Comment by roel_v | Hacker News Reader

Comment by roel_v | Hacker News Reader

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I've resigned to the fact that I'm probably going to get fucked over by people removing options from existing software (software that self-updates, by the way, and that needs in some aspects to be updated in order to stay useful, but you get all updates whether you like them or not). I understand, you're all busy people, and I'm not paying so I shouldn't complain, and who wants to work on backward compatible cruft when you could be building the next 'awesome bar'. I get all of that and people need to make trade offs - heck, I do it myself in my own software.

But then please for the love of god make about:config something that can be used without trawling mozilla.org discussion threads or random about.com 'articles'. There are hundreds and hundreds of about:config options, most of them more useless than the next, except for maybe 25 or so of them. If mozilla is already tracking so much, why don't they track the most-often changed settings through about:config and put them in their own section at the top of the list? Or, here's a radical idea, why don't they put the options in a tree rather than a flat list? Maybe ordered in a way that makes a bit of sense, but I may be pushing it there, I know. Why are we punched in the face with an 'options' dialog that (it seems) should have, in the eyes of most 'designers', only a very few options to the point where it becomes useless for 'advanced users', or kicked in the behind with an about:config page that could, functionally, just have well displayed 50 kb of output from /dev/urandom?

This : http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/07/13/156737801/the-cost... applies not to just Google Reader, guys... I've been using Firefox since the milestone builds of what back them was still just called 'Mozilla', if I'm remembering correctly, and I have yet to find something better (at least if you count in all the addins) but damn, if I were religious I'd do a prayer every time I see it 'installing updates', out of fear of what it's going to screw me over with in 'interface innovation' this time.

(done ranting now)

But then please for the love of god make about:config something that can be used without trawling mozilla.org discussion threads or random about.com 'articles'.

I think one of the reasons that about:config is not easy to use is because it shouldn't be easy to use.

If it was a nice window with checkboxes and dropdowns and tabs for groups of related options, then it would become a de facto settings dialog a thousand times more problematic than the legitimate settings dialog.

making it hard to use doesn't really stop people from using it[1], it just means they will use it badly

1) search Google about something, read blog, follow instructions is an amazing pattern people have learned and apply regardless of wisdom or skill

If options are removed from the preferences panels, something easier to use than about:config should exist, or about:config should become less useless.

When did warnings indicating that "this option will destroy your computer if set carelessly" become verboten? Why waste the expensive time of advanced users for no real benefit to the masses?

What a fascinating comment: "expensive time of advanced users"? As if knowing what, say, SSL 3.0 means is somehow a marker of a more valuable person, more worthy of not having their time wasted.

It might be good for you to remember that those "masses" are just people with other things to do with their lives - they're doctors, lawyers, concert violinists, nuclear physicists, biologists, teachers, ... and they just want their damned browser to work without having to mess around, and preferably not break with cryptic error messages they don't care about, because, frankly, they have better things to do.

I think you missed the point here, doctor, lawyers and otherwise supposedly busy non-advanced users will not delve in about:config at all, hence cannot waste any of their time there.

It's only the advanced users who are willing go through this path because they want to tweak a settings. And the question would be, is it really worth making such an impractical tool out of about:config and thus wasting time of advanced users when it was designed for their own use, for the sake of keeping non-advanced users out this setting panel.

Advanced users are the only ones who will be "mess[ing] around" in the advanced settings dialogs. Sane defaults and easy-to-customize advanced options are not mutually exclusive.

I take it you don't have friends or family who call you when they completely fuck up their system by means of some innocuously named preference.

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