4 ms·

Unfortunately, that always happens. New product gains power users, starts to dumb down to appeal to room temperature IQs, loses power users again. See also: Fir

Unfortunately, that always happens. New product gains power users, starts to dumb down to appeal to room temperature IQs, loses power users again. See also: Firefox.

sp332 12y ago
What are you missing in Firefox that you can't get back 100% with add-ons?
- Dylan16807 12y ago
  Well this is unrelated to 'dumbing down' but setting a minimum tab width below 30 pixels is remarkably painful these days. It used to be a single config setting, then a single rule in userchrome, but now it takes an add-on that removes Australis and a couple dozen lines of custom fragile CSS that took far too long to write.
Fuxy 12y ago
As far as I'm aware as a long time Firefox user it has never lost any functionality. The menus may appear a bit mor simplified at the surface but if you dig down you will find what you are looking for.
amelius 12y ago
Yes, but how do we prevent this from happening? That's the big question!
- mojuba 12y ago
  Be in touch with your power users.
  - chii 12y ago
    the problem is that the mainstream non-power users are where the money is at - power users are just the foot in the door, and when you get in, you don't care about them anymore.
    - mojuba 12y ago
      Well then ignore your power users and lose the non-power ones along with the money they bring. That's exactly what Google has been doing in the past years. They lost me on almost everything except GMail which is also hanging from the cliff already. Speaking of GMail, it's the same attitude basically. For example they added these automatic labels with some nonsensical heuristics, which don't work most of the time and are impossible to remove. One more "smart" improvement and I'm closing my GMail account for good, seriously.
      - mdm_ 12y ago
        I recently opened an Outlook account because I'm finding Google's business model creepy and so far it's been pretty nice. It integrates well with my BlackBerry Passport (switched from Android) and two-factor auth was pretty straightforward to set up. I've moved my entire calendar to outlook.com and I'm forwarding my GMail there for now and hopefully will migrate completely over the next year. When I started to think about how Google was privy to just about all of my online and some of my real-life activity, it occurred to me they could build a disturbingly accurate profile on me, and while I'm just a boring 30-something middle-class white guy, I still found that creepy. Now I spread my data out between Google, BlackBerry, Outlook, and Yahoo and it's not really any less convenient than having it all integrated (the phone does integrate it all I suppose, but BlackBerry is not trying to use that data to show me ads).
        blueskin_ 12y ago
        Outlook isn't much better. I ditched gmail ~2010 and switched to running my own mailserver. Also means I can DKIM sign my messages, I get unlimited aliases, full message headers, etc...

Unfortunately, that always happens. New product gains power users, starts to dumb down to appeal to room temperature IQs, loses power users again. See also: Firefox.

sp332 12y ago

What are you missing in Firefox that you can't get back 100% with add-ons?

Dylan16807 12y ago
Well this is unrelated to 'dumbing down' but setting a minimum tab width below 30 pixels is remarkably painful these days. It used to be a single config setting, then a single rule in userchrome, but now it takes an add-on that removes Australis and a couple dozen lines of custom fragile CSS that took far too long to write.

Fuxy 12y ago

As far as I'm aware as a long time Firefox user it has never lost any functionality. The menus may appear a bit mor simplified at the surface but if you dig down you will find what you are looking for.

amelius 12y ago

Yes, but how do we prevent this from happening? That's the big question!

mojuba 12y ago
Be in touch with your power users.
- chii 12y ago
  the problem is that the mainstream non-power users are where the money is at - power users are just the foot in the door, and when you get in, you don't care about them anymore.
  - mojuba 12y ago
    Well then ignore your power users and lose the non-power ones along with the money they bring. That's exactly what Google has been doing in the past years. They lost me on almost everything except GMail which is also hanging from the cliff already. Speaking of GMail, it's the same attitude basically. For example they added these automatic labels with some nonsensical heuristics, which don't work most of the time and are impossible to remove. One more "smart" improvement and I'm closing my GMail account for good, seriously.
    - mdm_ 12y ago
      I recently opened an Outlook account because I'm finding Google's business model creepy and so far it's been pretty nice. It integrates well with my BlackBerry Passport (switched from Android) and two-factor auth was pretty straightforward to set up. I've moved my entire calendar to outlook.com and I'm forwarding my GMail there for now and hopefully will migrate completely over the next year. When I started to think about how Google was privy to just about all of my online and some of my real-life activity, it occurred to me they could build a disturbingly accurate profile on me, and while I'm just a boring 30-something middle-class white guy, I still found that creepy. Now I spread my data out between Google, BlackBerry, Outlook, and Yahoo and it's not really any less convenient than having it all integrated (the phone does integrate it all I suppose, but BlackBerry is not trying to use that data to show me ads).
      - blueskin_ 12y ago
        Outlook isn't much better. I ditched gmail ~2010 and switched to running my own mailserver. Also means I can DKIM sign my messages, I get unlimited aliases, full message headers, etc...