7 ms·

Just another casualty of telemetry. I'm sure it doesn't help that Chrome killed its own encoding menu years ago.

Gigachad 5y ago
Isn't this issue fixed by websites fixing their encoding? If no browser is able to properly display the content, I imagine they will be fixed pretty quickly if they are at all maintained.
- roughly 5y ago
  Yes, but, they’re not. Huge swaths of the web are effectively abandoned, and will not get fixed.
  - Gigachad 5y ago
    Then the best option would be to copy out the useful content to new maintained sites and let the old ones die. Rather than keeping browsers tied to supporting long long dead features. UTF-8 has been standards for over a decade now. I think there has been plenty of migration time. More than flash had.
rjh29 5y ago
Chrome's position was "use an extension for this", but then users have to risk privacy by installing a third-party extension. What harm does having the option tucked somewhere in advanced settings do?
- sodality2 5y ago
  Every release they probably have to test that it still works. Not that I would ever justify removing something like this - it's clear that for a percentage of the userbase, this is necessary for them to browse. But I can see a product manager trying to cut "fat" if they see that 0.01% of people use it.
mnd999 5y ago
I would be prepared to bet that most people that use the more advanced functionality disable telemetry.
- babypuncher 5y ago
  And then they wonder why the developers think nobody uses said niche feature
  - iqanq 5y ago
    Given that it's known that power users disable telemetry, developers should not rely on telemetry alone when deciding to remove a feature. The opposite is spiting power users, and you can see how that's going for Mozilla.
    - yoasif_ 5y ago
      My feeling is that telemetry as used in most places as a gut check to ensure that what you are doing isn't a terrible idea. It isn't necessarily going to drive you to invest further into something (you generally have better ways of getting that kind of feedback).
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      > developers should not rely on telemetry alone when deciding to remove a feature What better data should they use? > you can see how that's going for Mozilla HN commenters (not necesarily readers) react this way to most changes in everything. Mozilla doesn't stand out IME.
      - account42 5y ago
        > What better data should they use? For one, they could take comments on their bug tracker to heart instead of locking the discussion as soon as there are enough users unhappy with a change.
  - marginalia_nu 5y ago
ehsankia 5y ago
> Just another casualty of telemetry. Sure, but you're missing the bigger picture, which is that each feature has all sorts of other costs (maintenance, security risk, codebase complexity, etc). As mentioned in the bug, this feature got in the way of implementing another feature. Telemetry helps guide the balance between those costs and the value the feature brings, and you can disagree with how that balance in each decision, but it still is a fact that codebase health is important and if you don't prune, you'll very quickly end up with a huge messy project, no matter how careful you are along the way. Of course, the other option would've been to rewrite/refactor the feature, but again, is an engineers time better spent working on something that helps 50 people or 50K people?
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  They still have the feature, but not the menu. I bet the maintenance burden of the menu is extremely low.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  Exactly. With infinite engineering resources, you can afford to keep every feature around and maintained forever. But nobody has infinite engineering resources. Maintaining everything comes at a cost, and eventually you have to make some hard decisions about which features to abandon so you can reallocate engineers to features people actually use. Frustrating for the small number of people who use that specific feature, but you can't please everyone.
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    > But nobody has infinite engineering resources. Maintaining everything comes at a cost Irrelevant in this case. There are far more effective ways of paying down technical debt and enhancing future maintainability than removing a small, self-contained feature that occasionally addresses a critical user need. This is Firefox we're talking about, they've got a humongous legacy codebase to play with.
Jach 5y ago
They should just remove Firefox since telemetry shows not a lot of people use it.
- yoasif_ 5y ago
  Their telemetry is coming from Firefox installs. Kind of impossible to escape from that cave.

Isn't this issue fixed by websites fixing their encoding? If no browser is able to properly display the content, I imagine they will be fixed pretty quickly if they are at all maintained.

roughly 5y ago
Yes, but, they’re not. Huge swaths of the web are effectively abandoned, and will not get fixed.
- Gigachad 5y ago
  Then the best option would be to copy out the useful content to new maintained sites and let the old ones die. Rather than keeping browsers tied to supporting long long dead features. UTF-8 has been standards for over a decade now. I think there has been plenty of migration time. More than flash had.

rjh29 5y ago

Chrome's position was "use an extension for this", but then users have to risk privacy by installing a third-party extension. What harm does having the option tucked somewhere in advanced settings do?

sodality2 5y ago
Every release they probably have to test that it still works. Not that I would ever justify removing something like this - it's clear that for a percentage of the userbase, this is necessary for them to browse. But I can see a product manager trying to cut "fat" if they see that 0.01% of people use it.

mnd999 5y ago

I would be prepared to bet that most people that use the more advanced functionality disable telemetry.

babypuncher 5y ago
And then they wonder why the developers think nobody uses said niche feature
- iqanq 5y ago
  Given that it's known that power users disable telemetry, developers should not rely on telemetry alone when deciding to remove a feature. The opposite is spiting power users, and you can see how that's going for Mozilla.
  - yoasif_ 5y ago
    My feeling is that telemetry as used in most places as a gut check to ensure that what you are doing isn't a terrible idea. It isn't necessarily going to drive you to invest further into something (you generally have better ways of getting that kind of feedback).
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    > developers should not rely on telemetry alone when deciding to remove a feature What better data should they use? > you can see how that's going for Mozilla HN commenters (not necesarily readers) react this way to most changes in everything. Mozilla doesn't stand out IME.
    - account42 5y ago
      > What better data should they use? For one, they could take comments on their bug tracker to heart instead of locking the discussion as soon as there are enough users unhappy with a change.
- marginalia_nu 5y ago

ehsankia 5y ago

> Just another casualty of telemetry. Sure, but you're missing the bigger picture, which is that each feature has all sorts of other costs (maintenance, security risk, codebase complexity, etc). As mentioned in the bug, this feature got in the way of implementing another feature. Telemetry helps guide the balance between those costs and the value the feature brings, and you can disagree with how that balance in each decision, but it still is a fact that codebase health is important and if you don't prune, you'll very quickly end up with a huge messy project, no matter how careful you are along the way. Of course, the other option would've been to rewrite/refactor the feature, but again, is an engineers time better spent working on something that helps 50 people or 50K people?

Dylan16807 5y ago
They still have the feature, but not the menu. I bet the maintenance burden of the menu is extremely low.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
Exactly. With infinite engineering resources, you can afford to keep every feature around and maintained forever. But nobody has infinite engineering resources. Maintaining everything comes at a cost, and eventually you have to make some hard decisions about which features to abandon so you can reallocate engineers to features people actually use. Frustrating for the small number of people who use that specific feature, but you can't please everyone.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  > But nobody has infinite engineering resources. Maintaining everything comes at a cost Irrelevant in this case. There are far more effective ways of paying down technical debt and enhancing future maintainability than removing a small, self-contained feature that occasionally addresses a critical user need. This is Firefox we're talking about, they've got a humongous legacy codebase to play with.

Jach 5y ago

They should just remove Firefox since telemetry shows not a lot of people use it.

yoasif_ 5y ago
Their telemetry is coming from Firefox installs. Kind of impossible to escape from that cave.