Firefox Launches More Experimental Features
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debugpoint.com
Anyway, Min Vid means I can use that workflow even on Windows. I never used PiP on televisions, and never understood why it was a thing...but, on my computer I totally want a little video window in the corner!
For years I used a simple ~30 LOC program that mapped Alt+F5 to maximize/restore and Alt+F6 to toggle Always On Top. Sadly, I seem to have lost it.
It really did wonders for my workflow, especially in the days before Dash or Aero Snap. Being able to have a little documentation window up was fantastic!
For sure when you have only one monitor it really helps following tutorials, documentation etc.
It all makes me wonder why both Windows and OSX are so unwilling to either explore more powerful window management, or at least provide APIs to enable power users to build their own.
And not that anyone will see this now, but most people in this thread were responding to my "OSX and Windows don't offer powerful window management solutions" specifically in reference to my comment about floating windows. That's just one example of many things OSX/Windows doesn't allow the user to do.
Not to be too dramatic, but i3 has made me more productive, more focused and happier while working. I now fear ending up in an environment where using Linux isn't possible. It's really that good. But really, tiling window managers are that good.
I also used Fluxbox and Openbox and like both very much, but they are kind of basic.
Working with any of those is both faster and easier than any of Windows or MacOS, for me at least.
However the majority of normal users don't care.
I also eventually got bored (using GNU/Linux since 1995) and always use whatever is the default WM of a specific distribution.
This is yet another reason why GNU/Linux lost the desktop, non-technical people and those that have to support them, don't really like choice.
Not really sure what you mean here, I choose a particular WM setup which best serves my workflow, and that's pretty much it, it's not as if you have to continously tweak your setup.
>This is yet another reason why GNU/Linux lost the desktop
Can't really see how it 'lost' the desktop, it never had it, nor was it ever in the runnning to claim it, same goes for OSX despite having a ton of product placement, straight up advertising and riding the huge wave of pro-Apple consumerism in the mobile space.
In short, I don't believe for a second that standardising on a particular UI would have made any difference in 'drawing the masses', if super wealthy Apple at it's prime couldn't, then neither would Linux.
Also in the old days it was fashionable to try all WM and post screenshots of our setups, specially on weekends.
There were quite a few web sites to share themes even.
Sure I am, but that meme was (still is?) repeated as a joke, did anyone actually believe it ?
>Also in the old days it was fashionable to try all WM and post screenshots of our setups, specially on weekends.
People still do that, there's a reddit sub dedicated to it: https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn ,but then again there's a reddit sub dedicated to just about everything.
Just like there are stamp collectors, train spotters, rock climbers, ballroom dancers etc, there are people who find enjoyment in tweaking/expressing themselves through 'pimping' their computer environment, I see nothing wrong with that although it's not my cup of tea.
After having configured my environment of choice according to my specific needs I leave it alone and instead waste my spare time on places like Hacker News ;)
You will wonder how many users have single-threaded, single-windowed mindset (hint: vast majority). No offense here, having multiple windows on desktop really distracts and confuses them, harming their productivity.
APIs are provided though, at least in Windows. Aston Desktop[1] is still working on Windows 7.
having multiple windows on desktop really distracts and confuses them, harming their productivity.
[1] : http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/13784/keep-a-window-on-top-wi...
Take a look around at the desktops of the majority of windows and osx users. Not the power users, who are a small minority of the user base of both OS'es, but the "I merely _use_ a computer to do task _X_" type users.
Once you start to look, you'll notice a trend. An overwhelming majority of them will be running every single application on their desktop in window maximized mode. And this will be true no matter the size of any monitors they have attached. The closest they get to "window management" is to poke the icon in their toolbar/dock for whatever it is next that they want to see on their screen.
Both OS'es likely do have API's to allow for an 'always on top' setting, but with a userbase that is 99% "run everything full screen" at the outset there is no room for those users to make use of an 'always on top' window (because it too would be maximized, defeating the usefulness of the 'on top' setting). Therefore neither maker likely sees much value in exposing those API's.
macOS Sierra adds Picture-in-Picture, IIRC.
About always-on-top in Windows I'm pretty sure nVidia drivers had this options years ago? I discovered TurboTop recently, it does this one job and it's great: https://www.savardsoftware.com/turbotop/
I am not sure why Mozilla don't want to implement it.
I'd really love to see Test Pilot begin to sync these extensions (and preferably also their settings) across different Firefox instances through Firefox Sync though. Right now I have to enable them separately for each instance, and while it's not exactly the end of the world, it definitely is a huge pain point for me (especially the lack of settings synchronization) and a glaring blemish on the high standard of UX most of these experiments are obviously striving to provide.
I just read every root comment and I don't see one example of "low-effort trolling".
No, I don't want to subscribe to your newsletter, I don't want email notifications, I don't want to become a member (at least not until I've read a few posts first).
Make it possible for me to make those choices my global defaults and I'll be a very happy user.
People might still use an addon if they like the tree style tabs, to have them in a threaded view. I would find it useful, but I also understand why it is not there yet, it complicates tab management and not every user will need it. But it would be a nice advanced option.
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/
Besides that, Firefox rocks, go Mozilla!
For the Test Pilot experiment we're asking users to tell us where and how the feature messes up websites so we can refine our Block list and improve the experience for everyone. We're already getting a lot of significant data and intend to share it soon.
Showstopper right here. What's wrong with storing to my hard drive? Can I at least choose my own server?
They could have put an actual value-add over screenshot programs in there by offering to make a screenshot of the entire page but right now this is a terrible image hoster hooked right into my browser. So tired of this nonsense.
The full page screenshot feature is coming in the next version in a week or two. We pared the product down to the absolute minimum for launch.
(I work on Page Shot)
Did you even try it? Your selection can exceed the size of the window, up to the entire page if you want.
There's also the "screenshot" command that's been available in the Developer Toolbar for years now, which will save a fullpage local screenshot.
I think some confusion is that the article makes it seem like pageshot.net is separate from the experiment itself. Both the add-on and service are the same experiment, and even hosted out of the same repository: https://github.com/mozilla-services/pageshot/ – you could host your own, but I would actively discourage it now (unless you want to contribute) as we are making a lot of changes and it would be annoying to track.
Another consideration is that we aren't only storing images, we're also storing information about the web pages. For instance, here's the JSON data for a clip of your comment: https://pageshot.net/data/aQOjNCw5wrjvveMC/news.ycombinator.... – of course you can still handle an image plus metadata on the local hard drive but it takes a lot of work if we wanted to support local and remote hosting.
Which leads to the question: why remote hosting at all? A lot of the use cases we see are for sharing. In Mozilla's research we've found that even people's archival habits tend to be built on sharing – people email themselves, send messages to other people for the primary purpose of reminding themselves, etc. My own theory is that to make something useful for your future self you have to go through all the same steps as if you were making it useful for someone else. So you have to pick out something interesting, make sure it is described well, etc. Anyway, we want to support sharing and cloud hosting is the best way to do that.
That said, this is an experiment, and what we're shipping with isn't necessarily what we're going to find, and we're open to suggestions. I'd encourage you to share any thoughts you have here: https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/c/test-pilot/page-sh...
One local hosting idea I've considered is an "all of the above" approach. In that case if you configured a directory to store your shots, then every time you take a shot we'd still upload it, but also same the image (by itself?) in the directory. That would be easy, and maybe it would tell us if this is a valuable direction (and if it was valuable then we might make it fancier than just dumping images). I'd be curious if that feature would make you more open to the concept?
(I work on Page Shot)
Edit: but we should update the privacy notice!
The features seem nice. The integrated to specific sites not so much. I know they say they'll add more video sites. That still means if youre not an established popular site you're basically 2nd class and your users may switch away because they can not use the feature.
That doesn't seem proper for a brower and certainly not one with Mozilla's M.O.
It would be nice if Min Vid would work on every <video> element. That would seem like the right way to implement the functionality.
Additionally, they're looking at supporting any old HTML5 <video> element: https://github.com/meandavejustice/min-vid/issues/331
The intent is certainly not to be exclusionary; it's just a new, experimental project with a small team.
Disclaimer: I work at Mozilla, on Test Pilot.
Why wouldn't you just make this play any <video> element in a floating widow and be done with it?
And somehow people still wonder why Safari is so popular for Mac users.
But as a developer I don't like the new tool.
Users always manage to crop out the pertinent information. As a dev I want to see body, not a cut of a visible part of it.
That's why the gcli tool was great, capturing the whole render even stuff below the fold is useful.
However it wasnt easy for users so people never used it. They had a chance to change that but haven't really.
In an earlier version of Page Shot we took a capture of the DOM at the same time as the screenshot, and so the screenshot meant "look at this" while we had an archival version of the page as the full context. Unfortunately the DOM capture didn't make it into the first release, and so we no longer have that context; we'll probably bring it back in the future, but maybe not as a combined product.
Test Pilot is, at least in part, a program intended to let us develop ideas in the open without the cost and complexity of shipping to millions of Firefox users. Whether or not you choose to install these experiments is entirely discretionary.
How are the two at all related?
I only mentioned screen sharing because of the comment about Chrome's sharing feature (of which I was unaware, but will check out).
After actually trying it out, however, it quickly became my favorite screenshot tool for web content due to its awesome UX made possible by having full access to the actual DOM of the page it takes screenshots of, namely things like being able to index all text in screenshots to allow you to search through them, and being able to intelligently limit the screenshot area to specific elements when you click on them. OS level screenshot tools simply can't offer an experience like this.
At the very least you have to agree that any amount of time spent on "bloat" features take away time that could be spent on improving energy efficiency.
Most users didn't care that Google Chrome had become a CPU and RAM dog the last few years. They cared that their favorite websites worked. Period.
Please recognize that while you want things like energy and RAM efficiencies to the hilt, this isn't what most users care about or even know how to detect/measure. Realistically speaking, how often are you in a spot where a power outlet isn't available? Most trains and planes these days have power outlets, and any of the popular browsers give you about 4-hours on a full charge. What's the beef?
Could it be that you want Mozilla to focus on your agenda as opposed to listening to their core user group? If yes, then by all means complain away. Otherwise, laud them for trying something new to entice users to use their browser vs. the competition.
A web browser is inherently designed to browse the web, and display pages. Practically every OS in recent history has the screenshot capability, and almost all of them can run client-server type applications that allow functionality like screen-sharing, SSH, etc.
But somehow Chrome and then Mozilla have decided that their browsers should become these giant monoliths of largely existing user functionality. Remember when Microsoft tied Windows Update to MSIE. Nobody was claiming that was a good fucking idea, were they?
> News flash: users want features
News flash: users want things to be fast, secure and not kill their battery.
> Most users didn't care that Google Chrome had become a CPU and RAM dog the last few years.
[Citation needed].
> Please recognise that while you want things like energy and RAM efficiencies to the hilt, this isn't what most users care about or even know how to detect/measure.
"My computer is slow/hot/loud/lasts just 2 hours instead of 7 on battery when using Chrome" is very much something a non-technical user can determine quite easily.
> Realistically speaking, how often are you in a spot where a power outlet isn't available?
Battery life is just one advantage of energy efficiency. Have you felt how hot a laptop can get when it's chewing a lot of CPU cycles for an extended amount of time? More energy in = more heat out.
> Otherwise, laud them for trying something new to entice users to use their browser vs. the competition.
Um, no. Firefox started out as lean, high performance competition to MSIE, just after Safari was launched by Apple. The original trigger was SOFTWARE BLOAT in the Mozilla suite, the features of which were still more related than what Google and Mozilla have added lately. At some point that goal of being a high performance standards-compliant web browser has apparently fallen away in favour of a keeping-up-with-the-joneses approach against Chrome.
Chrome's reason for existence is to allow Google more control over their revenue source. If they don't have a browser they control, they can't push whatever new technology they decide will make their business do better.
Part of Google's business is continually pushing the concept that user's don't need an OS that runs apps locally - everything can be in a browser (i.e. ChromeOS/Chrome browser with its kitchen sink approach to functionality)
So while Google's reasoning is not commendable (fuck the user experience, we need people to buy into our business model) their logic in pushing every possible feature into Chrome at least is understandable, if not agreeable.
Mozilla has no business case to artificially "encourage" reliance on a web browser for all user functionality, so why give up the hedgehog approach (do one thing, and do it fucking excellently) for whatever the fuck they're doing now?
Or did I miss something?
Update: About testing those features... I'm testing MinVid because they're logging basically only the name of the service I'm using, not the actual video. I'm not testing PageShot because they keep a copy of the screenshots: they're safe for office but they're not Mozilla's business. Actually, I could violate some NDAs by sending some of those screenshots to Mozilla. Worse, I'm not testing Tracking Protection because "When you engage with a prompt, we also collect information about the page you are on and the tracking domain that is being blocked". Mozilla won't know what I'm browsing.
Funnily enough the platform also provides a screenshot system. From another comment it seems like this was driven mostly by user feedback from Windows users, because the ~3 different ways of doing a print screen on Windows are not sufficient and they demand more.
Btw. the screenshot tool of Windows can't capture a webpage properly, only the visible area.
Does your screenshot tool let you capture whole webpages, or just what's in the viewport at the current moment?
Link to the UI bug? Sometimes things fall between the cracks.
That said, what will happen to Page Shot if it's deemed a good/decent UX and it's graduation time? Will it be an installable addon? Pre-shipped? Baked in?
I guess it's something to be decided in the future, yet it makes me curious today.
When is Mozilla going to channel its resources into building a JavaScript engine that can keep up with Chrome's so that the web is actually usable in FF again?
Then again, FF could be at fault. I don't really know in this case.
But you do have pretty good standards compliance, last I checked.
I just hope Servo will be great and wait. Until then, i am running Chrome again.
P.S.: I've used FF and Chrome on Windows and Linux, and on both OS, Chrome beats Firefox in UI responsiveness.
As for memory footprint and responsiveness, work is being done on it, IIRC, as well as a lot of other things.