Closed Bug 622049 Opened 14 years ago Closed 13 years ago

Get rid of livemark support

Categories

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect)

Product:
Firefox
Component:
Bookmarks & History
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

()

Status:
RESOLVED WONTFIX
Milestone:
Future
Tracking Flags:
Tracking Status
status2.0 --- wontfix

People

(Reporter: philikon, Unassigned)

Details

(Whiteboard: [killthem])

I'd love to get some data on how many people have livemarks (besides the one we create for them) and I'll happily volunteer writing a test pilot study for it if we don't have this data yet. I'm willing to bet that it's a negligible portion of our user base. My bet is that it's mostly power users who are interested in this feature. These users should be just as happy with an add-on (or dare I say web service?) of which there are many. I therefore propose getting rid of livemark support altogether.
Whiteboard: [killthem]
Why? Is there a measurable maintenance burden to this feature? It's not front-and-center so it affects only those who use it. The RSS button was confusing to some but the Livemarks system itself isn't in the forefront. (with the exception of the one in the default bookmarks toolbar, which probably should be removed separately) Please provide a reason to strip this feature, regardless of how many use it. As to offloading this onto an addon, if this were to be done the one who writes the patch to remove should probably also write the addon to go with it. By the way, a web service is not a full substitute for a feature or an addon, ever. Web services can go away or change; they're not necessarily permanent and you're at the whim of some remote server.
(In reply to comment #1) > Why? Is there a measurable maintenance burden to this feature? Yes, at least for Sync there is. I would imagine there's one for Places, too. Particularly anything that's not just a simple bookmark, folder or separator could be a burden as we evolve Places to provide more async APIs and be more async internally. > It's not front-and-center so it affects only those who use it. And those who have to maintain the code when changes to Places and dependent pieces of code are needed. > The RSS button was > confusing to some but the Livemarks system itself isn't in the forefront. This isn't just about the UI. In fact it's mostly about the fact that we have the feature in the first place and need to support it various pieces of code: Places APIs, DB migrations, Sync, etc. The UI is just one of those pieces of code, albeit an important one. (I'm all for less bookmark UI, but that'd be a different bug, so let's not mix these two issues up here.) > the exception of the one in the default bookmarks toolbar, which probably > should be removed separately) Please provide a reason to strip this feature, > regardless of how many use it. In short, it's a maintenance burden as we evolve Firefox. If it's a feature used by very few then it's worth cutting if it helps us streamline the product and provide new features that will in all likelihood be more popular (e.g. Sync). Also, the number of people who use a feature does matter. Heck, features that I loved have been removed from Firefox and I understand why. I also understand I was in a tiny minority, and that there'll be, one way or another, replacements for them. > As to offloading this onto an addon, if this were to be done the one who writes > the patch to remove should probably also write the addon to go with it. I don't see why. "You removed X but I love X so please make sure I can still have X" is not how it works. > By the way, a web service is not a full substitute for a feature or an addon, > ever. Web services can go away or change; they're not necessarily permanent and > you're at the whim of some remote server. Sure. But it might still work for the vast majority of people. If only a miniscule amount of people use Livemarks and only a miniscule portion of those people will not be happy with a web service, it'll be too bad for them, but by far the vast majority of users will be fine, one way or another.
If there's a truly big maintenance burden and impotence to adding new capabilities, then your argument has a lot of merit. I'm asking the question because this isn't really a "[killthem]" bug as stated in the whiteboard initially, as the others are more about removing unneeded redundancy and obsolete features. This feature is fully functional and not redundant to anything built in. Personally, I only use one livemark which I could live without. I'm not actually trying to argue that much against removing this feature. I just want to make sure we don't remove useful things without the reasoning fully laid out. With respect to a replacement addon, there's plenty of precedent. Big things like Chatzilla got their own full fledged addons created and then smaller features like the in-address-bar RSS icon got converted into a built-in optional toolbar item. If there's enough people who care about this, it would be nice to not pull the rug out from under them and give them something to migrate to. The removal of the livemarks system would pretty much constitute the removal of all built-in RSS capability from Firefox, which is a fairly big deal. As to the "vast majority" argument, that doesn't really work all the time because the "vast majority" of users aren't going to use the bran new web console that's being added, but it is anyway. Things aren't added or removed only based on usage rates. If this area of code is really a pain and problem to deal with, then so be it, but it being one of many low used features is not enough to warrant immediate removal by itself. That all being said, I take it this is targeted for post Firefox 4.0? Doing it before branching would be a bit of a last minute change that I think may be a bad idea.
Whiteboard: [killthem]
Version: unspecified → Trunk
(In reply to comment #3) > The removal of the livemarks system would pretty much constitute > the removal of all built-in RSS capability from Firefox, which is a fairly big > deal. "Mozilla, with the creation of live bookmarks and the first high-profile placement of the rss icon has done more to promote RSS than any other piece of desktop software." "Live bookmarks, the best RSS feature implementation I've seen to date in a web browser, is still there." Quotes by Asa Dotzler on http://camendesign.com/blog/rss_is_dying#do Can we get WONTFIX now ... please?
(In reply to comment #4) > Quotes by Asa Dotzler on http://camendesign.com/blog/rss_is_dying#do > > Can we get WONTFIX now ... please? I didn't say that it was useful to any large number of users, just that it was the best yet. The best yet absolutely doesn't mean the same thing useful to large numbers of Firefox users. I'm actually in favor of dropping livemark support. There may be useful ways to expose various RSS data, but livemarks have not proved themselves to be that over the last 6 years.
As a serious RSS reader, livemarks sucks, frankly. It doesn't keep track of what's read and if you have a lot of RSS feeds subscribed it's just way insufficient. It's only useful for RSS feeds where you only care about the most recent few entries. (that's why I use only one) For real RSS usage, you need the Brief addon or another addon or an external program. (I personally use Akregator, a program for KDE, but it's not perfect) My opinion here is similar to removing the RSS icon from the default top-level UI: I can't disagree with the fundamental reasoning, but I REALLY wish it were replaced with a better built-in system instead of just removed outright.
(In reply to comment #3) > If there's a truly big maintenance burden and impotence to adding new > capabilities, then your argument has a lot of merit. I'm asking the question > because this isn't really a "[killthem]" bug as stated in the whiteboard > initially, as the others are more about removing unneeded redundancy and > obsolete features. This feature is fully functional and not redundant to > anything built in. I'm not sure that's the definition of [killthem]. Gavin added that flag so I'll trust his judgement about whether it's appropriate or not. > Personally, I only use one livemark which I could live without. I'm not > actually trying to argue that much against removing this feature. I just want > to make sure we don't remove useful things without the reasoning fully laid > out. I understand that. I could've gone into more detail in the initial summary, I guess. Rest assured, I'm not proposing to remove features just because I'm hatin'. > As to the "vast majority" argument, that doesn't really work all the time > because the "vast majority" of users aren't going to use the bran new web > console that's being added, but it is anyway. Things aren't added or removed > only based on usage rates. If this area of code is really a pain and problem to > deal with, then so be it, but it being one of many low used features is not > enough to warrant immediate removal by itself. You're right, it's not only about users, other factors matter. Developer tools reach only so many users, but they obviously are important for other reasons. Conversely, a feature that has few users *and* does not necessarily align with our goals for the browser may as well be dropped if it proves to be a burden. > That all being said, I take it this is targeted for post Firefox 4.0? Doing it > before branching would be a bit of a last minute change that I think may be a > bad idea. Indeed. Never said I wanted this for Firefox 4 :) (In reply to comment #6) > My opinion here is similar to removing the RSS icon from the default top-level > UI: I can't disagree with the fundamental reasoning, but I REALLY wish it were > replaced with a better built-in system instead of just removed outright. That seems to suggest you would like Livemarks to be replaced with a proper built-in RSS reader. I'm pretty sure that would go beyond the scope of a browser. Just as a mail client, chat program, etc. would.
Whiteboard: [killthem]
status2.0: --- → wontfix
Target Milestone: --- → Future
(In reply to comment #7) > (In reply to comment #6) > > My opinion here is similar to removing the RSS icon from the default top-level > > UI: I can't disagree with the fundamental reasoning, but I REALLY wish it were > > replaced with a better built-in system instead of just removed outright. > > That seems to suggest you would like Livemarks to be replaced with a proper > built-in RSS reader. I'm pretty sure that would go beyond the scope of a > browser. Just as a mail client, chat program, etc. would. Mail and chat are not the same thing as web content. RSS is a web content format; it's web content just as much as HTML or XHTML. It's just generally simpler and handles updates better. As to whether I'd want a "proper" built-in reader, yes, but a very simple and user friendly one.
Just found this bug, and I really wish it wasn't about killing the feature—I wish instead it was about developing an improved replacement. Are we doing anything in the area of identity and contacts toward this end, for example? I'd love to have basically the News Feed from my Facebook account be a built-in tab in Firefox, only sourced from feeds distributed across the web. Whether that's powered by client-side Livemarks, or by server-side resources offered by Mozilla, I'd like to see it. I built this addon as a start—using Livemarks, actually: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fireriver/ Am I basically running into a dead end here? (In reply to comment #7) > That seems to suggest you would like Livemarks to be replaced with a proper > built-in RSS reader. I'm pretty sure that would go beyond the scope of a > browser. Just as a mail client, chat program, etc. would. Except mail and chat are not web content—RSS (and Atom) feeds are. In fact, they're a good way to proactively reach web content, like the search box with OpenSearch plugins. (I hope we're not killing that too.)
(In reply to comment #9) > Just found this bug, and I really wish it wasn't about killing the feature—I > wish instead it was about developing an improved replacement. Don't take this the wrong way, but this is an excellent way to stall the removal of any rarely used and hard-to-maintain feature. If livemarks were actually better, maybe they'd be more maintainable and maybe they'd get used more? Hard to tell. Doesn't change the status quo, though. > Are we doing anything in the area of identity and contacts toward this end, for > example? I'd love to have basically the News Feed from my Facebook account be a > built-in tab in Firefox, only sourced from feeds distributed across the web. I don't think there are any plans for this. And if there were, would we need to use feeds for this? And if we did, would they require the Livemarks feature? I'm inclined to answer these with "no." > I built this addon as a start—using Livemarks, actually: > > https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fireriver/ > > Am I basically running into a dead end here? I would say no, even if we're going to remove Livemarks. It's an add-on, so it could just as well use something other than Livemarks to display feeds. I get why you used Livemarks, it's a low-hanging fruit. We just need to ask ourselves whether it's worth it continuing a high-maintenance (and perf-damaging, as it turns out) feature just because it happens to be a good building block for esoteric add-ons. > (In reply to comment #7) > > That seems to suggest you would like Livemarks to be replaced with a proper > > built-in RSS reader. I'm pretty sure that would go beyond the scope of a > > browser. Just as a mail client, chat program, etc. would. > > Except mail and chat are not web content—RSS (and Atom) feeds are. In fact, > they're a good way to proactively reach web content, like the search box with > OpenSearch plugins. (I hope we're not killing that too.) You know what also provides a great way to proactively reach web content? The web. (SCNR :)) What I mean is: we have to make a trade-off between what lives in chrome and what lives in content. The feed problem has been solved in content space already, over and over. And even if we want stuff to be in more accessible in chrome (e.g. in an add-on), that doesn't mean we have to make it all work there. The F1 add-on is a great example for blending chrome with content. Incidentally, it's about social and sharing. :)
(In reply to comment #10) > Don't take this the wrong way, but this is an excellent way to stall the > removal of any rarely used and hard-to-maintain feature. I'm not trying to stall anything - I just want a better browser and a more open web. > > Are we doing anything in the area of identity and contacts toward this end, for > > example? I'd love to have basically the News Feed from my Facebook account be a > > built-in tab in Firefox, only sourced from feeds distributed across the web. > > I don't think there are any plans for this. Hmm, I could've sworn I saw a demo this summer with contacts and content aggregated from feeds associated with contacts. Still, that would've just been a demo, and not necessarily using Livemarks. But, that feed-polling machinery would be convenient to use for that > And if there were, would we need to use feeds for this? And if we did, > would they require the Livemarks feature? I'm inclined to answer these with "no." Not necessarily Livemarks, as such. But, I do think feeds would play a part. > > Am I basically running into a dead end here? > > I would say no, even if we're going to remove Livemarks. It's an add-on, so it > could just as well use something other than Livemarks to display feeds. I get > why you used Livemarks, it's a low-hanging fruit. So, a dead end. I'm not going to reinvent Livemarks and the bookmark management UI in an add-on. > We just need to ask ourselves whether it's worth it continuing a high-maintenance > (and perf-damaging, as it turns out) feature just because it happens to be a good > building block for esoteric add-ons. Not sure what's so esoteric—it's the kind of thing Twitter & Facebook are nailing. I just wish we had more of an answer to that, and Livemarks seemed like an angle on it. > You know what also provides a great way to proactively reach web content? The > web. (SCNR :)) Yeah, a web with a lot of content squirreled away in silos. Because, in part, the silos are good at discovery and aggregation. That, and free hosting. A browser can't do hosting, but I think it could be better at the other two. Killing Livemarks without a replacement feels like going in the other direction. > What I mean is: we have to make a trade-off between what lives in chrome and > what lives in content. Totally agree. > The feed problem has been solved in content space already, over and over. I'd disagree with that, or at least I don't like where it's been heading. > And even if we want stuff to be in more accessible in chrome (e.g. in an add-on), > that doesn't mean we have to make it all work there. True. So, I think we agree about Livemarks in particular. They've got problems. I don't think offering a server-side feed aggregator to every Firefox user necessarily the right thing, either. So, I'm not sure what the answer is. Really, I'm not trying to stall here - I just think killing this feature outright diminishes Firefox. > The F1 add-on is a great example for blending chrome with content. > Incidentally, it's about social and sharing. :) I've not been a fan of F1, for various reasons.
Note that we can always kill it and bring it back later. Right now it's a huge maintenance burden and it is holding us back from making the browser better.
(In reply to comment #11) > > We just need to ask ourselves whether it's worth it continuing a high-maintenance > > (and perf-damaging, as it turns out) feature just because it happens to be a good > > building block for esoteric add-ons. > > Not sure what's so esoteric—it's the kind of thing Twitter & Facebook are > nailing. I just wish we had more of an answer to that, and Livemarks seemed > like an angle on it. I'm not sure how exactly. Sure, Twitter provides feeds for you to subscribe to, but they're not really useful by themselves. At least Twitter's only half about consuming feeds. The other half is about publishing. > > You know what also provides a great way to proactively reach web content? The > > web. (SCNR :)) > > Yeah, a web with a lot of content squirreled away in silos. Because, in part, > the silos are good at discovery and aggregation. That, and free hosting. A > browser can't do hosting, but I think it could be better at the other two. > Killing Livemarks without a replacement feels like going in the other > direction. I totally get that. But just because something isn't in the browser doesn't mean Mozilla can't get involved and make it better and more open. This is about the scope of the browser, not about the scope at which Mozilla operates. > > And even if we want stuff to be in more accessible in chrome (e.g. in an add-on), > > that doesn't mean we have to make it all work there. > > True. So, I think we agree about Livemarks in particular. They've got problems. > I don't think offering a server-side feed aggregator to every Firefox user > necessarily the right thing, either. So, I'm not sure what the answer is. I'm not sure either, but it's a thought worth thinking. Mozilla does offer services that are integrated into the product now. Sync is one of them, more are to follow... I'm not saying this should be one of them, I'm just saying we should think about things we can do that make us not block on shipping an awesome browser. > Really, I'm not trying to stall here - I just think killing this feature > outright diminishes Firefox. I disagree. I'm with Shawn (comment 12) on this: if we don't get our act together and make the set of features people actually care about kick ass (yes, I'm implying livemarks ain't one of them), we will be diminished much more quickly.
(In reply to comment #12) > Note that we can always kill it and bring it back later. Right now it's a huge > maintenance burden and it is holding us back from making the browser better. Fair enough, totally agreed! And, I'll zip it, since I said all I meant to anyway.
Un-zipping for just one more comment: (In reply to comment #13) ... > I'm just saying we should think about things we can do that make us > not block on shipping an awesome browser. +1 > > Really, I'm not trying to stall here - I just think killing this feature > > outright diminishes Firefox. > > I disagree. I'm with Shawn (comment 12) on this: if we don't get our act > together and make the set of features people actually care about kick ass (yes, > I'm implying livemarks ain't one of them), we will be diminished much more > quickly. Fair point, well taken. Ass-kicking is what I like to see, and the loss of Livemarks in particular won't make me cry.
I understand all of the points made but I also believe the same points apply at least to some extent to the web console and other features. We added the web console because we want web developers to use Firefox. I highly suspect there will be many more users that use livemarks after Firefox 4 is released with the web console than there will be users that use or care about the web console. I also suspect that there will be few users that use or care about panorama. I have no problem with evaluating whether to get rid of livemarks but it is at least a feature I know that both novice and expert users use unlike the web console or for that matter panorama (actually, IMO there are other features that are used less than livemarks as well).
So... we have no metrics suggesting this isn't a popular feature, yet we're looking to drop it because it's a maintenance burden? If you pass that burden out to add-ons, you're just relocating the problem. Ultimately you'll either get someone looking after it in a big way who could've done that in the core app perfectly adequately.. and whose temporary unavailability (eg. illness) would kill the entire thing or (more likely) it will turned into a much less powerful tool by someone who doesn't want the maintenance responsibility that justified throwing it into add-on sphere in the first place. Based on the above, I submit taking it out of Firefox would likely result in a sub-optimal offering so I think it's important we're sure we're not acting based on an imaginary user-base. I would suspect that Livemarks is used way, way more frequently than say, Panorama. And will probably be used more than WebGL for the rest of time (and hey, I REALLY like WebGL, but it's very niche and gigantically high maintenance, sucking up huge amounts of high quality development time - are we going to just ditch that too?). I'd like to first understand which bits of Livemarks people use and which they don't. Perhaps just getting rid of the hard to maintain elements (I don't use Sync, for example... so is it being used in wild?) would address the issue? This seems like an ideal case for Test Pilot.
It's great that everyone feels the need to express their opinion, but bugzilla is not the place for that (per bugzilla etiquette: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html). Please take the discussion to dev.apps.firefox: https://www.mozilla.org/about/forums/#dev-apps-firefox
(In reply to comment #18) > It's great that everyone feels the need to express their opinion, but bugzilla > is not the place for that (per bugzilla etiquette: > https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html). Please take the > discussion to dev.apps.firefox: > https://www.mozilla.org/about/forums/#dev-apps-firefox FWIW, I started this thread to try to move discussion there: http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.apps.firefox/browse_thread/thread/fa6f83e781b962a4
I've actually been trying to lobby to improving the feed experience in Firefox rather than chrome-cloning and removing support: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.usability/PR4kVhAoxP4
Stop killing features! Now that my live bookmarks stopped updating, which I consider a bug, I miss them a lot. I don't want a browser that have only a back and forward button. I need the complete Firefox. Please change this to WON'T FIX.
(In reply to jrblier from comment #21) > Now that my live bookmarks stopped updating, which I consider a bug, I miss > them a lot. There is known bug about this, I use livemarks everyday, so you may have some incompatible add-on.
Sorry, I meant that there is NOT any known bug about that.
sheesh, can't you leave the best Firefox feature alone? kill livemarks, and there goes the only reason why I consistently come back to Firefox after trying other browsers. Please, change this to WONTFIX, and kill anyone who suggests removing this feature again. Make it a messy killing.
(In reply to ineluki from comment #24) > Please, change this to WONTFIX, and kill anyone who > suggests removing this feature again. Make it a messy killing. Please don't behave in this manner here or anywhere else involved with the Mozilla project. It's unacceptable.
We have good control over a ton of details here for the livemark we ship, we should get some data. As a first step, we can look at how the traffic on fxfeeds compares to our ADUs, possibly even over time. We can also collect more data in cooperation with at least some of our outlets like the BBC to see if they have metrics, or if we can do a short lived experiments that would gather that data. (Disclaimer, I use the default livemark of my german build several times a day)
(In reply to Axel Hecht [:Pike] from comment #26) > We have good control over a ton of details here for the livemark we ship, we > should get some data. As a first step, we can look at how the traffic on > fxfeeds compares to our ADUs, possibly even over time. this is valid for the default livemark, it would be better to collect more general telemetry data. I never used the default livemark (that imo is pointless) but I have about 30 livemarks, included bugzilla queries, that I use every day.
This bug is only for removing the livemarks front end feature, correct? We're not talking about removing any of the RSS parsing components that many add-ons rely on?
(In reply to Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] from comment #28) > This bug is only for removing the livemarks front end feature, correct? > We're not talking about removing any of the RSS parsing components that many > add-ons rely on? This is a discussion on whether livemarks feature is an issue to bring on. No decision has been made so far, so this is not filed to be immediately effective. In case of removal, it's likely some support component may be removed, but probably not everything.
there's no more a compelling need for this removal, most of the issues have gone, livemarks are now empty folders with a couple annotations, easy to manage by the backend and by Sync.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 13 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
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