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If Firefox is going to be the best browser, it should focus on fixing bugs, optimizing performance, keeping up with standards and ensuring users keep full contr

If Firefox is going to be the best browser, it should focus on fixing bugs, optimizing performance, keeping up with standards and ensuring users keep full control of their browser on desktop and mobile via detailed configuration options and a powerful extension framework. That's it. Ever. I'm positive this kind of thing will only be used to make Firefox worse by inspiring new built-in "features". Now that I think about it, all the built-in telemetry stuff like SHEILD should be handled by extensions. I shouldn't have to worry about a UI checkbox being respected by code. If the code's not there, I've got nothing to worry about.

Spivak 8y ago
All of the things you listed largely don't matter to anyone outside the bubble of hackers. Users care about features and aren't nearly as sensitive to feature creep as we are. * Average users wouldn't recognize a bug if they saw one. * Average users don't even know what it means to control / be controlled by software. It's a tool that either does something useful for them or not. * Average users barely know what an extension is, and they'll ask you to install an ad blocker for them. * Average users don't touch settings. They don't even know what an 'about' page is let alone a mozilla.cfg. * Average users don't even know what HTTP or HTML stand for. And nobody actually cares about standards, they care that the websites they use work. If given the choice between going against the standard or breaking any popular website a browser would be shooting their own foot by not picking the latter.
- some_account 8y ago
  This is why it's important that we who understand this also acts like it. Friends look to us for recommendations what to use, and why. As tech people, we are guides. Use your influence in the best way possible. Internet can be an amazing tool for shining light on oppression and censorship or it can become like cable TV, with corporate senders and powerless receivers.
- jasonkostempski 8y ago
  Average users don't even care about features, they use the browser they're given or the last one they were tricked into installing. None of the things in that list would need to be a concern of the average user if the right thing is the default. Nothing I suggested would stop that from being the case. In fact, most of those things are already being done right in Firefox, except the telemetry. Presenting the opt-in choice as a warm fuzzy sounding thing ("improve product", "speedy solutions", "Dark Web protection") to users that have no clue what it's about isn't really opt-in, it's just inducing a predictable fear-based response. Having a multi-step process to install an extension to turn those things on would be true opt-in. The average user would be too lazy to do it, the people that want it can have it, and those that explicitly don't want it, don't have to worry about it being inadvertently activated. Note, by "keep up with standards" I didn't mean be standards compliant at all cost, I meant implement new ones as they come up.
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  I'm pretty sure end users care about performance and bugs, although certainly you have to get over a significant threshold before it becomes a big deal.
yuhong 8y ago
I wonder why such strict standards are needed, given that it is open source.

Spivak 8y ago

All of the things you listed largely don't matter to anyone outside the bubble of hackers. Users care about features and aren't nearly as sensitive to feature creep as we are. * Average users wouldn't recognize a bug if they saw one. * Average users don't even know what it means to control / be controlled by software. It's a tool that either does something useful for them or not. * Average users barely know what an extension is, and they'll ask you to install an ad blocker for them. * Average users don't touch settings. They don't even know what an 'about' page is let alone a mozilla.cfg. * Average users don't even know what HTTP or HTML stand for. And nobody actually cares about standards, they care that the websites they use work. If given the choice between going against the standard or breaking any popular website a browser would be shooting their own foot by not picking the latter.

some_account 8y ago
This is why it's important that we who understand this also acts like it. Friends look to us for recommendations what to use, and why. As tech people, we are guides. Use your influence in the best way possible. Internet can be an amazing tool for shining light on oppression and censorship or it can become like cable TV, with corporate senders and powerless receivers.
jasonkostempski 8y ago
Average users don't even care about features, they use the browser they're given or the last one they were tricked into installing. None of the things in that list would need to be a concern of the average user if the right thing is the default. Nothing I suggested would stop that from being the case. In fact, most of those things are already being done right in Firefox, except the telemetry. Presenting the opt-in choice as a warm fuzzy sounding thing ("improve product", "speedy solutions", "Dark Web protection") to users that have no clue what it's about isn't really opt-in, it's just inducing a predictable fear-based response. Having a multi-step process to install an extension to turn those things on would be true opt-in. The average user would be too lazy to do it, the people that want it can have it, and those that explicitly don't want it, don't have to worry about it being inadvertently activated. Note, by "keep up with standards" I didn't mean be standards compliant at all cost, I meant implement new ones as they come up.
yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
I'm pretty sure end users care about performance and bugs, although certainly you have to get over a significant threshold before it becomes a big deal.

yuhong 8y ago

I wonder why such strict standards are needed, given that it is open source.