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by ptx 2839 days ago
Mozilla says[1] about the Developer Edition that it "replaces the old Aurora channel" (so it's like a rolling-release alpha version) and has "tools that aren't yet ready for production". I don't think advanced users should be expected to run an alpha-quality, experimental, non-production version as their day-to-day browser just to get their configurability back.

Setting the defaults to values that don't confuse mainstream users is fine. Removing the corresponding settings from the settings dialog or other easily-accessible UI ... maybe. But removing them even from "about:config"? That used to be the place explicitly for advanced settings for advanced users, settings that were too scary for the UI. These settings need to be somewhere. (What if mainstream users discover the Developer Edition? Mozilla will have to make a Secret Developer Edition to make sure only the real advanced users can find it!)

Also, where in that Bugzilla thread are bookmark descriptions mentioned as being an attack vector? I can't find anything about it.

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Dev...

1 comments

> Also, where in that Bugzilla thread are bookmark descriptions mentioned as being an attack vector? I can't find anything about it.

I was wondering the same thing. The only relevant item I could find is in bug 1402890 [0] linked in the very last comment. It says:

> Websites dictating what goes in a user's bookmark without any way to change that would be a terrible idea. Doubly so if it's secretly stored without even being viewable.

To me that seems like a valid privacy concern, but it should be solvable without discarding the entire feature. The "it's too hard to maintain this, let's just drop it, some volunteer will implement this again if it's needed (yeah, it won't integrate with our own UI like the current solution does, so what)" mindset in both those bugs just reeks of CADT [1].

[0] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1402890#c3

[1] https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html