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.

Comments

so...

[zlives]

ad block and no script baked in next?

Re:so...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't. Google will ban them.

Re:so...

[doconnor]

I believe they removed the Ad Block app because it removed ad from other apps.

Including ad block in Firefox would only effect Firefox, so it would probably be okay.

Re:so...

[Xenx]

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.

Re:so...

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe they apped the App App app because it apped apps from other apps.

Apped that for you!

Apps!

Re:so...

[Deathlizard]

Doubtful. They don't pay enough.

Apparently, the Mozilla foundation is in money trouble. They're baking ads in the new tab page. They switch to Yahoo cause Google won't pay them anymore. They "partner" with Telefonica to add Hello to Firefox, now they're "partners" with Pocket.

I'm guessing Firefox 39 will add Superfish integration to give me a more personalized web experience and justify it because it's already installed on millions of PC's.

Oh mozilla

[blueshift_1]

... telling the users what they like. Well done.

Re:Oh mozilla

[Archangel Michael]

Fact is that those who like it won't complain

... and those that know nothing about it also won't complain either.

The trend in software development is always towards bloat, cruft and kitchen sink. In the end, you have a program that does everything for everyone, that nobody really can use effectively. IT is a choice of providing 95% of what everyone needs, in a small easy to use package, or having 99.9999% of what everyone MIGHT need in a package that is too bloated to actually be usable.

How many times have you used Notepad/Wordpad instead of Word?

Re:Oh mozilla

[luvirini]

Unfortunately Mozilla has been doing this for quite a while.

It used to be that firefox was the most userfriendly and at the same time most extendable browser with fairly good stability and fairly high resource use.

Now it is a lot less userfriendly, though still as extendable with better stability than before and while the resource use has not really changed the other browsers have started using more and more resources so by relative position it is very good in resource use.

What makes me gringe with each major update of firefox is how it gets more and more annoying to use, that is you need to tweak, install extensions and disable more and more to get it closer to a usable browser.

Re:Oh mozilla

[grimmjeeper]

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.

Re:Oh mozilla

[aardvarkjoe]

They're just learning from the developers of Gnome, systemd, and slashcode.

Re:Oh mozilla

[ProzacPatient]

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.

Re:Oh mozilla

[chiefcrash]

What they don't know doesn't affect them.

The government must *love* you...

Re:Oh mozilla

[ConceptJunkie]

Perhaps it's time for a community-driven, open--source reboot that will focus on producing a lean, mean, standards-compliant browser without all the politics and bloat, but which is very flexible and user-configurable.

Maybe we can call it, "Phoenix".

Re:Oh mozilla

[Anne Thwacks]

What are you smoking? and where can I get some?

Re:Oh mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

So you've been stuck in the BIOS configuration screen for fifteen years?

Re:Oh mozilla

[Torodung]

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.

Re:Oh mozilla

[nmb3000]

The trend in software development is always towards bloat, cruft and kitchen sink. In the end, you have a program that does everything for everyone, that nobody really can use effectively.

Which is the beauty of the Firefox addon system. The baseline browser as a framework is extensible in an almost unlimited fashion, which should allow them to keep the default web browser lean and focused on browsing the web. If someone wants add chat client or "read it later" functionality, users can choose to install that addon. Mozilla could even show a "suggested addons" page the first time a user runs Firefox that includes stuff like Pocket and the absurd Firefox Hello crap. For that matter, they could even bundle addons for things like Hello, making it easy for users to remove addons they have no interest in.

But no. Mozilla is filled with people hell-bent on destroying Firefox the web browser and and replacing it with Firefox the Platform. I'm just waiting for them to start decommissioning the addon framework, which they've already started by requiring all addons to be signed by Mozilla, or they won't be loaded. It's sickening.

Re:Oh mozilla

[Archangel Michael]

You make my point. While trying to be pedantic. :-D

Re:Oh mozilla

[geminidomino]

They do it because it's feedback they received from a large number of users.

Yeah, and that check that Read It Later, Inc handed over had nothing to do with it.

Re:Oh mozilla

[geminidomino]

As much evidence as there is of this mass of "user feedback" asking them to integrate a shitty data-mining add-on into the browser core.

Re:Oh mozilla

[geminidomino]

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).

Re:Oh mozilla

[geminidomino]

It's entirely possible that they're being honest on that.

No, it's not. For starters, they already had Sync which did pretty much the same thing, sans monetized data mining, without having to integrate a 3rd party service with an intrusive privacy policy into the core browser.

That privacy policy should qualify as a "serious prohibitive quality" and the fact that you think it doesn't makes me question your honesty on the subject.

And first the claim was "user feedback" -- the mozilla feedback page shows that's clearly not true (the feedback, last time I looked, was unfavorable at a 9:1 ratio), then it was "popularity", which is still BS - As has been pointed out, it has about ~1% of the popularity just of ABP, which would put it, as a percentage of the whole, at around epsilon.

Not to mention the fact that several extensions intended to un-fuck the UI have been twice as popular or more, but we don't see them worrying about the popularity there... that position is still "up yours, install an add-on if you don't like our brilliant UX".

About the only way that hard-coding Pocket into the browser is not mind-numbingly, earth-shattering incompetence is if they got paid to do it. I mean, we're talking the no business near source code, drooling on the keyboard, typing by hitting the keyboard with a squeaky mallet kind of moronic.

Re:Oh mozilla

[serviscope_minor]

Maybe we can call it, "Phoenix".

Hm. Well the "phoenix" name in computing is already taken by Phoenix Bios. How about "firebird"?

The statement

[arielCo]

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.

Re:The statement

[steelfood]

Which is all good and fine from a technical standpoint. But look at the status bar fiasco. What was their response to that again? Oh, right, it can be brought back via a plugin. So do they want to move features into plugins or integrate plugins into the core code? Which is it, guys?

It's either blatant hypocrisy or there's some serious cognative dissonance going on inside Mozilla. Yeah, they're probably doing this to make money, but this one move simply invalidates all of their prior excuses for removing features people like and use.

Re:The statement

[MobyDisk]

Pocket has been a popular Firefox add-on for a long time and...

Let's see if they were right about that. Most popular extensions

Adblock plus: 20 million users
Video downloadhelper: 5 million users
Firebug: 2 million users
.
.
.
Pocket: 257k users

It is pretty popular. That puts it on Page 4 of the list.

Re:The statement

[arielCo]

Remind me, what did we lose along with the status bar? AFAIK everything either pops up as needed or was moved to the menu/toolbars.

I don't think interface changes or "bloat" are what slows down Firefox's adoption. I've used it since 1.x and I'm actually eager to see the search bar merged with the address bar, since I already do all my searches with engine keywords ("az" for Amazon, "/" for Google, "w" for Wikipedia though it's my default engine, etc...).

Re:The statement

[MobyDisk]

Please no! Just yesterday I told a client, who uses IE, to go to a URL. They tried it and got a Bing search result. First I thought they used the search bar. But no, it turned out they mistyped something in the address bar, and so it decided "that wasn't a valid URL" and it ran a search instead. It would have been better if it said "server not found" or "hey, you can't have spaces in URLs" or "you forgot the colon after https." But since the default behavior is to run a search, it replaced what they typed with "http://bing.com/search?q=...." so they couldn't read it back to me to fix the problem. Ugh.

Re:The statement

[Anne Thwacks]

I'm actually eager to see the search bar merged with the address bar, since I already do all my searches with engine keywords ("az" for Amazon, "/" for Google, "w" for Wikipedia though it's my default engine, etc...).

You may love it, but for others it is absolutely horrendous! The problem arises when you have an intranet, and wish to go to internal websites.

Having your address bar hijacked into a search bar so [random bunch of scum] can inspect your activity is only mildly intrusive, but getting error 404 every time you try to access an internal site because [random bunch of scum] cannot find it by DNS lookup is very bad news for users and tech support.

[random bunch of scum] does not mean NSA or GCHQ - they will obviously get your privates anyway.

Re:The statement

[MobyDisk]

The malformed URL would've resulted in an error otherwise, with more or less the same result.

Yes, it would have resulted in an error, which is exactly what I needed. It was not "more or less the same result." It was a completely different result that obfuscated the actual problem. When they got the Bing page, I first had to determine if they typed it into the correct box. Then, I had to determine what they typed in and what was wrong with it. But since it erased what I typed, the user couldn't read back to me what they typed.

There is a compromise: If it gave them the Bing search result, but didn't change what they entered into the URL bar, and/or echoed back what they typed in, then I would not have lost valuable information.

I had to include the scheme in this case, and I couldn't mail them the URL because it was the URL to get to their mail. :-) Worse yet, it had a port number.

Re:The statement

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a feature that violates Mozilla's own Manifesto.

This is not a core feature of a browser and as such it needs to be in a plugin. Even worse is that it relies on a proprietary solution that has a different privacy policy than FF. The company is VC funded and the PP states that "all your data are belong to us and also to whomever we sell out to".

Is that acceptable in an open source browser?

It is like they forgot what happened to Navigator when it tried to be a kitchen sink browser.

It is the same reason no one uses Seamonkey.

Stop trotting out strawmen and just admit you are a Mozilla shill, and a bad one at that.

New features are fine, when they make sense.

Re:The statement

[fahrbot-bot]

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

Re:The statement

[Anonymous Coward]

Adblock plus: 20 million users
Video downloadhelper: 5 million users
Firebug: 2 million users

A slight segue:

You do an indirect disservice by stopping the list at #3 when #5 is NoScript with 2.1M users -- proof that people who disable javascript are not out-of-touch aberrations. Web devs need to be more cognizant of this fact.

There is also a disservice as "Classic Theme Restorer" is on page two with 437,962 users. Therefore, more people are going out of of their way to restore the old look of Firefox than are using the "pocket" service. Don't see any effort to take care of those users who like the old UI either; other than the "fuck off or use an extension."

Seamonkey

[Anonymous Coward]

Want FireFox like it was back in the 3.x days?

Adblock is even more popular

[NotInHere]

Ship that by default if you dare!

Re:Adblock is even more popular

[amaurea]

It's almost 100 times more popular, in fact.

The current Mozilla wouldn't dare to do that, but it would not be that different from when they implemented pop-up blocking. That annoyed advertisers, and also had some collateral damage. But it was very much appreciated by users. I think if adblock had been around back when pop-up blocking was invented, it too would have been built into the browser.

Sigh

[drinkypoo]

Obligatory why is all this shit built into Firefox comment here. I don't even want the developer console, on some machines. It's just an annoyance when I accidentally pop it up. Why should I have features that bloat the install if I'm not using them? Make them all extensions. Wasn't that the point of the design? That it's a platform?

Yeah I noticed it too...

[Gordo_1]

Initially thought it was a new mozilla-run service, but when i clicked through to learn more, it was clear that it was a 3rd-party proprietary service. That's when i removed the 'Pocket' icon from the toolbar: Hamburger --> Customize --> drag it down and out. Kind of annoying that the plugin code bloat remains, but guess that's just something I'll live with for now.

I've been a big user and supporter of Firefox, even through all the performance problems, mis-steps, yahoo search shenanigans, but this is the first time I feel they blatantly went against their philosophy of an open web. Tsk tsk Mozilla.

Firefox Has Always Been Bloat

[HannethCom]

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.

Users like it?

[Gaygirlie]

I dunno, just generally stating that users like it is.. well, it doesn't really mean anything. How many users? How many users don't like it? How many are ambivalent about it? What sort of method did Mozilla use in the first place to even come to this conclusion? Me, I have zero use for Hello and I certainly have no use for Pocket, either, and I would have preferred all such things to be left as addons. I do understand Mozilla's motivation, of course; getting kickback funding for such a large ecosystem definitely looks appealing from the economical standpoint and it is, obviously, true that they can't just continue to run everything on air and good-will. Still, I can't help but feel this was poorly handled.

Why Firefox is losing market share

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why Firefox is losing market share. At one time, I could add whatever add-ons I felt was necessary to make Firefox look like what I wanted it to, and/or what I needed. However, for some time, Mozilla has been adopting a kitchen sink approach, where Firefox will have everything, and instead of being a lean browser, will be as bloated as IE.

Vote with your feet

[93 Escort Wagon]

If you do not like what the Mozilla Foundation is doing with Firefox, and they don't seem to care what you think - join the millions of us who've already switched to a different browser.

I was a loyal Firefox user for many years, but somewhere along the way Mozilla lost its focus. The things I used to need Firefox for (DOM Inspector, JavaScript debugging, Ad Block) are readily available with other browsers. So I bid adieu to their political agendas and bloated infrastructure (seriously - how much money do you need to develop a web browser?) and moved on.

Re:Vote with your feet

[omnichad]

how much money do you need to develop a web browser?) and moved on.

Less than Jimmy Wales needs to run a wiki, at least.

Re:Vote with your feet

[gstoddart]

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?

Re:Vote with your feet

[vilanye]

There isn't a single good browser any more.

All the FF forks suck in various ways.

Seamonkey blows and is under control of Mozilla.

Chrome is nothing but spyware.

IE sucks as always doesn't run on anything but Windows. Anyone else remember the Linux IE version, now that was bad!

Maybe the new browser from the old CEO of Opera won't suck but I am not holding my breath.

Voting with your feet and moving to a different browser is like voting in an election, all there is on the ballot is various levels of evil and incompetence.

Well...

[Arkh89]

Let's see if their "Submit Feedback" add-on works... (menu icon -> question mark icon -> Submit Feedback)

Re:Well...

[NotInHere]

It works

Re:Well...

[vilanye]

91% unhappy?

They might as well pipe those to /dev/null.

It has the same effect.

How many?

[gstoddart]

Mozilla has released a statement saying users like the integration

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.

Yet Firefox continues to lose marketshare...

[QuietLagoon]

... Mozilla has released a statement saying users like the integration...

Maybe Mozilla should stop telling users what they want, and start giving users what they want.

Re:more integration

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you think the *social* options in about:config are about? Guess who "needs" the provided API.

This looks like another tracker.

[BitPit1]

Pocket should not be built in to Firefox as it is yet another third party that gets to capture your browser usage. Good old bookmarks have the same function without involving some unknown third party. I do not want the Pocket feature taking up resources on my computer! Leave it as an addon for folks that can't figure out how to use bookmarks.

The short version

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> 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.

Re:Fuck you Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, political affiliation has EVERYTHING to do with a web browser. Must be those damned socialists and their damned feelings. How dare someone have empathy for humans?! anyway, what were we talking about? Oh right Firefox! THANKS OBAMA.

Sucks if you WANT pocket, too!

[itsme1234]

(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!

The degradation of Firefox continues

[The Faywood Assassin]

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.

Re:The degradation of Firefox continues

[fahrbot-bot]

For me, installing every new Firefox release starts with a web search for the new Firefox "features" to disable - sigh. (Social, Hello, Pocket, telemetry, health reporting, beacon, etc...)

What a waste

[Khyber]

It's not like bookmarks or Save Page functionality hasn't existed for more than a decade.

If mozilla cares about userbase

[Anonymous Coward]

They would do an ask slashdot about how they've been treating the browser lately.

"save web articles to read later"

[edxwelch]

Isn't that called bookmarks?

Re:I'm not sure I get this

[NotInHere]

The difference is, it gets saved in the cloud, and your data can be sold to third parties.

Bloat Spyware

[Anonymous Coward]

Chome = Spyware
Firefox = Bloat

I'd rather deal with bloat than spyware.

Re:I'm not sure I get this

[fustakrakich]

I can see the lawsuits now....

h264

[Henriok]

Hey Mozilla! Why don't you write some open source code that links to other useful proprietary stuff that folks like, like the h264 capabilities that comes installed on most of the plattforms you are deploying on?

Re:Fuck you Mozilla

[bigfinger76]

"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

Re:Fuck you Mozilla

[bws111]

But open source is supposed to be about what the users want

Since when? Seems to me open source is primarily about what the developers want, and if the 'user' happens to have developer skills he can make it what he wants. Which open source projects are the ones that do what the users (vs developers) want?

Re:Fuck you Mozilla

[OhPlz]

Apparently it does, look what happened to their former CEO Eich.

How to disable pocket for the lazy

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Add-on: good. Service: bad

[Anonymous Coward]

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:

• An icon in the URL area shows if a page is currently in the Pocket reading list.
• Clicking the Pocket icon in the URL area instantly adds it to the reading list.
• You can remove a page from the reading list by clicking the same icon. (The icon is a toggle.)
• Clicking the Pocket icon in the toolbar displays a pop-up list of pages saved. (Compare to the service, where all can do is open the Pocket site.)
• You can go to any of the reading list pages directly from the list; you don't have to go to the Pocket site.
• You can remove pages from the reading list directly from the pop-up list; you don't have to go to the Pocket site.
• Pocket is integrated into the context menu. Right-click on a link to add it to Pocket.
• and when you do so, it displays a icon next to the link to show that it was added.

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.

Re:Cheat Code Master List - oops, formatting...

[nowsharing]

about:config

Disable Firefox Hello
loop.enabled = false

Disable Pocket
browser.pocket.enabled = flase

Disable One-Click Search Bar (revert to old search)
browser.search.showOneOffButtons = false

Enable Firefox Tracking Protection (like Disconnect)
privacy.trackingprotection.enabled = true

Bonus: replace Adblock with the Open-Source and superior uBlock: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...

What users like this?

[markdavis]

>"Mozilla has released a statement saying users like the integration"

I don't know any such users. In fact, most people I know agree that Mozilla needs to stop this trend of adding things to Firefox; it goes completely contrary to the Firefox mission (or what I thought it used to be, anyway)- to be small, open, cross-platform, and fast.

So please remove it. And then remove Hello. In fact, remove the developer stuff too (which 99.999% of users never use). Please use Addons/Extensions for these things. And while you are at it- LISTEN TO YOUR USER BASE who want full control over the UI options (Should I mention tabs-on-bottom? Or status panel? Or traditional file menus?). Stop trying to be Chrome!!!

Re:Search Box Idiocy

[mike2006]

I did not like the change in search functionality. This is how I got it back.

about:config

Set browser.search.showOneOffButtons to false