4 ms·

Firefox is open, high quality and user friendly.

by mrj 11y ago

Retra 11y ago
Firefox's success often seems to be the exception that proves the rule.
- 6d6b73 11y ago
  So is, Postresql, Apache, Nginx, Blender, VLC etc..
- noir_lord 11y ago
  postgres, python, inkscape, XFCE, various shells, GTK, Qt, even libreoffice (which has gone through astounding refactoring), vim, emacs, apache, nginx. I don't think there is a rule.
  - Retra 11y ago
    That's a good point. Maybe it is a matter of perspective: none of those are consumer programs, they are developer tools. (Except libreoffice, but that has had its problems.) So you could argue that they are not all that user friendly.
    - noir_lord 11y ago
      > Contrary to popular belief, Unix is user friendly. It just happens to be very selective about who it decides to make friends with. They are user friendly they just represent the usages of the type of user using them. This is something I see said a lot, constraining an interface to your average completely new user who knows nothing makes it very difficult to have that interface adequately serve people with more experience, you load up the benefit on the front side and trash the backside in response - that said some powerful interfaces are just objectively bad but the tools utility overrides that.
      - Retra 11y ago
        At this point, I don't even know what "user friendly" means.
        noir_lord 11y ago
        user friendly - designed to aid the user in doing whatever task they are doing. The software for making a photo collage for Grandma and the software for controlling replication across a hundred database nodes can be radically different and still be user friendly. Lots of software tends to assume that the user is a new user but the problem then is that a new user rapidly becomes a not-new user and those things that helped initially now hamper productivity (cough Clippy cough). I'm not saying everyone should have a Symbolics terminal and that requiring lisp knowledge should be mandatory so much as lots of people say open source isn't "user friendly" when what they mean is it's not particularly friendly to new/inexperience users coming from outside. http://rippedwire.sourceforge.net/images/hbgtk-video.jpg http://rippedwire.sourceforge.net/images/hbgtk-video.jpg for example, to a new user that is very unfriendly but if you use it frequently and or understand what you are trying to do that kind of no-nonsense interface is user friendly.
PhantomGremlin 11y ago
I'm not sure I agree any more. The other day, on OS X, I happened to start a new copy of Firefox in an account that had parental controls enabled (such as Guest user by default). It was a real eye-opener. Parental controls alerts anytime an https connection is initiated. Basically it was impossible to keep Firefox from immediately initiating quite a number of these. I frantically tried to uncheck all the relevant preferences I could (e.g. "Block reported web forgeries"). I failed. Firefox still insisted on phoning home (maybe I missed something?). Also, it was hard to even make progress. The parental controls popup takes focus and demands an administrator's approval to proceed. By the time I could dismiss the popup, Firefox tried to phone home again and a new popup appeared. Sheesh. Here are just some of the sites that Firefox immediately accesses: self-repair.mozilla.org snippets.cdn.mozilla.net search.yahoo.com location.services.mozilla.com www.mozilla.org tiles.services.mozilla.com safebrowsing.google.com aus4.mozilla.org What I'm saying is that microphone access is just a very small portion of what's happening. Basically all these browsers are shipping vast amounts of our intimate browsing details to "the cloud".

Firefox is open, high quality and user friendly.

by mrj 11y ago

Firefox is open, high quality and user friendly.

Retra 11y ago

Firefox's success often seems to be the exception that proves the rule.

6d6b73 11y ago
So is, Postresql, Apache, Nginx, Blender, VLC etc..
noir_lord 11y ago
postgres, python, inkscape, XFCE, various shells, GTK, Qt, even libreoffice (which has gone through astounding refactoring), vim, emacs, apache, nginx. I don't think there is a rule.
- Retra 11y ago
  That's a good point. Maybe it is a matter of perspective: none of those are consumer programs, they are developer tools. (Except libreoffice, but that has had its problems.) So you could argue that they are not all that user friendly.
  - noir_lord 11y ago
    > Contrary to popular belief, Unix is user friendly. It just happens to be very selective about who it decides to make friends with. They are user friendly they just represent the usages of the type of user using them. This is something I see said a lot, constraining an interface to your average completely new user who knows nothing makes it very difficult to have that interface adequately serve people with more experience, you load up the benefit on the front side and trash the backside in response - that said some powerful interfaces are just objectively bad but the tools utility overrides that.
    - Retra 11y ago
      At this point, I don't even know what "user friendly" means.
      - noir_lord 11y ago
        user friendly - designed to aid the user in doing whatever task they are doing. The software for making a photo collage for Grandma and the software for controlling replication across a hundred database nodes can be radically different and still be user friendly. Lots of software tends to assume that the user is a new user but the problem then is that a new user rapidly becomes a not-new user and those things that helped initially now hamper productivity (cough Clippy cough). I'm not saying everyone should have a Symbolics terminal and that requiring lisp knowledge should be mandatory so much as lots of people say open source isn't "user friendly" when what they mean is it's not particularly friendly to new/inexperience users coming from outside. http://rippedwire.sourceforge.net/images/hbgtk-video.jpg http://rippedwire.sourceforge.net/images/hbgtk-video.jpg for example, to a new user that is very unfriendly but if you use it frequently and or understand what you are trying to do that kind of no-nonsense interface is user friendly.

PhantomGremlin 11y ago

I'm not sure I agree any more. The other day, on OS X, I happened to start a new copy of Firefox in an account that had parental controls enabled (such as Guest user by default). It was a real eye-opener. Parental controls alerts anytime an https connection is initiated. Basically it was impossible to keep Firefox from immediately initiating quite a number of these. I frantically tried to uncheck all the relevant preferences I could (e.g. "Block reported web forgeries"). I failed. Firefox still insisted on phoning home (maybe I missed something?). Also, it was hard to even make progress. The parental controls popup takes focus and demands an administrator's approval to proceed. By the time I could dismiss the popup, Firefox tried to phone home again and a new popup appeared. Sheesh. Here are just some of the sites that Firefox immediately accesses: self-repair.mozilla.org snippets.cdn.mozilla.net search.yahoo.com location.services.mozilla.com www.mozilla.org tiles.services.mozilla.com safebrowsing.google.com aus4.mozilla.org What I'm saying is that microphone access is just a very small portion of what's happening. Basically all these browsers are shipping vast amounts of our intimate browsing details to "the cloud".