864065 - Stop removing features

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[tad]

Before you invalidate this bug, read what I have to say.

This is a critical bug. Mozilla has cleansed (aka deleted code) the browser recently. We've lost all the good features, auto download manager, esc to stop animated GIFs. Users are complaining, and it sorta breaks the Mozilla manifesto.

The manifesto mentions pushing for innovation, I don't see how going backwards in time is innovation? We need to stop this, and fast.

Bring back the old features, users don't like the stripped down version, and you know it!
Marking as critical, this disrupts workflow for thousands of angry users and is losing us users to chrome every day.

Comment 1

[tad]

I saw this on irc:
<Mardeg> Dagger: we should put https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search/?q=dagger&status=4 in the URL of that bug :)

Evidence that users want features like these back.

Comment 2

[User]

Second. 

I propose there 2 versions of firefox. A stripped down version for normal users and advanced setting for advanced users. Maybe an install option to include advanced features. 

If you are taking out features to match chrome's speed then stop imitating chrome. Firefox is very fast and I never liked chrome because it didn't have firefox's features. Instead of destroying firefox to imitate chrome maybe we should be like chrome in the sense that we are not following competitors but making a browser we actually want to use, instead of just what we think people want to use. 

Aside from esc to stop gif's, the option to change about:config settings so you can change the options to scroll by a specific amount of pixels for no reason. Do "devices" not have pixels anymore? 

There's probably more features taken out. Please think of normal people who wouldn't join a forum to comment about what they think, but have everything they love taken away for no reason. 

Also, since there is no other official venue to post this, there should be an official firefox forum or board that the people involved in firefox actually pay attention to. Only being able to discuss things in the form of bug reports is like "answer" boards where you're only able to discuss things in the form of "asking". Instead of just suggesting to "Ask anything"  or "report a bug", but still being able to... talk normally. 

I've been using firefox since firefox since firefox 1 back in the early 2000's with the "get firefox" campaign banner on real websites and everyone telling me to use it and support it over internet explorer and other browsers. I didn't see the use in it, since it just seemed like a slightly different internet explorer, but over time I've come to love and depend on it. Even defending it when chrome and all the hype about it and its speed came out. 

I never saw chrome as advantage because of speed. It was missing lots of customization and features and I always saw it as more of a toy browser. I also think chrome is gaining users because google has a budget. They're a billion dollar company and can advertise and have armies of people who are viral google marketers. 

Telling people to download addons to gain features that are already taken out is exclusionary and only for users who know how to do that, instead of inclusionary for normal people by having everything already there. 

Have everything be "intuitive" so everything "just works" for users instead of having to be a "geek" or "computer guy" to do what you want to do. 

I don't any "smartphone guy" and complicated instructions and tutorials on how to add basic features removed for no reason back into "device" stuff, if that's who you are pandering to or trying to imitate and throw firefox people under a bus for. 

Thank you for everything.

Comment 3

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Let me ask what do you think will happen with this report ?
There is always a user who will complain if you remove one single and really not important feature or change the UI. I like for example the old ESC behavior but I'm 100% sure that this bug is invalid as filed.
Bugzilla is not for discussions like this one and the decision has been made by the module owner to remove those features. Discuss this in the newsgroups, the intended place for discussions.

Comment 4

[tad]

The newsgroups don't get action. Quite frankly, if this doesn't get resolved, the developers are breaking the Mozilla Manifesto, principle 3.

We can't enrich the lives of users without giving them features.

In this report, I expect that Mozilla stop removing features, and this is 100% not invalid. If that is the case, and we mark it as invalid, that would be basically saying an opinion is invalid, once again, breaking the manifesto at point 5. It could possibly wontfix, however, if you want more angry users.

I go to a school where the network staff use Firefox on a regular basis. Well, they did. Now they use Chrome, so do the students. All since version 20...
What Mozilla is doing isn't in the public's interest for the most part, and is annoying a lot of users.

Comment 5

[Dave Garrett]

Let me ask you another question: Do you have an actual list of these "removed features" that you can cite full arguments against the arguments to remove them, or is this just angry fist shaking?

Thus far, in this bug and the dependent (and blocking, because things are backwards) bugs here, I see the following issues mentioned:

1) ESC to stop GIFs gone. Near as I can tell this was a side-effect of something that was fixed and never really a feature. I honestly never even knew this existed until some people started complaining when it was removed, but due to its apparent usage it should probably be added back as an actual feature. It would probably be best served as a context menu item or something so ESC can still be used for other things. This should really have its own bug as I think this is possible to do in some way.

2) RSS is slowly being killed for no good reason. This isn't really Mozilla's fault, though they certainly aren't helping. Honestly, I think it's time to let it die and someone needs to come together to make a JSON based replacement that works better and has competent built-in support in browsers.

3) Remove the failed and not really fully attempted feature that was Panorama. Sorry, neat idea, but when first released they had already cut it back and hidden it mostly. Could've been good if they pushed it, but they just didn't so now it really needs cutting out.

4) Remove the ability to open content in a sidebar. Really? Who does this? There are addons out there that do multi-pane browsing better if anyone really wants that.

5) Some arcane settings and behaviors that might be still needed in some form that nobody has ever heard about except for the small group of people that use it. (data: URI custom form for keyword.URL, really? no matter how much a handful of people used that, I can guarantee it'd be better served in an addon)

6) Some minor to moderate differences in new UI that are strange and different.

(In reply to Thomas [:Tad] from comment #0)
> Bring back the old features, users don't like the stripped down version, and
> you know it!

(In reply to User from comment #2)
> I propose there 2 versions of firefox. A stripped down version for normal
> users and advanced setting for advanced users.

No. The entire reason Firefox was created was to create a straightforward browser with only the features that most users need and extensive addon capability to add the rest as needed. The Mozilla suite before it was a bloated beast and everyone knew it. Firefox is now building up cruft and bloat and they are trying to streamline things, which is very good. It's still going to have more features than it started with (by quite a bit) but the Firefox paradigm has always been to not included obscure features by default.

What we need is Firefox with just the features that get heavy use, some prefs to tweak a reasonable amount of other things (mostly hidden from the average user), and addons to do the rest.

What we really need to do this better is in-UI addon discovery, though. For example, a dozen or so links to AMO searches from different parts of the Firefox UI that users might want addons for.

Also as a footnote, it's not like these things don't go in the other direction. Flashblock is now built-in, as is text area resizing, and a few other addons I used to use but can't remember off the top of my head.

(In reply to Thomas [:Tad] from comment #0)
> Marking as critical, this disrupts workflow for thousands of angry users and
> is losing us users to chrome every day.

I'm not going to close this myself, but this sure as hell isn't a critical severity bug. Please read the severity definitions here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=fields.html

One last bit to this entirely too long comment: Whether any of us like it or not, "thousands of users" is roughly equivalent to zero when the total population of Firefox users is nearly half a billion. Please try to avoid the rather common logical fallacy that just because you've found other like-minded loud people who are affected that the rest of the population agrees with you. No matter how much I dislike RSS being axed, nobody really seems to care outside of a few power users. Google murdering Google Reader seems to have been a much bigger deal than anything on the browser side of things (sadly). The ESC-GIF thing is mentioned more frequently, but was already not discoverable so while it may be a big deal to many, it's not to most. For any discussion of this sort of topic to be remotely productive, we _all_ need to take into account the primary population first, whether we personally like it or not.

Comment 6

[tad]

Fair enough.

I have to say though, that comment was quite rude. We've spread an opinion of why we're not happy, so please don't be dismissive like that. 

To people who don't like this bug:
I'll close it. Fine, but expect me to be back in a different way. May it be IRC, emails, newsgroups, it doesn't matter. I think this should be stopped.

As for the features not being important:
Neither is bookmarks, tabs, built in search engines. They're all just additional features. Why don't we axe those?


Since people want to be so dismissive, and don't care, I'll simply make this wontfix.

Comment 7

[Dave Garrett]

(In reply to Thomas [:Tad] from comment #6)
> I have to say though, that comment was quite rude. We've spread an opinion
> of why we're not happy, so please don't be dismissive like that. 

It was not intended to be rude; it was blunt. If I was going to be dismissive I wouldn't take the time to sit down and respond in such detail. In fact I'm agreeing with you in large part. What you need to understand is that your actions are interpreted to be rude by others. Nobody is trying to be mean here; we just all have a bad habit of attaching emotion to our favorite little-used web browser features, and I would really prefer if we didn't.

> Fine, but expect me to be back in a different way. May it be
> IRC, emails, newsgroups, it doesn't matter. I think this should be stopped.

Good. Please do so. This discussion needs to be had, though I personally fear it will devolve into a very hard to follow one with people not seriously focusing on the more important bits.

My question at the beginning of comment 5 was not rhetorical. If you want to make this argument you *need* to be specific and to prioritize heavily. You also need to know that even if I will discuss this with you here a little bit, we're generally not supposed to do this here, and the people who will make any actual decisions will not. If, however, you can get some discussion elsewhere going on just the key important features getting the most complaints, then you can probably get some focused bugs here that will actually address some of them (though definitely not most).

Comment 8

[ramons]

I can only agree with this complaint! Since FF4.0 came out the entire FF approach is backwards. It started with UI changes and the one feature after another dropped off while only few truly useful features were added. Also, the attitude from the lead developers changed from listening to users to aping Microsoft/Apple arrogance while copying Chrome. If I'd want to use Chrome I'd use Chrome.
Case in point is bug 626365. A supposed bug fix broke this feature and instead of reaction to the quite numerous user complaints we get the many related bug reports set to 'invalid' with the reason that this is intended behavior. Maybe it is by design, but that just means that the design is bad.
Firefox shifted from a game changer that gave the masses what they wanted to a project that is geared entirely to the self-fulfillment of a handful of developers who rather express their ego in code than go back to what caused Firefox to make the big splash in the browser universe when it came out first.
I got sick and tired of being berated in the forums as dumb user and having each and every bug report get closed as invalid before other users could weigh in. I know it is impossible to make everyone happy, but at least have a debate about pros and cons and at least humor us users and appear to be appreciative about feedback and suggestions.

Comment 9

[tad]

Please don't use this bug anymore :)

I'll send an email out to all the cc members about next steps when Ive found them.

Comment 10

[ramons]

Didn't see the comments that were made while I was typing mine, but here are specifics: bug 626365! There is absolutely no reason why that behavior should not be there or at least be configurable so that it can be enabled.
Same applies to the feature that allows for duplicating the same tab. I often work with Google or Bing maps and have to look at map areas that are in close vicinity. No longer being able to find one spot and simply duplicate the tab two or three times is really annoying. Yes, it may be illogical for some to have the same tab content, but there are uses for it. If it helps, I can dig for the bug number.
UI in FF3.x and below was much better than it is now, especially the disabling of pretty much everything by default and hiding it behind one button is IMHO a big usability issue.
All three bugs were discussed and ultimately dissed and closed. How much more can we users do than giving actual use cases? And that is not for some lofty new feature, the three items I mention here were in FF before and got removed for little or no reason.
I do agree that the bug reporting system is not the place to have such discussions, but as Thomas pointed out before there is hardly any other avenue to get heard. I mean, short of using 'unfix' add-ons (such as the bug 586234 unfixer) what are we, the users, supposed to do? Defect to Chrome and IE like others?

Comment 11

[tad]

Ramons,
I'm currently working out where we can be heard. I'll feedback to everyone when there's a place

Comment 12

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

Bugzilla isn't a discussion forum nor a place for rants:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html

I'd expect someone posting from a mozilla.org.uk account to know better than that.


The proper place to discuss Firefox feature development is the firefox-dev list:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/firefox-dev

Comment 13

[tad]

Justin,
That's a fair point, which is why I have closed this bug. May I ask why a Mozilla.org.uk email address changes me as a person? Just because I am a trusted member of the UK community, I'm not going to become a different person. Feel free to mail me about this.

I started this bug as a request from the developers to do something, and justified my point clearly, but quite clearly, things were going to get nasty, prompting me to close the bug.

The mailing list you pointed out probably won't help much, but I guess we can try. In the past when Ive tried to make people aware of issues within Mozilla, mailing lists haven't been great.


Thanks for verifying this bug, hopefully we won't have any more comments :)