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The usage stats from telemetry showed a 0.01% usage rate. Even if 99% of people that used the Live Bookmarks feature disabled telemetry that implies that 99% of

by opencl 8y ago

The usage stats from telemetry showed a 0.01% usage rate. Even if 99% of people that used the Live Bookmarks feature disabled telemetry that implies that 99% of Firefox users did not use the feature.

jjordan 8y ago
Well, Firefox killed the RSS button on the URL bar a while ago now (bring it back with https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/awesome-rss/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/awesome-rss/), so AFAIK there has been absolutely nothing to indicate the feature even existed for years now. Also, 0.01% of a big number is still a big number, and given the state of the feature, that number is likely to include a lot of long-time users.
- zaarn 8y ago
  According to Mozilla's statistics, 0.01% amounts to only 80'000 browser installs that use live bookmarks. That's not a big number and it's easy to find features that more people care about (ie multi-tab selection). When resources are constrained you have to make decisions about what features you'll continue to develop and which to cut out. Live bookmarks was cut out. Mozilla devs have also mentioned that this feature is ancient code and would have required a lot of coding effort to bring up to date. I'm sure if you were to invest the time to reimplement live bookmarks with modern code and with the internal restructuring in the browser in mind and you'd volunteer to maintain it and fix all filed bugs, they'd accept it.
Felz 8y ago
It's really weird to apparently be personally part of a 0.01% group. I feel that usage rate must be suspect- in some Firefox version they gave out live bookmarks by default, and surely more than 1 in 10,000 people still have those. Do we know what the telemetry actually measured?
NeedMoreTea 8y ago
Given how long ago it is since live bookmarks were a feature they made obvious, or called attention to in any way, in the default install, that's not so surprising. They removed the visibility years ago, then progressive updates made them ever less visible, including hiding then removing RSS notification. Once the first step was taken, the route to removal was set, including the telemetry figures. If they were as visible as pocket, perhaps as visible as pocket stories on new tabs, usage would be hugely higher.

by opencl 8y ago

The usage stats from telemetry showed a 0.01% usage rate. Even if 99% of people that used the Live Bookmarks feature disabled telemetry that implies that 99% of Firefox users did not use the feature.

jjordan 8y ago

Well, Firefox killed the RSS button on the URL bar a while ago now (bring it back with https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/awesome-rss/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/awesome-rss/), so AFAIK there has been absolutely nothing to indicate the feature even existed for years now. Also, 0.01% of a big number is still a big number, and given the state of the feature, that number is likely to include a lot of long-time users.

zaarn 8y ago
According to Mozilla's statistics, 0.01% amounts to only 80'000 browser installs that use live bookmarks. That's not a big number and it's easy to find features that more people care about (ie multi-tab selection). When resources are constrained you have to make decisions about what features you'll continue to develop and which to cut out. Live bookmarks was cut out. Mozilla devs have also mentioned that this feature is ancient code and would have required a lot of coding effort to bring up to date. I'm sure if you were to invest the time to reimplement live bookmarks with modern code and with the internal restructuring in the browser in mind and you'd volunteer to maintain it and fix all filed bugs, they'd accept it.

Felz 8y ago

It's really weird to apparently be personally part of a 0.01% group. I feel that usage rate must be suspect- in some Firefox version they gave out live bookmarks by default, and surely more than 1 in 10,000 people still have those. Do we know what the telemetry actually measured?

NeedMoreTea 8y ago

Given how long ago it is since live bookmarks were a feature they made obvious, or called attention to in any way, in the default install, that's not so surprising. They removed the visibility years ago, then progressive updates made them ever less visible, including hiding then removing RSS notification. Once the first step was taken, the route to removal was set, including the telemetry figures. If they were as visible as pocket, perhaps as visible as pocket stories on new tabs, usage would be hugely higher.