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Mozilla Launches Test Pilot, A Firefox Add-On For Trying Experimental Features (thenextweb.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the back-from-the-dead dept.

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."

53 comments

  1. I.e. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You are the sucker!

    1. Re: I.e. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why is Slashdot so obsessed with Microsoft (oops, Micro$oft, dur!)?

      This has nothing to do with internet Explorer.

    2. Re: I.e. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not sure if +1 Funny, or +1 Poe May Apply.

  2. firefox haiku by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: -1, Troll

    Recommendations?
    No one wants your crufty shit.
    Simplify or die.

    1. Re:firefox haiku by serviscope_minor · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.
    2. Re:firefox haiku by Kkloe · · Score: 0

      yes

    3. Re:firefox haiku by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 2

      Every time they remove a feature from the main firefox people whine horrendously here too. So which is it?

      Sounds like different people with different opinions. And its hard to deny that FireFox isn't suffering from some manner of bloat.

      I belong to some Yahoo groups - I have no choice in the matter. With all of the battening down of my system, as soon as I go to Yahoo groups, the window goes dark, and a popup shows up telling me about the wonderful new FireFox/Yahoo experience I can have is I install something. It then scrolls up to hide the close window button, and won't let me move it back down for some number of seconds. Then it attempts to track me.

      To me, that is something pretty legitimate to complain about. It is certainly another data point when I choose to continue with FireFox or a different browser.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    4. Re:firefox haiku by HideyoshiJP · · Score: 1

      I don't think anybody would cry about losing "hello." I feel like the number of whiners about "pocket" would also be pretty low.

    5. Re:firefox haiku by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The problem is they've removed a lot of useful stuff and added a load of shit.

      The two groups you mentioned aren't mutually exclusive. I've complained about them adding crap like pocket while removing a great many options and features.

      As for who they should listen to, how about the users? They dropped below 10% of the desktop market share (and their share on mobile is practically zero). To be losing users so fast they're clearly getting things very wrong. Instead of continuing to do whatever they want and piss off everyone, why don't they try listening to people for a change and doing what the users ask?

    6. Re:firefox haiku by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The problem is they've removed a lot of useful stuff and added a load of shit.

      What is "useful" and what is "a load of shit" depends on who you ask.

    7. Re:firefox haiku by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There will be whiners. There always are. People only come online to whine these days. Firefox shouldn't be doing X, they should doing Y. And they'll make it sound like Firefox killed their dog, and that there are no alternatives, and that Firefox is cloning Chrome. And they probably won't have any idea what Mozilla is actually doing, and will refuse to acknowledge anything remotely positive. It's all negativity all the time. Just sample some of the other quality "informed" and "insightful" copypasta right here on this page for an idea of how it will always be. Even if Mozilla somehow cured cancer tomorrow, the comments would reflect how betrayed people feel that they're cloning Chrome.

    8. Re:firefox haiku by Hentes · · Score: 2

      Firefox isn't going to be succesful if they try to compete with Chrome on their turf. People who want a browser that "just shows webpages" will use Chrome anyway. On the other hand, after Opera's suicide and Microsoft's identity crisis FF could try to win back some popularity by attracting the power users. And while there might not be that many users of advanced features, it's vital for every browser to attract web developers. Especially when we seem to be heading towards a post-standards web, being the developer's platform of choice means that most webpages will support your browser.

  3. Too late Firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You became bloated and slow. Everyone is using Chrome now because you wouldn't adapt.

    Come out with a Firefox Slim and tote it as the fastest browser.

    1. Re:Too late Firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Too late Firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Chrome runs worse than Firefox, Edge, or IE on my tablets. It's been such an issue, we took it off anything less than an i5 w/ 8GB before it's issued to staff.

    3. Re:Too late Firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      At this point, the only way to get a Firefox that doesn't suck would be to re-fork Pale Moon

    4. Re:Too late Firefox by Chas · · Score: 1

      I pretty much agree with all of this.

      I'm sick of functionality being stripped from Firefox to be replaced with stupid, non-browser-like GIMMICKS.

      --


      Chas - The one, the only.
      THANK GOD!!!
    5. Re:Too late Firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What if Mozilla did their UI-screwups and feature removals only on this Test pilot plugin? That would benefit us all; the "designers" would have their playground and we users would be left with a functional browser.

    6. Re:Too late Firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Use Vivaldi. Best of both worlds.

    7. Re: Too late Firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think it is true that Firefox is bloated and slower than Chrome.

    8. Re:Too late Firefox by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

      Firefox became much faster at around version 17 or so. New versions brought less crashes, less memory leaking, faster javascript etc.
      Remember when opening a huge image such as 12 megapixels and higher was a sure crash?

      But now new versions are more of a wash. Needs e10s as default, at the cost of breaking some extensions.
      Now, if we could just have stayed on html4 with an actually working open source Flash plugin and sites meant to work on dial up it would still be plenty fast on a single core and 512MB RAM desktop or laptop.

  4. Should have called it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Pirx

  5. That thing is old by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It has been in nightly for years.

  6. multi threading / process (yeah like Chromium) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If they could *just* concentrate on the multi threading performance issues first, I'd gladly jump back to Firefox, but now it's just unbearably slow, freezing the whole browser when a tab freaks out in 2016, please.

    1. Re:multi threading / process (yeah like Chromium) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      If they could *just* concentrate on the multi threading performance issues first, I'd gladly jump back to Firefox, but now it's just unbearably slow, freezing the whole browser when a tab freaks out in 2016, please.

      People say these things all the time, but as a daily user of Firefox, I haven't actually seen that happen, even when using it at work with ridiculous numbers of tabs open.
      My experience with Chrome / Chromium is that it doesn't really improve anything, but does have a crappier interface.

    2. Re:multi threading / process (yeah like Chromium) by jbmartin6 · · Score: 1

      I see it several times a week when starting a Youtube video (HTML5, not Flash). I have to kill all FF windows and restart it. Luckily it can restore my session from the crash so not too awful. I still prefer FF to Chrome by a mile.

      --
      This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
    3. Re:multi threading / process (yeah like Chromium) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I see it all the time. /. itself was a huge issue back in 2013 when I finally deleted FF from my computers.

    4. Re:multi threading / process (yeah like Chromium) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The youtube HTML5 video player jams my Firefox too on XFCE/Debian. This happens every time when the machine had been suspended and waken up; the video playback can not be continued in same tab, it just starts to eat 100% of CPU while running the progress ball. I wonder, if the issue is a bug in Firefox or just a Google's evil feature youtube which tries to force users to use Chrome.

  7. It won't make a difference by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If Mozilla was interested in giving users what they wanted some of the highest voted bugs in Bugzilla wouldn't be almost twenty years old. I think Mozilla thinks they know what users want, and if reality conflicts with their ideas they just ignore reality. In short, there's no point in participating in anything Mozilla does if you suffer from any delusion that it's going to result in an improved browser.

  8. That's a good idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Until now you'd often need to be following an issue in bugzilla to even know that an experimental feature exists, and then need to manually edit about:config to enable it (and inevitably lose track of all experimantal features you've enabled somewhere along the way). An addon to advertise and manage these is obvious in hindsight.

    1. Re:That's a good idea by sunderland56 · · Score: 1

      Until now you'd often need to be following an issue in bugzilla to even know that an experimental feature exists

      Until now new features like Pocket have been forcefully installed on your computer with no permission at all, and no obvious way of disabling them, forcing you to spend time googling what the heck they are, and how to get rid of them.

      Unfortunately this new-features-on-demand-only idea only seems to apply to beta things; once they go gold they will still be forcefully rammed down our throats.

  9. Fix memory leaks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Please, spend time on that. Sandbox Add-Ons too so they cannot cause memory leaks.

    1. Re:Fix memory leaks by NotInHere · · Score: 1

      Sandboxes won't help against leaks.

  10. Firefox versions by rossdee · · Score: 1

    So whats the rule with FF version?

    Id it 'odd numbers are good' (like Windows)
    or
    'even numbers are good' (like Star Trek movies)

    1. Re:Firefox versions by Zocalo · · Score: 1

      For many (e.g. the >30% of market share Firefox has lost since it's peak) it seems to be that versions below {number} are good, those above {number} suck donkey balls, with the value of {number} being determined by the individual's opions on Mozilla's decisions to dumb down or remove useful feature/options and/or add some unwanted bits of bloat like Pocket to the main codebase to replace them.

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    2. Re:Firefox versions by squiggleslash · · Score: 0

      It's the Reverse Star Wars Rule: Numbers after 3 are bad. (Regular Star Wars rule is the opposite, of course.)

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    3. Re:Firefox versions by Merk42 · · Score: 0

      All versions of Firefox are bad since they became like Chrome
      Firefox should be pared down and just do the web well, and fast, like Chrome.

    4. Re:Firefox versions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Exactly. Firefox should be Chrome, is basically what the opinion is. It can't remove features, but it should. It shouldn't clone Chrome, but it should. That's just how insane the discourse about Firefox is these days.

  11. Mozilla's problem by jenningsthecat · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    They started treating the browser as a toy-like consumer appliance instead of as a tool. Even without this latest addon, Firefox has more blinkenlights, bells, whistles, misfeatures, and extraneous junk than a cheap 80's era Yorx stereo-with-disco-lights. And it works about as well as Yorx stereos did too.

    One sign of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, yet expecting a different result. Mozilla keeps making their browser uglier, slower, and harder to use, while expecting to regain the market share they've lost as a result of having made their browser uglier, slower, and harder to use. They are clearly insane.

    --
    'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
    1. Re:Mozilla's problem by sanosuke001 · · Score: 1

      Don't tell me that you think the Chrome settings page is easier to use than the Firefox one; because if you do I'll have to call you a liar.

      --
      -SaNo
    2. Re:Mozilla's problem by jenningsthecat · · Score: 1

      Nope, not a liar - at least not this time... I've never actually installed Chrome, and it's been a long time since I last used it. But my memory of its setup is 'what setup?', because it seemed that there wasn't much at all in the way of configurability.

      I was using Debian when Firefox's Australis interface came out, so I got a reprieve because in whichever release I was on, Iceweasel was a step or two behind the main Firefox releases. When I did get a taste of Australis, I reverted and held back on upgrading. Eventually I found Pale Moon, so my current daily browser experience is pretty much that of Firefox circa Version 25. It's still not as nice as earlier versions of FF but it's stable and I find it quite useable.

      --
      'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
    3. Re:Mozilla's problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Firefox has more blinkenlights, bells, whistles, misfeatures, and extraneous junk

      Like what?

  12. Could it be Vivaldi and Brave show their footprint by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That Mozilla and Opera are really forced since quite some long time to create something not only for the ordinary computer users.

    Hating Vivaldi and Brave, but if they are forcing Mozilla and Opera to get visible again from beyond their Chrome imitation rock, there is at least a bit which is good in both of them.

  13. Surprised by Hognoxious · · Score: -1, Troll

    I surprised that Firefox contains anything which isn't an experimental feature.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  14. good riddance, mindfulness by epine · · Score: 1

    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."

    Ah, more time swallowing and less time smelling and chewing. That never goes badly, does it?

  15. Awesome bar? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    WTF? Is all software created by 12 year olds these days?

    1. Re:Awesome bar? by transami · · Score: 1

      More like 21, but close enough.

      --
      :T:R:A:N:S:
  16. we don't want MORE features.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    we want less.... as in standards-compliant, add-on capable, modern browser... a BROWSER.. JUST A FUCKING BROWSER. like firefox used to be, 'pre-chrome-copycat phase'

  17. Wait, how is this any different by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    from the steaming pile of shit that continuous updates has brought us? Will people with this browser add-on get to alpha test new, even more useless changes than the beta testers (aka, the remaining few users of Firefox).

  18. Memory Lain by hjames · · Score: 1

    So when do they fix the memory loss problem?
    Firefox hangs onto memory and doesn't release it until you close ALL instances of the browser

    1. Re:Memory Lain by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

      It's one multi-window instance, if you allow me to nitpick.

  19. Wtf is an awesome bar? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And is it really awesome?

    1. Re:Wtf is an awesome bar? by LordLestat · · Score: 1

      Could it be that Mozilla is thinking about adding customization features again? Finally a bit worried about the negative publicity and user loss? Good, they should be!