> All the functionality attached to Firefox's "Browser tools" sub-menu should be unceremoniously ripped out, banished to the developer's edition.
I hope this is some kind of sarcastic take I am not getting. What a weird thing to stand for.
I hope this is some kind of sarcastic take I am not getting. What a weird thing to stand for.
> Did you know there's already a special developer's edition? No web designer is building on Firefox first any more. We're lucky if they even test on it. All the functionality attached to Firefox's "Browser tools" sub-menu should be unceremoniously ripped out, banished to the developer's edition.
Though, it would be more plain, if they wrote "could" instead of "should".
Dev tools are part of all browsers. Even Safari, which tries to keep things very simple, ships dev tools on the stable version. I really don't see the point in removing them.
They are very good to have available to everyone.
The thinking is that users are a danger to themselves and will be tricked by threat actors to add some CA cert to the trust store, paste commands into the js console, or download and sideload malicious extensions no matter what controls are in place so therefore these possibilities must be removed.
To this day, firefox is still the only browser that prevents its users from running custom extensions without Mozilla's blessing, likely motivated by the same garbage argument.
I have very little hope for Mozilla at this point and sincerely hope that they fail soon so that better open source browsers can take its place.
What the computing world needs is less separation of users and developers. Developers use programs all day, every day. And users should be able to write programs any time they wish. One of the most commonly used pieces of software in the world is a programming system: Excel.
One of my problems with iOS is the implicit assumption that users will not and should not extend the systems they use.
It exemplifies why beneficial change is so hard sometimes. The loudest voice in the room can go "here are the problems", we can all nod along in agreement, and then "and here's what we should do" … and it's just out there. I've seen this happen numerous times — borderline continuously — in politics.
Even ealier in the article, they (rightly, IMO) skewer Mozilla for laying off the Rust and Servo teams, but then TFA utterly undercuts its own thesis with,
> It shouldn't be trying to capitalize on [projects such as Rust or Servo].
What? What's the point of Rust, or Servo, then, if not to develop a better Firefox?
and it's just out there.
But then, Marx's proposed solutions... well, you know. They've never worked out too well. To make the understatement of a lifetime.