8 ms·

> Removed the description field for bookmarks. Users who have stored descriptions using the field may wish to export these descriptions as html or json files, a

by nathcd 8y ago

> Removed the description field for bookmarks. Users who have stored descriptions using the field may wish to export these descriptions as html or json files, as they will be removed in a future release. Does anyone know if there's an explanation for this somewhere? Between removing live bookmarks (a simple feed reader) and this, it seems like they're paring down user-facing features. I don't think these are the features being referred to when people complain about "browser bloat", Mozilla. I expect Chrome to push me to use remote services, but I don't want that from Mozilla. I know it's a trope to complain about Firefox becoming a Chrome clone, but it feels truer every release.

nerdponx 8y ago
They're also paring down user-facing settings. It makes no sense to, e.g., send people to about:config for disabling web service workers.
- driverdan 8y ago
  They've been actively hostile to friendly user settings for years. They constantly reduce what's exposed through the settings page, forcing users into about:config.
  - snaky 8y ago
    Forcing users to default settings actually, they would happily remove about:config if they could.
  - Adverblessly 8y ago
    And I feel like that's the first step towards using their telemetry to decide that feature is unused and can be deprecated (because only the people who really care about something will go through with Googling to find whatever hidden setting needs to be changed to fix their browser). And yes, I'm still salty about no longer being able to set showOneOffButtons to false :) (I've stopped using FireFox since the new extensions model doesn't allow this misfeature to be fixed with extensions anymore)
jaas 8y ago
The Firefox bookmarking implementation is unnecessarily complicated and I'm guessing very few features are actually used. It's a maintenance burden, I'm not surprised they want to slim it down. To give you an example of a maintenance burden in the bookmarking system, the bookmarking system uses a bunch of synchronous APIs. Mozilla is trying to cut down or eliminate use of those APIs, to reduce UI hangs among other reasons, and in order to do that a bunch of bookmarking code needs to be rewritten. You may have decided that you don't care about this particular kind of bloat, but all unnecessary maintenance burdens distract developers from doing work I'm sure you do care about. Here is the bug for removing descriptions: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1402890 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1402890 Here is a sub-bug that discusses issues with synchronous APIs. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1467996 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1467996
- nathcd 8y ago
  Thanks, I appreciate the explanation and links, and I can definitely appreciate the fact that it's a maintenance burden that's taking away from other important work. But it's still hard to swallow -- given the really, truly amazing engineering work that's been coming out of Mozilla (Rust and Servo are what I'm thinking of), and the gargantuan effort going into those -- that the APIs involved in the bookmarking system couldn't be improved. Looked at from another angle, if Mozilla can afford to put some resources into keeping Thunderbird alive, surely it can afford some resources to improve bookmarking code to avoid axing some fairly basic features.
  - nikbackm 8y ago
    I've read somewhere that Firefox telemetry showed that hardly anyone used the bookmark descriptions. In that case, understandable they chose to remove them.
    - nathcd 8y ago
      That's how I expect Google to make decisions, not Mozilla. I would like to say that I trust Mozilla to appropriately weigh pros and cons and make unpopular decisions when necessary, but it seems like the entire deliberation process was a few individuals in one of the bugzilla threads that jaas linked above: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1402890 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1402890 (and I don't see any mention of how widely used it is, from telemetry or otherwise).
interfixus 8y ago
Came here with exact same quote in clipboard, ready to grumble. Not that this is in any way an essential feature to me, but the trend is one way, and one way only: The paring down of choice and useful public features. Firefox of ten years ago was UI-wise a far superior product to the sorry quasi-Chrome of today. I no longer use it with any kind of joy or excitement because it's somehow best. I use it because everything else is even worse. No, please, spare me the recommendation: I do not use Google products. Period. [Edit: typos]
- jamesgeck0 8y ago
  > the trend is one way, and one way only: The paring down of choise and usefuls public features. ...and creating APIs so that extensions can handle the functionality instead.
  - snaky 8y ago
    Creating XUL, really? You cannot create an restricted API for everything, the very point of extensions, plugins, addons is community is always bigger than your developers team, and much, much more diverse. The 'long tail' effect is what extensions community is about, not '90 per cent of users'. 90 per cent of users might need just a couple of the same extensions, the other 10 per cent of users need a thousand of different extensions.
    - tomc1985 8y ago
      Well, we had XUL (which was awesome), now it's gone
      - snaky 8y ago
        I need to say at least one relatively good thing about Firefox - it has extensions on Android. I don't know for how long but still.
      - Endy 8y ago
        The community still has XUL thanks to Pale Moon.
gkya 8y ago
That's really bad. Deleting user data is one of the most loud ways to declare that "we're bad at software development!" I guess I should consider trying Ungoogled Chromium or maybe Pale Moon. I worry the former will be a menace to build because I don't have lots of RAM and CPU. Edit: I don't use the feature but still...
- fmoralesc 8y ago
  They are not deleting already existing data, they removed the user-facing features and the collection of new data.
  - yborg 8y ago
    No, they said they intend to remove the data entirely in the future and that you should back it up yourself if you want to keep it.
  - gkya 8y ago
    They will remove the data in a future release. I.e. if you don't read the entire release notes for all the software you use, there's a chance that your data will be removed inadvertently, if you happen to use the feature. Firefox has problems with data loss. I have lost my open tabs on multiple occasions in scenarios where it's totally possible to recover the entire data (just using atomic writes). Recently, I mistakenly opened FF 52 instead of FF 61 (Debian has 52), and all my bookmarks were deleted. Luckily I had a backup of the user profile so that I survived that. I like FF, but I cannot trust it with my data one bit. And now it's no more only mistakes but it's intentional, user-hostile design decisions.
m-p-3 8y ago
If they remove tags supports later on, that will be the last useful feature I'm hanging on. The bookmarking system is being downgraded to the point of uselessness, at this point I'd switch back to Chrome.
- TomK32 8y ago
  While I do tag my bookmarks I barely use that feature. Some tag cloud for my bookmkarks would be awesome though.
  - snaky 8y ago
    https://github.com/nextcloud/bookmarks https://github.com/nextcloud/bookmarks
- da_murvel 8y ago
  As long as Chrome is maintained by Google I'd never go back. Heck, I'd even start using IE before I'd turn to Chrome ...
- snaky 8y ago
  Bromite [1] is promising, especially if someone begin to build it for desktop platforms. [1] https://www.bromite.org/ https://www.bromite.org/
  - StillBored 8y ago
    What does it have over Falkon (previously, https://qupzilla.com https://qupzilla.com, which supported a whole pile of platforms), or for that matter any of the chromium based browsers, which all seem to be "de-googled"?
    - snaky 8y ago
      Is the Falcon actively developed recently? By the way, Bromite is available in F-Droid, is there any plans about Falcon for Android? > any of the chromium based browsers, which all seem to be "de-googled" Are there many of them?
darekkay 8y ago
If anyone relies on bookmark descriptions, look into my Static Marks tool [0]. It goes beyond descriptions: every bookmark may include multiple notes and other bookmarks. There is no import feature yet, though (but the latest move by Mozilla makes me want to implement this soon). [0] https://staticmarks.com/ https://staticmarks.com/

by nathcd 8y ago

nerdponx 8y ago

They're also paring down user-facing settings. It makes no sense to, e.g., send people to about:config for disabling web service workers.

driverdan 8y ago
They've been actively hostile to friendly user settings for years. They constantly reduce what's exposed through the settings page, forcing users into about:config.
- snaky 8y ago
  Forcing users to default settings actually, they would happily remove about:config if they could.
- Adverblessly 8y ago
  And I feel like that's the first step towards using their telemetry to decide that feature is unused and can be deprecated (because only the people who really care about something will go through with Googling to find whatever hidden setting needs to be changed to fix their browser). And yes, I'm still salty about no longer being able to set showOneOffButtons to false :) (I've stopped using FireFox since the new extensions model doesn't allow this misfeature to be fixed with extensions anymore)

jaas 8y ago

The Firefox bookmarking implementation is unnecessarily complicated and I'm guessing very few features are actually used. It's a maintenance burden, I'm not surprised they want to slim it down. To give you an example of a maintenance burden in the bookmarking system, the bookmarking system uses a bunch of synchronous APIs. Mozilla is trying to cut down or eliminate use of those APIs, to reduce UI hangs among other reasons, and in order to do that a bunch of bookmarking code needs to be rewritten. You may have decided that you don't care about this particular kind of bloat, but all unnecessary maintenance burdens distract developers from doing work I'm sure you do care about. Here is the bug for removing descriptions: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1402890 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1402890 Here is a sub-bug that discusses issues with synchronous APIs. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1467996 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1467996

nathcd 8y ago
Thanks, I appreciate the explanation and links, and I can definitely appreciate the fact that it's a maintenance burden that's taking away from other important work. But it's still hard to swallow -- given the really, truly amazing engineering work that's been coming out of Mozilla (Rust and Servo are what I'm thinking of), and the gargantuan effort going into those -- that the APIs involved in the bookmarking system couldn't be improved. Looked at from another angle, if Mozilla can afford to put some resources into keeping Thunderbird alive, surely it can afford some resources to improve bookmarking code to avoid axing some fairly basic features.
- nikbackm 8y ago
  I've read somewhere that Firefox telemetry showed that hardly anyone used the bookmark descriptions. In that case, understandable they chose to remove them.
  - nathcd 8y ago
    That's how I expect Google to make decisions, not Mozilla. I would like to say that I trust Mozilla to appropriately weigh pros and cons and make unpopular decisions when necessary, but it seems like the entire deliberation process was a few individuals in one of the bugzilla threads that jaas linked above: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1402890 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1402890 (and I don't see any mention of how widely used it is, from telemetry or otherwise).

interfixus 8y ago

Came here with exact same quote in clipboard, ready to grumble. Not that this is in any way an essential feature to me, but the trend is one way, and one way only: The paring down of choice and useful public features. Firefox of ten years ago was UI-wise a far superior product to the sorry quasi-Chrome of today. I no longer use it with any kind of joy or excitement because it's somehow best. I use it because everything else is even worse. No, please, spare me the recommendation: I do not use Google products. Period. [Edit: typos]

jamesgeck0 8y ago
> the trend is one way, and one way only: The paring down of choise and usefuls public features. ...and creating APIs so that extensions can handle the functionality instead.
- snaky 8y ago
  Creating XUL, really? You cannot create an restricted API for everything, the very point of extensions, plugins, addons is community is always bigger than your developers team, and much, much more diverse. The 'long tail' effect is what extensions community is about, not '90 per cent of users'. 90 per cent of users might need just a couple of the same extensions, the other 10 per cent of users need a thousand of different extensions.
  - tomc1985 8y ago
    Well, we had XUL (which was awesome), now it's gone
    - snaky 8y ago
      I need to say at least one relatively good thing about Firefox - it has extensions on Android. I don't know for how long but still.
    - Endy 8y ago
      The community still has XUL thanks to Pale Moon.

gkya 8y ago

That's really bad. Deleting user data is one of the most loud ways to declare that "we're bad at software development!" I guess I should consider trying Ungoogled Chromium or maybe Pale Moon. I worry the former will be a menace to build because I don't have lots of RAM and CPU. Edit: I don't use the feature but still...

fmoralesc 8y ago
They are not deleting already existing data, they removed the user-facing features and the collection of new data.
- yborg 8y ago
  No, they said they intend to remove the data entirely in the future and that you should back it up yourself if you want to keep it.
- gkya 8y ago
  They will remove the data in a future release. I.e. if you don't read the entire release notes for all the software you use, there's a chance that your data will be removed inadvertently, if you happen to use the feature. Firefox has problems with data loss. I have lost my open tabs on multiple occasions in scenarios where it's totally possible to recover the entire data (just using atomic writes). Recently, I mistakenly opened FF 52 instead of FF 61 (Debian has 52), and all my bookmarks were deleted. Luckily I had a backup of the user profile so that I survived that. I like FF, but I cannot trust it with my data one bit. And now it's no more only mistakes but it's intentional, user-hostile design decisions.

m-p-3 8y ago

If they remove tags supports later on, that will be the last useful feature I'm hanging on. The bookmarking system is being downgraded to the point of uselessness, at this point I'd switch back to Chrome.

TomK32 8y ago
While I do tag my bookmarks I barely use that feature. Some tag cloud for my bookmkarks would be awesome though.
- snaky 8y ago
  https://github.com/nextcloud/bookmarks https://github.com/nextcloud/bookmarks
da_murvel 8y ago
As long as Chrome is maintained by Google I'd never go back. Heck, I'd even start using IE before I'd turn to Chrome ...
snaky 8y ago
Bromite [1] is promising, especially if someone begin to build it for desktop platforms. [1] https://www.bromite.org/ https://www.bromite.org/
- StillBored 8y ago
  What does it have over Falkon (previously, https://qupzilla.com https://qupzilla.com, which supported a whole pile of platforms), or for that matter any of the chromium based browsers, which all seem to be "de-googled"?
  - snaky 8y ago
    Is the Falcon actively developed recently? By the way, Bromite is available in F-Droid, is there any plans about Falcon for Android? > any of the chromium based browsers, which all seem to be "de-googled" Are there many of them?

darekkay 8y ago

If anyone relies on bookmark descriptions, look into my Static Marks tool [0]. It goes beyond descriptions: every bookmark may include multiple notes and other bookmarks. There is no import feature yet, though (but the latest move by Mozilla makes me want to implement this soon). [0] https://staticmarks.com/ https://staticmarks.com/