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Mozilla Responds To Firefox User Backlash Over Pocket Integration
An anonymous reader writes: Last week, Mozilla updated Firefox to add Pocket integration — software that lets you save web articles to read later. Over the weekend, some Firefox users began to voice their displeasure over the move on public forums like Bugzilla, Google Groups, and Hacker News. The complaints center around Pocket being a proprietary third-party service, which already exists as an add-on, and is not a required component for a browser. Integrating Pocket directly into Firefox means it cannot be removed, only disabled. In response, Mozilla has released a statement saying users like the integration and the integration code is open source.
Quoth Mozilla from TFA:
Pocket has been a popular Firefox add-on for a long time and we’ve seen that users love to save interesting Web content to easily revisit it later, so it was an easy choice to offer Pocket as a service in Firefox and we’ve gotten lots of positive feedback about the integration from users.
All the code related to this integration within Firefox is open source and Pocket has licensed all the Firefox integration code under the MPLv2 license. On top of that, Pocket asked Mozilla for input on how to improve their policy, based on early comments from Mozillians. After that discussion, Pocket updated their privacy policy in early May to explain more precisely how they handle data. You can read Pocket’s privacy policy here.
Directly integrating Pocket into the browser was a choice we made to provide this feature to our users in the best way possible. To disable Pocket, you can remove it from your toolbar or menu. If Pocket is removed from the toolbar or menu, then the feature is effectively disabled, though you can still find it again by accessing it in the Customize Panel. You can find detailed instructions here.
The "removal instructions" are just to drag the button out of sight, but the bug report asking for actual removal, quoth Manish Goregaokar [:manishearth]:
Pocket is just a bunch of API calls. Firefox UI code is lazy loaded. Put those two together, and yes, Pocket code is effectively "disabled". It will cause no extra baggage until viewed.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
Let's see if their "Submit Feedback" add-on works... (menu icon -> question mark icon -> Submit Feedback)
What do you think the *social* options in about:config are about? Guess who "needs" the provided API.
(UN)Suprisingly it also sucks if you WANT pocket and you were registered with them and you have an account and all.
How? They said FF extension won't be supported anymore because Pocket is already in Firefox. Well, the "integrated" version just sends you to Pocket web page when you want to see what you want to read! It is nothing more, just a bookmark (it even shows under Bookmarks button).
While the extension would show your reading list directly, you could dismiss pages without going to pocket web page and so on. MUCH BETTER!
That's not the point. The point is that Google(in theory) will allow an app to block ads that display within itself, but not other apps installed on the device. Thus, an adblocking browser is ok because it only affects the browser itself.
I just stuck it into "Additional Tools and Features" like "Share this page," "Hello," and "Apps." I took "Forget" off the main toolbar, where it intruded one day, and stuffed it in the hamburger menu, as a feature that I rarely going to use.
Like everything they're adding, it inconvenienced me for all of three seconds.
Now, it does raise questions as to whether the Mozilla philosophy is still a "lightweight browser that you can customize with extensions," and including these features by default defeats the feeling that you have a choice of adding potentially unnecessary functionality by extensions. Lightweight does not seem to be the objective any longer.
For the people for whom this is an ideology, they are very irritated.
"You can change the source, you have the power!" Yeah, not so much... nobody is really going to do anything except complain. (Well, except that one guy who is now going to make it his life work to fork it into something he calls Freefox that gets used by around 53 people... but those 53 people are very happy about it.)
Firefox has been forked already. More than 53 people are very happy about it.
Pale Moon
I'd love it if Firefox integrated the Pocket add-on. The existence Firefox Pocket add-on is the primary reason I use Firefox!
The problem is what they integrated is the far inferior Pocket Firefox "service", and they announced that the add-on is no longer supported.
Features of the add-on, that were dropped from the service:
It's almost like the point of the service is to drive traffic to the Pocket site's page.
What's the point of Firefox integration if it is no better than a barely functional service? Integration from the browser vender should enable the function to be used transparently.
they did it based on popularity
Bollocks. It's got barely 10% of the users of the #5 app (Noscript), and about 1% of the #1 (ABP). It doesn't show up until the 4th page when sorted by popularity (#64).