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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
"Mozilla decided to ask due to buggy code."? /.'s editors got their lingo wrong.
I think
You better axe somebody!
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.
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.
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!