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0 pointsautoexec4y ago0 comments

Bloat and feature creep are real (and I'd accuse Firefox of both) but in general yes, I'd rather have more functionality and a complex interface than have features stripped away or hidden behind some search box where I have to know exactly what I want and hope the app can guess at what I'm asking for.

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eitland4y ago· 3 in thread

Agree to a large degree, but this:

> Bloat and feature creep are real (and I'd accuse Firefox of both) but in general yes[...]

Except Pocket, what particular new bloat has Firefox added over the last decade?

I am not too fond of Mozilla myself, but if anything I feel like Firefox has been stripped down way to far.

autoexecOP4y ago

Pocket is what comes to mind immediately absolutely, but there's a long and growing list of things I have to disable every time I install Firefox including:

- Their entire ad filled start pages / Snippets / Activity Stream / Suggested sites

- Normandy

- safebrowsing

- Push notifications

- Firefox Feature Recommendations

- Firefox Hello

- Firefox Accounts / Sync / Firefox Monitor / CloudServices

- Shield opt-out studies / Test Pilot / Experiments

- pre-installed 3rd party search engines

- PDF reader

- screenshots@mozilla.org.xpi, pictureinpicture@mozilla.org.xpi

- Password generator

Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan. It's still the most customizable browser available and with a lot of work (and a few add-ons) the most secure and private by far, but lean browsers don't require all this to prevent unsolicited network connections : https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-stop-firefox-making...

eitland4y ago

That was a longer list than I expected, thanks for putting in the effort and also for your nuanced position.

I'm one of those who enjoy the PDF reader FWIW, same with push notifications. The PDF reader in particular because I almost haven't used Adobe since it came.

Test pilot is fine with me as long as it is voluntary and opt in - but the robot extension - that I literally felt in my body when I saw it.

Again, thanks.

I think most of this should have been created using an extension API and should been voluntary to install. Back in the days this would absolutely have been possible I think.

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rurp4y ago

I totally agree. I have had a LOT of complaints about Firefox in the past five years and all of them fall into one of two buckets.

A) Useful functionality being removed. Firefox on Android has been crippled to the point of ruin.

B) Pointless UX changes for the worse. This can be bearable, but are a regular source of annoyance and wasted time.

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