests would be

1. An option to enable an *ABSOLUTE* restriction on new content windows. Even with the 'pop up blocker' fully enabled some sites still manage to open new windows. I would like these FORCED into new tabs, always, NEVER permitting additional content windows to open (dialogs for FF itself, preferences, etc would still be acceptable)

2. An interative javascript debugger, that includes the ability to run scripts in a 'step mode', override/block the execution of specific js statements (or force conditional branches), and change the contents of variables.

3. An ability to prevent detection of the absence of specific plugins, enabling the user to take control back of media served by websites (eg, "Sorry, you dont have Microsoft DRM-enforcing plugin X, so we wont serve this media to you" - the ability to force the site to just give the URI to the browser, and let the *USER* decide how to retrieve it and what to do with it from there)

DragDrop and Proper Focus/Blur Please!!

[l0ungeb0y]

Firefox does not provide any reference to a dragdrop file from the users FileSystem.
This is a HUGE issue as it prevents Drag and Drop file uploads for AJAX applications.
Sure, there is a FF Extension to solve this, but requires the user to install for such a behavior to work.

This should be a native solution. Can Firefox please reconsider their stance on this issue?
For years, drag and dropping of files into application windows has been EXPECTED behavior.
Firefox should allow AJAX applications the same sort of functionality.
As it stands, Firefox is the only browser I can not create a strictly script based solution for.

Below is an example. As we can see, the dragdrop event is useless except for preventing the dragdrop event from continuing propagation after we capture it.

<html>
    <head>
        <title>dragdroptest</title>
        <script type="text/javascript">
            function doOnDragDrop(event)
            {
                var t,ta;
                var str = "Dumping Event Data:\r\r";
                var d = document.getElementById("out");
                var o = event;
 
                for (var itm in o) { str += itm+": "+o[itm]+"\r"; }
 
                t = document.createTextNode( str );
                ta = document.createElement("TEXTAREA");
                ta.setAttribute("style", "{height:100%; width:100%;}");
                ta.appendChild(t);
                d.appendChild(ta);
                event.stopPropagation();
            }
 
            window.captureEvents(Event.DRAGDROP);
            window.addEventListener("dragdrop", doOnDragDrop, true);
        </script>
    </head>
 
    <body>
        <h4>Drag and Drop Files Onto Page</h4>
        <div id="out"/>
    </body>
</html>

Also, firefox (on Mac at least) does not properly recognize an onBlur when I click on a non-firefox application window.
onBlur only happens when we click on a 2nd Firefox browser window - bad bad bad.
This and the above dragdrop issue means that Firefox is not properly supporting OS integration.
Addressing these issues would be huge in more robust user experience and application capabilities for AJAX developers.

TIA for your consideration of these points.

V