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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 deci

by 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.
        dblohm7 8y ago
        How is that supposed to be sustainable?
        394549 8y ago
        Are you saying it's unsustainable to maintain an application suitable for power users? It'll definitely take more effort than maintaining a restrictive, dumbed-down app; but it's certainly not impossible and I think the benefit is worth it.
        dblohm7 8y ago
        I'm saying that it's unsustainable to maintain a hundreds of features for the benefit of different slices of 1% use.
        394549 8y ago
        > I'm saying that it's unsustainable to maintain a hundreds of features for the benefit of different slices of 1% use. There isn't one kind of "power user," especially for something like a web browser. If you want to support power users, you probably will need to support hundreds of specialized features, many of which won't be used my everyone. If you don't do that, then I think it's very unlikely that you support power users [1]. Apps with feature-sets like this exist, so I think it's wrong to make a blanket statement that it's unsustainable. I'm not saying it's always sustainable either: if you're a two man team at a small company, you probably can't manage to support much more than the core user group. However, Mozilla's big and I think they need to offer something unique compared to Chrome and Safari. [1] As opposed to developers or extension-writers. My definition of power user excludes people who extensively modify the software themselves.
- notriddle 8y ago
  > Exactly. There is no point to compete with Google for "browser for Uncle Joe" Yes there is. For Firefox to be useful, websites need to work in it. That means web developers need to test in it. And that means that the demographics that they target need to have enough Firefox users to justify testing it. That means there needs to be a sizable portion of Firefox users in every major demographic. Otherwise it'll be right back to where we were with IE6, except unlike back then, Google Chrome isn't abandonware that just happens to ship with Windows.

by nathcd 8y ago

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.
      - dblohm7 8y ago
        How is that supposed to be sustainable?
        394549 8y ago
        Are you saying it's unsustainable to maintain an application suitable for power users? It'll definitely take more effort than maintaining a restrictive, dumbed-down app; but it's certainly not impossible and I think the benefit is worth it.
        dblohm7 8y ago
        I'm saying that it's unsustainable to maintain a hundreds of features for the benefit of different slices of 1% use.
        394549 8y ago
        > I'm saying that it's unsustainable to maintain a hundreds of features for the benefit of different slices of 1% use. There isn't one kind of "power user," especially for something like a web browser. If you want to support power users, you probably will need to support hundreds of specialized features, many of which won't be used my everyone. If you don't do that, then I think it's very unlikely that you support power users [1]. Apps with feature-sets like this exist, so I think it's wrong to make a blanket statement that it's unsustainable. I'm not saying it's always sustainable either: if you're a two man team at a small company, you probably can't manage to support much more than the core user group. However, Mozilla's big and I think they need to offer something unique compared to Chrome and Safari. [1] As opposed to developers or extension-writers. My definition of power user excludes people who extensively modify the software themselves.
notriddle 8y ago
> Exactly. There is no point to compete with Google for "browser for Uncle Joe" Yes there is. For Firefox to be useful, websites need to work in it. That means web developers need to test in it. And that means that the demographics that they target need to have enough Firefox users to justify testing it. That means there needs to be a sizable portion of Firefox users in every major demographic. Otherwise it'll be right back to where we were with IE6, except unlike back then, Google Chrome isn't abandonware that just happens to ship with Windows.