7 ms·

I really don't want to be negative, but every browser update in the past year feels like a step back. This is true for Chrome and Firefox. Each update contains

by ggreer 13y ago

I really don't want to be negative, but every browser update in the past year feels like a step back. This is true for Chrome and Firefox. Each update contains more "Sign in to your browser" stuff plastered everywhere. Eye candy is added. Useful configuration options are removed.[1] Many of these changes seem to be made with the goal of increasing revenue, not improving user experience. Rule #0 of business is: Listen to your users. For browsers, one straightforward way to do this is to look at what extensions and addons users install. By far, the winner is adblock. Almost everyone who knows how to block ads does so. Therefore, if you are making a browser and you care about user experience above everything else, you will have ad blocking by default. That no major browser does tells us what their priorities really are. Again, apologies for the negativity. This has frustrated me for some time. Edit: I realize that if everyone suddenly started blocking ads, there would be darkness and chaos. But the current situation is only tenable because a small fraction of users have the know-how to get what they want. You can avoid ads if you are technically proficient or know someone who is. Everyone else has to put up with ads. Advertisers annoy millions if not billions of people, effectively subsidizing the usage of those with ad blockers. That doesn't seem fair to me. 1. Such as the old new tab page in Chrome: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=326788 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=326788

DCKing 13y ago
Maybe it's exactly rule #0 they're upholding, but maybe most users want something different than you?
andreasklinger 13y ago
With all love to focus on what users want… Currently online ads are one of the few standard business models that finance the internet ecosystem. It would be a step back to remove them without a replacement.
VMG 13y ago
I vividly remember the anger over omnicomplete and people vowing to switch to Opera, which didn't have that feature. I gave it a shot and found omnicomplete quite comfortable after a while. Status quo bias is a powerful thing.
- blueskin_ 13y ago
  I gave Opera a shot, found it weird (and much harder to customise), then went back to firefox with https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-location-bar/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-location-... .
  - ASneakyFox 13y ago
    Opera next is not meant to be customizable like opera 12 was. Now their focus is on streamining interface activities. Removing bookmark graveyards etc etc.
itry 13y ago
> one straightforward way to do this is to look at what extensions and addons users install Oh God No! I do not use adblock. I use noscript and im happy with it. I also do not use "Video DownloadHelper" which is the second most used addon. And neither do I use Firebug which is #3. Please do not put all this stuff into my browser! And not everybody uses noscript which I use and which is #4. Im completely fine with installing it. How about improving on the basic stuff? For example make FF use all cores of my machine and not just one?
- claudius 13y ago
  > Please do not put all this stuff into my browser! I was a very happy Opera user for years under the exact assumption that there is little need to install addons if your browser has all the features you need – and I didn’t use all of Opera’s features either, but somehow even with the included mail and bittorrent clients, it ended up being smaller than, say, Firefox.
- abus 13y ago
  They already built Firebug into the browser.
- Jakob 13y ago
  > For example make FF use all cores of my machine and not just one? They are working on it: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis This is already in the nightly version for some months: "File > New e10s Window" will open a new window in its own process.
  - itry 13y ago
    File > New e10s Window Wow! Nice. Thanks for the info!
knusprig 13y ago
The issue with pre-enabling adblock in a browser is that chrome is financed completely by google (runs on online ads) and mozilla is substantially financed by google and other search engines (who also rely on ad money).
scrollaway 13y ago
Seeing how much backlash Mozilla got for even proposing to block third party ads by default, I can't imagine what would happen if they shipped adblock. Just because adblock is popular doesn't mean everyone is using it, and as much as I don't like it, advertisers rely on that... it could seriously damage the web if they did that. The French have an expression for this, they would say you can see no farther than the end of your own nose.
- userbinator 13y ago
  > Just because adblock is popular doesn't mean everyone is using it, and as much as I don't like it, advertisers rely on that... it could seriously damage the web if they did that. The sites that suffer the most from adblocking are those that provide very little benefit for the user anyway: splogs, linkfarms, and other very contentless things built solely to lure users in for adverts. While I don't use adblock myself (I use a filtering proxy instead), seeing that part of the internet die off, and possibly a return to something closer to the noncommercialised web of the 90s where the signal-to-noise ratio was much higher, IMHO is a very good thing. Although there are some good ad-supported sites that may die off, in my experience the sites that contain lots of very good, detailed information are unlikely to contain ads too. It's a bit like chemotherapy...
  - nemof 13y ago
    really? I frequently visit The Verge and The Guardian. I also happen to follow their journalists on twitter because they're often interesting to listen and talk to. On more than one occasion I've seen them express their frustration at ad blocking software and the problems it causes. As such, and because I love the sites, I've turned off adblock for them. (not trying to sound magnanimous here, it's not like I disabled adblock for every site.) I'd rather have websites sell advertising space next to their content then gate their communities behind paywalls frankly.
    - userbinator 13y ago
      I'd rather have websites sell advertising space next to their content then gate their communities behind paywalls frankly. Those are not the only two choices. Many of the sites I like are personal ones either hosted on the author's own server+connection, or ones hosted by large institutions that would likely be able to afford the hosting anyway.
kijin 13y ago
Tough luck. The overwhelming majority of Mozilla's revenue is from their search partnership with Google, the Internet's largest advertising company. You don't bite the hand that feeds you. Apple is the only major browser vendor that can afford to ship an ad blocker without strangling its own throat. If Jobs where still around, he might have actually done that, if only to stick a big middle finger at Google. Now I'm not so sure. Maybe MSFT will do it first with IE, if Bing's market share gets any lower than it already is (or if Yahoo finally folds).
scrollaway 13y ago
I'd like to address your three separate points... > Each update contains more "Sign in to your browser" stuff plastered everywhere. Eye candy is added. Useful configuration options are removed. - First of all, each update cannot possibly contain more "sign in to your browser". Are you talking about Firefox Sync, of which similar-yet-poorer functionality used to be in an incredibly popular extension (by your own rules, that should go in the browser!)? - Eye candy is nice. Not everyone lives in the 90s and wants a clickable version of Lynx. - Configuration options are as useful as the users make it. There was a massive outrage on here when Firefox removed the javascript switch, yet that is one of the best decision they made for their userbase. Google sure did remove a lot of options over time, some of it has infuriated me as well (the removal of http: was a big one for me). But most of the time, users do not actually know what they want which is why they just want a bazillion options to be able to change their mind all the time, as if they're not using a browser but playing Wedding Tie Choice Simulator 2015. As Randall Munroe put it: https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/
- makomk 13y ago
  Firefox Sync was in the browser before, you just didn't need to sign in to your browser online to use the previous version. (It also let you sync through your own server rather than Mozilla's which I don't think the new version does yet, but even if you used their server you still didn't need a Mozilla account of any kind.)
  - euank 13y ago
    I run my own firefox sync server, and have since it was introduced. It's working fine for the current version of sync. There's a rather helpful guide for setting it up and there were a handful of alternative server implementations which have unfortunately fallen by the wayside. https://docs.services.mozilla.com/howtos/run-sync.html https://docs.services.mozilla.com/howtos/run-sync.html
    - rfk 13y ago
      Unfortunately this server is not compatible with the new sync protocol. It will continue to work while there is still old-sync support in the browser (a few versions after FF29 at least) but will eventually need to be upgraded to the new system.
exodust 13y ago
As much as I like Adblock, did you know it blocks static jpeg images that contain the text "300x250px" or similar in the file name? I didn't know until it blocked one of the images I put into a site that has no ads. I presume AdBlock's logic is that because promo ads often have the dimensions in the filename, that's good enough reason to block EVERY image on the web that has dimensions in the filename. Pathetic logic! While you might be happy browsing away on the internet with Ad-Block, it could very well be blocking non-ad content, which is not something you want as core browser functionality.
- ASneakyFox 13y ago
  Image name should be describing the image any way. That's just good seo.
  - exodust 13y ago
    Putting dimensions in image names is fine, it's quite useful for asset management. Describing the image is the alt tag's job. Otherwise, consider the nightmare... Britney_Spears_Red_Carpet_MTV_Awards_2012_834pm_Headshot.jpg Which isn't great file naming for the web. Or am I too oldschool and this is how all the kool kids do it now? Do search engines expect meta data in image names? I don't think they're counting on it, even if they are picking it up.
    - herokusaki 13y ago
      >Which isn't great file naming for the web. Why?
      - exodust 13y ago
        Because of standardized naming convention, or lack of. In the Britney example, there's no naming convention, only a vague approximation of the image contents. This may work for you personal blog, but in large production environments, you don't want editors just "making up" image names without consistent naming convention. Remember that the original digital camera image has no mention of Britney! At best, when the RAW image is converted, the general image name might be appended with "mtv_awards", but nothing further. Same for video file naming. You can't fit all the subject matter of the video into its file name, you would instead maybe put the reverse date in the name and an abbreviated title. But to expect that to be used for SEO is not a good strategy.
talonx 13y ago
+ for mentioning Useful configuration options. Prominent examples include Last tab close and hiding the Disable Javascript option in Firefox. In both these cases, the decision seems to be driven by the preferences of a specific group of developer(s) rather than informed decision making or listening to users.
amatheus 13y ago
I would guess most of the users simply don't install any plugins or addons. So in that case listening to them would simply mean not changing anything.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
bruceboughton 13y ago
How do you propose that our industry pay for the servers then? Magical pixie dust? I don't mind seeing ads on free services that have some marginal value for me. Don't force your intolerance for ads upon me.
mike-cardwell 13y ago
Chrome came out and lots of people started using it because it was faster than Firefox and because Google spammed it all over their search engine. Chrome is developed by an ad company. Chrome exists in order to create a web which can serve ads to you in a manner which is more profitable to that ad company. That's fair enough. Chrome users sow what they reap. If they want a web which develops under the control of an ad company, or several ad companies (Microsoft too), then that's what they'll get. The trouble is, it affects the rest of us who don't want a web to evolve according to the profit interests of ad companies; Mozilla got scared by the sudden migration of people from Firefox to Chrome, so they've now started copying Chrome in many ways that probably aren't as good as they think they are for the future of the web.
- scrollaway 13y ago
  Blocking ads doesn't hurt the revenues of ad companies. It hurts the revenues of the sites relying on those ad companies. That's your mog & pog blog.
  - mike-cardwell 13y ago
    I think the web is important. Important enough that making the technology behind it worse, either by not implementing tech that is bad for ads, or by implementing tech just because it is good for ads, so that ad funded sites can continue to be ad funded sites, is a mistake. I don't care who is behind those ad funded sites.
cookiecaper 13y ago
Rule #0 is not a good rule at all. People are never happy. When Firefox was focusing on utilitarian concerns, people reamed Mozilla incessantly for "ugliness" and "user hostility". They vowed to switch to Chrome which supposedly cared more about these things because its tab bar background was blue (or plug in your pet issue here). Now Firefox releases something that focuses on fluffy prettiness concerns like "native look and feel" or "non-distracting tab bars" and suddenly Mozilla is vain and silly, and people vow to switch to Chrome because they implemented Real Feature X. The point isn't that either side is necessarily wrong, just that "listen to your users" is not the #0 rule of business. Users can provide good feedback, but it must be tempered, because there are always going to be detractors, and detractors will always be louder than supporters.
userbinator 13y ago
> Useful configuration options are removed. This is IMHO a most disturbing trend; instead of leaving configuration options available (and possibly adding more), many "UX experts" seem to have the notion that all users are exactly the same and should therefore never need anything more or less than what these "experts" think they should need. Removing options also reduces the amount of learning-by-experimentation that is possible, but experimentation is one of the best ways of learning about things. The point is often made that this is so "users don't break things", but at the same time it denies them a valuable learning experience and takes away freedom. Meanwhile the focus is on adding eye candy and using plenty of doublespeak (some of my favourite examples of this are "decreased clutter", "simplification", "streamlining", "user-oriented") to make the users think that they're being offered an improvement. The goal of designing a browser for a novice user, which may be initially simple to use, but is "layered" so that it grows with the user's knowledge, is slowly eroding away. Instead, the expectation seems to be that the average user is one who knows little more than how to turn on a computer, and one who intends to remain ignorant --- the model of the "perfect consumer". The customisation features are gradually relegated to extensions, and advanced configuration is not a gradual learning curve, but a big jump, creating a gap that users have to cross - a gap that is widening. Maybe this is a reflection of a general societal trend, but I have no doubt that it is also contributing to it. In consideration of this, Mozilla also has a rather curious description: "Mozilla is a global non-profit dedicated to putting the user in control of their online experience..." Although I disgaree with making adblock a default; I think the concept of what constitutes an advert is too ill-defined to add this complexity to a browser. Personally I don't mind anything that is not intrusive or too distracting. The title of the article is pretty indicative too: "A New, Beautiful Browser is Coming". The first thing that comes to mind is "Beauty is only skin deep."

by ggreer 13y ago

DCKing 13y ago

Maybe it's exactly rule #0 they're upholding, but maybe most users want something different than you?

andreasklinger 13y ago

With all love to focus on what users want… Currently online ads are one of the few standard business models that finance the internet ecosystem. It would be a step back to remove them without a replacement.

VMG 13y ago

I vividly remember the anger over omnicomplete and people vowing to switch to Opera, which didn't have that feature. I gave it a shot and found omnicomplete quite comfortable after a while. Status quo bias is a powerful thing.

blueskin_ 13y ago
I gave Opera a shot, found it weird (and much harder to customise), then went back to firefox with https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-location-bar/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-location-... .
- ASneakyFox 13y ago
  Opera next is not meant to be customizable like opera 12 was. Now their focus is on streamining interface activities. Removing bookmark graveyards etc etc.

itry 13y ago

> one straightforward way to do this is to look at what extensions and addons users install Oh God No! I do not use adblock. I use noscript and im happy with it. I also do not use "Video DownloadHelper" which is the second most used addon. And neither do I use Firebug which is #3. Please do not put all this stuff into my browser! And not everybody uses noscript which I use and which is #4. Im completely fine with installing it. How about improving on the basic stuff? For example make FF use all cores of my machine and not just one?

claudius 13y ago
> Please do not put all this stuff into my browser! I was a very happy Opera user for years under the exact assumption that there is little need to install addons if your browser has all the features you need – and I didn’t use all of Opera’s features either, but somehow even with the included mail and bittorrent clients, it ended up being smaller than, say, Firefox.
abus 13y ago
They already built Firebug into the browser.
Jakob 13y ago
> For example make FF use all cores of my machine and not just one? They are working on it: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis This is already in the nightly version for some months: "File > New e10s Window" will open a new window in its own process.
- itry 13y ago
  File > New e10s Window Wow! Nice. Thanks for the info!

knusprig 13y ago

The issue with pre-enabling adblock in a browser is that chrome is financed completely by google (runs on online ads) and mozilla is substantially financed by google and other search engines (who also rely on ad money).

scrollaway 13y ago

Seeing how much backlash Mozilla got for even proposing to block third party ads by default, I can't imagine what would happen if they shipped adblock. Just because adblock is popular doesn't mean everyone is using it, and as much as I don't like it, advertisers rely on that... it could seriously damage the web if they did that. The French have an expression for this, they would say you can see no farther than the end of your own nose.

userbinator 13y ago
> Just because adblock is popular doesn't mean everyone is using it, and as much as I don't like it, advertisers rely on that... it could seriously damage the web if they did that. The sites that suffer the most from adblocking are those that provide very little benefit for the user anyway: splogs, linkfarms, and other very contentless things built solely to lure users in for adverts. While I don't use adblock myself (I use a filtering proxy instead), seeing that part of the internet die off, and possibly a return to something closer to the noncommercialised web of the 90s where the signal-to-noise ratio was much higher, IMHO is a very good thing. Although there are some good ad-supported sites that may die off, in my experience the sites that contain lots of very good, detailed information are unlikely to contain ads too. It's a bit like chemotherapy...
- nemof 13y ago
  really? I frequently visit The Verge and The Guardian. I also happen to follow their journalists on twitter because they're often interesting to listen and talk to. On more than one occasion I've seen them express their frustration at ad blocking software and the problems it causes. As such, and because I love the sites, I've turned off adblock for them. (not trying to sound magnanimous here, it's not like I disabled adblock for every site.) I'd rather have websites sell advertising space next to their content then gate their communities behind paywalls frankly.
  - userbinator 13y ago
    I'd rather have websites sell advertising space next to their content then gate their communities behind paywalls frankly. Those are not the only two choices. Many of the sites I like are personal ones either hosted on the author's own server+connection, or ones hosted by large institutions that would likely be able to afford the hosting anyway.

kijin 13y ago

Tough luck. The overwhelming majority of Mozilla's revenue is from their search partnership with Google, the Internet's largest advertising company. You don't bite the hand that feeds you. Apple is the only major browser vendor that can afford to ship an ad blocker without strangling its own throat. If Jobs where still around, he might have actually done that, if only to stick a big middle finger at Google. Now I'm not so sure. Maybe MSFT will do it first with IE, if Bing's market share gets any lower than it already is (or if Yahoo finally folds).

scrollaway 13y ago

I'd like to address your three separate points... > Each update contains more "Sign in to your browser" stuff plastered everywhere. Eye candy is added. Useful configuration options are removed. - First of all, each update cannot possibly contain more "sign in to your browser". Are you talking about Firefox Sync, of which similar-yet-poorer functionality used to be in an incredibly popular extension (by your own rules, that should go in the browser!)? - Eye candy is nice. Not everyone lives in the 90s and wants a clickable version of Lynx. - Configuration options are as useful as the users make it. There was a massive outrage on here when Firefox removed the javascript switch, yet that is one of the best decision they made for their userbase. Google sure did remove a lot of options over time, some of it has infuriated me as well (the removal of http: was a big one for me). But most of the time, users do not actually know what they want which is why they just want a bazillion options to be able to change their mind all the time, as if they're not using a browser but playing Wedding Tie Choice Simulator 2015. As Randall Munroe put it: https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/

makomk 13y ago
Firefox Sync was in the browser before, you just didn't need to sign in to your browser online to use the previous version. (It also let you sync through your own server rather than Mozilla's which I don't think the new version does yet, but even if you used their server you still didn't need a Mozilla account of any kind.)
- euank 13y ago
  I run my own firefox sync server, and have since it was introduced. It's working fine for the current version of sync. There's a rather helpful guide for setting it up and there were a handful of alternative server implementations which have unfortunately fallen by the wayside. https://docs.services.mozilla.com/howtos/run-sync.html https://docs.services.mozilla.com/howtos/run-sync.html
  - rfk 13y ago
    Unfortunately this server is not compatible with the new sync protocol. It will continue to work while there is still old-sync support in the browser (a few versions after FF29 at least) but will eventually need to be upgraded to the new system.

exodust 13y ago

As much as I like Adblock, did you know it blocks static jpeg images that contain the text "300x250px" or similar in the file name? I didn't know until it blocked one of the images I put into a site that has no ads. I presume AdBlock's logic is that because promo ads often have the dimensions in the filename, that's good enough reason to block EVERY image on the web that has dimensions in the filename. Pathetic logic! While you might be happy browsing away on the internet with Ad-Block, it could very well be blocking non-ad content, which is not something you want as core browser functionality.

ASneakyFox 13y ago
Image name should be describing the image any way. That's just good seo.
- exodust 13y ago
  Putting dimensions in image names is fine, it's quite useful for asset management. Describing the image is the alt tag's job. Otherwise, consider the nightmare... Britney_Spears_Red_Carpet_MTV_Awards_2012_834pm_Headshot.jpg Which isn't great file naming for the web. Or am I too oldschool and this is how all the kool kids do it now? Do search engines expect meta data in image names? I don't think they're counting on it, even if they are picking it up.
  - herokusaki 13y ago
    >Which isn't great file naming for the web. Why?
    - exodust 13y ago
      Because of standardized naming convention, or lack of. In the Britney example, there's no naming convention, only a vague approximation of the image contents. This may work for you personal blog, but in large production environments, you don't want editors just "making up" image names without consistent naming convention. Remember that the original digital camera image has no mention of Britney! At best, when the RAW image is converted, the general image name might be appended with "mtv_awards", but nothing further. Same for video file naming. You can't fit all the subject matter of the video into its file name, you would instead maybe put the reverse date in the name and an abbreviated title. But to expect that to be used for SEO is not a good strategy.

talonx 13y ago

+ for mentioning Useful configuration options. Prominent examples include Last tab close and hiding the Disable Javascript option in Firefox. In both these cases, the decision seems to be driven by the preferences of a specific group of developer(s) rather than informed decision making or listening to users.

amatheus 13y ago

I would guess most of the users simply don't install any plugins or addons. So in that case listening to them would simply mean not changing anything.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

bruceboughton 13y ago

How do you propose that our industry pay for the servers then? Magical pixie dust? I don't mind seeing ads on free services that have some marginal value for me. Don't force your intolerance for ads upon me.

mike-cardwell 13y ago

Chrome came out and lots of people started using it because it was faster than Firefox and because Google spammed it all over their search engine. Chrome is developed by an ad company. Chrome exists in order to create a web which can serve ads to you in a manner which is more profitable to that ad company. That's fair enough. Chrome users sow what they reap. If they want a web which develops under the control of an ad company, or several ad companies (Microsoft too), then that's what they'll get. The trouble is, it affects the rest of us who don't want a web to evolve according to the profit interests of ad companies; Mozilla got scared by the sudden migration of people from Firefox to Chrome, so they've now started copying Chrome in many ways that probably aren't as good as they think they are for the future of the web.

scrollaway 13y ago
Blocking ads doesn't hurt the revenues of ad companies. It hurts the revenues of the sites relying on those ad companies. That's your mog & pog blog.
- mike-cardwell 13y ago
  I think the web is important. Important enough that making the technology behind it worse, either by not implementing tech that is bad for ads, or by implementing tech just because it is good for ads, so that ad funded sites can continue to be ad funded sites, is a mistake. I don't care who is behind those ad funded sites.

cookiecaper 13y ago

Rule #0 is not a good rule at all. People are never happy. When Firefox was focusing on utilitarian concerns, people reamed Mozilla incessantly for "ugliness" and "user hostility". They vowed to switch to Chrome which supposedly cared more about these things because its tab bar background was blue (or plug in your pet issue here). Now Firefox releases something that focuses on fluffy prettiness concerns like "native look and feel" or "non-distracting tab bars" and suddenly Mozilla is vain and silly, and people vow to switch to Chrome because they implemented Real Feature X. The point isn't that either side is necessarily wrong, just that "listen to your users" is not the #0 rule of business. Users can provide good feedback, but it must be tempered, because there are always going to be detractors, and detractors will always be louder than supporters.

userbinator 13y ago

> Useful configuration options are removed. This is IMHO a most disturbing trend; instead of leaving configuration options available (and possibly adding more), many "UX experts" seem to have the notion that all users are exactly the same and should therefore never need anything more or less than what these "experts" think they should need. Removing options also reduces the amount of learning-by-experimentation that is possible, but experimentation is one of the best ways of learning about things. The point is often made that this is so "users don't break things", but at the same time it denies them a valuable learning experience and takes away freedom. Meanwhile the focus is on adding eye candy and using plenty of doublespeak (some of my favourite examples of this are "decreased clutter", "simplification", "streamlining", "user-oriented") to make the users think that they're being offered an improvement. The goal of designing a browser for a novice user, which may be initially simple to use, but is "layered" so that it grows with the user's knowledge, is slowly eroding away. Instead, the expectation seems to be that the average user is one who knows little more than how to turn on a computer, and one who intends to remain ignorant --- the model of the "perfect consumer". The customisation features are gradually relegated to extensions, and advanced configuration is not a gradual learning curve, but a big jump, creating a gap that users have to cross - a gap that is widening. Maybe this is a reflection of a general societal trend, but I have no doubt that it is also contributing to it. In consideration of this, Mozilla also has a rather curious description: "Mozilla is a global non-profit dedicated to putting the user in control of their online experience..." Although I disgaree with making adblock a default; I think the concept of what constitutes an advert is too ill-defined to add this complexity to a browser. Personally I don't mind anything that is not intrusive or too distracting. The title of the article is pretty indicative too: "A New, Beautiful Browser is Coming". The first thing that comes to mind is "Beauty is only skin deep."