6 ms·

The amount of regressions Mozilla has inflicted on Firefox in recent years blows my mind. One of their few big advantages over Chrome is better user control, bu

by rurp 2y ago

The amount of regressions Mozilla has inflicted on Firefox in recent years blows my mind. One of their few big advantages over Chrome is better user control, but they have been working continuously to destroy that. Getting rid of most extensions and removing about:config are two big wtf decisions. All that does is piss off power users, which are the main advocates for this browser. Plus so many other baffling changes to remove or worsen existing features, along with the pointless UI reshuffles. Edit: I should clarify that about:config has only been removed from mobile Firefox, so far at least.

olejorgenb 2y ago
> and removing about:config What?
- josephcsible 2y ago
  On mobile.
aquova 2y ago
> removing about:config about:config is right where it's always been, unless I've missed something?
- dralley 2y ago
  You've missed nothing, OP is full of it.
- 0x_rs 2y ago
  They're talking about the mobile application, where only a small subset of extensions was available for a few years. Access to about:config was disabled in official builds (but forks and custom builds such as some on F-Droid still have it). https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/21276 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/21276
  - Intralexical 2y ago
    > Access to about:config was disabled in official builds (but forks and custom builds such as some on F-Droid still have it). From your link, there are problems that are specific to `about:config` only on mobile, due to Android OS and GeckoView API specifics: - There are preferences that …is reset when the app restarts. - There are many preferences that …do nothing. - There are preferences …which breaks interacting with some websites. - There are platform preferences that …result in startup crashes …and reinstalling results in the deleting of data like bookmarks, passwords, history, etc. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1813163 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1813163 Look, it’s not like we’re insensitive to the desire for configuration; it’s that we know that on Android there are footguns that don’t exist on desktop! We want to figure out a way to do this in a way that makes it difficult to break GeckoView. I’m sorry that this isn’t good enough for many of you, but with all due respect, you’re not the ones on the receiving end when somebody breaks their browser because they didn’t know what they were doing! https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/i51k0q/mozilla_could_turn_on_about_config_and_have/g0n9nn0/?context=3 https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/i51k0q/mozilla_cou... Kinda reasonable, honestly? It sounds like more than just "page may render funny" types of footguns. Unknown quantities of unlabelled "Lose All My Data" buttons are probably what this site would call an antipattern. > They're talking about the mobile application, where only a small subset of extensions was available for a few years. On the above Reddit link, they also explain the extensions thing was because they were "literally not done implementing the APIs yet" and focused on the "highest priority extensions". So, the "big wtf decision" might be why they released it in that state, rather than "getting rid of most extensions".
    - willywanker 2y ago
      >you’re not the ones on the receiving end when somebody breaks their browser because they didn’t know what they were doing! about:config already has a warning when you first open it that you'll screw up your settings if you don't know what you're doing. So if someone borks their install as a result, it isn't Mozilla engineer's job to apologize or hand hold them through it. Every software until the 2010s (Windows itself, with its registry) has had this implicit disclaimer that you forfeit all official support if you dick around with the internals in an non standard way. So why is it now at the other extreme of 'fuck all power users, we will only target those who can't walk and chew gum simultaneously' ?
mrandish 2y ago
Yes! FF PMs and designers seem to HATE user customization, add-ons and power user capabilities yet those are the main reasons I came to FF and why I still use it. While FF is still the best browser for me (barely), it's only achieved this by all the alternatives enshittifying and dumb-ifying their browsers even faster than FF. As it is I have to spend significant effort under the hood customizing UserChrome scripts just to maintain minimal usability. (...and thank the heavens for Lepton (https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix), a regularly maintained, well-curated, all-in-one collection of essential Firefox fixes (which can each be turned off individually via flags.)
- willywanker 2y ago
  Firefox has enshittified itself if your reference point is the original Firefox of the early 2000s that unseated Internet Explorer's dominance. User customization has steadily eroded since version 4 when they started copying Chrome, from multi-process to removing the statusbar to introducing the hamburger menu to the insane practice of incrementing major version numbers into the triple digits. >While FF is still the best browser for me (barely) Give Pale Moon a try and ignore the FF fanboy propaganda of it being oLd aNd iNSeCuRe. It isn't, it's regularly updated to keep up with Google dominated web standards and security patches, and runs on an independent fork of Firefox's Gecko rendering engine. It is not a mere rebuild like Librewolf, Waterfox etc but a separate browser that retains all the full customizabiity of pre 2017 Firefox with full XUL extension and NPAPI plugin support.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
anal_reactor 2y ago
> Getting rid of most extensions I am still butthurt
- krapp 2y ago
  Welp. Name checks out.
  - shrimp_emoji 2y ago
    Second-order name checkout
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      Third order if improperly prepared crustacean.
      - shrimp_emoji 2y ago
        Stay away from Red Lobster. (Personal experience.)
shrimp_emoji 2y ago
Sounds like they hired GNOME devs.
lxgr 2y ago
> Getting rid of most extensions What extensions did they get rid of?
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  They changed the extension model which broke the extensions using the old model. Many of the developers didn't have the resources to rewrite the extension from scratch, or the new model had restrictions that made what the extension was doing difficult to impossible, so they disappeared.
  - lxgr 2y ago
    That was the switch from their own API and unsandboxed model to the standards-based one, right? I think all in all getting sandboxing as well as making it easier to provide cross-browser extensions was worth the breaking change.
    - pseudalopex 2y ago
      WebExtensions is Chrome based not standards based. And Firefox had sandboxed and unsandboxed extensions before. What Mozilla promised would have been worth it. Parity with Chrome's APIs. APIs to support popular features of old extensions. Support for extension developers to develop new APIs. But they abandoned these promises. And they managed the transition badly. They chose an arbitrary deadline before evaluating scope or designing a migration path. They held the arbitrary deadline as they missed estimates. Extension developers didn't know when or if APIs they needed would be implemented. And no version of Firefox supported old extensions and reasonably complete WebExtensions APIs. These decisions made many problems for developers and users. And this was shortly after many developers spent much effort making their XUL extensions multi process compatible or converting them to sandboxed extensions.
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      Mandatory sandboxing increasingly seems like a misfeature. Now you can't install an extension that does a lot of things that are useful, ostensibly to protect you from malware. Optional sandboxing can be good because users can have more confidence that something can't hurt them. But it can also be bad because users will have more confidence that something can't hurt them, and then it does anyway. Meanwhile the ability to exercise arbitrary permissions given the user's authorization is something we've lost. And what have we gained, when the user just runs how_to_actually_uninstall_mcafee.avi.exe and gets the malware regardless?

by rurp 2y ago

olejorgenb 2y ago

> and removing about:config What?

josephcsible 2y ago
On mobile.

aquova 2y ago

> removing about:config about:config is right where it's always been, unless I've missed something?

dralley 2y ago
You've missed nothing, OP is full of it.
0x_rs 2y ago
They're talking about the mobile application, where only a small subset of extensions was available for a few years. Access to about:config was disabled in official builds (but forks and custom builds such as some on F-Droid still have it). https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/21276 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/21276
- Intralexical 2y ago
  > Access to about:config was disabled in official builds (but forks and custom builds such as some on F-Droid still have it). From your link, there are problems that are specific to `about:config` only on mobile, due to Android OS and GeckoView API specifics: - There are preferences that …is reset when the app restarts. - There are many preferences that …do nothing. - There are preferences …which breaks interacting with some websites. - There are platform preferences that …result in startup crashes …and reinstalling results in the deleting of data like bookmarks, passwords, history, etc. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1813163 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1813163 Look, it’s not like we’re insensitive to the desire for configuration; it’s that we know that on Android there are footguns that don’t exist on desktop! We want to figure out a way to do this in a way that makes it difficult to break GeckoView. I’m sorry that this isn’t good enough for many of you, but with all due respect, you’re not the ones on the receiving end when somebody breaks their browser because they didn’t know what they were doing! https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/i51k0q/mozilla_could_turn_on_about_config_and_have/g0n9nn0/?context=3 https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/i51k0q/mozilla_cou... Kinda reasonable, honestly? It sounds like more than just "page may render funny" types of footguns. Unknown quantities of unlabelled "Lose All My Data" buttons are probably what this site would call an antipattern. > They're talking about the mobile application, where only a small subset of extensions was available for a few years. On the above Reddit link, they also explain the extensions thing was because they were "literally not done implementing the APIs yet" and focused on the "highest priority extensions". So, the "big wtf decision" might be why they released it in that state, rather than "getting rid of most extensions".
  - willywanker 2y ago
    >you’re not the ones on the receiving end when somebody breaks their browser because they didn’t know what they were doing! about:config already has a warning when you first open it that you'll screw up your settings if you don't know what you're doing. So if someone borks their install as a result, it isn't Mozilla engineer's job to apologize or hand hold them through it. Every software until the 2010s (Windows itself, with its registry) has had this implicit disclaimer that you forfeit all official support if you dick around with the internals in an non standard way. So why is it now at the other extreme of 'fuck all power users, we will only target those who can't walk and chew gum simultaneously' ?

mrandish 2y ago

Yes! FF PMs and designers seem to HATE user customization, add-ons and power user capabilities yet those are the main reasons I came to FF and why I still use it. While FF is still the best browser for me (barely), it's only achieved this by all the alternatives enshittifying and dumb-ifying their browsers even faster than FF. As it is I have to spend significant effort under the hood customizing UserChrome scripts just to maintain minimal usability. (...and thank the heavens for Lepton (https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix), a regularly maintained, well-curated, all-in-one collection of essential Firefox fixes (which can each be turned off individually via flags.)

willywanker 2y ago
Firefox has enshittified itself if your reference point is the original Firefox of the early 2000s that unseated Internet Explorer's dominance. User customization has steadily eroded since version 4 when they started copying Chrome, from multi-process to removing the statusbar to introducing the hamburger menu to the insane practice of incrementing major version numbers into the triple digits. >While FF is still the best browser for me (barely) Give Pale Moon a try and ignore the FF fanboy propaganda of it being oLd aNd iNSeCuRe. It isn't, it's regularly updated to keep up with Google dominated web standards and security patches, and runs on an independent fork of Firefox's Gecko rendering engine. It is not a mere rebuild like Librewolf, Waterfox etc but a separate browser that retains all the full customizabiity of pre 2017 Firefox with full XUL extension and NPAPI plugin support.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

anal_reactor 2y ago

> Getting rid of most extensions I am still butthurt

krapp 2y ago
Welp. Name checks out.
- shrimp_emoji 2y ago
  Second-order name checkout
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    Third order if improperly prepared crustacean.
    - shrimp_emoji 2y ago
      Stay away from Red Lobster. (Personal experience.)

shrimp_emoji 2y ago

Sounds like they hired GNOME devs.

lxgr 2y ago

> Getting rid of most extensions What extensions did they get rid of?

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
They changed the extension model which broke the extensions using the old model. Many of the developers didn't have the resources to rewrite the extension from scratch, or the new model had restrictions that made what the extension was doing difficult to impossible, so they disappeared.
- lxgr 2y ago
  That was the switch from their own API and unsandboxed model to the standards-based one, right? I think all in all getting sandboxing as well as making it easier to provide cross-browser extensions was worth the breaking change.
  - pseudalopex 2y ago
    WebExtensions is Chrome based not standards based. And Firefox had sandboxed and unsandboxed extensions before. What Mozilla promised would have been worth it. Parity with Chrome's APIs. APIs to support popular features of old extensions. Support for extension developers to develop new APIs. But they abandoned these promises. And they managed the transition badly. They chose an arbitrary deadline before evaluating scope or designing a migration path. They held the arbitrary deadline as they missed estimates. Extension developers didn't know when or if APIs they needed would be implemented. And no version of Firefox supported old extensions and reasonably complete WebExtensions APIs. These decisions made many problems for developers and users. And this was shortly after many developers spent much effort making their XUL extensions multi process compatible or converting them to sandboxed extensions.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    Mandatory sandboxing increasingly seems like a misfeature. Now you can't install an extension that does a lot of things that are useful, ostensibly to protect you from malware. Optional sandboxing can be good because users can have more confidence that something can't hurt them. But it can also be bad because users will have more confidence that something can't hurt them, and then it does anyway. Meanwhile the ability to exercise arbitrary permissions given the user's authorization is something we've lost. And what have we gained, when the user just runs how_to_actually_uninstall_mcafee.avi.exe and gets the malware regardless?