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Firefox 45 Will Remove Tab Groups Today, Get This Add-on To Replace It (softpedia.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Firefox 45, set to be released today, will remove the Tab Groups feature, a feature that many people used, but Mozilla decided to ask due to buggy code. The good news is that a developer created a perfect replacement for this feature as an add-on. Users that use Tab Groups on a daily basis are urged to install the add-on before upgrading to Firefox 45. The add-on will take over from the browser's Tab Groups feature without any complex configuration. Users that update to Firefox 45 will have their tab groups moved to their Bookmarks as folders, which may be difficult to move back into the Tab Groups add-on later on, especially if some people have hundreds of URLs.
In my day, we would axe a good question in school. Today, we ask a feature that sucks. What a future
as a bonus.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
>> where does Mozilla find so many chimps to hire
The complete works of Shakespeare were already published so the chimps were "on the bench" so to speak.
What did they ask due to buggy code? Must use Cortana........
"Mozilla decided to ask due to buggy code."? /.'s editors got their lingo wrong.
I think
You better axe somebody!
OMG (Score:5+ Insightful)
What? Why did they spend all of their time fixing this stupid feature no one uses! Firefox is supposed to be lean instead of all this useless bloat! Just make it an extension, that's the whole point of Firefox
So why not just fix the buggy code? I'm getting a little worried about the slips the Mozilla foundation is making. First with pushing "recommended sites" on the "home page" when a new tab was opened (used to push advertising agenda), now this. The is a new browser from the founders of Opera called "Vivaldi" at http://www.vivaldi.com/ and it's very good. MS is pushing "Edge" (along with windows 10 on every Windows 7+ OS and involuntary at that...shut down Windows Update in your services to prevent OS hijacking by MS) but it's not great. Ironically, you're better off with Firefox.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
reverse Ebonicsed
Letter To Iran
As someone who's used Firefox since way back when it was named "Phoenix," I say that removing anything and everything that isn't strictly necessary (except tabs themselves and support for extensions) is a good thing!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I Firefox from its early Phoenix days until I switched to other browsers after the "AwesomeBar" debacle in 2008, and my opinion today is that while the binary size has increased, the value provided by Firefox has gone down. Its no surprise they have lost market share from a decent high in the mid 2000's to their pathetic lows of today.
but Mozilla decided to ask due to buggy code
Ask - a question, to question, a query or inquiry.
Axe - to cut, chop, or remove.
Unless you're using some sort of ghetto slang, in which case "Axe" can be used for both.
Example: "Fry, let me axe you a question."
According to the summary, it appears they asked the code to be less buggy. Apparently, the code didn't respond as Mozilla wanted?
I used to love you. Now I find you have fallen behind even Microsoft Edge. I don't know when it happened, but I realized that on my latest laptop (I usually get a new piece of equipment at home or work every six months on average) that I didn't even bother to install you.
I thank you for reopening the browser wars. For that, I will forever be in your debt. But somehow, you managed to lose the war badly. Chrome is faster and better with memory management and has nice built-in developer tools. Edge is actually quicker too though I feel dirty for praising a Microsoft product. You used to have the corner on add-ins, but that is no longer the case.
Thanks for what you did for the Internet. But your time has passed.
Great. Now funding can go to REAL use. Like Facebook integration, Microsoft back doors, and ivory back scratchers for the executives. Y'know, gotta keep up the revenue for the non-profit. ...wait, was Firefox a web browser at one point?
I use the add-on in Firefox to get tab groups in my tab groups (Inception-style). With Firefox 45 this will no longer be possible.
I've been amazed, and not in a good way, since Mozilla has started their code cleanup project. People had been complaining for years that Mozilla was throwing every bell and whistle into Firefox adding bloat and bugs. Now that they have found out the users are right and start removing the bloat and bugs, all the users can [still] do is bitch. Extensions are being added that allow the smaller pools of users to continue using those features and the bloat is gone for everyone else. It's a win all the way around. Do this for enough features and everyone gets a slimmer, faster browser that has the features you use but, without all the bloat for the ones you don't. The one person that exists that uses every feature removed might lose out but, all of the rest of us gain.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
On a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 represents 'I never used it at all', and 5 represents 'I used it all the time': How often did you use the 'Tab Groups' feature in Firefox?
Me? '1'; I knew what it was, but didn't see the point to it and therefore never used it.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Pale Moon is the Firefox that you wish Firefox still were.
What's wrong with the awesomebar ? It's the only thing holding me from moving to Chrome.
Except that that doesn't seem to be what's happening, because a lot of random unnecessary junk is added.
Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to find the hamburger button to take me to the gear button so i can disable the helpful^Whorrible new about:newtab page.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Firefox deserves to go the way of IE6.
Well, Mozilla's symbol is a dinosaur after all.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
Perhaps because what people wanted them to remove were completely non-browser related crap like "Pocket", or "social integration" features, or "recommended sites", rather than actual browser related functionality like fine-grain cookie management and tab groups.
They're keeping the shit and throwing out the useful bits. Which I might see if it was working, but it's not: they're haemorrhaging more and more market share as they add shit and remove good things, because - gasp - people wanted the good stuff and didn't want the shit.
Is there any other reason to upgrade to version 45?
In other browser news I see Comodo Dragon is up to version48.12.18.243
But Avast thinks its a virus and won't let me download it.
For some reason, it's still the #1 browser in Germany. It would seem as if most people consider it the lesser evil compared to Chrome.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
What's wrong with the awesomebar ? It's the only thing holding me from moving to Chrome.
To start, it's not awesome.
Second, it takes up way too much space, showing me information I don't need or care about. Third, I can't configure it to be simpler unless I use something like the Old Location Bar add-on - which I use.
I don't know how popular add-ons like Old Location Bar, Classic Theme Restorer and Expire History by Days are, but that they exist and are, at least moderately, popular should tell the Mozilla team something. Too bad they're not listening. But, to each their own, I guess ...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I used tab groups all the time at work. Feature used to make me so much more productive, and its been missed since removed from Nightly.
Used to separate different workstreams into tab groups. Used to quickly jump between projects without the need to go hunting for the correct firefox icon. (had about 6 or so active groups at any one time).
Going into the tab group also gave a nice preview render of the pages within each group too - very useful for quickly picking out a tab that's miles away in the current tab group stack of tabs.
I really, really question the direction of firefox, and mozilla in general.
Extensions are being added that allow the smaller pools of users to continue using those features and the bloat is gone for everyone else.
Like those extensions for things non-browsery things like Hello, Pocket and Social - oh, right, they're bloat for everyone.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
... Now that they have found out the users are right and start removing the bloat and bugs, all the users can [still] do is bitch. ...
Firefox has been removing useful features, such as the ability to customize the UI, and adding useless highly bloated features, such as Pocket.
.
It is not necessarily the removal or addition of features, but what features are being added or removed.
And the problem is that Mozilla is clueless in this area.
Unlike IE, Chrome, and Safari, Firefox is not the default browser on any widely used platform (except desktop Linux, although even that is still mostly a system for nerds and not widely used by ordinary plebs). That means that the market for Firefox is the users that are knowledgeable enough to download a binary to replace the default web browser on their platform--likely, this means power users. Power users like things like advanced tab and cookie management. Power users do not like social media integration. Power users do not appreciate when the features they like (especially the ones they like enough to work around some long-lived bugs) are axed and replaced by an extension they have to go out and download.
Do you all actually read the comments before commenting 100th time about a typo? Obviously not, what the hell am i asking.
You misspelled "axetually".
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
IIRC, the Opera guys came up with "Awesome Bar," not the hipster douches at Firefox. As was usually the case, Firefox took a good feature of Opera and implemented it poorly.
The problem is that the new extensions system is much more restrictive and doesn't allow all the features to be added back in. That's done for security, because it turns out allowing extensions to modify security critical parts of the browser is a really bad idea, especially when your extensions are written in Javascript.
Firefox can never be what people want it to be - fast, massively modifiable through extensions and secure. It's a case of picking any two.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
LOL. You must be new here.
An editor that actually edits. On /. ? Bwahaha ! :-(
The main issue for me (being that I have moved to other browsers and made my peace with similar functionality) is the way it was handled by the FF developers - it really was a huge "fuck you, this is happening, tough shit if you don't like it" at the time, with massive changes to the way the address bar worked. If you wanted to revert to the old functionality, you were told to do x, y and z, while the developers and fanboys ignored the valid response that doing x, y and z didn't actually restore the address bar functionality to pre-awesomebar functionality, it just gimped the awesomebar functionality and made it even worse to use.
So, once it became obvious that the developers didn't give a shit about people using the software, I left for another browser. Haven't actually looked back once either - I do however smile every time I see a Slashdot story about some bat shit insane decision by the FF devs, but I don't regret stopping using FF.
I switched to Chromium several years ago because FF was having problems, but I ended up switching back to FF because Chromium is such a memory hog (a side effect of having a separate process per tab, I think). I always avoided Chrome because of Google's added closed-source "features".
But lately with FF I've been seeing what you're complaining about: after a while, the FF process will peg the CPU, and I'll end up having to Ctrl-Alt-Esc and kill it. After I restart the session, it won't use much CPU at all; part of this is because FF is much smarter than Chrome at restarting sessions. Chrome will load ALL the tabs at once, bringing your computer to a crawl as it ties up the CPU and RAM loading and rendering dozens of tabs at once, whereas FF will only load and render a tab when you look at it, and all the others will just serve as placeholders until you do. But after a certain amount of time browsing, FF will start chewing up CPU cycles and need to be restarted.
I really wish FF would add a feature to show, in a table, every tab and how much resources it's using, so I can figure out which tabs/websites are causing me so many problems. (And yes, I have both uBlock Origin and NoScript installed.)
actually the summary seems to be this: Remove everything I don't use, keep everything I do. And since I'm impacted I must be reflective of the actual user base. What the actual users use and what slashdotters whinge about are actually worlds apart.
Mozilla Boss: How can we fuck up Firefox for the next release?
Mozilla Dev: We've had great success fucking up or removing features people use.
Mozilla Intern: And make sure we make it more like Chrome, people hate that.
MB: Sounds good, what should we target next?
MI: I can run some numbers and see what features a moderate percentage of our users use. That way we continue the nice slow spiral down the drain.
MD: As long as I don't have to add anything new, I'm all for it.
MB: All right, so we pick some remaining features that distinguish us from Chrome, and we take one away that users depend on. Not too few users, not too many.
MI: I'll run a report against a target 20-40%.
MD: Once we pick a feature, I'll get on bugzilla and start adding bullshit about how it's a security risk for unspecified reasons, how it's unmaintained despite it not needing any maintenance, etc.
MI: I'll use my sock puppet accounts to create a few dupe accounts to reply in agreement with our actions.
MB: I'm fine with this as long as we make it absolutely clear we don't give a fucking shit what users want. Make sure to mark all their issues as "will not fix" and lock the comments whenever they post evidence of use or arguments against our "unmaintained" line.
MD: Don't worry, I'll post that we're redirecting all "conversation" to the mailing list.
MI: And as the moderator of the mailing list, I'll simply reject any postings that argue against us.
MB: Excellent. At this rate, we'll have a complete Chrome clone by the end of the year!
first time i've seen it in this direction, axe --> ask. it's usually the other way around.
It would seem as if most people consider it the lesser evil compared to Chrome.
...which of course it is.
They better go ax somebody!
...Mozilla's solution to a bit of code that's been present in their software for years and is buggy is to remove it years later rather than fix it?
Good to know they're still the consummate professionals we always assumed they were.
Really, where does Mozilla find so many chimps to hire?
Judging on recent examples, I'd say from the Nautilus, Gnome 3 and systemd crowd.
Removing important and popular features is the new IT paradigm!
I certainly don't want that useless feature in my browser. Do you not know how add-ons work?
Sounds exactly like Gnome3.
Now that they have found out the users are right and start removing the bloat and bugs, all the users can [still] do is bitch.
Its a different set of users bitching. The first set of bitchers no longer use Firefox.
Firefox became the bloated browser for users that want a bloated browser. Possibly the worst thing to do at this point is to alienate the remaining user base.
"His name was James Damore."
You complaints about Firefox sound good, except that all the other mainstream browsers are at least as bad.
Chrome is a memory hog and reloads everything when a session is restarted (unlike FF which waits until you look at a tab to reload it).
IE is, well, IE (or "Edge" as they call it now), and has no plug-ins AFAIK. On today's web, uBlock Origin and a script blocker are mandatory. And it only runs on Windows.
Safari only runs on Macs.
So it's not like there's a lot of great choices out there.
That's why I use Pale Moon. It's FireFox without the bloat. And it's also available in a 64-bit version.
Just commenting on this so the parent AC post becomes visible - more people need to know about Pale Moon. I use it too - installed it after FF came out with that Australis shit and I decided I'd had enough of Mozilla's attitude problem.
If enough users adopt Pale Moon, the developer may have enough sufficient resources to keep it alive, security updates and all, when FF inevitably goes down the drain around which it is circling more closely with each passing release.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Right!
# apt-get install palemoon Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done E: Unable to locate package palemoon
Pale Moon on Debian Jessie:
echo "deb http://main.mepis-deb.org/mepi... mepis12cr test" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mepis.list
apt-get update
apt-get install palemoon
If you're running a 'buntu variant, add the ppa: https://launchpad.net/~marian....
If you're on some other Linux variant, (or on Debian or 'buntu for that matter), just run the install script available here: https://linux.palemoon.org/dow...
Really, it's not that hard. Hell, there's even a special version for the Raspberry Pi.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Right. You shouldn't need an add-on to remove functionality from your browser! Mozilla, do you hear this?! All these features and crap they're shipping native were the entire reason for add-ons in the first place. If they wanted to ship with these features, they should have developed them as add-ons and bundled those with the distribution; then, anyone who didn't want the features could simply remove them and make their browser faster and lighter rather than the current situation, where one must install addons to disable the functionality, making the browser heavier and slower.
Mozilla had the browser market wrapped up precisely because of how powerful their add-ons were, allowing an ultra-light stripped-down browser where that was wanted and a super-massive do-everything browser where that was preferred. Now? Now, we have the option of a super-massive do-everything browser, or a super-massive stripped-down (by way of add-ons to remove functionality, rather than add it) browser, in a world where Windows tablets with 2GB of RAM aren't uncommon. Sadly, this has made me switch to Chrome, which has its own set of issues I'd also rather not deal with. All because Mozilla couldn't be assed to eat their own dogfood and develop features not every user might be interested in as add-ons, which they could bundle with the browser and allow the user to remove if they don't want them.
My suggestion to Mozilla, which I'll submit to them directly in addition to posting here, is to implement any features above and beyond those required for a basic functional modern web browser (that list includes rendering HTML and CSS pages, javascript mostly because it is required for add-ons in the first place, and support for common protocols: HTTP and HTTPS, possibly SPDY) natively and re-implement everything else as add-ons. Go ahead and bundle them, but make it possible for users to remove (not just disable) them. And if you're concerned with performance, implement a native add-on API, so you can compile those add-ons along with the browser (but, again, as their own separate executables), rather than developing them in javascript.
In short, give us the ability to once again have a browser that is both bare-bones and lightweight, while retaining the ability to add on every function under the sun. You know, what made Firefox great a decade ago.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Does anyone know of a good alternative for the Mac? The one thing that is really keeping me on Firefox is it's ability to restore my session after a crash (either browser or system). A few years ago I tried a couple other browsers and they would lose tabs that I had open if they quit unexpectedly but Firefox doesn't do that.
It's important because right now my system freezes sometimes when it goes to sleep. The screen will turn back on and I can move the pointer around with the mouse but that's as responsive as the system gets. Even the time shows what time the system went to sleep. So that's why I want a browser that can reliably keep my session for me.
And I don't want Flash installed on my computer. I got tired of it updating every week or two and having to restart my browsers along with a couple of other applications. And the curious thing is that except for a couple of sites (BBC mainly) I don't even notice that it's gone.
So with the new owners click-whoring headlines enter Slashdot? I've been visiting the site from pretty much the beginning and haven't really noticed this journalistic cancer before. If you stop it now, no major damage happens.
They promised to remove Extension support several years ago, with some foolish idea that they could drive people to use their "jet" thing. Not only was Jet utter crap, but the outcry at the threat of removing extensions echoed for a long time in their ears. I don't think they have enough remaining customers to make good on that stupid promise again.
The only reason I've remained loyal to Firefox is the extension model works so well. I can live with most of their ugly and awkward UI changes, even though they're all user-unfriendly and I hate everything about them. Extensions have replaced some of the missing needed features they've removed. But the main thing is there is no reason to use any browser that doesn't run NoScript. There's no reason to contact any server of a resource if I have no intention of loading or viewing said resource. And all the major alternatives are worse. Chrome is actively sending browsing habits directly into the world's largest advertising company, and I have no desire to feed that rapacious tiger. Microsoft's old offerings are laughably as insecure as swiss cheese, and their new browser phones home with practically every keypress.
Yes, I could run privoxy, but that's a really awkward approach when compared to NoScript's brilliant rules engine. But if the only choice becomes running through a filtering proxy, then I'm no longer bound to Firefox. May as well use the built in browsers at that point - they're less hassle.
John
The trouble is, we already had that in the form of Communicator/SeaMonkey. Firefox was created as a reaction against bloat!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
FireFox has been re-written using one process per tab. It's called Electrolysis (E10s), and is standard in FF since about v40 IIRC.
It's hardly that big a shift. Tab Groups (Formerly Panorama) used to be an add-on called "Tab Candy" (IIRC).
Just more evidence that Mozilla knows nothing about its users and instead is creating a browser by Mozilla devs intended for Mozilla devs.
Buddy, you don't know half of it. They've fucked up 45ESR big time: pocket, reader, idiot new search, no more options in a separate windows.
You didn't mention what browser. As someone mulling ditching Firefox, I'm intrigued by alternatives beyond Chrome, IE/Edge, etc. I know Palemoon is out there but what else?
That just makes too much sense. They'd never go for it.
I've been amazed, and not in a good way, since Mozilla has started their code cleanup project. People had been complaining for years that Mozilla was throwing every bell and whistle into Firefox adding bloat and bugs. Now that they have found out the users are right and start removing the bloat and bugs, all the users can [still] do is bitch.
Because they're different groups of users. It's not one unified group.
That, or the FF users who wanted the browser stripped down have already jumped ship and we're just hearing the ones who are still around who like the bloat anymore.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
And as I regularly do, just going to remind everyone that there IS a Linux build available. It might not have the sexy installer but it's easy to install and update anyway.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
https://linux.palemoon.org/
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
I disagree. Not entirely, but enough to comment.
Check out this hypothetical- the browser was just an URL bar, and then you could add plugins / extensions / whatnot. Into this reasonably open environment, inject different ways of doing pretty much everything- favorites, start pages, content blocking and modification, tabs, etc.
You or I would tinker with this and it would be pretty much perfect, until we have to go to another machine. Then we are reliant on either moving these preferences about via some online doohicky (login to "the browser", really logging into the mothership and pulling down what it needs to look like you are used to), or setting them up from scratch each time.
Each addon could easily be abandoned, with the best version of displaying tabs or whatever ceasing functionality six months after you have finally figured out all the details of it.
Finally, every addon you have to get increases the risk of it being a bad addon- someone needs to vet that, and that's a huge deal.
I'm fine with many of the things Firefox (and others) have decided is default UI- bookmarks, tabs, etc. Like you, I've got no time for things like pocket- no interest in that at all. But my point is, it's not obvious what is core functionality and what is not, and every addon that you have to remember and pull down is a hassle for you at some point in the future- it ceases to be a product and becomes a system you have to integrate. That's perfect for power and customization, but you know that it's a burden many would opt out of if given the chance.
Chrome is decent, but not exactly light on resources, either. IE is dead, Edge is not ready yet. Opera is quite nice, but as a niche browser it tends to have a few compatibility issues.
[citation needed]
Well, you could stop disabling telemetry? If they know what it is you, and those likes you, have for usage patterns they might (hey, it's possible) actually be more inclined to keep and improve the native features you enjoy.
I think a part of the problem is that non-tech users get heard more because they don't disable telemetry. They probably don't know how to. The few that are technical users and leave telemetry enabled are drowned out by the Average Joe User-types.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Sadly, I think you're right.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
First you say it runs flawlessly and then you say it has bugs and missing functionality. The missing functionality can be overlooked but having bugs kind of takes away that whole "flawlessly" thing, doesn't it?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
So you don't disagree with me at all, then; they should bundle a default set of add-ons that most people will use, so there is no confusion about which add-ons to "pull down". they could ship with the exact same functionality they do today, just with most of it as (bundles) add-ons, which can be removed if not wanted.
Perhaps, if you had read my entire post, you'd get that you basically just argued for exactly what I was saying: make any extra functionality an add-on (so users like you and I can remove the cruft we don't want) and bundle a set of defaults (so everyone else doesn't have to remember what to install).
I get it, though. I really do. You're sitting here arguing against doing any extra work, how could I possibly expect you to do the "extra" work of reading and understanding what I've written before you reply?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Consult any historical old/middle English textbook. The pronunciation went aks => ask
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Flashblock on Firefox seems to have gone to shit recently. Is there a version that works?
-- Fuck Beta
That's not as convincing as you might think... it not only proposes spelling implies pronunciation, but simply as an excuse for why a dimwit might pronounce nuclear as nucular. Hi George!
I'll buy the spelling went ax -> ask, but that doesn't definitively mean it was pronounced axe.
Well I wasn't around 1000 years ago but based on the 'vowel shifts' throughout the 2nd millennium, I would guess it was pronounced with an 'a' as in 'father' rather than as in 'cat'.
so something like 'arks' but without the 'r' sound rather than 'axe' rhymes with Â'tacks'.
This happens with every piece of software.
We ahave a boot system that does everything, running a kernel that does everything that has a desktop manager that does everything running a browser that does everything connecting to a website that does everything.
Where is the time that they only did a part of it and they did that well.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Agree 100% with your comments.
I used to be an Opera fan until the lack of good filtering options led me to Firefox (Opera had "site preferences", which was useful, but at some point it started being insufficient, besides the Opera I loved is dead)
If Privoxy ends up being the only option (we used to have Proxomitron, brilliant stuff), there is really no reason for me to stay with FF, would probably go for Chromium or Vivaldi once it is ready.
You are the Firefox Userbase AICMFP!
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Good grief. My point is that it pushes system integration to the user, and that's crappy for most users. Default bundles don't change that much, and even risk adding inefficiency (even if you don't use a scripting language). I didn't think that was the core of your post- if the root of your suggestion is a bunch of pieces you can compile together, that's... you know what that is, that's not any kind of help.
You do realize that Firefox has, and has had, add-on functionality for most of its existence, right? System integration is already in the hands of the user, I'm merely proposing that some features that aren't central to the role of a web browser not be included as native functionality but, rather, as add-ons, utilizing the add-on functionality that already exists. The risk of adding inefficiency would be minimal, as the add-on functionality already exists, while doing so would introduce the ability to increase efficiency by stripping out functionality we don't want or need. Currently, the only way most users can remove such functionality is to use an add-on to hide it; the functionality is still present, only now you're running additional code and further reducing efficiency to give the appearance that the functionality has been removed. And, by bundling the default set (and activating them by default), you're not sticking the user with a system integration task,; from their perspective, if they don't want the task, they'd be getting exactly the same thing they're getting now, it would literally be no different for those users.
<sarc>But yes, of course, you're right, what we have now is many time more efficient and making it possible for power users to better customize the browser and make it more resemble what once made it great, while providing regular users with the same out-of-box experience they currently enjoy would just be a horrible idea.</sarc>
In reality, you just sound like a Mozilla developer afraid he might have to implement some of this at some point.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Most of the last several linux distros I tested came with SeaMonkey as their default browser. And I was like -- yes! someone gives a shit about everyday usability!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Replacing Firefox with the very browser it was supposed to supplant is deliciously ironic.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
True, given that SM is basically an updated Netscape.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?