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Mozilla Launches Test Pilot, A Firefox Add-On For Trying Experimental Features (thenextweb.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla today launched Test Pilot, a program for trying out experimental Firefox features. To try the new functionality Mozilla is offering for its browser, you have to download a Firefox add-on from testpilot.firefox.com and enable an experiment. The main caveat is that experiments are currently only available in English (though Mozilla promises to add more languages "later this year"). Test Pilot was first introduced for Firefox 3.5, but the new program has been revamped since then, featuring three main components: Activity Stream, Tab Center and Universal Search. Activity Stream is designed to help you navigate your browsing history faster, surfacing your top sites along with highlights from your browsing history and bookmarks. Tab Center displays open tabs vertically along the side of your screen. Mozilla says Universal Search "combines the Awesome Bar history with the Firefox Search drop down menu to give you the best recommendations so you can spend less time sifting through search results and more time enjoying the web."
Simplify or die.
a) It's an addon, so it won't be there unless you install it.
b) Every time they remove a feature from the main firefox people whine horrendously here too. So which is it? should they listen to the slashdotters who whine horribly when features are removed or should they listen to the slashdotters who whine horribly when features aren't removed?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
No thank you. Firefox is losing far more functionality than many are comfortable with. We don't need another fucking Chrome/Chromium clone. There are too many already. I use firefox not because it is the fastest browser, but because it is the most powerful and most flexible. And people like you are driving it into the shit-heap of history.
If we focus on speed and ordinary consumers, then Firefox will never win. After all, it's competition for that market is a pair of massive corporations who control the default experience of a huge chunk of users. If you compared what Google can get for free in advertising to Mozilla's budget, I bet you that what Google would charge for equivalent pushing (Featuring it on the google homepage, suggesting it on most search results, and on every translation) exceeds the amount of money Mozilla has available to it for the entire operations of Mozilla. Edge is much the same. Pre-installed on most new computers. The default browser.
You need to have a feature set which justifies switching. Half a percent more speed isn't that feature. Things like being the most extensible browser, being the only one which doesn't track users for the benefit of massive corporations. Things like being customizable beyond just what color your icons are, and what BG image you use. Those might not get most people, but it will bring in the people who want those things. Most of whom are the techies who will install it on computers for themselves, their family, their company. Who will support open source and the Mozilla foundation. Not people who say "The internet is broken" when IE gets deleted from the desktop.