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At the same time, you have to acknowledge that Mozilla suffered a huge backlash from its user base when Australis was landed on release. For the exact opposite

by gluxon 12y ago

At the same time, you have to acknowledge that Mozilla suffered a huge backlash from its user base when Australis was landed on release. For the exact opposite reason you're describing. I'm not sure if these events are related, but Firefox developers have been talking about this decision in the mailing list for a while. This doesn't come to me as a surprise.

daleharvey 12y ago
I wouldnt call the Australis reaction a backlash, in fact I believe it was very positive considering it was a big change. If your point was that there was and will always be people who protest against a change, then yup.
- Pacabel 12y ago
  What is it that makes you think that the reception of Australis was "very positive"? I'd consider the reception of a software product update to merely be "positive" if there was generally praise, basically no negativity at all, and people expressing that they are now significantly better off. "Very positive" would involve no negativity, and complete and total jubilation from users. This is extremely rare. A lot of people are not happy about Australis, and justifiably so. While Firefox has been imitating Chrome the past few years, Australis sealed the deal and made them nearly identical in the most critical ways. The only mitigating factor is that there really isn't a viable alternative to either Chrome or Firefox these days. Opera has basically become Chrome, and Safari obviously has very similar roots. IE is engaging in the same imitation of Chrome. Both IE and Safari suffer from a lack of portability, too. Many Firefox users are extremely disappointed with Australis, but they have no recourse. Switching browsers isn't really an option. And we wouldn't be in this position had Mozilla listened to all of the past feedback they've been given, so giving more feedback is probably a pointless exercise. So they suck it up, as best they can. Australis was a debacle, at best. I think you're deceiving yourself, and people not familiar with the situation, to suggest otherwise.
  - Silhouette 12y ago
    I wonder how long it will be before Mozilla are in real danger of losing control of the browser they call Firefox, if they continue on their recent trajectory. We're talking about Open Source here, so it is always possible to fork it under different branding, and a few groups already have for one reason or another. Of course, in reality, forking and then establishing the fork as a mainstream replacement that aligns more closely with the traditional advantages of Firefox would be a huge undertaking. For any new browser to gain traction outside of geek communities would surely require both a substantial user base and substantial support from the development community. But it's been done before, even for large and high profile projects, when the existing corporate stewardship wasn't getting the job done: the LibreOffice/OpenOffice split is the first example that comes to mind. If I were this week's CEO at Mozilla, I would consider a mainstream fork to be at least a plausible threat by now.
    - Pacabel 12y ago
      I think that they've already voluntarily given up control over the destiny of Firefox, in a sense. By imitating Chrome so closely these past few years, we haven't seen any real innovation out of Mozilla. They've been following, rather than leading. Since they aren't calling the shots, they don't really have true control over the future of Firefox.
  - Curmudgel 12y ago
    The less tech savvy users that are unhappy about the Australis UI changes don't know who they can complain to or where they can complain. I think that the backlash from power users has been lessened because addons (Classic Theme Restorer and Classic Toolbar Buttons) can successfully undo the distasteful and unnecessary Australis UI changes. It is telling that one of the best rated extensions for FF is an addon that undoes supposedly positive changes. Reliance on third party addons for functionality is almost always a step backwards, but it is possible to run the latest Nightly with the pre-Australis UI.
    - cpeterso 12y ago
      Users can report their [dis]satisfaction using Firefox Input, the happy/sad feedback form in Firefox's Help menu (if you know to look). And user comments are public and tracked closely. It can be a cesspool, but it is enlightening: https://input.mozilla.org https://input.mozilla.org

by gluxon 12y ago

daleharvey 12y ago

I wouldnt call the Australis reaction a backlash, in fact I believe it was very positive considering it was a big change. If your point was that there was and will always be people who protest against a change, then yup.

Pacabel 12y ago
What is it that makes you think that the reception of Australis was "very positive"? I'd consider the reception of a software product update to merely be "positive" if there was generally praise, basically no negativity at all, and people expressing that they are now significantly better off. "Very positive" would involve no negativity, and complete and total jubilation from users. This is extremely rare. A lot of people are not happy about Australis, and justifiably so. While Firefox has been imitating Chrome the past few years, Australis sealed the deal and made them nearly identical in the most critical ways. The only mitigating factor is that there really isn't a viable alternative to either Chrome or Firefox these days. Opera has basically become Chrome, and Safari obviously has very similar roots. IE is engaging in the same imitation of Chrome. Both IE and Safari suffer from a lack of portability, too. Many Firefox users are extremely disappointed with Australis, but they have no recourse. Switching browsers isn't really an option. And we wouldn't be in this position had Mozilla listened to all of the past feedback they've been given, so giving more feedback is probably a pointless exercise. So they suck it up, as best they can. Australis was a debacle, at best. I think you're deceiving yourself, and people not familiar with the situation, to suggest otherwise.
- Silhouette 12y ago
  I wonder how long it will be before Mozilla are in real danger of losing control of the browser they call Firefox, if they continue on their recent trajectory. We're talking about Open Source here, so it is always possible to fork it under different branding, and a few groups already have for one reason or another. Of course, in reality, forking and then establishing the fork as a mainstream replacement that aligns more closely with the traditional advantages of Firefox would be a huge undertaking. For any new browser to gain traction outside of geek communities would surely require both a substantial user base and substantial support from the development community. But it's been done before, even for large and high profile projects, when the existing corporate stewardship wasn't getting the job done: the LibreOffice/OpenOffice split is the first example that comes to mind. If I were this week's CEO at Mozilla, I would consider a mainstream fork to be at least a plausible threat by now.
  - Pacabel 12y ago
    I think that they've already voluntarily given up control over the destiny of Firefox, in a sense. By imitating Chrome so closely these past few years, we haven't seen any real innovation out of Mozilla. They've been following, rather than leading. Since they aren't calling the shots, they don't really have true control over the future of Firefox.
- Curmudgel 12y ago
  The less tech savvy users that are unhappy about the Australis UI changes don't know who they can complain to or where they can complain. I think that the backlash from power users has been lessened because addons (Classic Theme Restorer and Classic Toolbar Buttons) can successfully undo the distasteful and unnecessary Australis UI changes. It is telling that one of the best rated extensions for FF is an addon that undoes supposedly positive changes. Reliance on third party addons for functionality is almost always a step backwards, but it is possible to run the latest Nightly with the pre-Australis UI.
  - cpeterso 12y ago
    Users can report their [dis]satisfaction using Firefox Input, the happy/sad feedback form in Firefox's Help menu (if you know to look). And user comments are public and tracked closely. It can be a cesspool, but it is enlightening: https://input.mozilla.org https://input.mozilla.org