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Comment by electrotype | Hacker News Reader

Please Firefox developers : always keep in mind that power users are loyal to Firefox for some specific reasons. One of those reasons is that Firefox is, by far, the browser with the most customizable interface. The "Customize..." feature is why I personally stick to Firefox :

http://i.imgur.com/AH1ahF3.jpg

I really don't care which browser is #1 in speed tests. I don't care about integrations with social networks. I simply want a browser that I can configure the way I want!

Another suggestion : when you change something, even if you are 100% sure everybody will like it, please at least leave an "about:config" option that can revert that modification.

Sadly, I realized that, when Firefox is updated, I'm not trilled anymore to see what new features are included, I'm instead anxious to see what has been changed/removed!

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The fundamental problem with the legacy Firefox extension API is that its incredible power comes from putting incredible constraints on Firefox internals. Every stable API commitment involves some constraints, but the constraints from legacy Firefox extensions were out of control. They were killing the browser.

The "legacy" Firefox extension API is powerful because it reaches its tentacles into every corner of the internals of the browser. Keeping that API stable involves freezing a large amount of internal architecture and behavior.

Firefox needs to evolve if it's going to live, and it can't evolve in the ways that it needs to if so much of its internals are effectively frozen. It's a painful drag on development, slowing things down and preventing necessary changes.

I'm not even going to get into the problems with the API itself except to say that it had many, including widespread dependencies on synchronous behavior.

Mozilla's sacred-cow-level commitment to preserving legacy extension support is a big reason why Chrome beat Firefox on so many technical levels for so long. It ate up a ton of developer time, held off or killed critical architectural changes, was the cause of a lot of crashes, hangs, memory leaks, security problems... Thank goodness that's about to be over.

I'm sorry that you'll miss it but this is a really important step. Mozilla is doing a great job with WebExtensions, I suspect you'll be happy with how things shake out in the end.

Incredible short sighted decisions on Mozilla side, destroying their legacy plugin & addon platform. It's like Microsoft would switch off WinAPI support and kill thereby their platform. Firefox is all about "legacy API", Windows is all about "legacy API (WinAPI)" - almost no one gives a shit about WebExtension or UWP, there is no advantage over better competition Chrome / iOS or Android. Good luck with that.

Wouldn't it be better to offer a legacy addon API shim - old addons would still work even on new Firefox.

I don't see how it's short sighted. Long time Firefox user here and the extensions I depend upon Just Work (TM). The few remaining ones like NoScript are being worked on. I find it absurd when users of a handful of extensions claim "it's all thanks to us that you're successful, you'd better keep our sacred cow alive or we'll make everyone switch to Chrome". Here's the thing, I'm a power user too, and in the past I've installed modern browsers for friends and family who didn't know better. But by now, most of these casual users use Chrome because it's fast. The way to appeal to these users is to make a browser that's lighter and faster. That's how I can make a pitch to my friends to use Firefox again - "hey why don't you just use the browser that loads quicker and uses less memory?" That's something they'll listen to, rather than "hey why don't you use this incredibly modifiable browser that allows you to disable JS if you want to?"

Look, I get it. You have your extensions and you don't want to see them go away. But you're a tiny niche and even other power users don't use these extensions that you find essential. Certainly the vast majority of users rarely install extensions at all. Mozilla is doing the right thing and an entire thread praising the performance of the latest version vindicates their approach.

Why not just give the NEW browser that is incompatible but faster a different brand name? Why is the NEW browser not based on Servo? The potential new users don't know Firefox anyway, and the current user that still use Firefox despite Firefox-tech-standstill for like 5 years (multi-process is coming next year, we promise) are power user who customized it heavily (and deactivated phone-home/telemetry). Microsoft made the same mistake, same rabbit hole.

Where is the next Servo based browser? Instead of refactoring the 20year old mess (with COM and XML), the should focus 99% on Rust and Servo, and finally release a stable build with a lightweight HTML5 UI (Vivaldi).

> Why not

Well, you answered your own question. Clearly they have a userbase that will stay with them out of inertia or loyalty. These users can now benefit from the improvements in the latest release. If they released a new browser, few people if any would try it out because of inertia. The lack of users would kill the product pretty quickly.

Of course, some users who rely on old addons will be left behind, but they have the option to use Firefox Extended Support Release, which will get security updates. Eventually the extensions situation will sort itself out and these few users can move to the main release.

> Where is the next Servo based browser?

That's Firefox. Many of the components in Firefox 57 are taken from Servo.

>I really don't care which browser is #1 in speed tests.

You're in the minority then. The majority of users care, a lot, about speed, and Firefox is visibly slower than Chrome, probably one of the main reasons it has lost so much share.

Personally I care about both, that's why I am so conflicted about this update. But it's disingenuous to assume this is an unwarrented regression. You cannot get better in terms performance while keeping the extension system as it is. This reworking is necessary for Firefox to even compete wit Chrome. I understand the dillema but this is far from clear-cut one way or the other.

    The majority of users care, a lot, about speed

Yeah. I care about browser speed a lot; I'm one of those guys always looking for settings to tweak and measuring results and so forth. I spent I-don't-even-want-to-know-how-many hours a week using a browser so even small improvements become noticeable quality-of-life upgrades.

But, still:

1. Benchmarks are important, but aren't always the best reflection of actual performance, either real or perceived. Subjectively, Safari on Mac and Edge on Windows "feel" fastest to me even though benchmarks say otherwise. Within reason, that's what typical end users care about: "feel" vs. benchmarks. (FWIW, Firefox is my main browser; I'm not telling anybody to use Safari or Edge)

1a. Chrome benchmarks the best, but it also uses the most memory due to its multiprocess model, so for users on memory-constrained devices (particularly with spinning HDDs, where swap's going to be really slow) I'm not convinced reality always lines up with benchmarks here

2. The user's network connection is still usually the biggest factor.

3. I don't think actual site content's getting much heavier. All this extra browser performance is just getting soaked the hell up by heavier and heavier ads. So I can't get as excited about browser performance as I used to.

Just wanted to say that, annecdotally, I switched from chrome to firefox not because of speed, but stability, four years ago. Chrome would reliably crash on my laptop after opening three tabs, while firefox would let me open dozens without trouble. I guess it was an OOM issue, but I never really cared. Firefox worked, chrome didn't.

The added extensibility, while nice, was mostly an afterthought. The only extension I'll miss is cliget, and hopefully it can be added back eventually.

Why do you want to customise so much? I know there are people like you but maybe like the Firefox developers I don't understand it. I use software as it comes. I almost never change any options. I don't even change my desktop wallpaper. I think making developers add options for everything creates bloat. Just use the defaults!

I'm not quite sure if you are being sarcastic or not, but one of the things I value more in software is costumizability. I don't want someone else to make my choices for me and force me in a given mold. No browser, no software, can be made perfect for everybody. Different people want different things, so a good software must always offer users the option to change it to fit their use case.

For instance neither "classic" top tabs nor a side list/tree is the "best" or "right" way to design a tab selector. Some users will prefer one, others the other. You should give them choice.

I'm not being sarcastic - I genuinely don't understand why people value being able to tweak such trivial things and why they want to spend their precious time and effort doing it.

I think building support for a choice about something like tab placement is a waste of time and code - I don't understand why people can't adapt to one way or the other and then we all benefit from simpler code with fewer bugs.

I don't think we need to decide if top or side tabs are better, because I can't see how it matters much. Just pick one, hard code it, and everyone get on with the things that matter.

It does matter to me. When I'm working I often have a large amount of tabs open. Side tabs let me view more tabs at one,which top tabs can't since they don't let me view more than ~10 at once. Furthermore, screens are wider than taller, while webpages scroll up and down. Makes much more sense to have all the real estate you can get vertically, while the tabs go on a sidebar.

I spend several hours every day on a browser, switching tabs hundreds of times. I am measurably and subjectively more efficient with side tabs than top tabs. Why is this something that doesn't matter? It's not trivial, I literally cannot browse without side tabs without getting annoyed. It's absolutely not a waste of time and code if it's important to people.

There are always things that people want to customize, and this is where Firefox differs from Chrome. An example is the recent change in Chrome that make the Backspace key no longer go back a page. Chrome just flatly forced users to adapt it, with no configurable option anywhere, whereas if Firefox ever adopts this, I have peace of mind that I can always go to about:config and change it back.

In case you didn't know: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/go-back-with-backs...

Not really a "configurable option" but very close to it, it achieves the same goal and has been released along with the Backspace modification.

Tree Style Tabs.

Multirow tabs

> Just use the defaults!

Just customize!

Adding support for customisation has a cost - more code, more things to test. If people just used defaults we could have simpler code, shipped more quickly, with fewer bugs.

So?

Not supporting images or JavaScript would simplify things as well...

So supporting configurable options takes resources away from implementing useful features. I'd rather we had more useful features, and more bugs fixed, than silly options for fussy people to rearrange where their tabs are in their browser.

> silly options for fussy people

That's just your opinion—which I guess the Firefox devs and most users don't share.

> So supporting configurable options takes resources away from implementing useful features.

Customizability is a very useful feature for many people.

I've just had my "last straw" moment with Firefox after over a decade of using it. Several addons broke with their developers saying, in effect, F-it, and then it lost all of my saved logins. So, yep, F-it. Firefox has been moving toward becoming a clone of Chrome for years. I just skipped to the chase and started using Chrome. Congratulations, Mozilla. Nice work.

Instead of going to Chrome, I think you should consider moving to the better alternative to Firefox, Pale Moon. It has all the same mindset of decent Firefox, XUL compatibility (and an oath to never use WebExtensions), and other features.

I was interested in Pale Moon, but you just convinced me to skip trying it. Sandboxing is top important, and WebExtensions are rather important there.

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