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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.
ad block and no script baked in next?
Firefox was supposed to be a no nonsense browser only. It was supposed to be just a browser with all the "bloat" of the suite cut out. The odd thing is right away the first release of Firefox was a bigger download and took up more memory than Seamonkey. (Windows Platform) Firefox had been changed over to the generic UI framework and was on Gecko Runner. I assumed that these were the reason for the bigger size, but when Seamonkey changed over to these, its memory footprint and download size shrunk.
As it is Seamonkey download is 31MB and Firefox is 38MB. I personally like the old suite and all its options, but I also like that it feels faster.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
What, they asked like 5 users if they liked it?
I'm betting more people do not care/do not want it than those who do.
If I want to save a web page, I'll use a damned bookmark.
Instead of putting this shit in the browser for the small fraction of people who care, how about we leave it as an add-on and those people who want it can add it themselves.
Why must Mozilla keep filling up Firefox with shit that most people have no interest in? Stop wasting my fucking memory with crapware I don't need.
Who the hell is in charge at Mozilla these days? I bunch of guys from marketing?
I hope someone is going to fork it and throw this crap out so we can have a simple web browser, not some swiss-army knife with crap in it we don't care about.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
>> Users: Quit adding unnecessary crap. Stick to the original mission of "leanest browser available."
>> Mozilla: F*** you. Here's some bloatware chasing down some rarely used media extensions.
>> Users: Quit adding unnecessary crap. Stick to the original mission of "leanest browser available."
>> Mozilla: F*** you. Here's a Mozilla "operating system."
>> Users: Quit adding unnecessary crap. Stick to the original mission of "leanest browser available."
>> Mozilla: F*** you. Here are some built-in ads.
>> Users: Quit adding unnecessary crap. Stick to the original mission of "leanest browser available."
>> Mozilla: F*** you. Here is some built-in crapware from Pocket.
>> Users: No, f*** you. We already switched ourselves and everyone we know still running Firefox to Chrome.
How many times have you used Notepad/Wordpad instead of Word?
I don't. I always have either Notepad++ or VIM installed on every machine so that I have a useful text editor. I haven't had to stoop to using Notepad/Wordpad for a very long time.
... and those that know nothing about it also won't complain either
What they don't know doesn't affect them.
The trend in software development is always towards bloat, cruft and kitchen sink
You're assuming that it's what happened here. Dev time is costly, most companies try to avoid wasting it whenever possible. And please don't put software in the same boat as laptop manufacturers.
what everyone MIGHT need in a package that is too bloated to actually be usable.
You know we are talking about a browser. Mozilla is far from being a burden for even the oldest computer I have in my office (7+ years old). I believe the google bar offered in almost every install package these days to be a bigger burden to most systems.
How many times have you used Notepad/Wordpad instead of Word?
Are you suggesting notepad/wordpad should not be included in the OS as it's bloatware? What if I didn't need notepad? What if I always install another text editor, why do I need notepad now? Is it bloatware of convenience?
Well, what's our options here?
There's Chrome, which is owned by an advertising company. There's Chromium, which I've never been clear on what it's for. There's Firefox (which we have two stories today about bloat). There's Opera, which is essentially Chrome. Apple abandoned Safari on Windows quite some time ago.
So, what's left that isn't either a) a marketing/ad platform, or b) full of bloat?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Using Firefox has become like that relationship that used to be perfect and then out of nowhere your partner starts cheating on you and each time swears its going to be the last time.
And you keep falling for it.
"I'm a humble person really,
I'm actually much greater than I think I am"
They would do an ask slashdot about how they've been treating the browser lately.
Why not? It works for Apple.
On a more serious note I've been a loyal Firefox user for the past 12 years however I'm getting rather upset with the direction it has taken the past couple years, however I don't want to use Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer or Edge (all of which are owned and maintained by large corporations) and since Opera has jumped on the WebKit bandwagon making it a glorified Chrome skin I'm thinking maybe it's time for a new open source browser. The only browser I can think of that isn't tied to some other browser is Konqueror but unfortunately I find KHTML to be somewhat awful and even if it wasn't Konqueror is *nix only.
tl;dr: Mozilla has become detached from what made early Firefox versions great and it's probably time for them to be replaced.
1.about: config
2. Find browser.pocket.enabled preference and change its value to ‘false’.
3. To remove Reader view, change reader.parse-on-load.enabled preference value to ‘false‘.
4. Restart the browser to see the changes.
-S
Pocket: 257k users
It is pretty popular. That puts it on Page 4 of the list.
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the "popularity" had to do with Pocket being in the stock portfolio of someone at Mozilla - or some other self-serving investment relationship... /cynical
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .