Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by heavyset_go 1637 days ago
There's Mozilla wiki pages for many of the options in about:config. Check this out: http://kb.mozillazine.org/About:config_Entries

If Mozilla made a chrome UI for those settings, they'd be accused of adding bloat to Firefox, creating complex options that confuse users, and making Firefox harder to use than Chrome-based browsers. I've noticed that open source really can't win in that department, so power user settings are put out of sight and out of mind, or are eliminated completely.
2 comments
jlarocco 1637 days ago
Thank you! That's more documentation than I knew about before.

TBH, the I personally think the UI is fine, but it's annoying to have so many places to look for settings.

Chromium/Chrome have chrome://flags, which is basically the same UI, but all of the options have a few sentences explaining what they do.

I still miss Opera; they were the only browser developer who didn't take the "Users are stupid and easily confused" approach to browser development.

link
heavyset_go 1636 days ago
> I still miss Opera; they were the only browser developer who didn't take the "Users are stupid and easily confused" approach to browser development.

Old Opera was amazing, and incredibly fast. For a while there on pre-Android and early Android phones, Opera rendered the fastest out of all the mobile browsers.

link
throwawaylinux 1637 days ago
> If Mozilla made a chrome UI for those settings, they'd be accused of adding bloat to Firefox, creating complex options that confuse users, and making Firefox harder to use than Chrome-based browsers.

Possibly, but does Mozilla actually care about accusations of bloat or poor usability?

link