24 ms·

Firefox Test Pilot

224 points by vladikoff 10y ago

morinted 10y ago
This looks neat because it allows people to try new features without risking stability in a beta or nightly environment. It also doesn't hold Mozilla accountable to get these new features into Firefox's core without proving that they are viable and popular. I'm impressed.
- lmorchard 10y ago
  FWIW, we're also working to make these things remove themselves cleanly - and if you uninstall the initial Test Pilot add-on, it pulls out all the experimental add-ons along with it and disables any metrics we might have enabled along with it. Bug reports very welcome if this doesn't work as expected
chipperyman573 10y ago
Interesting that these changes are installed via an add-on instead of through a different browser entirely.
- lmorchard 10y ago
  That's because a) we want to make it easier for folks to try these features out without switching to another release channel, and b) we want to get feedback on how they work in the browser that folks normally use day-to-day
kibwen 10y ago
Is the "Tab Center" feature a prototype for an official version of tree-style tabs, perhaps? I've seen that Servo/browser.html was experimenting with tabs-on-the-side, I'd love to see this graduate to more than just an experiment.
- talmand 10y ago
  I seem to recall various addons for Firefox over the years that would put tabs on the side. No idea on the current state of such things.
  - plorkyeran 10y ago
    There's been a lot of them, but none of them other than Tree-Style Tabs have been consistently maintained, so as someone that likes tabs on the side but doesn't like everything else TST does, I'd be happy to get off the treadmill of constantly switching to different side-tab plugins every time one breaks.
- chuckharmston 10y ago
  Potentially! The simple story is that the current tabbing model in was designed to save you from needing half a dozen browser window open. It just doesn't scale well past a dozen tabs or so, and we know that some users have dozens or even hundreds open at the same time. Tab Center is taking a fresh look at the problem with that in mind.
  - chongli 10y ago
    The whole problem of a tab UI for power users with hundreds or even thousands of open tabs (like me) is mindblowingly daunting. I don't know that tabs on the side is the solution. For a long time I'd been using Tab Groups but I've been frustrated with its limitations. Ideally, I think I'd like something similar to the spatial system of the Classic Mac OS Finder, which I coincidentally expounded upon recently in another thread[0]. Tab Groups goes part of the way there with its spatial organizational system but it lacks the hierarchy and persistence of those Classic folders and desktop. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11664984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11664984
    - chuckharmston 10y ago
      I agree, it is a daunting problem. Another problem is that it's hard to experiment in the browser; the stakes are very high when bugs or poorly-conceived ideas quite literally break the internet for users. As a result, the development cycle is righteously slow (~18 weeks), the cost of landing code in Firefox is righteously high, and it's just a difficult environment to try new things. On Test Pilot we aren't trying to build the solution, we're trying to find it. It's a different model of product development than we've historically had at Mozilla. In this case, side tabs are the start, but you can expect new features and concepts to start coming down the pipeline as we start gathering feedback and data about how people use them.
rhinoceraptor 10y ago
Mozilla, please implement HTML5 input types. Thanks, frontend web developers.
- 6a68 10y ago
  You'll be happy to know that somebody recently started working on the date/time input types bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=888320 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=888320 If you have a bugzilla account, you can CC yourself on the bug to catch future updates :-)
  - rhinoceraptor 10y ago
    Great! So now in like 2 years, hopefully I can simply use type="time" instead of implementing a half baked JS time picker or time validator. It's frustrating seeing them spend so much time on Firefox OS, Hello, etc. and not on making Firefox a really good, standards compliant browser.
    - callahad 10y ago
      You asked us to implement X. We confirmed that we've begun work on implementing X and provided a way you can follow the progress. You then chose to respond with sarcasm and disdain. What productive outcome could we possibly reach from that exchange?
      - lucb1e 10y ago
        > What productive outcome could we possibly reach from that exchange? To advocate the devil, s/he'd like to change future plans. You did confirm it's being worked on, but the comment you're responding to tries to get you (mozilla) to work on implementing standards more often. I'm not saying I agree or disagree, I'm underinformed (though I also ran into Firefox not having input types and am also not a fan of recent experiments, I can't tell whether the concept of doing such experiments isn't worth doing), I'm just pointing out there is something behind the negative sarcasm.
      - 10y ago
greglindahl 10y ago
Very excited to see this launch! The Internet Archive has been working with browsers to check (opt-in) the Wayback Machine whenever endusers click on a dead link. We're in the queue for the next round of Test Pilot tests!
- amjd 10y ago
  There's an existing add-on that (kind of) does this. It checks Google Cache and Internet Archive, among others. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/resurrect-pages/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/resurrect-pag...
  - greglindahl 10y ago
    Yes, there are a bunch of plugins which kind of do this. We're hoping to get this into all browsers, and only offer to take the end-user to the Wayback if we actually have a good capture of the URL.
lol768 10y ago
Not entirely sure why this requires a Firefox account. It appears possible to install the mentioned add-ons manually: Tab Center appears to be available from http://people.mozilla.org/~bwinton/TabCenter/ http://people.mozilla.org/~bwinton/TabCenter/ Universal search: (edit: link here was incorrect) Activity streams: https://moz-activity-streams.s3.amazonaws.com/dist/latest.html https://moz-activity-streams.s3.amazonaws.com/dist/latest.ht...
- lmorchard 10y ago
  They work for now. But these and future experiments are going to start talking more to the main Test Pilot site, and will possibly break / disable themselves without that connection. Going out-of-band to install these will likely lead to sadness eventually. Also, I think you're pointing to older demo versions of some of those add-on and not the current Test Pilot releases. We're trying to work more in the open on this stuff, so you'll likely find things like this here and there.
- morinted 10y ago
  Looks like the wrapper add-on will: - Sync your experimental add-ons across browser instances - Provide useful metrics for the TestPilot add-on - Cleanly remove all add-ons and metrics when you uninstall it
  - lmorchard 10y ago
    Yes, all of that. Also, there are legal disclaimers and privacy notices and all kinds of thing beyond my IANAL ken that are wrapped up in agreeing to participate in Test Pilot. Nothing sneaky, just mainly we want to get lots of feedback while you're in, be totally up front about that, and clean up after ourselves when you leave. Although, actually, the experiment installs are per-browser-profile and not necessarily sync'd if you haven't turned that on in your sync prefs. So if you wanted, you can try experiments in one release channel / profile, but not in another.
  - the8472 10y ago
    I don't use sync in general, so this particular instance of sync is not positive point to me. And I don't see how the other things need an account.
dynofuz 10y ago
if the drone fox needs a dome, he probably also needs rockets to replace the propellers
- lmorchard 10y ago
  I think they're anti-gravity generators. That, or the atmosphere's just really thin up in the experimental altitudes.
- jgruen 10y ago
  We were going for an 'edge of the atmosphere' feel. Also, that hood scoop is pretty rad.
- 6a68 10y ago
  pull requests welcome: https://github.com/mozilla/testpilot https://github.com/mozilla/testpilot
- perilunar 10y ago
  Looks a lot like the M200G Volantor, but with fewer fans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moller_M200G_Volantor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moller_M200G_Volantor
jgruen 10y ago
While this isn't integrated into the Test Pilot site UX for the time being, we have Discourse forums set up for all of the experiments in Test Pilot.* If you'd like to register questions or feedback ton Discourse, team members and community moderators will be monitoring the forum. https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/c/test-pilot https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/c/test-pilot *Yes, you'll need to sign in with Persona ;)
fiftyacorn 10y ago
My first thought was the Clint Eastwood film
- cyberferret 10y ago
  LOL - me too! I thought someone had built a flyable Mig-31 Firefox and were looking for someone to fly it... http://archive.is/ZqD9a http://archive.is/ZqD9a
- lmorchard 10y ago
  Apropos of that, if you think hard enough in Russian at the front page, you might be able to activate our super-secret easter egg. (oh wait, no, we had to cancel that one for licensing reasons)
webwanderings 10y ago
Firefox was once working on improving the Bookmarks Manager. I recall lengthy articles detailing the extensive study and research (sorry, do not have the link handy. No pun intended). Whatever happened to that project? All the more power to introducing improvements to the Browser, but above does not give me confidence in signing up.
tyoverby 10y ago
There is no link to the Test Pilot plugin, and it's not available in the store. I'd like to help, but you need to make it easy :(
- 6a68 10y ago
  The Test Pilot website explains that you install the add-on after creating an account and signing in. It's actually super easy, give it a try :-)
dingaling 10y ago
What a curious page; just blank-white in Firefox 46.0 on Linux with this output in the console: "You have google analytics blocked. We understand. Take a look at our privacy policy to see how we handle your data."
- 6a68 10y ago
  You need to have JavaScript enabled to use the site
  - wodenokoto 10y ago
    That may be, but the error is still terrible.
- Blaaguuu 10y ago
  Huh... I'm on Chrome in Windows 10, and I have Google Analytics blocked, and the rest of the page loads fine for me.
  - 6a68 10y ago
    Yeah, the site is templated client-side using Ampersand (though lmorchard keeps threatening to rewrite it in React as a weekend project). Should work fine with tracking disabled, but won't work at all without JS.
    - jeena 10y ago
      Oh wow, this is one of the simple designs which only needs HTML and CSS, no JS at all to work, I wonder why they chose to do it this way.
      - Mithaldu 10y ago
        As do i, so i reported it as a bug: https://github.com/mozilla/testpilot/issues/774 https://github.com/mozilla/testpilot/issues/774
      - 10y ago
tux3 10y ago
I have to say I love the concept, and I'm very happy with my brand new tabs on the side. That said I did find a bug and I have some performance problems to report, but it's not clear to me where I can report a bug for a particular experiment. It looks like the feedback button wants me to fill out a whole satisfaction survey, and "File in issue" takes me to the test pilot github, which seems to be about the Test Pilot program in general. Is there a better place to report bugs?
- 6a68 10y ago
  Hey there! Our wiki has a list of bug trackers: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Test_Pilot#Found_a_bug.3F https://wiki.mozilla.org/Test_Pilot#Found_a_bug.3F You can also talk with us in #testpilot on Mozilla IRC.
dfc 10y ago
Why do we encourage users to override security protections? I click "get started now", and am presented with a warning message reminiscent of an ssl cert error. In general when users see the "this site is trying to install software" warning message I hope they become suspicious and do something else (certainly not override the warning dialog). I am not entirely sure why that should not be the case now. I am inclined to think that mozilla is an organization with "good" technology and principles. But if that is the case why cant they get the left hand to talk to the right hand and install test pilot in a manner that does not teach users that its okay to override the security warning dialogs?
- 6a68 10y ago
  Are you talking about the doorhanger that appears when you try to install the add-on? Firefox always shows a warning doorhanger if an add-on is installed from a website other than addons.mozilla.org. What you're seeing is a Mozilla web property following the same rules as every other website. Nothing to worry about.
  - danielweber 10y ago
    What is a doorhanger?
    - 6a68 10y ago
      A 'doorhanger' is this bit of UI: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8yivzcq2gw63pqq/Screen%20Shot%202016-05-10%20at%202.59.52%20PM.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/8yivzcq2gw63pqq/Screen%20Shot%2020...
    - chuckharmston 10y ago
      A doorhanger is a term for this sort of warning notification: http://i.imgur.com/huWjWjq.png http://i.imgur.com/huWjWjq.png As 6a68 mentioned, Firefox presents this doorhanger whenever any site other than addons.mozilla.org attempts to install an add-on.
  - dfc 10y ago
brokentone 10y ago
White screen in Chrome 43: TypeError: Array.from is not a function
- cornedor 10y ago
  Do you have a reason to run an old Chrome version like that? Just curious.
  - brokentone 10y ago
    Corporate version... have to imagine I'm not alone.
mrmondo 10y ago
Honestly all I want from Firefox is better stability and performance - I don't care about almost anything else barring security. Firefox has become so unstable and slow (on OSX at least) that many people I know - myself included have switched to chromium. We don't want to use it but we have to because of all the crashes and massive slowdowns during long running sessions or when many tabs are open. This goes for stable, dev edition and nightly. It really saddens me and I'm sure others because of the great work that Mozilla does especially with regards to transparency, privacy and security. Edit: I'm also in two minds about the plugin systems between the two browsers. The idea of all JavaScript plugins scares me to death, there really are no good download managers for chromium / chrome, on the other hand Firefox plugins I rely on like Evernote web clipper keep breaking and don't even work on dev/nightly when enforcing the new plugin system.
- 6a68 10y ago
  Test Pilot isn't happening at the cost of stability and performance improvements. It's a complementary program that helps us ship better features through data-driven iteration. I hear your concerns, though. The platform and desktop teams are doing tons of great work on improving stability and performance--you might want to give Firefox another try sometime. If you do, maybe try out some Test Pilot experiments while you're at it, and let us know what you think.
  - burfog 10y ago
    They "are doing tons of great work on improving stability and performance", but I've heard this before and somehow we got to where we are today. Do you alternate between improving these things and worsening them? Could you possibly not worsen them, or at least warn us to not upgrade when that happens? Regressions are really not OK. People are trying to use this browser. Well, mostly they were trying to use it. I stuck it out longer than most. Having 512 MB of RAM and dozens of tabs is my use case.
    - mistermann 10y ago
      I have 12GB of RAM and probably ~120 tabs open at any given time. This used to be fine, but it seems Firefox is just getting worse over time, the main problem is the frequent 5 to 30 second pauses while it is doing....something.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dredmorbius 10y ago
I was almost going to pass this up based on the HN discussion and the initial CTA[1] on the page. I'm still not sure this answers any of the many frustrations, and hopes, I have for browser development,[2][3] but it's of possible interest. For the love of all that's holy: Put a compelling argument for a CTA on the page BEFORE the CTA. And ... put a compelling argument there regardless. This lacks both. The features mentioned, especially tabs management, strike me as useful. Tabs are a mistake. That's not my opinion, that's Adam Stiles' view -- and he invented them. Content management is a huge problem. Web design isn't the solution, it's the problem. My standing recommendation now is that Pocket add a Web Intent to its Android app. If I could use it rather than Firefox or Chrome for browsing, I'd be vastly happier. Streams, search, bookmarks, content, organisation, reputation (of authors, sites, publishers), fact-checking, influence-registries (Nature just had an item on this IIRC) are all other areas of issue. Paying content providers is a concern. I'm notafan of micropayments, but building the system into the browser is one option. Broadband or content taxes with usage monitoring similar to music's mechanicals is another. Browsers could play a role in both. I'm also not a fan of having to register for stuff. But might regardless. ________________________________ Notes: 1. Call to action. 2. Among my longer rants, with a future roadmap: https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/256lxu/tabbed_browsing_a_lousy_bandaid_over_poor_browser/?ref=search_posts https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/256lxu/tabbed_... 3. Specific to Firefox: https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/VX64KGmikfg https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/VX64KGmi...
- ianbicking 10y ago
  Somewhat an aside, but Sticky Reader View would be a great Test Pilot experiment.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    Good suggestion.
owaislone 10y ago
Great, now can we have ubiquity back?
746F7475 10y ago
Just gave it a 10 seconds and decided this is not for me. Very first thing I enabled (Tabcenter) made Firefox completely unusable to a point where I couldn't even disable the feature or uninstall the plugin. Thankfully these pieces are named nicely in ~/.mozilla/firefox/<profile>/extensions and thus can be removed manually. Of course to even to read this advice after fucking up you need to know about firefox's -P startup option.
smacktoward 10y ago
Very nice! So far I'm liking this quite a bit, especially Tab Center. On that note, one usability suggestion: having the tab sidebar run all the way to the top of the window means that the years (decades?) of muscle memory I've built up telling me to mouse to the top left of the window to hit the Back button now results in me hitting the New Tab button. It'd be better if the awesomebar area spanned the complete width of the window, and the tab center column started at the same height as the content area.
toyg 10y ago
This is a step in the right direction. No more should crap like Pocket land in FF without warning. Making new features, which might be controversial, go through a "preview" stage like this, should help restore a lot of faith in the development process, and show that Mozilla is again focusing on the browser rather than random me-too projects following the latest web-fad.
- lmorchard 10y ago
  Yeah, I can't speak for everyone, but I think Test Pilot is in part a reaction to the Pocket thing. Even among Mozilla employees, there were folks who thought it was a great addition and there were folks who thought it was a huge mistake. Either way, it was a surprise, and not entirely pleasant. Test Pilot will hopefully be a way to reduce surprises of this nature.

224 points by vladikoff 10y ago

This looks neat because it allows people to try new features without risking stability in a beta or nightly environment. It also doesn't hold Mozilla accountable to get these new features into Firefox's core without proving that they are viable and popular. I'm impressed.

lmorchard 10y ago
FWIW, we're also working to make these things remove themselves cleanly - and if you uninstall the initial Test Pilot add-on, it pulls out all the experimental add-ons along with it and disables any metrics we might have enabled along with it. Bug reports very welcome if this doesn't work as expected

chipperyman573 10y ago

Interesting that these changes are installed via an add-on instead of through a different browser entirely.

lmorchard 10y ago
That's because a) we want to make it easier for folks to try these features out without switching to another release channel, and b) we want to get feedback on how they work in the browser that folks normally use day-to-day

kibwen 10y ago

Is the "Tab Center" feature a prototype for an official version of tree-style tabs, perhaps? I've seen that Servo/browser.html was experimenting with tabs-on-the-side, I'd love to see this graduate to more than just an experiment.

talmand 10y ago
I seem to recall various addons for Firefox over the years that would put tabs on the side. No idea on the current state of such things.
- plorkyeran 10y ago
  There's been a lot of them, but none of them other than Tree-Style Tabs have been consistently maintained, so as someone that likes tabs on the side but doesn't like everything else TST does, I'd be happy to get off the treadmill of constantly switching to different side-tab plugins every time one breaks.
chuckharmston 10y ago
Potentially! The simple story is that the current tabbing model in was designed to save you from needing half a dozen browser window open. It just doesn't scale well past a dozen tabs or so, and we know that some users have dozens or even hundreds open at the same time. Tab Center is taking a fresh look at the problem with that in mind.
- chongli 10y ago
  The whole problem of a tab UI for power users with hundreds or even thousands of open tabs (like me) is mindblowingly daunting. I don't know that tabs on the side is the solution. For a long time I'd been using Tab Groups but I've been frustrated with its limitations. Ideally, I think I'd like something similar to the spatial system of the Classic Mac OS Finder, which I coincidentally expounded upon recently in another thread[0]. Tab Groups goes part of the way there with its spatial organizational system but it lacks the hierarchy and persistence of those Classic folders and desktop. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11664984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11664984
  - chuckharmston 10y ago
    I agree, it is a daunting problem. Another problem is that it's hard to experiment in the browser; the stakes are very high when bugs or poorly-conceived ideas quite literally break the internet for users. As a result, the development cycle is righteously slow (~18 weeks), the cost of landing code in Firefox is righteously high, and it's just a difficult environment to try new things. On Test Pilot we aren't trying to build the solution, we're trying to find it. It's a different model of product development than we've historically had at Mozilla. In this case, side tabs are the start, but you can expect new features and concepts to start coming down the pipeline as we start gathering feedback and data about how people use them.

rhinoceraptor 10y ago

Mozilla, please implement HTML5 input types. Thanks, frontend web developers.

6a68 10y ago
You'll be happy to know that somebody recently started working on the date/time input types bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=888320 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=888320 If you have a bugzilla account, you can CC yourself on the bug to catch future updates :-)
- rhinoceraptor 10y ago
  Great! So now in like 2 years, hopefully I can simply use type="time" instead of implementing a half baked JS time picker or time validator. It's frustrating seeing them spend so much time on Firefox OS, Hello, etc. and not on making Firefox a really good, standards compliant browser.
  - callahad 10y ago
    You asked us to implement X. We confirmed that we've begun work on implementing X and provided a way you can follow the progress. You then chose to respond with sarcasm and disdain. What productive outcome could we possibly reach from that exchange?
    - lucb1e 10y ago
      > What productive outcome could we possibly reach from that exchange? To advocate the devil, s/he'd like to change future plans. You did confirm it's being worked on, but the comment you're responding to tries to get you (mozilla) to work on implementing standards more often. I'm not saying I agree or disagree, I'm underinformed (though I also ran into Firefox not having input types and am also not a fan of recent experiments, I can't tell whether the concept of doing such experiments isn't worth doing), I'm just pointing out there is something behind the negative sarcasm.
    - 10y ago

greglindahl 10y ago

Very excited to see this launch! The Internet Archive has been working with browsers to check (opt-in) the Wayback Machine whenever endusers click on a dead link. We're in the queue for the next round of Test Pilot tests!

amjd 10y ago
There's an existing add-on that (kind of) does this. It checks Google Cache and Internet Archive, among others. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/resurrect-pages/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/resurrect-pag...
- greglindahl 10y ago
  Yes, there are a bunch of plugins which kind of do this. We're hoping to get this into all browsers, and only offer to take the end-user to the Wayback if we actually have a good capture of the URL.

lol768 10y ago

Not entirely sure why this requires a Firefox account. It appears possible to install the mentioned add-ons manually: Tab Center appears to be available from http://people.mozilla.org/~bwinton/TabCenter/ http://people.mozilla.org/~bwinton/TabCenter/ Universal search: (edit: link here was incorrect) Activity streams: https://moz-activity-streams.s3.amazonaws.com/dist/latest.html https://moz-activity-streams.s3.amazonaws.com/dist/latest.ht...

lmorchard 10y ago
They work for now. But these and future experiments are going to start talking more to the main Test Pilot site, and will possibly break / disable themselves without that connection. Going out-of-band to install these will likely lead to sadness eventually. Also, I think you're pointing to older demo versions of some of those add-on and not the current Test Pilot releases. We're trying to work more in the open on this stuff, so you'll likely find things like this here and there.
morinted 10y ago
Looks like the wrapper add-on will: - Sync your experimental add-ons across browser instances - Provide useful metrics for the TestPilot add-on - Cleanly remove all add-ons and metrics when you uninstall it
- lmorchard 10y ago
  Yes, all of that. Also, there are legal disclaimers and privacy notices and all kinds of thing beyond my IANAL ken that are wrapped up in agreeing to participate in Test Pilot. Nothing sneaky, just mainly we want to get lots of feedback while you're in, be totally up front about that, and clean up after ourselves when you leave. Although, actually, the experiment installs are per-browser-profile and not necessarily sync'd if you haven't turned that on in your sync prefs. So if you wanted, you can try experiments in one release channel / profile, but not in another.
- the8472 10y ago
  I don't use sync in general, so this particular instance of sync is not positive point to me. And I don't see how the other things need an account.

dynofuz 10y ago

if the drone fox needs a dome, he probably also needs rockets to replace the propellers

lmorchard 10y ago
I think they're anti-gravity generators. That, or the atmosphere's just really thin up in the experimental altitudes.
jgruen 10y ago
We were going for an 'edge of the atmosphere' feel. Also, that hood scoop is pretty rad.
6a68 10y ago
pull requests welcome: https://github.com/mozilla/testpilot https://github.com/mozilla/testpilot
perilunar 10y ago
Looks a lot like the M200G Volantor, but with fewer fans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moller_M200G_Volantor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moller_M200G_Volantor

jgruen 10y ago

While this isn't integrated into the Test Pilot site UX for the time being, we have Discourse forums set up for all of the experiments in Test Pilot.* If you'd like to register questions or feedback ton Discourse, team members and community moderators will be monitoring the forum. https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/c/test-pilot https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/c/test-pilot *Yes, you'll need to sign in with Persona ;)

fiftyacorn 10y ago

My first thought was the Clint Eastwood film

cyberferret 10y ago
LOL - me too! I thought someone had built a flyable Mig-31 Firefox and were looking for someone to fly it... http://archive.is/ZqD9a http://archive.is/ZqD9a
lmorchard 10y ago
Apropos of that, if you think hard enough in Russian at the front page, you might be able to activate our super-secret easter egg. (oh wait, no, we had to cancel that one for licensing reasons)

webwanderings 10y ago

Firefox was once working on improving the Bookmarks Manager. I recall lengthy articles detailing the extensive study and research (sorry, do not have the link handy. No pun intended). Whatever happened to that project? All the more power to introducing improvements to the Browser, but above does not give me confidence in signing up.

tyoverby 10y ago

There is no link to the Test Pilot plugin, and it's not available in the store. I'd like to help, but you need to make it easy :(

6a68 10y ago
The Test Pilot website explains that you install the add-on after creating an account and signing in. It's actually super easy, give it a try :-)

dingaling 10y ago

What a curious page; just blank-white in Firefox 46.0 on Linux with this output in the console: "You have google analytics blocked. We understand. Take a look at our privacy policy to see how we handle your data."

6a68 10y ago
You need to have JavaScript enabled to use the site
- wodenokoto 10y ago
  That may be, but the error is still terrible.
Blaaguuu 10y ago
Huh... I'm on Chrome in Windows 10, and I have Google Analytics blocked, and the rest of the page loads fine for me.
- 6a68 10y ago
  Yeah, the site is templated client-side using Ampersand (though lmorchard keeps threatening to rewrite it in React as a weekend project). Should work fine with tracking disabled, but won't work at all without JS.
  - jeena 10y ago
    Oh wow, this is one of the simple designs which only needs HTML and CSS, no JS at all to work, I wonder why they chose to do it this way.
    - Mithaldu 10y ago
      As do i, so i reported it as a bug: https://github.com/mozilla/testpilot/issues/774 https://github.com/mozilla/testpilot/issues/774
    - 10y ago

tux3 10y ago

I have to say I love the concept, and I'm very happy with my brand new tabs on the side. That said I did find a bug and I have some performance problems to report, but it's not clear to me where I can report a bug for a particular experiment. It looks like the feedback button wants me to fill out a whole satisfaction survey, and "File in issue" takes me to the test pilot github, which seems to be about the Test Pilot program in general. Is there a better place to report bugs?

6a68 10y ago
Hey there! Our wiki has a list of bug trackers: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Test_Pilot#Found_a_bug.3F https://wiki.mozilla.org/Test_Pilot#Found_a_bug.3F You can also talk with us in #testpilot on Mozilla IRC.

dfc 10y ago

Why do we encourage users to override security protections? I click "get started now", and am presented with a warning message reminiscent of an ssl cert error. In general when users see the "this site is trying to install software" warning message I hope they become suspicious and do something else (certainly not override the warning dialog). I am not entirely sure why that should not be the case now. I am inclined to think that mozilla is an organization with "good" technology and principles. But if that is the case why cant they get the left hand to talk to the right hand and install test pilot in a manner that does not teach users that its okay to override the security warning dialogs?

6a68 10y ago
Are you talking about the doorhanger that appears when you try to install the add-on? Firefox always shows a warning doorhanger if an add-on is installed from a website other than addons.mozilla.org. What you're seeing is a Mozilla web property following the same rules as every other website. Nothing to worry about.
- danielweber 10y ago
  What is a doorhanger?
  - 6a68 10y ago
    A 'doorhanger' is this bit of UI: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8yivzcq2gw63pqq/Screen%20Shot%202016-05-10%20at%202.59.52%20PM.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/8yivzcq2gw63pqq/Screen%20Shot%2020...
  - chuckharmston 10y ago
    A doorhanger is a term for this sort of warning notification: http://i.imgur.com/huWjWjq.png http://i.imgur.com/huWjWjq.png As 6a68 mentioned, Firefox presents this doorhanger whenever any site other than addons.mozilla.org attempts to install an add-on.
- dfc 10y ago

brokentone 10y ago

White screen in Chrome 43: TypeError: Array.from is not a function

cornedor 10y ago
Do you have a reason to run an old Chrome version like that? Just curious.
- brokentone 10y ago
  Corporate version... have to imagine I'm not alone.

mrmondo 10y ago

Honestly all I want from Firefox is better stability and performance - I don't care about almost anything else barring security. Firefox has become so unstable and slow (on OSX at least) that many people I know - myself included have switched to chromium. We don't want to use it but we have to because of all the crashes and massive slowdowns during long running sessions or when many tabs are open. This goes for stable, dev edition and nightly. It really saddens me and I'm sure others because of the great work that Mozilla does especially with regards to transparency, privacy and security. Edit: I'm also in two minds about the plugin systems between the two browsers. The idea of all JavaScript plugins scares me to death, there really are no good download managers for chromium / chrome, on the other hand Firefox plugins I rely on like Evernote web clipper keep breaking and don't even work on dev/nightly when enforcing the new plugin system.

6a68 10y ago
Test Pilot isn't happening at the cost of stability and performance improvements. It's a complementary program that helps us ship better features through data-driven iteration. I hear your concerns, though. The platform and desktop teams are doing tons of great work on improving stability and performance--you might want to give Firefox another try sometime. If you do, maybe try out some Test Pilot experiments while you're at it, and let us know what you think.
- burfog 10y ago
  They "are doing tons of great work on improving stability and performance", but I've heard this before and somehow we got to where we are today. Do you alternate between improving these things and worsening them? Could you possibly not worsen them, or at least warn us to not upgrade when that happens? Regressions are really not OK. People are trying to use this browser. Well, mostly they were trying to use it. I stuck it out longer than most. Having 512 MB of RAM and dozens of tabs is my use case.
  - mistermann 10y ago
    I have 12GB of RAM and probably ~120 tabs open at any given time. This used to be fine, but it seems Firefox is just getting worse over time, the main problem is the frequent 5 to 30 second pauses while it is doing....something.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

dredmorbius 10y ago

I was almost going to pass this up based on the HN discussion and the initial CTA[1] on the page. I'm still not sure this answers any of the many frustrations, and hopes, I have for browser development,[2][3] but it's of possible interest. For the love of all that's holy: Put a compelling argument for a CTA on the page BEFORE the CTA. And ... put a compelling argument there regardless. This lacks both. The features mentioned, especially tabs management, strike me as useful. Tabs are a mistake. That's not my opinion, that's Adam Stiles' view -- and he invented them. Content management is a huge problem. Web design isn't the solution, it's the problem. My standing recommendation now is that Pocket add a Web Intent to its Android app. If I could use it rather than Firefox or Chrome for browsing, I'd be vastly happier. Streams, search, bookmarks, content, organisation, reputation (of authors, sites, publishers), fact-checking, influence-registries (Nature just had an item on this IIRC) are all other areas of issue. Paying content providers is a concern. I'm notafan of micropayments, but building the system into the browser is one option. Broadband or content taxes with usage monitoring similar to music's mechanicals is another. Browsers could play a role in both. I'm also not a fan of having to register for stuff. But might regardless. ________________________________ Notes: 1. Call to action. 2. Among my longer rants, with a future roadmap: https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/256lxu/tabbed_browsing_a_lousy_bandaid_over_poor_browser/?ref=search_posts https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/256lxu/tabbed_... 3. Specific to Firefox: https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/VX64KGmikfg https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/VX64KGmi...

ianbicking 10y ago
Somewhat an aside, but Sticky Reader View would be a great Test Pilot experiment.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  Good suggestion.

owaislone 10y ago

Great, now can we have ubiquity back?

746F7475 10y ago

Just gave it a 10 seconds and decided this is not for me. Very first thing I enabled (Tabcenter) made Firefox completely unusable to a point where I couldn't even disable the feature or uninstall the plugin. Thankfully these pieces are named nicely in ~/.mozilla/firefox/<profile>/extensions and thus can be removed manually. Of course to even to read this advice after fucking up you need to know about firefox's -P startup option.

smacktoward 10y ago

Very nice! So far I'm liking this quite a bit, especially Tab Center. On that note, one usability suggestion: having the tab sidebar run all the way to the top of the window means that the years (decades?) of muscle memory I've built up telling me to mouse to the top left of the window to hit the Back button now results in me hitting the New Tab button. It'd be better if the awesomebar area spanned the complete width of the window, and the tab center column started at the same height as the content area.

toyg 10y ago

This is a step in the right direction. No more should crap like Pocket land in FF without warning. Making new features, which might be controversial, go through a "preview" stage like this, should help restore a lot of faith in the development process, and show that Mozilla is again focusing on the browser rather than random me-too projects following the latest web-fad.

lmorchard 10y ago
Yeah, I can't speak for everyone, but I think Test Pilot is in part a reaction to the Pocket thing. Even among Mozilla employees, there were folks who thought it was a great addition and there were folks who thought it was a huge mistake. Either way, it was a surprise, and not entirely pleasant. Test Pilot will hopefully be a way to reduce surprises of this nature.