[byuu]

With each passing day, Mozilla tries harder and harder to get me to stop using their browser. If not for Chrome being the only viable alternative, they would have long since succeeded.

Wreck the address bar algorithm? Ugh. Move the tabs on top? Ugh. Force me to keep download history? Ugh. Bury all the configuration options (like JS features) into about:config? Ugh. Turn the UI into a poor Chrome imitation? Ugh. Turn the new tab page into adware? Ugh. Promote a bigot to the CEO position? Ugh. And now turn extensions into a walled garden? ... I can't even muster up the energy to feign surprise anymore. I basically expect a new disappointment every time I hear Mozilla in the news.

[tokyo1000]

It's too bad to see that your comment is getting downvoted. I think it hits on some important issues.

From what I can tell, Mozilla's own Firefox feedback stats support what you're saying.

https://input.mozilla.org/en-US/?product=Firefox

It's currently showing 77% of the reports about Firefox as being 'sad', while only 23% are 'happy'. It gets even worse if Firefox OS and Firefox for Android are included, too. In that case, 86% of the reports are 'sad', and only 14% are 'happy'.

I expect disappointed users to be more likely to say something, but that's still an awfully large difference between the proportion of users who are 'happy' and those who are 'sad'. When I used Firefox for Android, I'm pretty sure it sometimes prompted me to give feedback, so it's not like only disappointed users looking to complain are being sampled.

I don't know how things work at Mozilla, but at any other software product company I've ever worked at, feedback results so out of whack would've raised a lot of eyebrows, and gotten a lot of attention. Much effort would have been put toward finding out what's wrong, and what can be done to fix it, especially if the results were consistently bad for weeks or months on end.

[byuu]

I think it's part of the dark side of open source software.

When your product is free, you feel no obligation to your users whatsoever. We see it time and time again. Firefox, Ubuntu, Gnome 3, KDE 4, systemd, etc. The attitude is always, "we know what's best for you, piss off."

Hell, I am guilty of it myself. When I'm working on projects for free, I do things the way I want them done. But in my defense, I'm one person working on niche projects nobody would ever depend on for anything important, and I am not looking for popularity.

But right now, the most I can do to express my dissatisfaction is to simply leave. And when we all do that, then suddenly they don't hear anyone complaining, so they think everything they are doing is great, and keep getting worse. I complain because I've enjoyed their software so much in the past, and I'm saddened by its new direction.

Microsoft really went against the grain with Windows 8. And you saw similar levels of outrage. But you know what? The Windows 10 preview has fixed most of it. The Metro start page is gone, the start menu is back, Metro things can run inside windows and multi-task properly now ... they may not be perfect, but they are definitely listening to their customer's feedback, at least.

[nine_k]

I never knew about that page to this day. I left a 'happy' piece of feedback. Should I have a serious issue, I'd probably look for a feedback page to report my problems, and would find it.

So I think the feedback there is seriously skewed towards "unhappy".

[TheLoneWolfling]

And this is why feedback forms are useless. They just reinforce people's intrinsic biases.

Someone thinks that the current version is good, but the feedback is bad overall? Must just be that the feedback is skewed. Someone thinks that the current version is bad but the feedback is good overall? Must just be that the feedback is skewed.

[hiou]

I upvoted you to get you out of the grey because I didn't feel like your comment was too inflammatory and did bring up specific issues which are relevant in a big picture view to this change. That said, the CEO comment was a bit unproductive.

One thing I would like you to consider is that Firefox has to maintain a certain marketshare in order to continue to serve their mission. Which includes fighting for web standards and other things outside directly working on the browser/phone os. Unfortunately, that causes them to serve the larger market than what you or I might enjoy. I'm definitely not a big fan of the dummification trend in UX right now(which most of your complaints seem to stem from), but I'm sure it's just that, a trend, and we'll see some of the more ridiculous parts of that trend move back toward the middle soon enough. Design trends are like the weather, if you don't like it now, just wait a bit and it will be sure to change.

So, hopefully you can cut Mozilla a little slack as they have a many headed dragon to feed and that set of compromises will leave everyone a bit hungry, but on the whole I feel more comfortable depending on Mozilla than the alternatives of Apple and Google.

[byuu]

> That said, the CEO comment was a bit unproductive.

I thought about leaving it out because it wasn't a technical issue, but being honest, it was one of the bigger disappointments I've had with their project, so it seemed important to include it.

I know all about the situation, and I also don't like how it was resolved (my disappointment was that it happened in the first place.) I also know others won't agree with me on that. But to me, it's a very important issue. I think ethics are absolutely essential for a CEO of a company.

> Which includes fighting for web standards

This is certainly one positive thing I will say about them. They have definitely helped advance good standards (HTML5, CSS3, etc.)

> Design trends are like the weather, if you don't like it now, just wait a bit and it will be sure to change.

I sure hope so. I've been backed into such a tight corner. I'm down to running FreeBSD with Xfce, and I'm already starting to write my own basic system utilities now (file manager, text editor, etc) because this trend is just accelerating so rapidly.

[blueskin_]

>the CEO comment was a bit unproductive.

That doesn't make it untrue. He was a bigot, and good riddance to him; I hope his reputation remains sufficiently sullied for the foreseeable future.

[sparaker]

I agree with you on this. However i have also seen that alot of malware and adware does indeed make it to the browser to make it more pathetic and i think its a good direction in that regard. However i think that they really need to actually think what users are going to use then just build random features that nobody really cares for. And the imitation game is definitely not good, why be separate if you're going to keep on imitating.

[byuu]

The problem is that the malware is going to find a way through anyway. Even if it has to replace firefox.exe with a custom compiled binary that removes the signature checking function; or simply patches out the check in the binary on your system like a warez crack.

This is going to impede regular users a lot more than the advertisers.

[barrkel]

I hear you - very few of Mozilla's moves have been to my liking, and I have to work harder and harder on every fresh install to get Firefox looking and working the way I like it.

However, thus far, I've been able to do it. I disable the magic address bar, I use tree style tabs, I have history disabled, and I use combo of menu, toolbar and status bar (Status 4 Evar, addon bar, whatever) to maintain what I consider to be a usable UI. These are all extra work, but I haven't been locked out.

My concern about this latest move is the lag when Firefox needs an upgrade, and not all extensions have been updated and signed. I've had to download and install custom treestyle tabs builds in the past in particular.

[byuu]

Likewise. I am currently running Classic Theme Restorer, oldbar, Cookies Manager+, Download Cleaner, plus the usual stuff (Adblock and such.) Not only do I have to trust a bunch of third-party devs I don't know; it also takes longer and longer to setup and start using Firefox on a fresh install.

And indeed like you said ... the signing thing is a huge issue. oldbar in particular hasn't been touched since 2008. I've also had to manually load Greasemonkey before, and many times I've had to manually edit the XPI file compatibility ranges so that I could install certain extensions.

[_pmf_]

> I basically expect a new disappointment every time I hear Mozilla in the news.

Shitty suggestions that elicit strong reactions seem to be better for the Mozilla Corporation than being more and more ignored.

[blueskin_]

http://www.palemoon.org/