7 ms·

It is so unlike Mozilla to introduce something like that, I ran a virus scan and checked what programs had been installed recently -- I assumed it had been put

It is so unlike Mozilla to introduce something like that, I ran a virus scan and checked what programs had been installed recently -- I assumed it had been put there in the same way that IE users used to get the Ask Toolbar installed. Exactly how I felt. What the hell were they thinking? I'm generally very supportive of Mozilla, I even supported their initiative to put advertisements on Firefox's start page. But bundling stuff like Pocket and Hello with Firefox is just ridiculous. Why not make it an official extension? That way users can easily disable or remove it.

sp332 11y ago
Is there a practical difference between disabling the features and just ignoring them?
- pc2g4d 11y ago
  Memory and CPU utilization for starters
  - dblohm7 11y ago
    Firefox makes extensive use of lazy initialization for a lot of its code. You typically don't pay the price for those features unless you actually use them.
  - Manishearth 11y ago
    A button that does an API call consumes very less resources until clicked.
brador 11y ago
Was money on the table to integrate Pocket into Firefox? Like with the default search engine payments Mozilla receives.
- IshKebab 11y ago
  Almost certainly.
  - dblohm7 11y ago
    Mozilla employee here: That is incorrect. There is limited public information available about this deal, but the best quote so far is in this article: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2930532/reading-service-pocket-built-into-firefox-replacing-reading-list-feature.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/2930532/reading-service-pocke...
    - gcommer 11y ago
      This makes even less sense... I also assumed the Pocket integration was a paid placement, in which case I was fine having to spend the time removing the button and disabling it in about:config, since I saw it as a cost of actively developed free software (same with having to change my default search engine away from Yahoo all the time). Integrating a third party API for free when plenty of browser-centric features are left as extensions makes me really question Firefox's goals. How is elevating an arbitrary third-party service from an extension into native browser code "promoting openness, innovation & opportunity on the Web"?
      - blakeyrat 11y ago
        It just means the payola was under-the-table and not something that gets documented in meeting minutes.
      - xg15 11y ago
        I also assumed the Pocket integration was a paid placement, in which case I was fine having to spend the time removing the button and disabling it in about:config, since I saw it as a cost of actively developed free software Apologies for being slightly off-topic, but I'd argue this would be questionable even if it were an openly announced partnership like with Yahoo. Yes, Mozilla is free software and is doing some enormous contributions to the open web. Which is why we should support them with donations and code contributions. (And I'd also fully endorse usage of paid services from them should they develop any). However, what they are doing now is basically selling their good reputation and their wide user base to force some features on their users that they don't need in return of (presumably) payment. That strikes me as deeply unethical.
Puts 11y ago
You really start to wonder what pot they are smoking over there at Mozilla. Standard things you would expect from a browser, like a way to easily disabling javascript are apparently left to third-party extensions, because oh you don't want to bloat the browser. But hey, video conferencing on the other hand is such an essential part of the browsing experience.
- untog 11y ago
  Standard things you would expect from a browser, like a way to easily disabling javascript That is very far from being an expectation of the average user.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- sp332 11y ago
  They don't let users easily disable JS because that breaks so many webpages, and they didn't want to deal with supporting users who complained that Firefox wasn't working. http://limi.net/checkboxes-that-kill/ http://limi.net/checkboxes-that-kill/
  - SquareWheel 11y ago
    Good read, thanks for linking. Some points I'd never considered.
  - yellowapple 11y ago
    The vast majority of the described problems would be solved if Firefox provided more/better documentation and help text alongside such options. Or better yet, they could be solved by Firefox displaying warnings if pages appear to rely on certain settings. Javascript disabled and a site relies on it? "Hey, this site would probably work better if you enabled Javascript, but you have it disabled. Would you like to enable Javascript again? Or perhaps just for this page?" SSL/TLS disabled? "Hey, so TLS is disabled, but I need it in order to show you this web page. You want me to enable it for you?" The overarching theme here is not that there are too many options, but that there are too many poorly documented options with poorly documented consequences. Fixing that problem would give users the best of both worlds: flexibility and ease-of-use.
cmdrfred 11y ago
I always get devoted when I support chrome on here but I think history will prove me right.
dblohm7 11y ago
Hello is just a thin wrapper around WebRTC. That's why Chrome can receive Hello calls without an extension. There's barely anything to add on in that case.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- xg15 11y ago
  Not many resources perhaps, but a lot of additional UI surface, which clutters up the menus with irrelevant options.
  - azakai 11y ago
    I wouldn't say a lot, it's just one button. Is there a cost to adding even a button? Yes. But that has to be weighed against the benefit. And a significant amount of users benefit from having the button.
    - mook 11y ago
      "Just one button" led to Netscape 6 and subsequently Firefox in the first place. It's easy to miss the significant amount of user benefit from not having that one button, since it's a smaller amount of benefit per person across a lager number of users.
      - azakai 11y ago
        That's a fair point and I agree, there is benefit to not having more buttons on the UI. It's hard to know what the right tradeoff is, between the benefits of adding buttons and not adding them. There are good reasons to prefer both more and less. In this case, data on user behavior indicated that it was worth adding the buttons. It's still possible that the data is imperfect somehow and a more optimal tradeoff could have been chosen. Still, I think there is good reason to believe the current data and decisions make sense.
  - mccr8 11y ago
jtgeibel 11y ago
This completely captures my response as well. I run on the beta channel, so the day after 38.0 stable hit, this got rolled out the the beta channel. I checked the plugin/addon page and my user profile directory at least a dozen times, assuming that something unwanted had done this behind my back. I probably wasted half an hour looking into this. Finally, I took a (second) look at the release notes before actually realizing that this was something build in. (I missed it the first time because it didn't even register that they would be doing this.) What really shocked me was that it was added by default to standard toolbar, which seemed rather rude and presumptuous. (Maybe they rolled this out differently to the stable channel, I don't know.) Worst of all, there has been almost no communication on this. I subscribe to Planet Mozilla and read everything that seems interesting to me, and I still didn't know this was coming. There still hasn't been much public discussion on this. On top of that, they did a weird 38.0.5 release cycle that I haven't seen before with the release train. It was almost like someone said: "there is no way we can introduce this to enterprise with an ESR release, so lets tweak the whole release model so we can shove it in everyone else's face once we spin the ESR release." I've been a huge Mozilla supporter since back in the Pheonix days. I'm even okay with their ad ambitions (so far) and think that they made the right pragmatic decision with regards to DRM support. However, with this move I've now felt it necessary to take a step back and seriously question their motives. It just seems so far out of character. I've been thinking and reading about this for the last 3 weeks and I still have no idea what they are thinking. Edit: I'd also like to add that I'm a huge Firefox Sync fan. The fact that they took such a user focused approach to encrypting everything client side, and minimizing their server-side exposure to user data seemed like such a principled approach and is probably the only thing that kept me from taking the leap to Chrome at a time when there were noticeable performance benefits to doing so. This integration seems like the exact antithesis.
- browser 11y ago
  In my view, they need to reverse course 180 degrees on things like Pocket and Hello, or it will be the beginning of the end for Firefox. Firefox is a niche product that appeals to the privacy-consciuos. Stuff like Pocket and Telefonica/Hello basically eliminates its reason for being. I have Firefox as my main browser now, but I won't keep it around for long if I have to swat down new marketing integrations in every new release.
gcb0 11y ago
that hits home. because there was a malware that distributed itself as a mozilla add-on. even sent in patches because it affected a bank i used.
gcb0 11y ago
that hits home. because there was a malware that distributed itself as a mozilla add-on. even sent in patches because it affected a bank i used.
gluxon 11y ago
The "Mozilla Manifesto and Pocket" email thread in the Firefox Dev mailing list gives some insight from the developers. [1] To paraphrase: it seems they wanted a reading list feature but found it pointless to re-implement an existing solution with many desired features. (Work which was started but appears to have been scrapped.) This rationalized piggy-backing on Pocket. It gives Firefox a reading list for its users without Mozilla having to maintain it. My personal problem with this has more to do with the anti-competitive nature of integrating services rather than Pocket's closed source. [1] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/firefox-dev/B3jJq_kUuIQ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/firefox-dev/B3jJq_kU...
- derefr 11y ago
  It somewhat makes sense. If they want it that badly, though, maybe Mozilla should buy Pocket so that they can put it under the aegis of their license/philosophical charter. "Reading List" is currently right up there with "Web Browser" and "Email Client" as major programs that I would like to be neutrally owned by a public foundation.
  - browser 11y ago
    I think you are confusing cause and effect. Pocket was not added to Firefox because Firefox users demanded a sophisticated offline reader. If that were all there is to it, Pocket would be an addon. Pocket was added to Firefox because Mozilla wants the extra revenue from partnering with Pocket.
    - fabrice_d 11y ago
      Pocket is not paying Mozilla, as said already. Also, anyone implementing a compatible backend can switch to it by changing a pref.
      - browser 11y ago
        Can we get a public statement from Mozilla describing its deal with Pocket? I see a comment below from a Mozilla employee stating that "there is limited public information available about this deal", and claiming that the best quote is in an article that contains a paraphrase from an email from another Mozilla employee saying that Pocket didn't pay for placement. When a non-profit gives prominent placement to a for-profit company, there are many ways for money to change hands beyond straight up payment for placement. I think we are owed a clear explanation of the Mozilla-Pocket deal.
pdkl95 11y ago
> Why not make it an official extension? It says a lot about Mozilla when they decide to bundle fad features like these after spending years stripping existing features[1] out of Firefox. During their effort to dumb-down[2] Firefox, it was common to hear that removing those features didn't matter, as they should be provided by extensions instead. Apparently that cheap excuse is ignored when the feature when it is convenient to do so. [1] the many options cut from the preferences dialog comes to mind - some that I have had to help a LOT of friends work around. Far too many man-weeks have been wasted ;_; [2] which was a terrible idea that hurts the enthusiast that actually used those feature, hinders the inexperienced-but-interested users by hiding previously visible features behind the addons.mozilla.org, and doesn't do anything at all for the supposed target audience of non-technical users who by definition don't even use the preferences dialog.
- Artemis2 11y ago
  http://xkcd.com/1172/ http://xkcd.com/1172/
  - nosmo-king 11y ago
    i had memorized the index of my 65535 bookmarks, now have to scroll by +1 which forces me to a 17-bit mental pointer. who thought 17-bits was ok?
CarloSanta4 11y ago
They bundele it because they get payed for it. Same story with the new suggested site advertising. The alarming thing is that this way Mozilla is loosing it's independency.
- glass- 11y ago
  This is Mozilla gaining independency. When they were completely reliant on Google they had no independency.
- dblohm7 11y ago
  As repeatedly said elsewhere in this thread, Pocket is not paying Mozilla for this integration.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

sp332 11y ago

Is there a practical difference between disabling the features and just ignoring them?

pc2g4d 11y ago
Memory and CPU utilization for starters
- dblohm7 11y ago
  Firefox makes extensive use of lazy initialization for a lot of its code. You typically don't pay the price for those features unless you actually use them.
- Manishearth 11y ago
  A button that does an API call consumes very less resources until clicked.

brador 11y ago

Was money on the table to integrate Pocket into Firefox? Like with the default search engine payments Mozilla receives.

IshKebab 11y ago
Almost certainly.
- dblohm7 11y ago
  Mozilla employee here: That is incorrect. There is limited public information available about this deal, but the best quote so far is in this article: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2930532/reading-service-pocket-built-into-firefox-replacing-reading-list-feature.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/2930532/reading-service-pocke...
  - gcommer 11y ago
    This makes even less sense... I also assumed the Pocket integration was a paid placement, in which case I was fine having to spend the time removing the button and disabling it in about:config, since I saw it as a cost of actively developed free software (same with having to change my default search engine away from Yahoo all the time). Integrating a third party API for free when plenty of browser-centric features are left as extensions makes me really question Firefox's goals. How is elevating an arbitrary third-party service from an extension into native browser code "promoting openness, innovation & opportunity on the Web"?
    - blakeyrat 11y ago
      It just means the payola was under-the-table and not something that gets documented in meeting minutes.
    - xg15 11y ago
      I also assumed the Pocket integration was a paid placement, in which case I was fine having to spend the time removing the button and disabling it in about:config, since I saw it as a cost of actively developed free software Apologies for being slightly off-topic, but I'd argue this would be questionable even if it were an openly announced partnership like with Yahoo. Yes, Mozilla is free software and is doing some enormous contributions to the open web. Which is why we should support them with donations and code contributions. (And I'd also fully endorse usage of paid services from them should they develop any). However, what they are doing now is basically selling their good reputation and their wide user base to force some features on their users that they don't need in return of (presumably) payment. That strikes me as deeply unethical.

Puts 11y ago

You really start to wonder what pot they are smoking over there at Mozilla. Standard things you would expect from a browser, like a way to easily disabling javascript are apparently left to third-party extensions, because oh you don't want to bloat the browser. But hey, video conferencing on the other hand is such an essential part of the browsing experience.

untog 11y ago
Standard things you would expect from a browser, like a way to easily disabling javascript That is very far from being an expectation of the average user.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
sp332 11y ago
They don't let users easily disable JS because that breaks so many webpages, and they didn't want to deal with supporting users who complained that Firefox wasn't working. http://limi.net/checkboxes-that-kill/ http://limi.net/checkboxes-that-kill/
- SquareWheel 11y ago
  Good read, thanks for linking. Some points I'd never considered.
- yellowapple 11y ago
  The vast majority of the described problems would be solved if Firefox provided more/better documentation and help text alongside such options. Or better yet, they could be solved by Firefox displaying warnings if pages appear to rely on certain settings. Javascript disabled and a site relies on it? "Hey, this site would probably work better if you enabled Javascript, but you have it disabled. Would you like to enable Javascript again? Or perhaps just for this page?" SSL/TLS disabled? "Hey, so TLS is disabled, but I need it in order to show you this web page. You want me to enable it for you?" The overarching theme here is not that there are too many options, but that there are too many poorly documented options with poorly documented consequences. Fixing that problem would give users the best of both worlds: flexibility and ease-of-use.

cmdrfred 11y ago

I always get devoted when I support chrome on here but I think history will prove me right.

dblohm7 11y ago

Hello is just a thin wrapper around WebRTC. That's why Chrome can receive Hello calls without an extension. There's barely anything to add on in that case.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
xg15 11y ago
Not many resources perhaps, but a lot of additional UI surface, which clutters up the menus with irrelevant options.
- azakai 11y ago
  I wouldn't say a lot, it's just one button. Is there a cost to adding even a button? Yes. But that has to be weighed against the benefit. And a significant amount of users benefit from having the button.
  - mook 11y ago
    "Just one button" led to Netscape 6 and subsequently Firefox in the first place. It's easy to miss the significant amount of user benefit from not having that one button, since it's a smaller amount of benefit per person across a lager number of users.
    - azakai 11y ago
      That's a fair point and I agree, there is benefit to not having more buttons on the UI. It's hard to know what the right tradeoff is, between the benefits of adding buttons and not adding them. There are good reasons to prefer both more and less. In this case, data on user behavior indicated that it was worth adding the buttons. It's still possible that the data is imperfect somehow and a more optimal tradeoff could have been chosen. Still, I think there is good reason to believe the current data and decisions make sense.
- mccr8 11y ago

jtgeibel 11y ago

This completely captures my response as well. I run on the beta channel, so the day after 38.0 stable hit, this got rolled out the the beta channel. I checked the plugin/addon page and my user profile directory at least a dozen times, assuming that something unwanted had done this behind my back. I probably wasted half an hour looking into this. Finally, I took a (second) look at the release notes before actually realizing that this was something build in. (I missed it the first time because it didn't even register that they would be doing this.) What really shocked me was that it was added by default to standard toolbar, which seemed rather rude and presumptuous. (Maybe they rolled this out differently to the stable channel, I don't know.) Worst of all, there has been almost no communication on this. I subscribe to Planet Mozilla and read everything that seems interesting to me, and I still didn't know this was coming. There still hasn't been much public discussion on this. On top of that, they did a weird 38.0.5 release cycle that I haven't seen before with the release train. It was almost like someone said: "there is no way we can introduce this to enterprise with an ESR release, so lets tweak the whole release model so we can shove it in everyone else's face once we spin the ESR release." I've been a huge Mozilla supporter since back in the Pheonix days. I'm even okay with their ad ambitions (so far) and think that they made the right pragmatic decision with regards to DRM support. However, with this move I've now felt it necessary to take a step back and seriously question their motives. It just seems so far out of character. I've been thinking and reading about this for the last 3 weeks and I still have no idea what they are thinking. Edit: I'd also like to add that I'm a huge Firefox Sync fan. The fact that they took such a user focused approach to encrypting everything client side, and minimizing their server-side exposure to user data seemed like such a principled approach and is probably the only thing that kept me from taking the leap to Chrome at a time when there were noticeable performance benefits to doing so. This integration seems like the exact antithesis.

browser 11y ago
In my view, they need to reverse course 180 degrees on things like Pocket and Hello, or it will be the beginning of the end for Firefox. Firefox is a niche product that appeals to the privacy-consciuos. Stuff like Pocket and Telefonica/Hello basically eliminates its reason for being. I have Firefox as my main browser now, but I won't keep it around for long if I have to swat down new marketing integrations in every new release.

gcb0 11y ago

that hits home. because there was a malware that distributed itself as a mozilla add-on. even sent in patches because it affected a bank i used.

gcb0 11y ago

that hits home. because there was a malware that distributed itself as a mozilla add-on. even sent in patches because it affected a bank i used.

gluxon 11y ago

The "Mozilla Manifesto and Pocket" email thread in the Firefox Dev mailing list gives some insight from the developers. [1] To paraphrase: it seems they wanted a reading list feature but found it pointless to re-implement an existing solution with many desired features. (Work which was started but appears to have been scrapped.) This rationalized piggy-backing on Pocket. It gives Firefox a reading list for its users without Mozilla having to maintain it. My personal problem with this has more to do with the anti-competitive nature of integrating services rather than Pocket's closed source. [1] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/firefox-dev/B3jJq_kUuIQ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/firefox-dev/B3jJq_kU...

derefr 11y ago
It somewhat makes sense. If they want it that badly, though, maybe Mozilla should buy Pocket so that they can put it under the aegis of their license/philosophical charter. "Reading List" is currently right up there with "Web Browser" and "Email Client" as major programs that I would like to be neutrally owned by a public foundation.
- browser 11y ago
  I think you are confusing cause and effect. Pocket was not added to Firefox because Firefox users demanded a sophisticated offline reader. If that were all there is to it, Pocket would be an addon. Pocket was added to Firefox because Mozilla wants the extra revenue from partnering with Pocket.
  - fabrice_d 11y ago
    Pocket is not paying Mozilla, as said already. Also, anyone implementing a compatible backend can switch to it by changing a pref.
    - browser 11y ago
      Can we get a public statement from Mozilla describing its deal with Pocket? I see a comment below from a Mozilla employee stating that "there is limited public information available about this deal", and claiming that the best quote is in an article that contains a paraphrase from an email from another Mozilla employee saying that Pocket didn't pay for placement. When a non-profit gives prominent placement to a for-profit company, there are many ways for money to change hands beyond straight up payment for placement. I think we are owed a clear explanation of the Mozilla-Pocket deal.

pdkl95 11y ago

> Why not make it an official extension? It says a lot about Mozilla when they decide to bundle fad features like these after spending years stripping existing features[1] out of Firefox. During their effort to dumb-down[2] Firefox, it was common to hear that removing those features didn't matter, as they should be provided by extensions instead. Apparently that cheap excuse is ignored when the feature when it is convenient to do so. [1] the many options cut from the preferences dialog comes to mind - some that I have had to help a LOT of friends work around. Far too many man-weeks have been wasted ;_; [2] which was a terrible idea that hurts the enthusiast that actually used those feature, hinders the inexperienced-but-interested users by hiding previously visible features behind the addons.mozilla.org, and doesn't do anything at all for the supposed target audience of non-technical users who by definition don't even use the preferences dialog.

Artemis2 11y ago
http://xkcd.com/1172/ http://xkcd.com/1172/
- nosmo-king 11y ago
  i had memorized the index of my 65535 bookmarks, now have to scroll by +1 which forces me to a 17-bit mental pointer. who thought 17-bits was ok?

CarloSanta4 11y ago

They bundele it because they get payed for it. Same story with the new suggested site advertising. The alarming thing is that this way Mozilla is loosing it's independency.

glass- 11y ago
This is Mozilla gaining independency. When they were completely reliant on Google they had no independency.
dblohm7 11y ago
As repeatedly said elsewhere in this thread, Pocket is not paying Mozilla for this integration.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]