New Firefox Suggests Ways To Get More Out of the Web (cnet.com)

Starting Tuesday, Firefox will nudge you to try out options designed to make the web more interesting, more useful or more productive. From a report: Mozilla's new Firefox 64 keeps an eye on what you're up to and prompts you to try extensions and features that could help you with that activity, the browser maker said. For example, if you open the same tab lots of times, it could suggest you pin it to your tab strip for easier future access. Other suggestions include installing the Facebook Container extension to curtail the social network's snooping, a Google Translate extension to tap into Google's service, and the Enhancer for YouTube extension to do things like block ads and control playback on Google's video site.

The feature could help you customize Firefox more to your liking -- something that could help you stick with the browser in the face of Google Chrome's dominance. And that, in turn, could help Mozilla pursue its push toward a privacy-respecting web that's not just effectively controlled by Chrome.

Comments

Here, let us snoop on you to enhance your privacy.

[stevegee58]

Why didn't that come out right?

Translation

[campuscodi]

Translation: Firefox now spams you with suggested extensions

Is Mozilla snooping if data never leaves device?

[tepples]

Is it really "snooping" if neither the activity logs associated with this feature nor any information identifiably derived therefrom leaves the user's device? And if so, why should it be deemed objectionable?

Please stop

[psychic_bacon]

I've given up on Firefox, so I shouldn't care, but please stop.

Last time I updated Firefox, it had "suggestions by pocket". To turn these off, it took ten minutes of googling to fix it, and then they still came back after another update.

Maybe I'm weird, but I thought the best browser is one that simply works, works fast, and then allows for extensions to do whatever extras that I want. This worked really well for firefox in the beginning, but now it is caught in the same trap of so many other programs. Power users want to be able to control things. Average users just want something that works. Do any of these features help either set of users?

Re:Please stop

[markdavis]

>"I've given up on Firefox, so I shouldn't care, but please stop. [...]This worked really well for firefox in the beginning, but now it is caught in the same trap of so many other programs."

And so you use what? Chrome? Then you are caught in the trap of not being allowed to choose what options you want at all (in many cases). In addition to whatever other things Google wants to shove in their binary. Don't get me wrong, I hate this new "feature" (just like Pocket and other such crap), but one can turn it off easily in preferences. Chrome, on the other hand, is SUPREMELY hostile to user choices and control compared to Firefox...

>"Maybe I'm weird, but I thought the best browser is one that simply works, works fast, and then allows for extensions to do whatever extras that I want."

Firefox does simply work. And it is fast. NO browser allows extensions to do whatever extras they want anymore. That model was incompatible with security, performance, and stability. Mozilla HAD to do something to move the browser forward. I just wish there were more UI API's. They are coming along, though... although too slowly for my taste.

Oh dear

[namgge]

Oh dear, some clown has reinvented Clippy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

If there one useless annoyance that the WWW does *not* need, it's ****ing Clippy.

Remember when Firefox was "just a browser"

[xack]

It's hard to believe its been 16 years since Phoenix was first released, that promised to be just a browser. In these times of increasing chromization of browsers, we need a responsible Firefox, not a ad-infested one (suggestions = ads).

Re:This will be interesting.

[Kjella]

Even computer geeks don't have an unlimited appetite for customization, or not all of them, at least. But we tend to act as if other people do.

I think it's more like "don't fuck with our workflows and muscle memory just because you've decided DVORAK is the future". I still prefer a desktop which is fairly reminiscent of Windows 95, menu bar w/classic start menu at bottom, system tray in bottom right, mix/max/quit buttons in upper right, alt-tab to switch applications, single-click to select/focus, double-click to launch. You want tiles? Cool. Ribbons? Cool. Spinning cubes? Cool. Follow focus? Cool. Mouse gestures? Cool. I don't want to be the grumpy old fart that decided it's good enough for me, so it's good enough for everybody and touchscreens and virtual desktops are an abomination. I understand that you might even have UX studies that support that if an average person was starting from scratch this would be easier and better.

I'm just asking people to accept that if you already know how to do it then in most cases it's very little effort to keep doing it. For example I drive a manual transmission car, if you write it out like a process it seems like I'm doing a lot of work to gauge the RPM, push the clutch, shift gears up/down and release the clutch. I seem to remember it was a little tricky in the beginning. But after 20+ years of driving that way I'm not consciously thinking about it at all. An automatic wouldn't make my driving experience any measurably better. I understand that in the real world you have production volumes and all that but with software a "classic" menu system is just a bit of old, proven and nearly feature complete code but you're throwing it out simply because it's not fashionable anymore. And you're doing it because you need to take away the choice to force your vision on everybody else. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.