Mozilla Ends the Advertisements In Firefox's New Tab Tiles (mozilla.org)

An anonymous reader writes: For some time, Mozilla has been experimenting with advertisements in the "suggested tiles" on new Firefox tabs. They received a lot of criticism from the community for it, and now (using linguistic gymnastics), Mozilla has decided to end that experiment. They say, "We experimented with all content – including advertising. We proved that advertising can be done well while respecting users. We have learned a ton along the way. Our learnings show that users want content that is relevant, exciting and engaging. We want to deliver that type of content experience to our users, and we know that it will take focus and effort to do that right. We have therefore made the decision to stop advertising in Firefox through the Tiles experiment in order to focus on content discovery. We want to thank all the partners who have worked with us on Tiles. Naturally, we will fulfill our current commitments as we wind down this experiment over the next few months."

Comments

How the mighty have fallen.

[Anonymous Coward]

Our learnings show that users want content that is relevant, exciting and engaging.

Do people who speak like this not realise how fucking ridiculous they sound?

Re: How the mighty have fallen.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes they do in a bully wood movie

Re: How the mighty have fallen.

[Anonymous Coward]

They love marketing and hate technology.

Re: How the mighty have fallen.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just how the be.

Re: How the mighty have fallen.

[Anonymous Coward]

And they also hate children.

Re: How the mighty have fallen.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just how the be.

Yep, that how be those be demo-crats be like that be... yep. Just be like be be.

Re:How the mighty have fallen.

[Ol Olsoc]

Our learnings show that users want content that is relevant, exciting and engaging.

Do people who speak like this not realise how fucking ridiculous they sound?

Sounds like a pornsite advertisement.

Re:How the mighty have fallen.

[Anonymous Coward]

Our learnings show that users want content that is relevant, exciting and engaging.

Do people who speak like this not realise how fucking ridiculous they sound?

It wasn't 'learnings'. It was 'lemmings'.

Re:How the mighty have fallen.

[Anonymous Coward]

I wanted to comment on the same sentence. They had to have heard loud and clear from the community that advertising was not wanted before the feature was released, and similarly received feedback through all phases prior to release (nightly, beta). Only plausible reason that this is "learning" is they (the decision makers) weren't listening in the first place.
Firefox should return to their open source roots where individual developers and users opinions mattered. The project seems to be marketing and paid employee centered to me. Who's going to go against the company line and say this is bullshit, nobody wants more advertising.

Re: How the mighty have fallen.

[jonbally7631]

No one want do like that. Mozilla now understood that how content that is neither relevant and nor exciting. that's why they remove the advertisement from the browser. Latest Information about Technology : http://filmar.com/

Re:How the mighty have fallen.

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course they do. But that's how they got tiles in to begin with.

You see, people at this level get paid 500k/y (with 30-45% bonus of that amount in addition to it) for doing this. If it brings enough money, and ads to million of people do that, that's guaranteed lots of salary money. I'm not blaming the guy quitting/being fired here, he's been hired for the advert job and has done what he was hired to do. I'm blaming the guys and gals that hired him for this purpose.

Thankfully it seems that somebody decided this wasn't viable in the longer run as losing users over time due to advertisement just means they'll eventually rack in 0 USD.

Disclaimer: I work for Mozilla and have worked there for years. There's a lot of ups and downs of the sort. Right now, it seems like common sense and "fighting for the user" became trendy again, let's hope it stays that way. Let me tell you that, there are still people on the board that fought to get ads in Firefox just for the money. Sad. Hopefully they've changed their minds, now, uh.

Re: How the mighty have fallen.

[Anonymous Coward]

Republicans They love marketing and hate technology.

Oh, you mean like the Motion Picture Association of America RAN BY DEMOCRATS, headed by progressive liberal Senator Chris Dodd? You mean those kind of market loving, super lying, haters of technology? You mean like that?

Trying to hide the truth, eh?

Re: How the mighty have fallen.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm impressed they can form a sentence like that without throwing up in their mouth.

Re:How the mighty have fallen.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they don't. This is one of the points of the Cluetrain Manifesto. The people that communicate in that sort of artificial corporate speak don't realize that that language doesn't work in today's world. They need to speak like a normal person if they want to get their message across.

Re:How the mighty have fallen.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hence, no matter what you may think of him, this is why Trump is so high in polling right now. Because he avoids that kind of language and speaks plainly. The part of the GOP establishment that lives for that kind of corpspeak language is totally fucking scared shitless right now.

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

So now it is exactly the same as Chrome!

Re:Good

[pete6677]

Anyone still using Firefox, class, anyone?

Re:Good

[Slashdot Junky]

Firefox is my primary browser both on my Win7 laptop, Mac, and B&N Nook HD+ tablet running CM12. I also use on a Linux box. Many changes have been made to Firefox in recent years that cost it points, and many of these are UI-centric. The UI is a lot like that for Chrome now, at least for the Android apps. I don't use Chrome, because its worse for what bothers me. Another reason is Google's primary business of Big Data. Although the UI for IE throughh v11 is the least offensive for me, it is my secondary browser. I tend to only fall back to it when Flash is needed or something seems to not be working in Firefox. I keep Firefox configured in such a way that it doesn't some commonly implemented crap design features.

Re:Good

[Darinbob]

Yes. The worst parts of Firefox is when it copies Chrome; evolving to the same look, using the same ridiculously fast upgrade cycle, etc. Any browser I use must have noscript and adblock plugins, and that eliminates a lot of browsers. So I have firefox on the phone (where it's not very good, but the default google browser is braindead), Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Re:Good

[yoshi_mon]

Yes actually. I currently use FF, IE, and Chrome. FF for my primary browser, IE for my 2nd monitor media browser (YouTube/Twitch/etc), and Chrome as my backup browser that has no extensions installed in case I need to look at something and it is not working in my NoScript/AdBlock browsers.

Now am I a fan of what FF has done for some time now, not at all. In fact my FF is modded via extensions and the config files to resemble something usable to me. If for whatever reason I lost all of that I likely would just ditch it and look elsewhere for a main browser rather than go though all the hassle of re-configuring it all back to a usable state. (I honestly don't even remember all the changes I've had to make over the years.)

I also still, and I could be wrong about this, think that FF's extension pool is the most robust. However as I said I could be fully wrong about that because my IE's AdBlock works just fine and I know I could do even more with it and or Chrome. So if FF's extension's waver at any point I'll likely join one of the many who will switch away for good.

Re:Good

[droneriot]

Using it to reply to your comment, albeit heavily tweaked to look and act like the old versions.

Fresh horrors

[Anonymous Coward]

"We have therefore made the decision to stop advertising in Firefox through the Tiles experiment in order to focus on content discovery."

I feel the need to pick this sentence apart and read between the lines. What fresh horrors do they have in store?

Re:Fresh horrors

[Anonymous Coward]

"Content discovery": Mozilla will "suggest" web pages that you might want to visit, based partly on your previous browsing habits and partly on how much certain companies have paid Mozilla to suggest their pages to you.

"Content discovery" is the same thing as "advertising," except that it's viewed as centering on the person who sees the advertisement instead of the person who pays for it.

Re:Fresh horrors

[mysidia]

When you start to type something into your address bar or search bar; it's going to start looking more like a Facebook news feed enticing you to click on a Sponsor's clickbait/ad, than search results.

I wasn't switching anyway,

[Anonymous Coward]

but this makes me feel a lot better about Mozilla in general.

almost (r)evolutionary occupy the truth

[Anonymous Coward]

just for fun https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBjQ9tuuTJQ

Respecting users?

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of me wonders what prompted this change.

Re:Respecting users?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pale Moon has their own problems. They're having a hate boner over VP9 and refuse to support it. Insisting it's Google's problem to make a plugin for it. Their suggested resolution is to use Flash instead of HTMl5 video. I just ditched PM back to Firefox today. I had jumped to PM with the mention of Mozilla going full retard with the UI in the coming months. I can kick the can down the lane and deal with those problems later.

Re:Respecting users?

[unixisc]

What is VP9?

Re:Respecting users?

[Anonymous Coward]

More specfiically their issue is with MSE (Media Source Extensions). It's not complete so they refuse to implement it. Mozilla has implemented the bare minimum to get it working in Firefox and so has every other major browser. PM is being a adamant about it though. Their suggested resolution whenever the topic is brought up is to just use Flash video instead. My hate for Flash is greater than Mozilla right now.

Re:Respecting users?

[Anonymous Coward]

Flash video is accelerated on my machine and HTML5 is not. Apparently FF needs to use latest directX features that make an X850 unsupported. On machines where it works, HTML5 video sucks. Ads can draw on the screen.

Re:Respecting users?

[Anonymous Coward]

You could at least give SeaMonkey a try. Being in a direct line from Netscape Navigator makes it a lot like FF in the 3.6 era, only with all the modern Gecko HTML improvements from FF. I'm still waiting for a chance to ditch Flash forever (it won't even fucking upgrade properly now on my computer, the "Install" button does nothing!) but ustream still won't use their HTML5 player with the current version of SM, and it is the main thing left that I use semi-regularly that requires Flash. (For now Flash remains in "click to enable" mode.)

Re:Respecting users?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pale Moon is also even farther behind Firefox on HTML5 and CSS3 support. I have a feeling the Pale Moon developers will have a lot of trouble to keep up the other browsers on web standards.

I have always hated the "New Tab" page

[Anonymous Coward]

When I open a new tab, I want it to go to my home page, which is Google. I obviously want to do a new search. It used to be that was the default behavior, then it was an option you could select, then you could make it happen with an extension. Konqueror is my main browser these days, but the last time I used Firefox I couldn't see any way to make it do the right thing.

Re:I have always hated the "New Tab" page

[sexconker]

The "new tab" page got hidden from the UI for no reason.

It was relegated to "browser.newtab.url" in about:config for a long fucking time, and I used it to specify the new tab page should be "about:blank" the instant they added the "new tab" page that showed your top visited sites, etc. because I knew the ads were coming.

It worked until they started putting ads on the new tab page. The browser.newtab.url setting was ignored.
People bitched and moaned. Mozilla and their dogs on the bug tracker made up some bullshit about how it was a security issue. They claimed malware was hijacking the new tab page via that setting. They did not provide any example of this actually happening.

They SHOULD have just re-exposed the option in the main settings page - use a url, use blank or use the tiles page.
But their "solution" was to ignore the setting and force everyone onto the shitty tiles page.

Choosing "show a blank page" on the tiles page options menu (yes, it has it's own options menu with a gear icon separate from the browser's main options menu) doesn't show you a blank page. It's loads the tiles new tab page with content hidden and the options gear visible. This "blank page" option was inconsistent with the "blank page" option for the home page (which gave you about:blank - a true blank page).

People bitched because they wanted to load a specific page for their new tabs, or wanted a blank page. Mozilla and their goons on the bug tracker started closing bug reports left and right without ever considering user feedback. As I predicted, it was all about the ads. Mozilla said that if users wanted this functionality they should install an addon. So I did. https://www.soeren-hentzschel....

Everyone laughed at how Mozilla said the change was done for user security and then pointed people to an unverified third party addon to restore functionality that used to be on the browser's main settings page.

And here I am laughing again. I'll continue to laugh as long as Mozilla continues to fail.

If you would like to laugh along, check out:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/s...
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/s...
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/s...
And all the dozens of other reports they've marked as dupes and closed. Make sure you expand and read all of the censored comments. (There were many more they outright removed.)

Re:I have always hated the "New Tab" page

[Anonymous Coward]

This whole argument has been the dumbest thing ever, just not Mozilla's side of the argument. They're making a lot of actual sense, but people don't care: they just want to bitch about their convenience being lessened, and to hell with any counter-arguments (which are plainly ludicrous despite all of the evidence to the contrary). Vocal entitled users really are the worst aspect of Firefox, and have been the #1 factor keeping the browser in the stone ages. We can't have nice things, because Mozilla has to keep supporting your antiquated and often insecure pet features and options, instead of you just making your own addons for them.

Re:I have always hated the "New Tab" page

[Anonymous Coward]

The "new tab" page got hidden from the UI for no reason.

It got hidden from the UI for a very good reason: if you have a feature that you want to remove, you hide it from the UI and then use the drop-off in usage stats from telemetry collected from "average" users to claim it was never wanted in the first place.

Then you present those skewed metrics to the clueless bosses in order to implement the user-hostile, advertising-friendly, and design-fashionable thing you wanted to implement in the first place.

You don't need tabs-on-top. You don't need a checkbox to enable tabs-on-top. You don't need an about:config preference to re-enable tabs-on top.
You don't need a status bar. You don't need a hidden about:config to enable the status bar.
You don't need to disable Javascript. You don't need an about:config to selectively disable javascript.
You don't need to see the http:/// part of the URL bar. You don't need to see the fully-qualified domain name or the complete URL. You just need to know you're connected to AOL. (Thankfully this one got shot down before it made it to production in Chrome, let alone Firefox.)

Firefox started out as a powerful browser under control of the user. With every feature deletion, they lose market share.

This has been the pattern from UXtards in every product over the past 5 years. CEIP (telemetry) was opt-in in Win7. Was opt-out in Win8. Can be forcibly disabled in Win7. The telemetry of error reporting cannot be opted out of in Win10 beneath Enterprise.

The clued users disable the shit on sight, leaving only the clueless. And metrics-driven UXtards never realize they end up producing products that can only be used by morons, because the only metrics they get are from morons. They could get the opinions of thought leaders by simply asking them, but no, that's not "Big Data" or otherwise buzzword-compliant. So this is the shit we get.

Re:I have always hated the "New Tab" page

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla is for cows! Cows use beg reparts! u cow mooooooo

Re:I have always hated the "New Tab" page

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you misspelled "Moozilla". Hope this helps!

Re:I have always hated the "New Tab" page

[Anonymous Coward]

I must be doing something wrong then. I turned off tiles when they were first introduced, and have NEVER had them come back on their own.

And I've always updated to the latest version whenever Firefox alerted me to it.

Re:I have always hated the "New Tab" page

[droneriot]

Is there any way to reënable the HTTP:// beginning of URLs?

Re:I have always hated the "New Tab" page

[Anonymous Coward]

Hint: Mouse over the URL.

Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

It was one of the first things I disabled after a fresh reinstall.

Too much

[Anonymous Coward]

"Our learnings show that users want content that is relevant, exciting and engaging. We want to deliver that type of content experience to our users, and we know that it will take focus and effort to do that right."

People do want this. But not from you. Provide a good web browser and then get out of the way. It's this same logic that prevents users from setting a homepage on Android. That's right, Mozilla doesn't want you to change the most basic web browser setting on Firefox for Android. No, I don't want to put a link to my home page on your home page. Stop trying to provide "an experience"!

Re:Too much

[Obfuscant]

People do want this. But not from you.

This. I want content I ASK FOR, not the crap you think I might want to see. It is pathetically stupid for Firefox to put ANYTHING on a new tab except perhaps the home page the user has set. I'd rather they not even put the "settings" wheel on a page that is supposed to be BLANK (about:blank).

No, I don't want to put a link to my home page on your home page.

I find it rather annoying when Firefox on CentOS decides that I need to see some CentOS page when I open it, and the repeated "check plugins" page that cannot be disabled on Windows is even more so. It takes fiddling deep in the config to set the plugin check URL to something invalid to get it to stop running off to momma.

Re:Too much

[Anonymous Coward]

This. I want content I ASK FOR, not the crap you think I might want to see.

Then you're out of luck. Everything on the Internet is moving to a curated, or suggested, or whatever model. (See Netflix, Facebook, Amazon, FireFox, Google Play, and so on and so on.) Don't worry about discovering content on your own, let the algorithm suggest things you might like, no need to think about it, or waste time browsing or anything like that. Just consume, or watch the ad, or whatever.

Re:Too much

[Anonymous Coward]

People do want this. But not from you.

This. I want content I ASK FOR, not the crap you think I might want to see. It is pathetically stupid for Firefox to put ANYTHING on a new tab except perhaps the home page the user has set. I'd rather they not even put the "settings" wheel on a page that is supposed to be BLANK (about:blank).

No, I don't want to put a link to my home page on your home page.

I find it rather annoying when Firefox on CentOS decides that I need to see some CentOS page when I open it, and the repeated "check plugins" page that cannot be disabled on Windows is even more so. It takes fiddling deep in the config to set the plugin check URL to something invalid to get it to stop running off to momma.

Exactly, this "to create unique, personalized experiences for individuals"....... no, don't create an experience for me, leave me alone. What the hell.

Ads on the New Tab page?

[Nutria]

What's the purpose when so many people run ad blockers?

Re:Ads on the New Tab page?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you say APK in the bathroom mirror 3 times he appears and edits your hosts file. I bet you're too chicken to try it though.

Re:Ads on the New Tab page?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you say APK in the bathroom mirror 3 times he appears and edits your hosts file. I bet you're too chicken to try it though.

Please, do not summon the host file monster.

Re:Ads on the New Tab page?

[markdavis]

>"What's the purpose when so many people run ad blockers?"

These were not web pages and not blocked by ad blockers, it was just placeholders when you open a new, fresh tab. But you could also easily elect to have the browser not show them, too. Mozilla did it right- you could just select a blank page for new tabs if you wanted. The control was right there, easy to find... just click on the gear and check "show blank page."

Re:Ads on the New Tab page?

[Stan92057]

And a blank tab ISNT what users wanted and told them so very vocally. You must work for them somehow lol. I had to use a stinking add-on to make the browser do what I wanted it to do, I did have it configured with the "about config" but they changed MY setting and choices. What i HAD it doing opening a new tab with THE PAGE OF MY CHOICE. FF isn't about user choice anymore that's why its failing badly.

Re:Ads on the New Tab page?

[nukenerd]

So would a hosts file help? Is there anyone here who could post a long and detailed description of what a hosts file could do for us?

Re:Ads on the New Tab page?

[sexconker]

APK
APK
APK

Re:Ads on the New Tab page?

[Nutria]

These were not web pages and not blocked by ad blockers, it was just placeholders when you open a new, fresh tab.

Right. When I open a blank tab, I see ... facepalm.

(I'm using Chromium because it's multi-threaded.)

Re:Ads on the New Tab page?

[markdavis]

Well, I had no problem with it. If you don't want it blank, you just use about:config.

If you want "user choice", you must REALLY hate Chrome...

Re:Ads on the New Tab page?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can adblock+ do 16 things hosts do for speed, security, & reliability:

1.) Protect vs. malicious sites/servers (past ads)
2.) Protect vs. fastflux botnets + stop C&C communique
3.) Protect vs. dynamic dns botnets + stop C&C communique
4.) Protect vs. DGA botnets + stop C&C communique
5.) Protect vs. downed DNS (adds reliability)
6.) Protect vs. DNS redirect poisoned dns
7.) Protect vs. trackers
8.) Protect vs. spam
9.) Protect vs. phish
10.) Protect vs. caps
11.) Get you past a dns blocking
12.) Keep you off dns request logs
13.) Speed up surfing by adblocks & hardcoded fav. sites
14.) Work on anything webbound (ie email programs) multiplatform.
15.) Give you easily controlled data
16.) Do all that & block ads better than addons more efficiently in cpu cycles + memory usage

* ANSWER ="NO" to each above on ab+ doing it as well or @ ALL + hosts = already on every device natively.

APK

P.S.=> Ab+ does less than hosts & less efficiently - hosts do MORE w/ less + Hosts start w/ the IP stack before REDUNDANT inefficient addons BEGIN to operate (as 1st resolver queried).

Re:Ads on the New Tab page?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not anymore, a new "feature" forces you to use a plugin to change the new tab url, because of... wait for it... adware.

But those plugins, like CTR, are being deprecated.

Re:Ads on the New Tab page?

[cfalcon]

Mozilla didn't do it right. There's no correct way to do ads. Ads are harmful.

Re:Ads on the New Tab page?

[jopsen]

What's the purpose when so many people run ad blockers?

It's wasn't ads. And you could easily disable it... The new tabs page showed tiles, like it does in chrome... Honestly that's great, before it was just a blank page.
The only thing was that when you were a new firefox user and there was no content to display in the tiles, some of the empty ones would be sponsored... Or at least that's how I understood it..

Honestly, Mozilla makes money from the search deal.. Which is just ads in-directly... I'm not sure it's much worse to do it directly. Granted it's a lot of work.

Re:Ads on the New Tab page?

[markdavis]

I was not aware of that until now! I still had about:config browser.newab.url set to about:blank, but it wasn't doing anything. Ug, that does piss me off, somewhat.

Re:Ads on the New Tab page?

[cfalcon]

Can your incantation do 16 things?

Re:Ads on the New Tab page?

[denis-The-menace]

OMG it worked!

Re: Ads on the New Tab page?

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing ABP won't do is spam slashdot and stalk posters.

APK has that feature, however.

Re:Ads on the New Tab page?

[Gavagai80]

All it did was give new or occasional firefox users an immediate negative impression of the browser. When the first thing I see on my first day is ads, and no other browsers have ads, I don't come back.

Re:Ads on the New Tab page?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like someone's gotten their ass handed to them by apk on hosts files before.

Re:Ads on the New Tab page?

[Anonymous Coward]

also you can "rename" "google.com" to "microsoft.com".
or you can rename the whole internetwebZ ^_^

srsly tho, redirect from 127.0.0.1 to "apkapkapk.net" which would be on ip address ??? get a cute cat video instead?

Re:Ads on the New Tab page?

[Anonymous Coward]

sexconker YOU BASTARD!

Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[Anonymous Coward]

The latest browser usage stats are showing Firefox at only about 8% of the market. That's just the desktop market only, too. They have almost no mobile presence at all (Firefox for Android is at 0.04%).

Is Mozilla finally realizing that people are fucking fed up with all of the utter stupidity that has infected Firefox for the last several years?

Are they finally waking up to the fact that their whole organization will soon be irrelevant once the remaining Firefox users move to Chrome or the other browsers?

Fuck, I sure hope so! I hope that their next blog post talks about how Australis is being thrown away in favor of the Firefox 3.6 UI, which was actually usable.

And I hope the blog post after that is about them finally getting around to fixing the goddamn performance issues that make Firefox so much slower than Chrome.

I really do hope that Mozilla has realized that treating their users like total shit hasn't helped them.

Maybe they are learning that when you treat your users like shit, and force one unwanted change after another on them, that they'll move to the better products that competitors are offering!

I really hope that's the case.

I hope that Mozilla is getting a grip on the reality that they're facing.

Do what Firefox's users want. Don't force idiotic changes on them. Don't force ads, of all things, on them.

Re: Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is a lack of anything better than Firefox. Chrome/Chromium will spy on and rape your children, IE is a Microsoft product, Midori is good but still needs polish which probably won't happen because muh lightweight.

Re: Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is a lack of anything better than Firefox.

So.. Firefox's problem is that it's the best? It's a good problem to have.

Re:Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[Anonymous Coward]

Australis is being thrown away in favor of the Firefox 3.6 UI

Could someone link to a before/after Australis picture of the same bit of GUI?

I certainly believe something really major happened then, from all the complaining, but honestly i noticed nothing at all then. Was it a windows-only thing? (I'm on Linux). I've seen some other changes, like the URL bar moving under the tabs instead of over by default, but I had no clue what people were talking about with this Australis thing. My search-fu failed me on finding out.

Re: Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[rsborg]

The problem is a lack of anything better than Firefox. Chrome/Chromium will spy on and rape your children, IE is a Microsoft product, Midori is good but still needs polish which probably won't happen because muh lightweight.

Safari? I guess Mac users aren't of interest to you (I agree FF is still more usable that Safari, but Safari isn't bad and doesn't spy).

Re:Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[Anonymous Coward]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...
http://i1-news.softpedia-stati...

Re: Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[AntiSol]

Not "best", "least-worst".

Re:Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks, other AC.

Re:Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks, other AC.

Third (fourth?) AC chiming in.

It wasn't that there was a huge gap between 3.6 and 4.0. It was that 3.6 marked the demarcation between a browser with a status bar - which was something every browser had had since the days of Mosaic, and 4.0 was the one without the status bar, because the UX team, ignoring overwhelming negative feedback, had already made up its mind that the users didn't need one anymore, and if they didn't like it, they could always install a third-party extension.

The problem with "install a third-party extension" is that it effectively tells the community: we're not building a browser for you, we're making our own UX decisions and it's up to the community to spend its own efforts undoing our work if you want to keep the browser the way you wanted it.

To this day, two the most popular extensions have been Status4Evar, and post-Australis, ClassicThemeRestorer.

A UI team builds a user interface based on feedback from users. A UX team ignores the data and implements its preconceived notions of design aesthetic against them, creating negative value that the community must then work to undo.

The real irony about the rationale for the status bar was that it took up too much vertical space. 16 pixels. And the same group of webdevs - not the same individuals, but their contemperaneous collegues - in the same name of "advancing" the web for small screens and mobile, subsequently went on to design mastheads like time.com, nytimes.com, forbes.com, and pretty much any local TV news station with giant 60+ and 150+-pixel position:fixed things that remain visible at all times.

You can't have a 16-pixel status bar. Not even an about:config option to re-enable it. You can't have an option to put tabs on top/bottom. But giant CSS position:fixed mastheads that remain visible and limit the actual content to a tiny sliver of the screen, why, that's just fine.

Fuck this industry. I'm so glad I left.

Re:Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[Luckyo]

Competition. It keeps everyone honest.

Re: Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[Anonymous Coward]

Diversity of browser choices is important. It's in users' best interest to have a variety of alternatives, and having fewer dominate the market leads to bad outcomes.

For what it's worth I use (and recommend) the following :

Mobile : Firefox (primary), chrome
Desktop : chromium (primary), Palemoon

Re: Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[Billly Gates]

I disagree.

It is the worst browser. IE 11 is ok and is W3C compliant. MS Edge is even better and Windows 10.1 next spring will have Edge with Webkit extensions too! Opera uses Chromium minus the spyware. No one cares about Google spying. It is the best browser. IE 11 is usable. Edge is good.

Where does this leave Firefox? Firefox is stuck in a timewarp and is turning into what Netscape was. A social media engine and bug ridden product. In the end AOL got a branded IE 6 and named it AOLNetscape even though they freaking owned the browser in the very end.

Technology wise it is a decade behind as it has no multi core cpu support with processes unlike IE 8 and Chrome 1.0 circa 2009. No lowrights mode in %appdata again solved in 2009. It has the most security vulnerabilities too. IE is very tight nowdays in comparison.

We moved on. The only thing that can save it is a new fresh rewrite similiar to Firefox from Netscape/Mozilla and IE did to become Edge in Windows 10. Scrap the old code and start a fresh.

Re: Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, we do not mean any such thing.

Re: Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pale Moon.

It's kinda sad when "properly maintained version of Firefox that predates all the bullshit they've added recently" equates to "better than Firefox".

But at least I have a decent approximation of Firefox without all the bullshit, so there's that.

Re: Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not? Too close to the bone?

Re:Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[Anonymous Coward]

move to the better products that competitors are offering!

If you've moved on to a better product, then why do you care what Mozilla does with Firefox?

Because once upon a time Firefox was THE customizable geek browser of choice and it's hard to let go of how good it was and realize that it is now a steaming pile of SHIT.

Re: Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[kangsterizer]

There's a rewrite in progress, it's called Servo, if you want to check it out, it's actually really cool https://github.com/servo/servo

Re:Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[hairyfeet]

I don't think it'll help, they burned too many bridges with their "fuck the users!" attitude they've had these past several years. I know that FF was the #1 browser for my customers for several years and since Australis every.single.one has asked me to help them move to something else or gone to Chrome. I don't even bother packing FF in to my default install package anymore, they keep screwing with things so much they leave a bad taste in my customer's mouths.

Instead for those that use extensions or just prefer the originalk FF UI I offer them the choice of Pale Moon or Ice Dragon, Ice Dragon is a little more secure since it can integrate with Comodo IS to auto sandbox on launch while Pale Moon is more like old school Firefox but both are really good browsers.

But sadly I just don't see FF coming back, they have peed in their corn flake one time too many and alienated so many users I just don't see them being able to lure them back, not to mention it looks like Mozilla is about to get fucked by Yahoo with rumors pointing to Yahoo selling off most of their core assets, possibly even selling off everything and shutting down. I think if that happens they are just fucked, as nobody is gonna pay the hundreds of millions they got from Google and Yahoo for their search, not with numbers as low as they are.

Re:Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[mysidia]

I think if that happens they are just fucked, as nobody is gonna pay the hundreds of millions they got from Google and Yahoo for their search, not with numbers as low as they are.

It should not cost millions to make and distribute a browser. They need to downsize back into the community project they are supposed to be, they should have an annual budget of less than $1million a year, anything beyond that is fat that needs to get cut.

Re: Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox is a perfectly useable browser. It has bugs and issues same as every other software app. It is not a pile of SHIT. So grow up and stop acting like a 5 year old.

Re:Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[Anonymous Coward]

At this point I see the prospect of Mozilla dying as an opportunity. Without the corporate and UX idiots Firefox could be restarted as a usable, extensible, truly open-source(*) browser. Born from the ashes -- we could call it Phoenix...

(*) which of course means no binary plugins, especially no Flash, and no fucking DRM

Re: Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[thegarbz]

I gave up on that altruistic bullshit when I realised I just wanted to browse the web with something that works. When Firefox started driving users who care about privacy towards Chrome, Mozilla should have realised they were majorly on the wrong path.

Also IE being a Microsoft product is not bad in on itself. IE is a really crap browser, that's the problem. If it were released by the FSF I still wouldn't use it.

Re:Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[Anonymous Coward]

B-b-b-b-ut... it's got pocket!

Re: Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. Do whatever consumers want. Even if it means zero revenue. I'm going to put that to work in my restaurant and see how it goes. Except, no... That would be retarded.

Re:Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[kimvette]

> Fuck, I sure hope so! I hope that their next blog post talks about how Australis is being thrown away in favor of the Firefox 3.6 UI, which was actually usable.

Classic Theme Restorer to the rescue. :-)

Re: Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[Anonymous Coward]

He would have said complete dog doo not shit, its more like a disgruntled preteen not a toddler

Re:Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[Anonymous Coward]

I still don't understand what is so bad about Australis. Australis looks way more modern than the previous UI, without going 80s retro flat like others did. The only problem with Australis is that you can't put tabs on bottom.

Re:Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[Anonymous Coward]

I still don't understand what is so bad about Australis. Australis looks way more modern than the previous UI

That's what's so bad about it.

http://deep.design/the-hamburger-menu/ sucks. Hiding functionality takes away from the thing people liked about Firefox: its customizability. Pre-ribbon UIs (hierarchical menus) were easy to document and troubleshoot over a medium as sparse as text messaging: View->Options->Foo->Bar, etc. Now it's "Click the hamburger, then the gear, and if the gear doesn't work, the, umm, what version are you on again? Maybe they moved it last week. Or took it out altogether."

See also: http://www.fastcodesign.com/3053406/how-apple-is-giving-design-a-bad-name -- discoverability is not merely important, it's critical. Those non-modern hierarchical menus? With them, I can, within 30 seconds, get a feel for what my browser can do. Just click on "File, Edit, View, History, Bookmarks, Tooks, and Help" and see which things have submenus (click on those too to see what's there), and then move on to the next. Maybe another 10-20 seconds looking at what's beneath on "Customize..." or "Tools->Options". No mystery navigation.

And after using them a few times, I get a feel that "View" is where I toggle on/off things like whether I want a toolbar or a status bar, "File" does the same sorts of things every desktop application has done since Xerox PARC, and Tools-> options is where the cool stuff is. File for files, View for views, and Tools for the advanced stuff. It's almost like the words mean things and help build the user's mental model of how the damn thing works. Neat, huh?

What mental model is being built up by Hamburger, 3verticaldots, 3TriangularDotsAndTwoLines (for sharing), and IsThatAPaperAirplaneOrATriangle (gmail, send)? Other than not having to pay an engineer to localize words because Mozilla only has a $330M budget?

Re:Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[narcc]

I know that FF was the #1 browser for my customers for several years and since Australis every.single.one has asked me to help them move to something else or gone to Chrome.

I can imagine that conversation. "I hate this new UI, help me switch to a browser with a UI that's just like the one I hate!"

What's next? "Tracking protection is off by default? Help me switch to Chrome! Surely, they can be trusted."

Re:Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[hairyfeet]

More like "if they are gonna make this look like Chrome I'll just use Chrome, as its faster and doesn't hang like FF does". Is that REALLY so surprising, that if you make your product a bad ersatz of a very popular product that users might just go for the more popular one you ripped off, especially when they are both free?

At the end of the day numbers don't lie, and it looks like Mozilla is going the way of Netscape, with many users following mine and just going somewhere else and the worst part for Mozilla? Once people switch to something else nothing THEY do matters, because users will stick with the new browser as long as they don't do something radical or stupid and it doesn't look like Google, Pale Moon project, or Comodo are be as dumb as Mozilla was.

Re:Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[narcc]

I switched to FF from Chrome when FF introduced the new UI. Why? Chrome is a resource hog and the only thing keeping me there was the UI.

Chrome benefits from the myth of performance, as they were, at one time, the better performing browser. That's obviously no longer the case, so I expect the tide to turn again over the next few years. To call the death of FF seems a bit premature, considering the state of the competition.

Re: Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[bingoUV]

When Firefox started driving users who care about privacy towards Chrome

How so? While Firefox keeps breaking the add-ons now, with a little effort you can maintain real adblock, requestpolicy, noscript, cookieculler, httpsfinder, betterprivacy, youtube video downloader etc. Chrome doesn't have a decent replacement for most of these, last I checked.

The other features Firefox (with add-ons) still has - mouse gestures that work on preferences tab too, tree-style tabs which chrome has refused to ever support using any add-on etc. There is still no match for Firefox in features.

Re:Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[geminidomino]

it doesn't look like Google, Pale Moon project, or Comodo are be as dumb as Mozilla was.

I dunno about Google. I still don't get the decision that they and Opera made; to block users from saving to %temp% and opening one-offs from the download window. I originally thought "well that's dumb, but at least it beats Firefox."

Then I came to realize, the hard way, just how many CSVs, XLS/ODS, and DOCs I download on a daily basis at work.

Now I'm back to Pale Moon. I don't love it, but it's really got the laurels of "sucks the least" clinched.

Re:Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad they are removing the plugin API which is needed for Classic Theme Restorer.

Re:Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately people who have used FF for a decade now can not use it anymore. A few relatives called me after FF updated itself and asked eg. how to access bookmarks, how to print, etc. The hamburger menu is just useless fad.

Re: Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[thegarbz]

ublock and tamper monkey do most of what I need. Youtube video downloader? Why does that need to be a plugin sitting hogging memory? If you want a youtube video just go to tubeoffline.com and download it.

What does Firefox offer in exchange for a tiny bit of extra functionality? A slower browser. A browser which will let a single script crash the program. A browser that despite having a decent memory footprint now still has some horrific memory leaks. Still not 64bit, though I should be glad since it means memory leaks will cap the amount of resources it can hog up, but it becomes painfully slow to use when you have more than about 40 tabs open. It has a difficult user interface, and I don't even know what half those icons in the top right are, but one of them is a damn download manager. I mean WTF the first time they introduced that I downloaded the same thing 6 times because I couldn't figure out what was "wrong" with my browser and why it wasn't downloading the file I wanted. Mozilla systematically ignores things that the community (not individual users but the whole community) want, put every attempt at fixing the core of the browser into the "too hard" basket, but hey it's okay because I now get tiles with ads and no option to set my home page to about:blank where it has been for the best part of 20 years.

And every time I have a problem someone directs me to the depths of about:config to change a setting which I wonder why it changed in the first place. But that's okay because I can save it all to my Pocket and have a conversation about it. Fucking Eyh! *thumbs up*

Firefox was once a great browser. It is still the only browser on the market with full display profile colour management support. Even that can't save it. That's right every browser on my computer renders colours on webpages incorrectly due to my monitor setup and I still prefer not to use Firefox. Firefox's defining feature was once that it wasn't Chrome. Shame that's who they decided to model future versions on. Why use a Chrome clone when you can just use Chrome.

Re: Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[bingoUV]

OK, some valid criticism there, some not. Tree style tabs?

1. You tube downloader means any flash/mp4 video downloader. There is no dedicated website for all of them.

2. For a few years, Firefox has been asking me to kill misbehaving scripts. Do you have an example of a Firefox crashing script?

3. I've been using 64 bit Firefox for 5 years on Fedora Linux. It's been available before that, but I was on 32 bit Fedora.

4. With vimperator, I've not needed any icons in the top right for 7 years. Chrome's vim emulation was very poor last year when I checked.

5. I don't see any Pocket - probably because of vimperator. I enabled the URL bar, right click, customize, drag "Pocket" away, and it vanishes.

6. I have blank as my start page, the settings icon on its top right allows you that option - "show blank page". Latest Firefox from Fedora as of right now - 42.02

Re: Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[Anonymous Coward]

Chromium will spy on and rape your children

link?

Re:Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[hairyfeet]

You should try Comodo Dragon, or if you want to be bleeding edge Comodo Chromodo as the problem is NOT the Chromium engine, its the crap Google bolted on top. Comodo don't bolt that shit, nor does it phone home like Google's browser, and they are fast fast fast!

I use Pale Moon as a backup but at the end of the day I have never seen a Chromium engine browser lock up, I've seen Gecko based engines lock up at least once every browser session. Like it or not sticking with a single process engine really hurts any browser based on Mozilla's engine, its just a bad way to do it in 2015. But I stick with my previous assertion, once somebody switches? The other guy has to do something REALLY dumb to get users to switch back. Most don't notice resource usage BTW, so you are the exception and not the rule.

Re: Firefox: 8% of the market and dropping.

[thegarbz]

1. Not something I need a plugin for. Even if tubeoffline didn't exist managing complex downloads is something I do rarely so it should be a sitting feature in the browser. Standalone app e.g. Jdownloader works just fine as a replacement when needed.

2. Script may have been the wrong word. But yes there are countless examples of something going wrong in one tab taking out the browser. That was the predictable result of everything as one process approach that people have been criticising Firefox for a long time about, and also something Mozilla promised and then threw in the too hard basket.

3. That's great but if I go to getfirefox.com and click the button that says "Free Download" I don't end up with a 64bit process. This wouldn't be a problem except when combined with the lack of multiple processes, and combined with memory leaks. Firefox under heavy use eventually tends to crap out unless you completely exit the browser and reopen it. Admittedly that's a small complaint in usability but at the same time it's 2015, they've been promising to fix this for at least 7 years.

4.5. Yeah a lot of things in Firefox can be fixed when you hack it about and install 3rd party plugins to do it. You can bash it into submission, but the fact that you need to is not helping its market share.

6. I have that set to v42.00 on windows. It obeys it for the first launch of the application only. Any subsequent tabs or new windows which are opened bring up the tiles regardless of the setting. This has been an open bug for a long time now and the subject of some real bullshit excuses by devs as to why they won't fix even going so far as calling it a security hole.

Finally listening to the comunity!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now they are going to remove Pocket, Hello!, and Australis. And then put more efforts in electrolysis and the mobile version.
Great!

Re:Finally listening to the comunity!

[Anonymous Coward]

Australis

What in particular is so terrible about the Australis UI? I think you're getting worked up over nothing. If you want Firefox to look different then use Classic Theme Restorer or something like it.

Re:Finally listening to the comunity!

[AntiSol]

1. Moving things around without asking me
2. Stupid fucking hamburger menu button which I want nothing to do with and which periodically comes back all by itself, forcing me to continually re-customize and remove it. Which is helpful, because my constantly removing it is obviously accidental. I must want the hamburger menu, I just don't know it yet. While we're explaining what's so terrible about things, I'd love to hear what's so terrible about a hierarchical menu system.
3. Curvy chrome-alike tabs which uselessly take up more space, not good when you have many tabs open.
4. Removal of the status bar, meaning that the icons for the fuckton of addons I have installed all got migrated to the main (only) toolbar, making it a huge mess
5. Most importantly, no option to revert all this insanity. Going from something customizable to something which isn't. It's a step backwards.

If you want Firefox to look different then use Classic Theme Restorer

That's an excellent suggestion, and exactly what I did. It's also really helpful because I didn't think I had enough addons installed, and firefox wasn't using enough memory or CPU time.

Re:Finally listening to the comunity!

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, they are removing the ability to have themes in a future update. Along with addons in favor of chrome style extensions.

Re: Finally listening to the comunity!

[bill_mcgonigle]

$324M budget and this AC gets the user sentiment better than all the focus groups ever have.

MoFo will be a joke if they only wind up being a Firefox company - the grand vision roundly failed if several billion dollars couldn't even get a threaded/processed UI implemented for basically two desktop apps, e.g.. Remember when Firebird was the protest app against the extant leadership?

The Board could at least throw 10% of the budget at the evil-Kirk devs who would still be willing to go off and hoist the Jolly Roger and reestablish some competition inside Mozilla. While there are still options beyond liquidating the office furniture.

This is me not holding my breath for the yes-men

Re:Finally listening to the comunity!

[Anonymous Coward]

you are both complaining about tabs that take too much space and the lack of a status bar that does uselessly take space ... most of it was just gray area without information anyway.

Re:Finally listening to the comunity!

[Anonymous Coward]

Most importantly, no option to revert all this insanity. Going from something customizable to something which isn't .... I didn't think I had enough addons installed,

So first you claim Firefox isn't customizable and then your next complaint is that it's too customizable. You are confused. You can't have it both ways. If you want a browser built the way you yourself specifically want it built, then build it. But if you can't build it then don't whine because it's childish.

Re:Finally listening to the comunity!

[Anonymous Coward]

you are both complaining about tabs that take too much space and the lack of a status bar that does uselessly take space ... most of it was just gray area without information anyway.

Not either two posters, but I agree with them, and disagree with you:

Status bar: Tells me more than just that I'm about to click on a Goatse or a Rick Roll link when I hover over it. It also tells me that the reason the site's loading slowly is because it's Looking up: www.slashdot.org (no, that was fast, DNS is clearly working), waiting for: www.somefuckingadnetwork.com (aha, that's the problem!)

Curvy tabs: If you only have 4-5 tabs open at one time, it doesn't matter. Right now I have 27. That's because browser.tabs.tabMinWidth is set to 0 (in extremis, show the favicon and nothing else), and browser.tabs.closebuttons is set to 3 (one little "X" on the far right of the wall-o-tabs, so that I don't have to move the mouse to close tabs. Just hover the cursor over the X and click. No space-wasting row of "X" icons, one per tab, exactly the way that the UX designers didn't want, but have forgotten to take that choice away from me, although to be honest, I usually use the ^W keyboard shortcut to close the window anyways.)

tl;dr: I use the status bar. Every fucking day. I'm willing to sacrifice 16 pixels - if you're not, that's fine, you should be able to disable it. Just don't take away my ability to enable it. And I have lots of tabs open, so any pixels wasted on curvy little file-folder looking decorations (I thought UXtards hated skeumorphism, LOL!) are something I'm not willing to waste.

A good UI designer designs for what the user wants - even if it's not his or her own personal preference. A UXtard apes Chrome and preaches minimalism - fuck the user's preference, it's all about putting their personal stamp on it and being able to point to their Github commits to a future employer. There is a difference.

Re: Finally listening to the comunity!

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when Firebird was the protest app against the extant leadership?

Yes I do. Here's to hoping the same thing will happen again. All we need are a few bright, energetic programmers that have a vision of a lean and mean version of Firefox. Then, we'll use it until it becomes popular enough that some knuckle-headed management type ruins it.

Re:Finally listening to the comunity!

[Slashdot Junky]

> Right now I have 27

I don't like the tab UI design mostly, because the tab bar is vertical-space-wasting. I probably never have more than 10-12 browser windows open at one time in that rare instance when there are a lot. What about your workflow or usage warrants 27 tabs?

Re:Finally listening to the comunity!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't like the tab UI design mostly, because the tab bar is vertical-space-wasting. I probably never have more than 10-12 browser windows open at one time in that rare instance when there are a lot. What about your workflow or usage warrants 27 tabs?

I don't like context-switching between navigation (requires interaction with the computer) and reading (requires nothing more than passively hitting the spacebar/PgUp/PgDn keys).

So - of those 27: 6 Slashdot articles and 6 Slashdot comment threads. (Of the 6 Slashdot comment threads, two of them are more than 100 posts, and that's 100 posts per tab, so, 14 tabs.). On HackerNews, another 12 articles and 8 comment threads (four of the 12 candidate threads had fewer than 10 comments and I didn't bother opening them.)

To the left of those 27, I have a "home page" that is actually a group of four or five tabs: /., HN, a finance site, a work-related webmail, and a personal webmail. The tab stack never goes under those 5.

So the workflow is: ^T (newtab to the extreme-right), ^PgDn (wrap around to leftmost tab, which might be off the screen), F5 Slashdot, ^PgDn (proceed to HN tab), F5, etc... - I can refresh all those tabs in less than a second of muscle memory. I do that maybe three or four times a day. If there's a bunch of new stuff, I pop it all open in new tabs, which I can then read at my leisure.

To use this example set, the reading workflow is "RTFA, close RTFA, skip commentary, RTFA, close RTFA, skip commentary..." for about 15 minutes of RTFAing, leaving me with 14 threads of comments - be they 50-comments about something techincal or 500-comments during a mass shooting - to peruse during the downtime.)

I'm not saying my workflow is better than yours. I'm saying it's mine. If you're good at context-switching - like, stopping what you're reading to click "page 2" of some hardware review? Great. I kinda suck at that -- so when some gaming site has a 10-page paginated hardware review, and it doesn't have a "print" or "single-page" view (or, more commonly, some fucking webdev wants to get metrics to see who actually reads the whole
(click here to forget what you were reading and continue to page 2 of this exciting rant!)
article.

Thanks for the metrics, sucker!
The Author.

(but I digress)

When shit gets paginated, I open the pages up in consecutive tabs -- and for a typical hardware review, that might be 5-10 tabs per article -- and they probably sit there idle for an hour or two before I get around to reading them all in 5 minutes.

tl;dr: Software that supports lots of tabs and keyboard shortcuts for manipulating them works well for me. I'd really like it if UXtards stopped trying to make me
(click here for what's beneath the fold)
FUCK OFF UXTARD! (why aren't you using Pocket? You could put all that in the Cloud and give some marketroid a view of everything you read, even more so than you already do?)
work according to their preferred workflow, but would just leave me the hell alone to use the software, I'd find it a lot easier to cope.

The browser UX is Good Enough. Leave it alone and concentrate on shit that matters, like memory, performance, and security. I'm sorry that those hard problems that don't look cool, but that would actually make a browser more useful for me. Change for the sake of a UXtard's CV/resume is a value-subtracted proposition.

tl;tl;dr: I have better things to do than relearn how to ride the bike when the UXtards decided it should be a tricycle or a unicycle every few months.

Re:Finally listening to the comunity!

[EzInKy]

you are both complaining about tabs that take too much space and the lack of a status bar that does uselessly take space ... most of it was just gray area without information anyway.

If you saw the status bar as a waste of space, then you were using it incorrectly. Not only does it show you where links will take you before you click on them, but any good extension offers the option to move its interface there and clean up the top of your browser. Damn if the first thing I did when the status bar was removed was look for a way to put it back. I couldn't believe that removing the most informative and useful part of a user friendly browser would have crossed anyones mind. The browsers job is to present information, not hide. it.

Re:Finally listening to the comunity!

[zippthorne]

not refreshing pages is the killer feature of the tons-of-tabs workflow:

It seems every browser decided to re-load all the page resources when you hit the back button (or.. trigger javascript events that end up requiring this?). This takes a bunch of time and also loses your position on the page. If you just want to peek at a link or two (say.. when reading slashdot...), it's much easier to open those links in tabs, read them in the order they finish loading, and then go back to the original page that hopefully hasn't helpfully auto-refreshed and lost your place.

All you need is for a couple of those tabs to also have links you want to peek at and you can expand to a couple dozen tabs pretty quickly.

Unnecessary, time-consuming page loads have trained users to manually cache pages by leaving them open in tabs.

No.

[Anonymous Coward]

> We want to deliver that type of content experience to our users, and we know that it will take focus and effort to do that right.

No you don't. You're a fucking browser company. Stop trying to deliver content and make browsers.

Re:No.

[DivineKnight]

Remember when Google was a search company? Yeah....

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when was Google a search company? It's always been an advertising one

spread on thick

[Anonymous Coward]

'our users' relevant, exciting and engaging, experience.

Marketing has taken over the asylum, nothing but fluff words and miss understanding the relationship, users of firefox are users of firefox, not your users. Not part of the flock you sell at market.

But should pick at holes given their commitment to mimic chrome until there is not reason to pick firefox over chrome. How can an organisation with one main product not understand that the only reason the vast majority of the users of that product only stay is because of the third party plugins inspite of moves to mimic chrome. Then deprecate the third party plugins ?

Re:spread on thick

[AntiSol]

They're going for that segment of the market which really likes chrome but think it's too fast and doesn't use enough memory.

Re:spread on thick

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly the marketing BS has been creeping for quite some time in many other community projects (most notably GNOME/GTK, and to a lesser extent KDE, and you see it in part in systemd and associated projects too, although there is at least some amount of -erroneous- technical considerations for them, contrarily to Firefox and GNOME/GTK...).

It feels to me the stupid call for "the GNU/Linux desktop" (it's been there for a very long time, and most of us have been using it at least as their main desktop system for a long time too) and "trying to push GNU/Linux to beginners and companies" as backfired big time.

Companies will of course bring their own marketing BS, and beginner users will one day grow (in age), and some of them will become software developers because of their GNU/Linux 'experience', without necessarily having the right mentality for it. They were pushed into it without really understanding anything, they think they belong, but they still have a Microsoft/Apple mindset, and they try to apply it to GNU/Linux, forcing idiot changes on the core users of GNU/Linux.

Then of course, more globally, because of individual considerations, too much attention to GNU/Linux in recent years has brought on an assortment of people who are here mostly for the money and popularity. Some were users but didn't really think about GNU/Linux for their 'personal gains', and some weren't even. "I smell some money here, let's become a GNU/Linux developer!". Some of these people mostly have a marketing education, and they are applying their BS on "their product", without the slightest consideration for the core community, and without even understanding that GNU/Linux and associated projects are slowly becoming more popular only thanks to this core community.

Yes, it is true, my mom has zero need for GNU/Linux. She will barely even remember the name. Even the philosophy is completely lost on her. You can try to cater all you want to her specific needs as a totally clueless user, she is using GNU/Linux only because of me, and she will stop using it the moment I'm not here to do everything to maintain it. If I'm not installing GNU/Linux on her next computer, she will of course use the default system installed: Windows (or worst...). And I am left with a system now 'designed' for clueless users for my own use.

I put quotes around 'designed', because there is another problem: these marketing people are of course bringing about their statistical BS too. And they're not even good at it. The dollar bills flowing in their mind are having them forcing their ugly trojan horse in, with zero privacy and security considerations, and they do only as they read their stupid stats. They have no consideration for true simplicity and efficiency as human beings with specific goals. Adding to the sadly natural inclination of most programmers and even developers to ignore or even reject, if not negate usability, accessibility (good luck with your stupid stats for these considerations... "but they're a minority, the stats shows it, why the fuck should I cater to them?!"... even laws for many projects won't change their mind...), and rush even basic testing (and bark at anyone pointing their errors), you easily get to today's situation: a buggy trash code mess of useless crap (which you can of course find in most other places too, so even if you're into scat, you can far more easily get it elsewhere...).

"But I wanna be the next Bill Gates!!!".

Fuck, you. And get the fuck out of my lawn.

I've been using firefox since it was called

[waspleg]

netscape and it kind of irritates me that their default "start page" asks for donations when they start doing bullshit like the ads tiles and pocket.

Yea, I turned it off, but I also know from experience a shit load of people don't know how and/or don't care enough to learn.

Re:I've been using firefox since it was called

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it's pretty annoying that they ask for our support, so they don't have to be beholden to Google or Yahoo to give us a modern browser. Pretty pathetic, really. They shouldn't need our help, or even any money at all, to do such a simple job. They should just do as we say, and be thankful we're even willing to grace them with our blessed usage of their free browser.

Re: I've been using firefox since it was called

[Anonymous Coward]

Deliver what we want, then get support from us. Don't ask for support, then spend our money on hookers and blow, and then deliver Australis anyhow. Show us you deserve our support.

Re:I've been using firefox since it was called

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox wasn't Netscape. Netscape became "Mozilla". "Mozilla" was bloated (it was Netscape) and was eventually replaced by a rewritten, lighter browser (eventually called Firefox), though not immediately; they coexisted for a while. If I recall correctly someone eventually resurrected the Netscape name later, but based the browser component on Firefox instead of "Mozilla proper". Mozilla (the organization) has since dropped Mozilla (the application suite).

Re:I've been using firefox since it was called

[Anonymous Coward]

SeaMonkey is still going strong.

Re:I've been using firefox since it was called

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla was bloated, yes (15 years ago it took longer to start mozilla than to build a kernel), only that it was NEVER replaced by a "rewritten, lighter" browser. All they did was yank the email and irc components. The core remained just the same, with the same bloat and bugs, and a whole lot more accumulated since then by monkeys messing with code they don't understand. Nobody, except some extension writers understand how XUL/XBL work; there are decades old bugs which nobody even dares to think about fixing.

Now the people in charge will be very happy to pull the plug and replace everything with a rebranded webkit clone (extensibility & community be damned), only they don't how to best sugar-coat it.

Re:I've been using firefox since it was called

[Anonymous Coward]

Pedantism: FireFox was a fork from Netscape. Seamonkey was renamed from Mozilla, which was renamed from Netscape Navigator.

Re:I've been using firefox since it was called

[doom]

The people working at Netscape originally called the project Mozilla (Mosaic + Godzilla = Mozilla). The marketing people at Netscape changed the name, which is the kind of thing that pisses off techies (however unreasonably), so when they got control back they also resurrected the old name. You can think of Netscape as "the original Mozilla" if you want.

(Myself, I think changing the name to Netscape made a lot of sense, but when they decided to change the meaning of "Netscape" to make it an application suite that only happens to include a browser -- then called the "Communicator", as I remember it -- that was a bit much.)

OT: When will Dicedot figure out

[fred911]

what Ads Disabled means?

or does it mean I need an ad blocker here too?

Re:OT: When will Dicedot figure out

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, you need an ad blocker here.

Re:OT: When will Dicedot figure out

[antdude]

None of the ad block filter subscriptions block them too. I did share this on adblockplus.org, EasyList, etc. but they didn't think it neded to be blocked by them since it is /.'s own ads. I had to block themselves myself manually. :(

Re:OT: When will Dicedot figure out

[Anonymous Coward]

I use ABP, flashblock, noscript, blur, DNT, and probably other things I'm forgetting... and I don't see any ads on /. See, very easy!

Seriously, I don't see any ads at all. Maybe because although I have the option, I don't "disable ads". Or maybe it's one or some of the above mentioned plugins. Who knows.

Re:OT: When will Dicedot figure out

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been blocking ads on /. since 2005. A /. ad used 100% of my CPU, so that day I installed Firefox and turned on adblock. Never again, /. Never again. You had your chance.

Nice mini-rant, dude

[Anonymous Coward]

But they need to raise funds to exist. Projects without funds are dead projects.

Besides, you turned the feature off. So you are complaining about a default setting that you can change yourself, and you did.

Re:Nice mini-rant, dude

[Anonymous Coward]

But they need to raise funds to exist. Projects without funds are dead projects.

Projects with too much money tend to get worse because they attract the type of leadership that sees money as its top priority. The type of leadership that has NO IDEA WHY the project is popular in the first place. Mozilla and Dice come to mind.

Re:Nice mini-rant, dude

[taustin]

Projects without funds are dead projects.

Sometimes, it's a mercy killing.

Re:Nice mini-rant, dude

[Gavagai80]

Why bother existing if your purpose was to be the open source users-first browser but you've ended up as the only browser that forces ads onto users and your commercial competitors feel less commercial?

Re:Nice mini-rant, dude

[EzInKy]

But they need to raise funds to exist. Projects without funds are dead projects.

Projects without users are projects that have no need to exist.

Gee whiz, who knew?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I mean really, who could have predicted that users wouldn't want to see more ads?

It's, like, so unbelievable!

Palemoon and Fossamail

[unixisc]

Just installed Palemoon and Fossamail on my Windows laptop. Even though LinkedIn describes Firefox as the browser it works best w/, it fails to recognize Pale Moon. I installed Fossamail to check it out, and also b'cos Windows Mail has just stopped syncing any of my mail. Even the Microsoft store had told me that it wasn't ideal, and that I was better off using Outlook. Well, Outlook is overkill for what I need, so I installed Fossamail

Never saw any

[Anonymous Coward]

Because my "new tabs" are a speed dial extension.

"Experience" is the new "value"

[Opportunist]

The word that makes a customer cringe for he knows that it means the maker of the product is trying to either upsell or otherwise fuck with him.

Re:"Experience" is the new "value"

[Billly Gates]

People forget something.

Companies do not make great products and innovations. PEOPLE make great products and innovations. A good company realizes this and hires the best with visions and capable employees to sell and make the product to drive it home.

When committees and marketers who often are not good at their job make the calls you are done. No software engineers who got promoted to leadership positions but rather droids.

In other worse as stated by another slashdotter all from Mozilla sounds the same as an executive of a company with a dying product desperate to stay relevant. Meanwhile we all moved on. RealNetworks will be waiting for them on the other side eventually.

What a waste of time!

[AndyKron]

What a waste of time! I went through the effort to remove them, and now Mozilla goes and takes them off anyway? Humpf!

Proof that Mozilla watches South Park

[Cito]

Unless that blog poster is a human ad....

OMG!!!!

Re:Proof that Mozilla watches South Park

[cfalcon]

But does he KNOW he's an ad?

Re:Proof that Mozilla watches South Park

[Cito]

https://youtu.be/a1Y73sPHKxw

Millennials/Hipsters are the problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

And the same group of webdevs - not the same individuals, but their contemperaneous collegues

Collectively they're called Millennials or Hipsters. They've been the worst thing to happen to computer software ever. Their "design" ideas have ruined a large number of well-established software products, including Firefox 4 and later, GNOME 3, and Windows 8. They've also ruined many web sites (just look at the Slashdot Beta disaster), as you've pointed out. And they're also responsible for systemd, which has rendered Linux unusable on the server, and broken on the desktop. Everything these people are involved with turns to total shit.

Re:Millennials/Hipsters are the problem.

[Ol Olsoc]

Everything these people are involved with turns to total shit.

Oh, you are so gonna be a Tea Partier if you aren't already. The olde cranky bastard is very stong in you.

Re:Millennials/Hipsters are the problem.

[Mashiki]

Except they have a valid point. If the changes that these people made had been rated as good by the general public, there would have been an increase in their marketshare. In this case the opposite has held true, and it reflects directly back on those that mozilla has hired meaning that the millinials/hipsters are the cause of mozilla's massive loss in marketshare in the last 8 years. This entire thing could be summed up as a learning experience: Don't change what isn't broken, and don't shove garbage down the users throats.

Re:Millennials/Hipsters are the problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, these are the people that have virtually destroyed the internet and a lot of software. Millennials, hipsters, I don't know if that's what you call them but I agree with everything the anon coward above said and am happy to not be the only one(grumpy bastard) thinking it. Funny thing, these also seem to be the same ultra sensitive people that need their safe spaces. Those are some messed up individuals. Do their births coincide with the chernobyl disaster perhaps?

Re:Millennials/Hipsters are the problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see that comment as being cranky. It's just describing a real problem. It inherently has to be a negative comment. One can't describe a problem like millennials and hipsters positively.

Suppose somebody was repeatedly hitting you in your cock and balls with a hammer every few minutes. You wouldn't be considered cranky if you complained about the excruciating pain.

Re:Millennials/Hipsters are the problem.

[Ol Olsoc]

Except they have a valid point. If the changes that these people made had been rated as good by the general public, there would have been an increase in their marketshare. In this case the opposite has held true, and it reflects directly back on those that mozilla has hired meaning that the millinials/hipsters are the cause of mozilla's massive loss in marketshare in the last 8 years.

You sound exactly like the guys down at the local bar moaning about how it all went downhill after women got the vote.

You forgot to add:

Thanks, Obama!

Re:Millennials/Hipsters are the problem.

[Ol Olsoc]

5 insightful? So you must have proof that hipsters and millenials are running the show at Mozilla?

Certiously, someone so insightful should have pretty good citations.

I'll even wait until you get those goddamned kids off your lawn for the cites.

Re:Millennials/Hipsters are the problem.

[Mashiki]

5 insightful? So you must have proof that hipsters and millenials are running the show at Mozilla?

Certiously, someone so insightful should have pretty good citations.

I'll even wait until you get those goddamned kids off your lawn for the cites.

You only need to look at the policy changes and the internal pushes that have been taking place at Mozilla itself including statements by their current CEO and others. That includes stuff by people who work at Mozilla trying to force their views on people at other OSS projects. Or haven't you noticed the shrill amount of whining by hipsters and millennials over terms like "master, slave, suicide"(as an example) in various FOSS projects, and how they want to remove them. Never mind that it would break backwards compatibility, it's all about the perceived hurt feelings. And that those people who contribute nothing, are directly impacting projects.

Re:Millennials/Hipsters are the problem.

[Mashiki]

You sound exactly like the guys down at the local bar moaning about how it all went downhill after women got the vote.

You forgot to add:

Thanks, Obama!

Yeah how dare I actually be involved in FOSS projects and see the amount of BS going on these days over the perpetual hurt feelings brigade over words that are used in important functions.

Oh as for the Obama thing? Pro tip: America isn't the centre of the universe, no matter how much you think it is.

Re:Millennials/Hipsters are the problem.

[Ol Olsoc]

You sound exactly like the guys down at the local bar moaning about how it all went downhill after women got the vote.

You forgot to add:

Thanks, Obama!

Yeah how dare I actually be involved in FOSS projects and see the amount of BS going on these days over the perpetual hurt feelings brigade over words that are used in important functions.

Oh as for the Obama thing? Pro tip: America isn't the centre of the universe, no matter how much you think it is.

You mad bro?

Re:Millennials/Hipsters are the problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or haven't you noticed the shrill amount of whining by hipsters and millennials over terms like "master, slave, suicide"(as an example) in various FOSS projects,

Oh, seriously. First it was hipsters and millennials now the boggy man is social justice warriors. Grow up.

Re:Millennials/Hipsters are the problem.

[Mashiki]

You mad bro?

Sadly no, more disappointed in the general stupidity.

Re:Millennials/Hipsters are the problem.

[Ol Olsoc]

You mad bro?

Sadly no, more disappointed in the general stupidity.

And how. It's pretty widely known that I'm so stupid I forget to breath at times.

But define hipster for me. Seems for some that it is like hardcore neoconservatives calling anyone who disagrees with them a Libtard or some other useless pejorative.

And to think, no one brought up "neckbeards" And with millennials. Ive experience with quite a few, and for the most part, they consume, they do not produce. But even that's a forced generalization.

To cap it all off we have seen the same sort of ruination of browsers since before the millenials were even in secondary education.

The problem with Firefox is that it is being run/developed by people who by a combination of ego, and who have failed in the fight against software bloat, have seriously screwed up their flagship program.

And big egos and and screwing up your product have existed pretty much forever.

So has identifying some mythical enemy to serve as some sort of scapegoat.

Well good!

[cfalcon]

I'm glad that they learned their lesson. Maybe if Pale Moon starts to be bad ever, I'll consider switching back.

Our learnings show that users want content that is

[blogagog]

"Our learnings show that users want content that is relevant, exciting and engaging."

I think that means that users want great fun advertisements. I think it's true. My favorites are the ones about pills for diseases I've never heard of before suggesting I ask my doctor for more information. I never have anything fun to talk to my doctor about, and these are great conversation starters.

I actually think Mozilla did advertising right

[guevera]

I can't think of a single UI change Firefox has made in years that I liked. Some I've hated; some I'm indiferent to.

I don't like that FF still has performance issues compared to Chrome. Doesn't crash like it used to, though.

But the occasional ad on the new tab page didn't really bother me.

IMHO it's actually an example of the right way to do advertising. It was non-intrusive, it was differentiated enough from other content that you could tell it was an ad without being distracting. It usually contained something at least vaugely relevant and not boner pills and hot milfs. And it helped pay for something useful without costing me cash. If the internet obeyed simliar principles I wouldn't need an ad blocker.

Apparently I'm the minority.

Of course, I really only use it nowdays for firebug and a couple of other things when I'm doing dev or troubleshooting or whatever.

That might be the bigger problem for Mozilla: make me care enough about your browser to hate it sometimes.

Re:I actually think Mozilla did advertising right

[iampiti]

I didn't mind too much either, but mostly because I understand a project the size of Firefox needs money to keep running. Anyway, I don't think there's a way to make money without annoying the users at least a little bit

How is Opera these days?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone used Opera on Linux recently? Firefox has sold out, PaleMoon appears to be a Firefox clone, and Chrome is a privacy nightmare. What is left other than Opera? I haven't used it in years.

Re:How is Opera these days?

[theskipper]

Been using Opera Developer on Mint/Cinnamon for a few weeks and it's definitely ok. Only one crash (surprisingly, expected more) and very fast (unsurprisingly given the engine underneath). As a matter of fact, I was somewhat stunned that after getting to the bottom of this thread there wasn't any mention of it.

Random thoughts:
- One process per tab (ps aux |grep opera...whoa!)
- Lazy tab loading (enabled in settings)
- No multirow tabs afaict, didn't see an extension like Tab Mix on FF
- uBlock works great (extension)
- New tab gives a customizable dial page. It shows only the site name in different fonts unless it finds a logo, not a thumbnail preview. Still undecided.
- Dial page allows grouping of sites into one tile, gets close to the group your tabs concept in FF.
- No significant rendering problems with various sites like in the old days of Opera.
- Bookmarks sidebar is ok but not as polished as Firefox yet. Don't have a list of "gripes", just feel like it needs some more polish and TLC.
- Extensions are pretty cool embedded in the sidebar.
- Interface is definitely "slim" like Australis so it's not like going back to the pre-hipster interface days (e.g. Palemoon freezing FF). Probably fair to say it's not the holy grail of interface usability+speed, just a very decent alternative.

Lastly (and most importantly to me personally), what I really liked about FF was the group your tabs feature but then the announcement that it was going to be removed came up. That's why I gave Opera to see what features it had, it would be very cool to see that revived in Opera.

FWIW.

Re:Our learnings show that users want content that

[Ol Olsoc]

"Our learnings show that users want content that is relevant, exciting and engaging." I think that means that users want great fun advertisements. I think it's true. My favorites are the ones about pills for diseases I've never heard of before suggesting I ask my doctor for more information. I never have anything fun to talk to my doctor about, and these are great conversation starters.

Ask your Doctor if Scratchicrotchi 80 grit catheters are for you!

content that is relevant, exciting and engaging.

[Ol Olsoc]

A group of folks wnrt to Mozilla HQ this morning and listened in on a staff meeting - what they overheard......

"Users want content that is relevant, exciting and engaging."

"We need to facilitate integrated synergies"

"The new Browser will engage visionary models"

"This will allow us to enable leading-edge content"

All these three word corporate bullshitisms courtesy of the Corporate bullshit generator http://www.novasio.com/bs_gene...

If there was ever a bad sign, it is when an outfit starts using the three word bullshit. And I defy anyone to tell the difference between the BS generator and what they wrote, other than we know they wrote it already.

Explains a lot...

[God of Lemmings]

Now I understand what all the proxy block spam when I opened firefox at work....

Tracking protection is good

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla, Tracking Protection (which blocks tracking elements on a page) is very good. More of this.
Popup block still doesn't block popups.
Speed / Stability the two ongoing issues.

I still don't understand how tab groups work, you sort of go into a mode with a page of tabs, as though groups are mutually exclusive and we want to look at X or Y but never elements of X and Y?.... could use some more thought.

Sack the idiot with the "relevant, exciting and engaging" phrases, he isn't leading, he's reading stock phrases from a "Dummies Guide to sounding like a manager" book.

Re:content that is relevant, exciting and engaging

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people that do the work/code at mozilla stopped attending these meetings. The monday meeting is a circle-jerk for highly paid execs. These words make them feel good and potentially fool some new hires... kinda sad.

what's surprising though is the number of hard working people that still believe in the mission and are still coding their asses off.

to reiterate

[vel-ex-tech]

I would like to reiterate my position on Brendan Eich.

I stand with Voltaire. I defend Eich's right to speak against the GBT community (note the absence of the L) to the death.

What I will not do is help fund his speech in the form of political lobbying via a(i)ds in a browser. (Myself I am happy to report I do not suffer from AIDS/GRID despite the insistence by the religious that their god should have given me it by now.)

Then there was that whole fucking SJW* drama.

Now that the advertising has ended, I welcome Eich to step back up. He at least seemed to know WTF he was doing.

Yet, we cannot have nice things because of these misunderstandings of ideology vs. funding vs. free speech vs. political speech.

(Yes, I am aware there are things called paragraphs. Each of those are their own paragraph. Consider it a precis of the rant I might have written.)

* You know who I mean. I don't mean Harriet Tubman, who was an actual warrior.

Lesson learned: Complaining is awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

This whole complaining thing rocks. Seriously. If something bugs you, it doesn't even matter if that thing is in the necessary best-interests of someone else, just complain. You don't even need a reason to complain -- just if something bugs you for whatever reason. Complain!

Recently, after my success complaining about the revenue model of Firefox, I went to the Apple store and decided to give this whole complaining thing a try.

I told them that I was "not okay" with Apple's revenue model and that I would not be paying the prices for iPhones. I would however be taking the product anyway,

The Apple rep told me to wait a second and then he came back and gave me a free phone! Today, Apple announced that they have learned "a ton" about what annoys consumers and they have applogized for attempting to "monetize" their stores. The prices have been pulled from their products now.

So listen everyone (and by "everyone", I mean mostly Millennials who have never paid for media) : If you don't like someone's business model because you find prices, advertisements and other assorted quid pro quo to be distasteful: Just pipe up and let your overblown sense of entitlement flow freely! Don't be shy now.

There's no reason you shouldn't have everything for nothing. Why should *your* content and *your* applications be monetized by someone else?

Complain! /s

Re: Lesson learned: Complaining is awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

So let's see...with that sorry attitude and poor argument style you're either in advertising or you're just a libertarian jerk.

If I don't like someone's business model I won't use their products, but saying why is a perfectly acceptable thing. Sorry if you think everyone needs to just be obedient little consumers and buy whatever the capitalists want to sell them.

And no, I'm not a millennial and I pay for content I like, which isn't much. I'm just sick of obnoxious ads everywhere all the time. Most people are. If advertisers weren't so greedy and behaving like they're entitled to make people watch their garbage there wouldn't be such a backlash, but they are and there is. Get over it.

Re: Lesson learned: Complaining is awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

You apparently missed the point. The point is not, as you say, that those who object take their business elsewhere.

That's actually fine! And it's what you're supposed to do.

The issue is people who object to business models (of any kind really) and want to consume/use the product anyway.

That's the have your cake and eat it too sense of entitlement I think the OP was referring to.

Re:Lesson learned: Complaining is awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, nobody should complain about something that has always been free, open source and includes their hard work, even when some company decides to completely take it over, take full credit for it and monetize it without permission or paying royalties.

Mozilla is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla has simply taken so many wrong turns its really sad. Does anyone at Mozilla actually use Firefox? Its a honest question and their changes they make seem out of touch with its core user base. How can you be successful when your main core users hate and complain about ever change you make? I can remember when Firefox was actually innovative, stable, and a refreshing choice in a browser. Maybe that was only because IE 5 and 6 was so bad? Maybe the reality has finally set in that its not so great and judging by the rapid pace Chrome has had. I would say Firefox does not have a hope in hell of regaining any of its user base every.

Re:Mozilla is dying

[jones_supa]

I can remember when Firefox was actually innovative, stable, and a refreshing choice in a browser. Maybe that was only because IE 5 and 6 was so bad?

That's the reason. Now when Chrome and Edge have upped their game, Firefox starts to look quite crusty.

Mozilla, you got caught.. again!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh well Mozilla, how about telling the truth for only once during your existance?

http://www.ghacks.net/2015/12/05/mozilla-has-a-revenue-share-agreement-with-pocket/

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[Anonymous Coward]

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[Anonymous Coward]

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See subject: APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit http://start64.com/index.php?o...

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FREE, not 'souled-out' to advertisers + adds speed, security & reliability. Does FAR more w/ FAR less more efficiently vs. redundant browser addons & local DNS servers @ home + fixes DNS' many security issues & it stops a LOT of tracking @ webpage + DNS levels via 1 file you NATIVELY have - firewalls do the rest (on less used IP address trackers vs. host-domain name type).

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It obtains data vs. threats & for adblocking from 10 reputable security community sites!

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SPEEDS YOU UP 2 ways (adblocks + local RAM cached favorite sites @ TOP of hosts for fastest resolution speed vs. remote DNS (aids reliability)) vs. other "so-called security 'solutions'" SLOWING YOU!

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All that via something you natively have vs. "bolting on browser addons 'MOAR'" that's usermode slower & increases messagepassing, cpu + ram overheads!

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MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee who verified it's source as safe http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi... ) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus per this VERY recent testing of them all http://www.av-test.org/en/news...

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It's safe proven by 57 antivirus programs recently in BOTH its 64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

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In its 32-bit model too https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

Installer too -> http://f.virscan.org/APKHostsF...

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* "The premise is quite simple: Take something designed by nature & reprogram it to make it work for the body rather than against it..." - Dr. Alice Krippen: "I am legend".

APK

P.S.=> By "yours truly" - "The Lord of Hosts" so-to-speak:

"The image this title brings to mind is of a mighty military commander, one who can at a mere word summon rank upon rank of protective power" from https://answers.yahoo.com/ques... & THE WORD = hosts!

(Accept NO substitutes!)

...apk

Ooh let's talk about Brendan Eich

[Anonymous Coward]

and his right-wingedness, and how he never blathered quite like that. And about the design quality of his underlings' work product vs. the scatterbrained churn-and-shovel crap from under Andreas Gul's neoliberal rule.