5 ms·

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

by 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).
  - snaky 8y ago
    > That's how I expect Google to make decisions, not Mozilla Exactly. There is no point to compete with Google for "browser for Uncle Joe", Google won that battle. The power user browser niche is what Firefox could take instead. But no, let's chase after the leader by his rules, look at how good is Blackberry doing.
    - dao- 8y ago
      Can you explain how exactly the description field for bookmarks was a relevant feature for a significant share of power users?
      - snaky 8y ago
        > a significant share I don't know what is 'a significant share' when we are talking about power users. Not to say a significant share of power users disabled telemetry completely so we can't say anything about their share using this feature.
        dao- 8y ago
        > I don't know what is 'a significant share' when we are talking about power users. It basically means: worth tailoring to, given precious UI space and limited developer resources. Of course there's no fixed share that "worth tailoring to" can be translated to universally. It's a judgement call. Do you think 50% of power users used this feature? How about 10%? 5%? 1%? I doubt this one even met the 1% bar. Would you agree that it's reasonable if not necessary to draw a line somewhere? > Not to say a significant share of power users disabled telemetry completely so we can't say anything about their share using this feature. What we can at the very least do is reason about features and why and how people would use them, and we can collect anecdotal evidence. I consider myself a power user. I have never used this feature in more than a decade, and have a hard time imagining what important thing people would do with it.
        394549 8y ago
        > It basically means: worth tailoring to, given precious UI space and limited developer resources. How much precious developer time is required maintain a user-facing text field on an entity with only a handful of other fields? Certainly not enough to properly justify a feature regression with user-data loss. > Do you think 50% of power users used this feature? How about 10%? 5%? 1%? IMHO, you're thinking about power users incorrectly. Power users aren't as cookie-cutter as regular users, so you shouldn't expect them all to use an identical set of features. For instance, say you have 100 power user features. It wouldn't surprise me if none of those features passed 1% usage, but 90% of power users use at least one of them. Get rid of them all due to "low usage according to telemetry" and you've just created regressions for 90% of your power users.
- 394549 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. It's not understandable. That logic leads to dumbed-down, point-and-grunt products because the "telemetry" shows most users aren't power users. Anyway, how much effort does it really take to maintain a text field on a bookmark entity?
  - Karunamon 8y ago
    I do kind of wonder how many power users are opting out of telemetry for privacy reasons... Unrelated, but dear god that bug tracker was infuriating to read. As in I had a strong desire to reach through the screen and shake a few by the shoulders asking "What the FUCK is wrong with you people?!" Concern over data loss nearly dismissed out of hand, a smug "you should have backups" response to intentionally caused data loss, and all this over what amounts to a property field on a bookmark... It's like I was reading the GNOME tracker! All this over "maintenance burden". Is the "maintenace burden" of a non-searchable field that's only visible in a single context really that high? Really? It seems like this is quickly becoming the go-to excuse to eliminate power user features in a way that those users will not see until its too late. "Developer" is already a subset of "power user", and "developer who reads the bug tracker for unwanted future surprises" is an even smaller subset.
  - unethical_ban 8y ago
    >Anyway, how much effort does it really take to maintain a text field on a bookmark entity? My thought too! Legacy extension APIs are one thing. An extra DB column / key:value pair is nothing.
    - StillBored 8y ago
      If you think about, how this simplifies anything, you will start to understand the mess that is the FF codebase (not that chrome is noticeably better, particularly if you try and build it anywhere outside of ubuntu/x86_64).
      - 8y ago
- Endy 8y ago
  No, it's not understandable at all. It might be understandable to have an option to display descriptions or not, but not remove altogether. Frankly, Firefox was, for a long time, the only major privacy-respecting browser. Heck, Tor Browser is still built on FF. By only caring about "telemetry" (i.e. random information sharing without the user having the ability to audit data prior to any transmission), and not caring about providing the best and most robust privacy-focused feature set, Firefox is actively cutting off a major part of its old user base, telling them that Firefox is not the browser which they originally installed anymore. Now, if the description data was being stored in plaintext and that data was being leaked, by all means, say that outright so we know that the devs screwed up again, remove the dangerous function, leave the data to the user (that part really kills me, btw - Mozilla is trying to delete information from my PC without my explicit consent), and put it in roadmap to reimplement in a more privacy-driven way. That means, do not reveal information to any server - and I mean any - if I have a server on my network, don't let my user settings leak there. Do not rely on an external, insecure, website to do what your browser should. And all websites are insecure - I am not the only person to deal with the server from bare metal up, that means there are twice as many security risks as there are abstractions from me plugging my computer directly into that computer. If you want "telemetry", give me a button in my options menu to compile the report, in human-readable plaintext, and then, only after I approve it, ask me to send that text file through sFTP to a server I can log into with a one-time username and password, with 1024bit encryption minimum. I would be okay with sending a monthly report, after having confirmed that it does in fact contain no information whatsoever that could be used to deanonymize me. Anything more than once a month per user is extreme, and means that the devs are being overloaded with data so they don't have time to manually code.

by nathcd 8y ago

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).
- snaky 8y ago
  > That's how I expect Google to make decisions, not Mozilla Exactly. There is no point to compete with Google for "browser for Uncle Joe", Google won that battle. The power user browser niche is what Firefox could take instead. But no, let's chase after the leader by his rules, look at how good is Blackberry doing.
  - dao- 8y ago
    Can you explain how exactly the description field for bookmarks was a relevant feature for a significant share of power users?
    - snaky 8y ago
      > a significant share I don't know what is 'a significant share' when we are talking about power users. Not to say a significant share of power users disabled telemetry completely so we can't say anything about their share using this feature.
      - dao- 8y ago
        > I don't know what is 'a significant share' when we are talking about power users. It basically means: worth tailoring to, given precious UI space and limited developer resources. Of course there's no fixed share that "worth tailoring to" can be translated to universally. It's a judgement call. Do you think 50% of power users used this feature? How about 10%? 5%? 1%? I doubt this one even met the 1% bar. Would you agree that it's reasonable if not necessary to draw a line somewhere? > Not to say a significant share of power users disabled telemetry completely so we can't say anything about their share using this feature. What we can at the very least do is reason about features and why and how people would use them, and we can collect anecdotal evidence. I consider myself a power user. I have never used this feature in more than a decade, and have a hard time imagining what important thing people would do with it.
        394549 8y ago
        > It basically means: worth tailoring to, given precious UI space and limited developer resources. How much precious developer time is required maintain a user-facing text field on an entity with only a handful of other fields? Certainly not enough to properly justify a feature regression with user-data loss. > Do you think 50% of power users used this feature? How about 10%? 5%? 1%? IMHO, you're thinking about power users incorrectly. Power users aren't as cookie-cutter as regular users, so you shouldn't expect them all to use an identical set of features. For instance, say you have 100 power user features. It wouldn't surprise me if none of those features passed 1% usage, but 90% of power users use at least one of them. Get rid of them all due to "low usage according to telemetry" and you've just created regressions for 90% of your power users.
394549 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. It's not understandable. That logic leads to dumbed-down, point-and-grunt products because the "telemetry" shows most users aren't power users. Anyway, how much effort does it really take to maintain a text field on a bookmark entity?
- Karunamon 8y ago
  I do kind of wonder how many power users are opting out of telemetry for privacy reasons... Unrelated, but dear god that bug tracker was infuriating to read. As in I had a strong desire to reach through the screen and shake a few by the shoulders asking "What the FUCK is wrong with you people?!" Concern over data loss nearly dismissed out of hand, a smug "you should have backups" response to intentionally caused data loss, and all this over what amounts to a property field on a bookmark... It's like I was reading the GNOME tracker! All this over "maintenance burden". Is the "maintenace burden" of a non-searchable field that's only visible in a single context really that high? Really? It seems like this is quickly becoming the go-to excuse to eliminate power user features in a way that those users will not see until its too late. "Developer" is already a subset of "power user", and "developer who reads the bug tracker for unwanted future surprises" is an even smaller subset.
- unethical_ban 8y ago
  >Anyway, how much effort does it really take to maintain a text field on a bookmark entity? My thought too! Legacy extension APIs are one thing. An extra DB column / key:value pair is nothing.
  - StillBored 8y ago
    If you think about, how this simplifies anything, you will start to understand the mess that is the FF codebase (not that chrome is noticeably better, particularly if you try and build it anywhere outside of ubuntu/x86_64).
    - 8y ago
Endy 8y ago
No, it's not understandable at all. It might be understandable to have an option to display descriptions or not, but not remove altogether. Frankly, Firefox was, for a long time, the only major privacy-respecting browser. Heck, Tor Browser is still built on FF. By only caring about "telemetry" (i.e. random information sharing without the user having the ability to audit data prior to any transmission), and not caring about providing the best and most robust privacy-focused feature set, Firefox is actively cutting off a major part of its old user base, telling them that Firefox is not the browser which they originally installed anymore. Now, if the description data was being stored in plaintext and that data was being leaked, by all means, say that outright so we know that the devs screwed up again, remove the dangerous function, leave the data to the user (that part really kills me, btw - Mozilla is trying to delete information from my PC without my explicit consent), and put it in roadmap to reimplement in a more privacy-driven way. That means, do not reveal information to any server - and I mean any - if I have a server on my network, don't let my user settings leak there. Do not rely on an external, insecure, website to do what your browser should. And all websites are insecure - I am not the only person to deal with the server from bare metal up, that means there are twice as many security risks as there are abstractions from me plugging my computer directly into that computer. If you want "telemetry", give me a button in my options menu to compile the report, in human-readable plaintext, and then, only after I approve it, ask me to send that text file through sFTP to a server I can log into with a one-time username and password, with 1024bit encryption minimum. I would be okay with sending a monthly report, after having confirmed that it does in fact contain no information whatsoever that could be used to deanonymize me. Anything more than once a month per user is extreme, and means that the devs are being overloaded with data so they don't have time to manually code.