12 ms·

I don't understand all the negativity around this. People complained when Firefox added Pocket, in part because they took a browser extension and made it a feat

• alisonkisk 5y ago
  FTP is Internet browsing, it's just not not "web".
  • cpach 5y ago
    What is the use-case for FTP in 2021?
    • sildur 5y ago
      What's the use-case for desktop Linux in 2021?
      • drdec 5y ago
        A desktop environment with no telemetry.
    • jacquesm 5y ago
      Backwards compatibility with existing online resources.
    • silverfox17 5y ago
      Transferring files
    • ipaddr 5y ago
      Moving files between servers. Same as yesterday, same as tomorrow.
      • duskwuff 5y ago
        And Firefox didn't even do that. It never included full FTP client functionality; it only supported directory listings and downloads.
    • stirfish 5y ago
      Transferring files
    • xahrepap 5y ago
      I work in the healthcare sector. I tend to come across FTP urls related to my industry often. Usually from .gov sites.
      • Someone1234 5y ago
        The healthcare sector should be using secure technologies like TLS/HTTPS. If anything that's an argument for this change, since misuse of FTP remains rampant.
        • xahrepap 5y ago
          I don’t disagree. I’m simply pointing out it’s still used. That severing links and arguing in favor of that by saying “no one uses it” is inaccurate.
    • antisol 5y ago
      >What is the use-case for FTP in 2021? Transferring files. There's a hint right there in the protocol name.
  • _e 5y ago
    Yes, good point. Gopher is internet browsing too but is Firefox the best way to experience FTP and Gopher? How many different protocols should Firefox support? Firefox does not have the same resources as Google so focusing on what Firefox is known to do best such as HTTP and its supporting protocols, like WebSocket, really well looks like a good strategy.
    • jacquesm 5y ago
      On many systems it is now the only way.
      • mmastrac 5y ago
        I just checked my Windows 10 machine and it still has the FTP command-line program built in. What proportion of machines have Firefox but no FTP command-line program (or a "finder"/"explorer" that doesn't support FTP)? I cannot imagine this number is large.
• Y_Y 5y ago
  I, for one, would be quite happy to trade FTP for no-Pocket. I sometimes looked at an ftp index through firefox, but my file managers do a perfectly good job too. Anyway I still don't want to give it up until Pocket is erased.
• Rd6n6 5y ago
  Mozilla is struggling and is trying to focus its resources in a way that will let them build sustainable revenue and browser share. I hope they succeed
  • hulitu 5y ago
    RIP Mozilla. It's a shame that at the beginning the browser was pretty good.
    • autoexec 5y ago
      It's still a really good browser, you just have spend a lot of time and effort beating it into submission, removing/disabling anti-features, and installing 3rd party add-ons to get it there. Once you do however, it's the best bet you have at a secure, privacy respecting, modern web browser.
• RadioactiveMan 5y ago
  > People complained when Firefox added [...] > Now they're [...] removing [...], and people are still complaining? It's different people.
  • genewitch 5y ago
    This right here is something I want to say every time the "people said x, now people say y" paradigm appears. The word "people" in both cases are not the same persons. It is a shorthand but it always seems like it's designed as a "gotcha". I haven't thought enough about it to figure out what fallacy it entails, just enough to ignore it anytime I see an argument that uses it.
• tyingq 5y ago
  It's old, but "ftp://" is a valid uri scheme that has established use, and lots of valid links on existing, live web pages. Browsers removing support are breaking part of the web that was working fine.
  • johnebgd 5y ago
    Agreed. There are old drivers from established vendors that only send drivers over FTP links. It's an edge case these days though as more are moving to https:// https:// links so I can understand the browser vendors wanting to make the code base smaller. They have enough to do. Especially for Mozilla given what they charge for us to use their product.
    • tyingq 5y ago
      Maybe nice if they (Mozilla and/or Google) would make a site somewhat like https://webftp.dreamhost.com/ https://webftp.dreamhost.com/ that would accept url parameters to sort of proxy ftp requests. Wouldn't help for internal network ftp servers, but would ease the publicly accessible part. (Note that the dreamhost site has a little link icon in the lower left that will generate a link/landing page with all the important bits filled out.)
      • xg15 5y ago
        Wouldn't make that security worse? Then any FTP connection would have to be proxied through a third-party, which has all opportunity to monitor or MITM the files. This in particular as FTP is often used to transfer non-public files. Alternatively, Firefox could allow standalone clients to register for the ftp:// uri scheme (I think that's already possible) and, if no client is registered, redirect to some info page that explains the situation and offers links to standalone clients.
        • tyingq 5y ago
          Perhaps if it only supported anonymous ftp. That's most of the links that will get broken. For that, there is no real security consideration. What exists is plain text all around with deliberately exposed passwords.
• none_to_remain 5y ago
  A decision that maintaining an FTP client is no longer worth the effort and resources is fine, but instead there's this ... imperious attitude, that has come to characterize Mozilla even as their market share drops, diminishing any ability to actually be imperious
• jacquesm 5y ago
  Because pocket was a useless addition and dropping ftp:/ support breaks approximately 150 million valid links.
  • acabal 5y ago
    Browsers opening an ftp:// link can simply prompt to open it in a different program, much like they did PDFs in the past. (I also don't think a browser should have to be a great PDF renderer, but here we are.)
    • beebeepka 5y ago
      Good thing the pdf reader in Firefox is just a is just a .is file
    • jacquesm 5y ago
      And such programs can and will be downloaded from disreputable sites packed with malware and other junk, because the user needs that file. The great thing of having this stuff concentrated in a single program is that at least you have only one vendor relationship to consider.
      • photon-torpedo 5y ago
        Users googling for an ftp client have a good chance to land on filezilla, a client that has a history of bundling with unwanted software. The net security impact of dropping ftp support from the browser may well be negative.
    • tablespoon 5y ago
      > Browsers opening an ftp:// link can simply prompt to open it in a different program, much like they did PDFs in the past. (I also don't think a browser should have to be a great PDF renderer, but here we are.) Except then you have to find, install, and configure that program, which not everybody may be able or willing to do. We have trust browsers, for better or worse, and many people may not be comfortable identifying another trustworthy program to handle FTP downloads (due to malware/adware concerns), especially when they're trying to do something else. Having something in the browser saves users a trust decision. Also, this feature has been so established that lots of stuff was designed expecting it to work that will now be broken. I also wouldn't be surprised if some FTP sites (say with old drivers) just get taken offline without being migrated, due to this.
• nashashmi 5y ago
  Understand this: ftp has been with the browser for 25 years. Ftp has been with the web. Ftp is part of the web. No one cares that ftp is not really what browsers are made for. Browsers is how people access ftp. That’s it. And they have been used in of web pages too.
  • TheRealPomax 5y ago
    Yeah, really gonna need some numbers here, though, because literally no one I know younger than 40 even knows what FTP is, let alone having used it. Even Apache 1 can expose dirs over http instead of ftp, there is literally no reason for FTP unless you want uploads. In which case: no you don't, you want sftp at the very least, because you care about the fact that you want data that gets uploaded to be your data, not the data that a MITM trivially changed it to. Which FTP fully allows.
    • layoutIfNeeded 5y ago
      I'm 30 years old and using FTP daily.
      • mattl 5y ago
        For what? What client?
        • antisol 5y ago
          I use it for....drumroll... transferring files usually waterfox if I'm only transferring one, something else if I need to do a bunch.
        • layoutIfNeeded 5y ago
          Transferring huge files. The client is FileZilla.
          • mattl 5y ago
            Why not use SFTP or rsync at this point?
• jeppesen-io 5y ago
  I agree. Creating some friction to encourage the move away from FTP is the right thing to do, for a variety of technical reasons There are times when HN seems to become very negative to a particular topic. In the past I’ve seen it with Kubernetes, systemd or GCP/AWS. I feel it’s that way with Mozilla/Firefox. More often than not, comments on Mozilla/Firefox are very negative then create a feedback loop of negativity. Obviously subjective, but just what I see
  • antisol 5y ago
    > for a variety of technical reasons Please elaborate. In excruciating detail.
    • fomine3 5y ago
      For network protocol perspective, FTP is weird old protocol from current view. Forget Active mode since it's no luck under NAPT. Even in Passive mode, it requires NAT device to rewrite address in command, won't work with firewall closing unknown external port without dynamic filtering by packet inspection, and server configuration isn't simple depends on network configuration. Modern network environment like NAT64/DNS64 need special support for FTP. There are no reason to continue using ancient protocol forever.
      • antisol 5y ago
        How is NAT the browser's problem? You're about 10,000 words short of "excruciating", and about half a dozen reasons short of "a variety" >There are no reason to continue using ancient protocol forever. You undermine yourself with statements like this. I explicitly asked for excruciating detail. This response essentially sums up to "because I said so". ...and it's empirically incorrect, too: You can find a ton of reasons where people need FTP today if you look through this discussion. So many that I'm not going to bother repeating them here.
        • AstralStorm 5y ago
          Even less of a problem now once IPv6 gets everywhere finally.
• kragen 5y ago
  FTP has been related to web browsing since the beginning of the web 31 years ago. For maybe a decade (the first third of the web so far), most of the WWW was on FTP servers—not just most software downloads, but also most HTML pages. Web browsers are a much better interface to FTP servers than dedicated FTP clients, because you can click a link on an HTML page (either a statically generated directory, possibly on the FTP server itself, or a dynamically generated search result page) and get the file from the FTP server. There are a few people commenting with nonsense like this: > You can configure Firefox to open "ftp://" links with the client of your choice. This is a non-issue. That's absolutely useless if the client of your choice can't render HTML and the ftp:// link is to an HTML file. The fundamental idea of the WWW project was that it provided a universal, uniform interface to all the information on the internet, regardless of protocol. This move amounts to Firefox abandoning that vision. Abandoning Gopher was maybe reasonable—there just aren't that many Gopher servers out there—but FTP is still a widely used protocol. More broadly, this is a tradeoff between the traditional vision of the WWW as a vast library, in which human knowledge accumulates over time and becomes accessible to all, and the strip-mall vision of the WWW as a means to sell people things they don't need. This move amounts to burning down a wing of the library (or, at least, its card catalog) because it wasn't profitable enough. Or because people keep getting mugged there, I guess. This kind of intentional functionality regression is precisely the kind of thing I use free software to avoid.
  • zamadatix 5y ago
    Firefox didn't support directly opening and rendering HTML files via ftp:// URLs anyways, it'd just download them like a normal FTP client. I can't even remember the last browser I used that supported that. You can't kill what has been dead for decades already.
    • classichasclass 5y ago
      Actually, yes, it did, until Firefox 61 when FTP subresources were disallowed from HTTPS, and Firefox 70 when HTML pages over FTP were converted to downloads as well.
• forgotpwd16 5y ago
  To note that Pocket was related to web browsing and offered a convenient bookmarking system. The reason people complain is it being a third-party extension and service (requiring registration even) rather built-in features in the web browser. That said some functionality has been included in bookmarks such as clicking favorite button saves directly in unsorted, clicking twice opens a menu where tags can be added, and can see all bookmarks through menu. A secondary bookmarks tree can be added with extra features being read status, and simple status change and deletion from menu without requiring right click. Kinda like Chrome did it.
• attractivechaos 5y ago
  > People using FTP can use a dedicated client, of which there are plenty on every platform FTP is used often in my field. The removal of FTP from both Chrome and FireFox has been very inconvenient. I tried a few free FTP clients with GUI. They are huge and clumsy in comparison to browsers. For example, cyberduck zip is as large as firefox and I couldn't copy-paste a ftp:// URL in FileZilla. I wonder why these FTP clients don't adopt a browser-like interface. It would be more friendly. Now I mostly use command-line lftp, which is better than the GUI clients I have tried but still not as convenient as browsers.
  • zamadatix 5y ago
    > I couldn't copy-paste a ftp:// URL in FileZilla You should be able to paste a full ftp://server.tld/path into the host field and upon connection it'll drop you right into that folder. As for why the GUIs aren't that great I think it's precisely because FTP was made with CLI in mind and by the time good GUIs came around there were better protocols to plug into them.
• thrower123 5y ago
  What exactly about FTP has changed that invalidates the FTP browser code that's been in Firefox for 20+ years? People bitched when Firefox added a stupid non-standard thing, yes. Now, the few who still use Firefox, will bitch because they have arbitrarily removed a standard thing.
• grumblenum 5y ago
  Pocket is ad-tech that nobody wanted. FTP is, for some, a useful feature. The negativity is because Mozilla maintains a façade of selflessly serving the little guy but then it removes an existing, working feature that makes it a little easier not to use surveillance-focused file-sharing services like Google Drive. The animosity Mozilla receives from its users has been well earned. > A modern web browser is probably some of the most complex software humanity has invented yet, besides a full-scale OS. And whose fault is that, if not WHATWG? Embrance. Extend. Extinguish. --------------------- ^ [The web is here]
• raxxorrax 5y ago
  FTP is something completely different to Pocket. FTP is a standardized protocol. Browsers never had decent ftp support, true. They just allow you to list directories and download stuff. But on the other hand, the FTP support doesn't cost anything. Don't know much about Pocket to be honest, but this form of integration is much worse than to support a protocol. Aside from that, maybe using http for downloads is the better alternative today.
• chuckSu 5y ago
  People just like complaining