6 ms·

You'll be happy to know that somebody recently started working on the date/time input types bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=888320 https://bug

by 6a68 10y ago

You'll be happy to know that somebody recently started working on the date/time input types bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=888320 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=888320 If you have a bugzilla account, you can CC yourself on the bug to catch future updates :-)

rhinoceraptor 10y ago
Great! So now in like 2 years, hopefully I can simply use type="time" instead of implementing a half baked JS time picker or time validator. It's frustrating seeing them spend so much time on Firefox OS, Hello, etc. and not on making Firefox a really good, standards compliant browser.
- callahad 10y ago
  You asked us to implement X. We confirmed that we've begun work on implementing X and provided a way you can follow the progress. You then chose to respond with sarcasm and disdain. What productive outcome could we possibly reach from that exchange?
  - lucb1e 10y ago
    > What productive outcome could we possibly reach from that exchange? To advocate the devil, s/he'd like to change future plans. You did confirm it's being worked on, but the comment you're responding to tries to get you (mozilla) to work on implementing standards more often. I'm not saying I agree or disagree, I'm underinformed (though I also ran into Firefox not having input types and am also not a fan of recent experiments, I can't tell whether the concept of doing such experiments isn't worth doing), I'm just pointing out there is something behind the negative sarcasm.
  - rhinoceraptor 10y ago
    Sorry for being rude. It comes from a place of love, I think Firefox plays an extremely important role in the open web, and for that I'm very grateful.
    - callahad 10y ago
      Thanks, it's all good. :) Aside from the input types, what other pain points are you seeing?
  - alphapapa 10y ago
    Frankly, your response is indicative of the problems at Mozilla. You need to realize that behind every sarcastic, disdainful comment about Mozilla or Firefox is years, often nearly decades, of Firefox usage, contribution, and promotion. When people come to trust and rely upon a tool for getting work done for many, many years, and then the organization responsible for that tool starts changing priorities in ways that negatively effect the tool's usability and usefulness, people react negatively. And when the organization then gets defensive and offended at people's negative reactions, it creates a self-reinforcing cycle of negativity and not-listening-to-the-other-side. Mozilla makes a great browser, saving the world from Microsoft and IE. Nearly two decades later, Mozilla starts mucking with the UI, chasing the mythical never-used-the-Internet-before-and-will-always-be-that-way user, forcing unwanted, unrequested features upon all users, etc. Naturally, people respond negatively. "Why are you doing this, Mozilla? Why are you ruining this great browser? Why are you now chasing numbers and mythical unicorn users instead of pursuing excellence and usefulness like you always have before?" Then Mozilla employees get defensive and respond with, "What? Why don't you like what we're doing? Why aren't you being nice to us? We're doing this for you! Stop being mean!" And then they say to each other--especially on Bugzilla reports--"Ugh, more comments from the peanut gallery."--or in Mozilla-speak, "advocacy"--"Locking this bug to editbugs-privileged only accounts." So now we have two sides that are offended by each other and not listening to each other. But the two sides are not equal, for without users, what is the point of Mozilla and its products? Plenty of well-made software has fallen into obscurity over the years when people weren't using it. And without Firefox, what are users left with but poor imitations? Undoubtedly Chrome has had an impact here, but Mozilla is mistaken to imitate Chrome to recapture its users. Some people leave Firefox for Chrome because they prefer Chrome, or because Chrome is faster (and they don't mind its memory usage). But other people leave Firefox for Chrome because--wait for it--Firefox has stopped being Firefox! They figure, well, if Firefox is going to try to be a poor imitation of Chrome, I might as well just use Chrome. But what we really want is authentic Firefox, the browser that we started using when IE ruled the world and Phoenix rose from the ashes of Netscape to save us from the Evil Empire. Microsoft isn't the threat to the Internet it used to be, but monoculture will always be a threat, and proprietary, walled-garden, app-store-style software is a growing threat to user freedom and empowerment. We need Firefox to be Firefox, not Chrome, not Mozilla's experiment of the month, not Mozilla's platform for enacting social change. I guess the problem is that Mozilla is literally not who it used to be, because the people are different, and they have different ideas. Probably money has something to do with that; a few years of hundred-million-dollar+ deals obviously has an impact. People get used to the money, and when it comes down to it, they'll do whatever they think it takes to keep the money flowing, even if it means undoing what made them successful. But the root problem is the Rug Problem: people react negatively when the rug is yanked out from under them without their consent. Mozilla should recognize this and not react defensively. Instead, Mozilla should interpret every such comment as evidence of bugs in the Mozilla organization, people, processes, and priorities. When "customers" are unhappy, smart companies don't get offended and tell off their customers, they figure out why customers are unhappy, and they make them happy again. As for myself, I'm keeping an eye on Pale Moon, which has made a commitment to stability in API and UI, and to usefulness for its users. I wish Mozilla would make the same commitment to its users and extension developers.
- 6a68 10y ago
  I hear your frustration; people inside the company found some of those changes frustrating, too. Test Pilot is a step in a new direction that's more participatory and inclusive of the community, and injects a lot of data into the decision-making process. As far as web standards go, Gecko's the only open-source browser controlled by a nonprofit. The alternative is a webkit monoculture, a world controlled by Apple and Google (oh, and Microsoft). Within Mozilla, the Firefox and Platform teams are super focused on improving standards compliance and squashing bugs. Things are getting better :-)
  - kuschku 10y ago
    btw, regarding UI and extensibility, a suggestion that many advanced users want to give is: look at Vivaldi ;)
    - CelticSuperhero 10y ago
      Vivaldi has amazing features, yes. But it is no real browser and only an advanced web app bundled with Chromium. Also, smashing a wrapper on top of Chromium with features and call it a day is one of the most stupid things ever which a group of developers can do. But Vivaldi shows what guys do when they have respect of power users. They add features we want and we prefer and not only features what simple users or Chrome users want and prefer.
      - kuschku 10y ago
        Exactly. I’d never use vivaldi, but many of its features are awesome. I’d also love if Firefox had a way to adapt the UI color to the current page, if I could have as nicely animated tab previews, and many of the other settings. Firefox started working on many features for power users (look at testpilot’s vertical tabs), but let’s hope they#ll do more.
      - LordLestat 10y ago
        So comments from people who think that Firefox has to feature again customization are getting downvoted. Why people value simplicity and minimalism and design more higher today than having customization features and options?
- pcwalton 10y ago
  A huge amount of the Hello work was really WebRTC, which is a standard--and an important one. Hello is a front end to that.
  - rhelmer 10y ago
    Hello (and Pocket for what it's worth) are relatively small add-ons that ship with Firefox nowadays, the bulk of the actual magic for both happens in web content. Hello has a new tab-sharing feature, but that also works by sending media streams through WebRTC. I am starting to suspect that their prominent placement and sudden appearance in the default Firefox UI caused people to think that they are taking a larger amount of Mozilla's development resources than is actually the case. To bring it back on topic to Test Pilot - hopefully this will help the overall Firefox community vet these types of ideas before they make it to the default UI. Even if the outcome is ultimately the same (new feature is added/default UI is changed, which makes some subset of people legitimately unhappy), it gives a wider audience a chance to test and provide feedback and generally socialize new ideas.
Aldo_MX 10y ago
Fine print: CCing a bug doesn't mean it will be addressed in a timely manner, it may take 10 years[1] but in the meantime you'll receive 2,147,483,647 mails of other people "me too"-ing and discussing about the bug. [1] Not exaggerating: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=390936 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=390936
- callahad 10y ago
  You can adjust what events trigger an email at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/userprefs.cgi?tab=email https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/userprefs.cgi?tab=email
  - Aldo_MX 10y ago
    Leaving the cynicism and hyperbole aside, what bothers me are not the e-mails, but the double-sided stance of Firefox as a project, in feature-parity bugs we get the draconian speech of "oh no, we must follow the standards strictly, it doesn't matter if every other browser work fine and it doesn't matter if you already spent your time to develop a patch", but in the outside world we get the announcement of support for webkit-prefixed properties (to name an example). As a developer, this destroys the credibility of Firefox when it comes to interoperability, and in the outside world I have been perceiving a rise of Chrome-only web applications, this can't be a coincidence.
    - ianbicking 10y ago
      There's a lot of people at Mozilla, and they talk fairly freely, so the result is an inconsistent message. Not everything you see is a stance, much of it is people trying to figure things out and communicate the decisions-of-the-moment. As far as web compatibility and standards, the inconsistency is part of Mozilla. Is Firefox a tool for open web standards advocacy? Some in Mozilla feel that way. Do we just want Firefox to render things well? There's a whole team for that too (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Compatibility https://wiki.mozilla.org/Compatibility). And of course there's Bugzilla, which can feel like a lottery – it's very hard to know who you encounter when you enter the project through there. This stuff is hard, and making the right choices is hard – I'm sure Mozilla has not always made the right decisions, but I personally prefer ongoing struggles to make the right decision over a consistent and credible stance.

by 6a68 10y ago

rhinoceraptor 10y ago

Great! So now in like 2 years, hopefully I can simply use type="time" instead of implementing a half baked JS time picker or time validator. It's frustrating seeing them spend so much time on Firefox OS, Hello, etc. and not on making Firefox a really good, standards compliant browser.

callahad 10y ago
You asked us to implement X. We confirmed that we've begun work on implementing X and provided a way you can follow the progress. You then chose to respond with sarcasm and disdain. What productive outcome could we possibly reach from that exchange?
- lucb1e 10y ago
  > What productive outcome could we possibly reach from that exchange? To advocate the devil, s/he'd like to change future plans. You did confirm it's being worked on, but the comment you're responding to tries to get you (mozilla) to work on implementing standards more often. I'm not saying I agree or disagree, I'm underinformed (though I also ran into Firefox not having input types and am also not a fan of recent experiments, I can't tell whether the concept of doing such experiments isn't worth doing), I'm just pointing out there is something behind the negative sarcasm.
- rhinoceraptor 10y ago
  Sorry for being rude. It comes from a place of love, I think Firefox plays an extremely important role in the open web, and for that I'm very grateful.
  - callahad 10y ago
    Thanks, it's all good. :) Aside from the input types, what other pain points are you seeing?
- alphapapa 10y ago
  Frankly, your response is indicative of the problems at Mozilla. You need to realize that behind every sarcastic, disdainful comment about Mozilla or Firefox is years, often nearly decades, of Firefox usage, contribution, and promotion. When people come to trust and rely upon a tool for getting work done for many, many years, and then the organization responsible for that tool starts changing priorities in ways that negatively effect the tool's usability and usefulness, people react negatively. And when the organization then gets defensive and offended at people's negative reactions, it creates a self-reinforcing cycle of negativity and not-listening-to-the-other-side. Mozilla makes a great browser, saving the world from Microsoft and IE. Nearly two decades later, Mozilla starts mucking with the UI, chasing the mythical never-used-the-Internet-before-and-will-always-be-that-way user, forcing unwanted, unrequested features upon all users, etc. Naturally, people respond negatively. "Why are you doing this, Mozilla? Why are you ruining this great browser? Why are you now chasing numbers and mythical unicorn users instead of pursuing excellence and usefulness like you always have before?" Then Mozilla employees get defensive and respond with, "What? Why don't you like what we're doing? Why aren't you being nice to us? We're doing this for you! Stop being mean!" And then they say to each other--especially on Bugzilla reports--"Ugh, more comments from the peanut gallery."--or in Mozilla-speak, "advocacy"--"Locking this bug to editbugs-privileged only accounts." So now we have two sides that are offended by each other and not listening to each other. But the two sides are not equal, for without users, what is the point of Mozilla and its products? Plenty of well-made software has fallen into obscurity over the years when people weren't using it. And without Firefox, what are users left with but poor imitations? Undoubtedly Chrome has had an impact here, but Mozilla is mistaken to imitate Chrome to recapture its users. Some people leave Firefox for Chrome because they prefer Chrome, or because Chrome is faster (and they don't mind its memory usage). But other people leave Firefox for Chrome because--wait for it--Firefox has stopped being Firefox! They figure, well, if Firefox is going to try to be a poor imitation of Chrome, I might as well just use Chrome. But what we really want is authentic Firefox, the browser that we started using when IE ruled the world and Phoenix rose from the ashes of Netscape to save us from the Evil Empire. Microsoft isn't the threat to the Internet it used to be, but monoculture will always be a threat, and proprietary, walled-garden, app-store-style software is a growing threat to user freedom and empowerment. We need Firefox to be Firefox, not Chrome, not Mozilla's experiment of the month, not Mozilla's platform for enacting social change. I guess the problem is that Mozilla is literally not who it used to be, because the people are different, and they have different ideas. Probably money has something to do with that; a few years of hundred-million-dollar+ deals obviously has an impact. People get used to the money, and when it comes down to it, they'll do whatever they think it takes to keep the money flowing, even if it means undoing what made them successful. But the root problem is the Rug Problem: people react negatively when the rug is yanked out from under them without their consent. Mozilla should recognize this and not react defensively. Instead, Mozilla should interpret every such comment as evidence of bugs in the Mozilla organization, people, processes, and priorities. When "customers" are unhappy, smart companies don't get offended and tell off their customers, they figure out why customers are unhappy, and they make them happy again. As for myself, I'm keeping an eye on Pale Moon, which has made a commitment to stability in API and UI, and to usefulness for its users. I wish Mozilla would make the same commitment to its users and extension developers.
6a68 10y ago
I hear your frustration; people inside the company found some of those changes frustrating, too. Test Pilot is a step in a new direction that's more participatory and inclusive of the community, and injects a lot of data into the decision-making process. As far as web standards go, Gecko's the only open-source browser controlled by a nonprofit. The alternative is a webkit monoculture, a world controlled by Apple and Google (oh, and Microsoft). Within Mozilla, the Firefox and Platform teams are super focused on improving standards compliance and squashing bugs. Things are getting better :-)
- kuschku 10y ago
  btw, regarding UI and extensibility, a suggestion that many advanced users want to give is: look at Vivaldi ;)
  - CelticSuperhero 10y ago
    Vivaldi has amazing features, yes. But it is no real browser and only an advanced web app bundled with Chromium. Also, smashing a wrapper on top of Chromium with features and call it a day is one of the most stupid things ever which a group of developers can do. But Vivaldi shows what guys do when they have respect of power users. They add features we want and we prefer and not only features what simple users or Chrome users want and prefer.
    - kuschku 10y ago
      Exactly. I’d never use vivaldi, but many of its features are awesome. I’d also love if Firefox had a way to adapt the UI color to the current page, if I could have as nicely animated tab previews, and many of the other settings. Firefox started working on many features for power users (look at testpilot’s vertical tabs), but let’s hope they#ll do more.
    - LordLestat 10y ago
      So comments from people who think that Firefox has to feature again customization are getting downvoted. Why people value simplicity and minimalism and design more higher today than having customization features and options?
pcwalton 10y ago
A huge amount of the Hello work was really WebRTC, which is a standard--and an important one. Hello is a front end to that.
- rhelmer 10y ago
  Hello (and Pocket for what it's worth) are relatively small add-ons that ship with Firefox nowadays, the bulk of the actual magic for both happens in web content. Hello has a new tab-sharing feature, but that also works by sending media streams through WebRTC. I am starting to suspect that their prominent placement and sudden appearance in the default Firefox UI caused people to think that they are taking a larger amount of Mozilla's development resources than is actually the case. To bring it back on topic to Test Pilot - hopefully this will help the overall Firefox community vet these types of ideas before they make it to the default UI. Even if the outcome is ultimately the same (new feature is added/default UI is changed, which makes some subset of people legitimately unhappy), it gives a wider audience a chance to test and provide feedback and generally socialize new ideas.

Aldo_MX 10y ago

Fine print: CCing a bug doesn't mean it will be addressed in a timely manner, it may take 10 years[1] but in the meantime you'll receive 2,147,483,647 mails of other people "me too"-ing and discussing about the bug. [1] Not exaggerating: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=390936 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=390936

callahad 10y ago
You can adjust what events trigger an email at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/userprefs.cgi?tab=email https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/userprefs.cgi?tab=email
- Aldo_MX 10y ago
  Leaving the cynicism and hyperbole aside, what bothers me are not the e-mails, but the double-sided stance of Firefox as a project, in feature-parity bugs we get the draconian speech of "oh no, we must follow the standards strictly, it doesn't matter if every other browser work fine and it doesn't matter if you already spent your time to develop a patch", but in the outside world we get the announcement of support for webkit-prefixed properties (to name an example). As a developer, this destroys the credibility of Firefox when it comes to interoperability, and in the outside world I have been perceiving a rise of Chrome-only web applications, this can't be a coincidence.
  - ianbicking 10y ago
    There's a lot of people at Mozilla, and they talk fairly freely, so the result is an inconsistent message. Not everything you see is a stance, much of it is people trying to figure things out and communicate the decisions-of-the-moment. As far as web compatibility and standards, the inconsistency is part of Mozilla. Is Firefox a tool for open web standards advocacy? Some in Mozilla feel that way. Do we just want Firefox to render things well? There's a whole team for that too (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Compatibility https://wiki.mozilla.org/Compatibility). And of course there's Bugzilla, which can feel like a lottery – it's very hard to know who you encounter when you enter the project through there. This stuff is hard, and making the right choices is hard – I'm sure Mozilla has not always made the right decisions, but I personally prefer ongoing struggles to make the right decision over a consistent and credible stance.