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by traderjane 2681 days ago
Firefox's Container's approach has been quite interesting to use, but if a suggestion could get out to the Firefox team, I would advise improved streamlining of workflow for the extension, including with sync and returning browser setup, and for organizing and setting up new containers (configuring them to always open for a domain, putting them in folders).
6 comments

Yeah the UX of Multi-Account Containers is awful. The number of steps the user is required to follow to make a website always open in a particular container is absurd.

    1) Create a new container 
    2) Open a new tab with that container
    3) Open the website in that container
    4) Check "Always open in [container name]"
    5) Open a new tab and load that page again.
    6) Click "Remember my decision"
    7) Click "Open in [container name] Container"
I don't mean to throw shade, I'm sure whoever came up with this had good intentions, but it needs work. (Also, why a limit of 8 colors and 12 icons? Why not an arbitrary number of colors and user definable icons?)
> Also, why a limit of 8 colors and 12 icons? Why not an arbitrary number of colors and user definable icons?

This commonly called the paradox of choice. Satisfaction is often higher when choosing from a limited set of good options than choosing from a large set of options with varying quality.

(YMMV, it is also used as an excuse for being inflexible, or for forcing bad options on users a.l.a. a false dilemma, and to be honest I'm not sure how to tell the difference as an outsider)

It's pretty crap in practice. Which of those icons am I to choose for HN? Dog? Fork and knife? Apple? Sunglasses? Briefcase? Gift?

I chose 'Dollars' as the closest fit due to the association between the tech industry and greed, but really shouldn't there be at least one tech-themed icon? Of the 12, two are food themed, two or three are shopping related, etc. The icon set is redundant with poor conceptual coverage.

Okay, maybe I'm a nerd who cares about tech and Mozilla thinks most firefox users who use Multi-Account Containers will be regular joes who aren't interested in tech. I disagree, but maybe that's their theory. What icon am I to use for youtube? Everybody uses youtube. Is youtube conceptually a briefcase? Trees? Dog? Is it a dog because everybody watches dog videos on youtube? I chose sunglasses, because sunglasses are associated with eyes and eyes are associated with videos.. it's a pretty tenuous association. And which color? Red makes sense, youtube brands itself with the color red. Yet red isn't on the color list. Two shades of orange are on the list, but not red. What the fuck? So youtube is "dark orange sunglasses". Great, just great.

I just pretend that’s not a feature and use the circle with a single color for everything.
> Also, why a limit of 8 colors and 12 icons? Why not an arbitrary number of colors and user definable icons?

If I had to guess it would be UX designers: users are really dumb so lets make sure we make this simple enough.

Of course they don't say these words but sometimes I feel this attitude shines through everywhere :-/

The Temporary Containers addon is a great way to use containers everywhere, but I agree a bit of streamlining from upstream to standardize things would be even better.

With Temporary Containers, you can easily run one new container per tab. Or one new container per domain or even subdomain within the same tab. Although the latter option will break many sites and the go back button.

Containers are amazing. The only headache I've run across so far has been a dungeon of my own design--I have certain sites that are confined to my Shopping container (Amazon, PayPal, eBay, couple others). What's bitten me more than once is trying to purchase from a site where I forgot to re-open it in the Shopping container, get to checkout, try to pay via Amazon or Paypal, and have the payment fail because the login cookie is in a different container.
Agreed. Containers feels a little unfinished right now. Sync is a must and the UX needs to be improved a little so it's easier to start them up and organize them. There should probably be an opt-in option to always ask you into which container you want new websites you visit, too. This way I wouldn't have to change it after the fact or make the effort to set-up a container before I think about visiting the site.
Containers have some great add-ons built around them, have you taken a look?

I agree with your point completely though- needs to be a front and center feature.

I'd like to add something else- firefox should ship a 'power user' edition. Comes pre-installed with uBlock origin/uMatrix/temporary containers/sidebar tabs/greasemonkey/Tridactyl (sorry emacs users ;)

> firefox should ship a 'power user' edition

If you have Firefox-Sync enabled. You will get all your extensions anyway. so it is a one time setup for all those extensions that you need.

First time hearing Tridactyl! I'm using Vimium. Does it have any advantage over Vimium?

Related to the GP - Tridactyl has container support with `tabopen -c [container name] url`, for example.

Generally we're much more happy to add features. Vimium cares much more about looks and stability (although we do have a Vimium-style theme with `colours shydactyl`).

>If you have Firefox-Sync enabled. You will get all your extensions anyway. so it is a one time setup for all those extensions that you need.

Yes, but it's still annoying to set up the containers and set up that certain sites only open in certain containers.

Also if I'm on a work device I may not want to sign into Firefox Sync for privacy reasons.

Same reason as mine- separation of work and private profiles
Sorry never used it but one advantage of tridactyl is that the creator lurks here and is extremely responsive and kind.

I will tell you what 3-fin can and can't do-

Can:

Js, key bindings, can show alpha and numeric hints. In numeric mode, behaves like vimp- type char of link text. ;; for link info. ; for hover. C-d/C-f et al work. H, L navigate history. Edit in vim. C-i

Cannot: Self limitation -

No way to stop page load I think. Very painful :)

No shortcut for search. No readline bindings in text editing regions.

Webext limitation- takes a while to load.

That's all I use right now.

You can stop page load with `stop`, bound to x, provided that the page has loaded enough for Tridactyl to be running.

Search - we actually have our own find mode now. Instructions on how to set it up are on the changelog. The default Firefox one has find next / previous bound to Ctrl-G / Ctrl-Shift-G.

You can add readline binds to text regions if you want. It's mentioned and linked to on the help page somewhere near the top.

You'll have to pardon me for not finding time to read the manual and spouting nonsense! I'm going to get around to it real soon, just too much backlog!