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I don't know how I've improved the situation going from Chrome to Firefox and then to Firefox Nightly: I wish Mozilla put efforts toward preserving settings an

I don't know how I've improved the situation going from Chrome to Firefox and then to Firefox Nightly: I wish Mozilla put efforts toward preserving settings and not reinstalling search providers one has purposefully removed. I understand that by using Nightly I cannot expect what a general user expects, but this problem exists in all browsers. I consider it user-hostile behavior that more emphasis isn't taken to preserve settings. Oh a new update? Clearly you want us to sync everything instead of just the few things you selected. Let's revert it all to defaults. I also understand how settings are stored (the backend format) might change between minor or major versions. Sometimes factory defaults need to be reinstated - but it should be very fucking clear (with a notification) that the user should go review settings that have changed/reverted. And this cannot be a banner that shows every time an update applies. Give the user some transparency. On Chrome when I ask it to preserve my previous session it preserves just that session's browsing history. This history is forgotten if I make a point to close all tabs and end the session. On Firefox I must save all history be to 'restore the current session'. Wish we had more control over this. You can't disable Firefox from checking for updates (I wish this could be left to package managers on some systems). I understand but I don't want to be nagged. You can make Firefox ask you, but it will check nonetheless. Why the fuck would I want "Recommmend features as I browse?" or "Recommend extensions as I browse?" I hate being advertised to. "Warn you about unwanted and uncommon software" - who is making this determination? Who is Firefox talking to about what I download? I wish I could sync settings, open tabs, addresses, history, etc - to an simple archive on close or periodically. No online service to sync against with another account I have to worry about. Sucks that in hotels Firefox determines if there's a captive portal in effect by querying a Mozilla-hosted site (detectportal.firefox.com). Blah.

the_pwner224 7y ago
> On Firefox I must save all history be to 'restore the current session'. Wish we had more control over this. What do you mean by that? I have mine set to never remember history, and I often force-kill FF as a way to save a session. When I start it up again it prompts to restore the previous session. > You can't disable Firefox from checking for updates (I wish this could be left to package managers on some systems). Firefox's updater is disabled on Arch Linux and iirc also Ubuntu/Fedora/etc. The 'About' window says that it has been disabled by the system administrator. Presumably this is either an about:config setting (good) or a compile-time flag (sad). > Why the fuck would I want "Recommmend features as I browse?" or "Recommend extensions as I browse?" I hate being advertised to. These aren't ads; you can't pay to have your extension shown to users. Recommending features is done by the browser on your computer; iirc the addons recommendations are also computed locally based on anonymized data (don't quote me on that though). I at least find the feature suggestions to have been helpful. Many normal people won't know about reader mode, and FF on Android also tells you that bookmarking a page will save it for offline use, which I would not have otherwise known. > "Warn you about unwanted and uncommon software" - who is making this determination? Who is Firefox talking to about what I download? Google is used; if a file seems suspicious only then are details sent to google to give the final word. I wish they were more upfront about that. But FF is targeted at normal people, and this does help them not get malware. Advanced users like us can easily disable it. That doesn't excuse the lack of transparency though. > Sucks that in hotels Firefox determines if there's a captive portal in effect by querying a Mozilla-hosted site (detectportal.firefox.com). How else do you propose they do this? And better to have Mozilla host it than someone else. On Android you are forced to use Google's NTP servers, and I have no doubt their captive portal detection is also google-hosted. I'd bet the detection URL is exposed in an about:config flag on FF. > I wish I could sync settings, open tabs, addresses, history, etc - to an simple archive on close or periodically. No online service to sync against with another account I have to worry about. For what its worth, Firefox Sync is e2e encrypted with your password. If you log out of sync on all your devices and forget your password, the synced data is gone forever. To log back in you will have to reset the password, and since none of your devices are logged in (they act as backups for the data), it is gone forever.
- sfink 7y ago
  Addon recommendations do not anonymize their input data, which I think is just what browser features and maybe sites you've used (I'm not sure). But it doesn't matter, since it is never sent anywhere. The data is local, the decision is local. Your browser already knows your browsing history.
Marsymars 7y ago
> You can't disable Firefox from checking for updates (I wish this could be left to package managers on some systems). You typically can... not sure about your platform, but I use policies.json on Windows to disable update checks.
- blitmap 7y ago
  That does not sound very user-friendly... but well within the realm of a package manager installing a distro's custom policies.json
DanBC 7y ago
> Sucks that in hotels Firefox determines if there's a captive portal in effect by querying a Mozilla-hosted site (detectportal.firefox.com). But all browsers do this. "Windows performs a series of network tests. The destination site of these tests is msftncsi.com," https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/mobilebroadband/captive-portals https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/mo... "Shill, the connection manager for Chromium OS, attempts to detect services that are within a captive portal whenever a service transitions to the ready state. This determination of being in a captive portal or being online is done by attempting to retrieve the webpage http://clients3.google.com/generate_204 http://clients3.google.com/generate_204. This well known URL is known to return an empty page with an HTTP status 204. If for any reason the web page is not returned, or an HTTP response other than 204 is received, then shill marks the service as being in the portal state." https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/network-portal-detection https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/...
vinay_ys 7y ago
I also use Firefox Nightly. But was rudely surprised to notice that settings were getting reset after nightly upgrades. This is really poor decision by Firefox. If they expect early adopters to use and give feedback, then they should be friendly to them.
- sfink 7y ago
  You're probably seeing a recent change. Different channels (eg release vs nightly) recently started using separate profiles, because it was too easy to get data loss by switching between browser versions with the same profile. The storage files are backwards- compatible, but not forward compatible. I don't know if firefox clones your profile or creates a blank one when you switch channels, though.

the_pwner224 7y ago

> On Firefox I must save all history be to 'restore the current session'. Wish we had more control over this. What do you mean by that? I have mine set to never remember history, and I often force-kill FF as a way to save a session. When I start it up again it prompts to restore the previous session. > You can't disable Firefox from checking for updates (I wish this could be left to package managers on some systems). Firefox's updater is disabled on Arch Linux and iirc also Ubuntu/Fedora/etc. The 'About' window says that it has been disabled by the system administrator. Presumably this is either an about:config setting (good) or a compile-time flag (sad). > Why the fuck would I want "Recommmend features as I browse?" or "Recommend extensions as I browse?" I hate being advertised to. These aren't ads; you can't pay to have your extension shown to users. Recommending features is done by the browser on your computer; iirc the addons recommendations are also computed locally based on anonymized data (don't quote me on that though). I at least find the feature suggestions to have been helpful. Many normal people won't know about reader mode, and FF on Android also tells you that bookmarking a page will save it for offline use, which I would not have otherwise known. > "Warn you about unwanted and uncommon software" - who is making this determination? Who is Firefox talking to about what I download? Google is used; if a file seems suspicious only then are details sent to google to give the final word. I wish they were more upfront about that. But FF is targeted at normal people, and this does help them not get malware. Advanced users like us can easily disable it. That doesn't excuse the lack of transparency though. > Sucks that in hotels Firefox determines if there's a captive portal in effect by querying a Mozilla-hosted site (detectportal.firefox.com). How else do you propose they do this? And better to have Mozilla host it than someone else. On Android you are forced to use Google's NTP servers, and I have no doubt their captive portal detection is also google-hosted. I'd bet the detection URL is exposed in an about:config flag on FF. > I wish I could sync settings, open tabs, addresses, history, etc - to an simple archive on close or periodically. No online service to sync against with another account I have to worry about. For what its worth, Firefox Sync is e2e encrypted with your password. If you log out of sync on all your devices and forget your password, the synced data is gone forever. To log back in you will have to reset the password, and since none of your devices are logged in (they act as backups for the data), it is gone forever.

sfink 7y ago
Addon recommendations do not anonymize their input data, which I think is just what browser features and maybe sites you've used (I'm not sure). But it doesn't matter, since it is never sent anywhere. The data is local, the decision is local. Your browser already knows your browsing history.

Marsymars 7y ago

> You can't disable Firefox from checking for updates (I wish this could be left to package managers on some systems). You typically can... not sure about your platform, but I use policies.json on Windows to disable update checks.

blitmap 7y ago
That does not sound very user-friendly... but well within the realm of a package manager installing a distro's custom policies.json

DanBC 7y ago

> Sucks that in hotels Firefox determines if there's a captive portal in effect by querying a Mozilla-hosted site (detectportal.firefox.com). But all browsers do this. "Windows performs a series of network tests. The destination site of these tests is msftncsi.com," https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/mobilebroadband/captive-portals https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/mo... "Shill, the connection manager for Chromium OS, attempts to detect services that are within a captive portal whenever a service transitions to the ready state. This determination of being in a captive portal or being online is done by attempting to retrieve the webpage http://clients3.google.com/generate_204 http://clients3.google.com/generate_204. This well known URL is known to return an empty page with an HTTP status 204. If for any reason the web page is not returned, or an HTTP response other than 204 is received, then shill marks the service as being in the portal state." https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/network-portal-detection https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/...

vinay_ys 7y ago

I also use Firefox Nightly. But was rudely surprised to notice that settings were getting reset after nightly upgrades. This is really poor decision by Firefox. If they expect early adopters to use and give feedback, then they should be friendly to them.

sfink 7y ago
You're probably seeing a recent change. Different channels (eg release vs nightly) recently started using separate profiles, because it was too easy to get data loss by switching between browser versions with the same profile. The storage files are backwards- compatible, but not forward compatible. I don't know if firefox clones your profile or creates a blank one when you switch channels, though.