I’m surprised “Customizable UI” was so high, I’m pretty sure I was one of those who marked it down as “want least.” I guess it’s cool, but I prefer the browser to get out of my way instead of being something I spend time messing with.
That said, I’m happy and not particularly surprised that AI didn’t show up anywhere in the top-10.
Option to allow browser extensions to run only on specific websites
This actually sounds pretty awesome. Now I want that feature. Good job Mozilla, now I want a feature which I may not get soon enough. ^^ Sometimes I wish to be an ignorant.
Just noting: If one develops a firefox extension one can already restrict it via URL. That should be the first application one develops within the official tutorials.
You could even change this as a non-programmer as long as sources of the software are available.
At the expense of having to either hope devs do it or only use extensions that give the source, having to do it for every extension individually, having to redo it every time you want to add or remove a URL, no longer getting automatic updates, and having to redo it every time you want to update.
I get the sentiment but it’s not worth the hassle, especially when it would be trivial to have this as a browser feature that would solve all of those problems.
Would be a great feature for online school websites…
Though that also depends on them not using Honorlock (or Honorlock adding firefox support…)
Funny how people were interpreting the survey itself as a way to pretend that everybody wanted AI even when they didn’t - yet somehow it was possible that it didn’t end up in the top 10 😅
(Also understandably, this won’t be 1:1 the roadmap, for the caveats they mentioned in the post. Still helpful!)
Because people don’t understand statistics. The survey was very well made.
Agreed, the survey was pretty decent. My biggest complaint, however, was that there wasn’t an option for “don’t want,” only “want least.” Sometimes I got three options that I actually do want, and sometimes I got two that I definitely don’t want, and I think it would be useful to communicate that.
How do you weigh a Don’t Want with Want Most? A 0.1 weighting is much more useful than a negative weighting. And it is rightfully phrased so.
I would weigh a don’t want the same as want least. I just had a couple situations where two options were both “don’t want,” and I wish I could have communicated that instead of picking one to be in the middle. I don’t think the same should be true of “want most” though, I should be forced to rank those. But for two things I really don’t care about, ordering doesn’t convey any extra useful information.
Amazing, it’s almost as if most of us aren’t techdudebros with our heads up our own asses :)
Who’d have thought!
RIP PWAs
The view tracker is an interesting proposition I currently use uMatrix to have fine-grained control over what is getting loaded amd some sites are downright unholy in how much thrid-party stuff gets loaded to display a site.
Guys, can’t seem to find split view. Search hasn’t been helpful nor going through the settings. Any tip on how to find/use it?
I think you might be looking for this?
Yes, that’s it. Didn’t realise it’s an add-on. Thanks, Charmain Meow (spare the sparrows this time 😄 ).
This is gonna be very useful! 😃
Unfortunatly this wasn’t Android exclusive. The Firefox Android App sucked ass in the past and will probably suck ass for the foreseeable future. There are currently multiple support and Reddit threads going about insane battery drain and heat build-up caused by the Firefox App (even when suspended and battery optimized). The UI is barebones and lacks basic features like closing tabs from the navigation bar or opening new tabs by scrolling left on the rightmost tab. Even something as simple as having actual tabs akin to the desktop version is not present, instead you have a tab list or grid view that barely manages to load previews for each open website. The native video player also hasn’t been touched in a literal decade.
All in all Firefox Android is a horrible experience that has only the ability to use extensions going for it.
Really? Performance-wise, Firefox on Android runs great for me. No battery drain.
It is lacking in a lot of features though.
At least for me, it does. It got so bad that watching a Twitch stream caused my phone to overheat to the point of freezing up and turning off. In comparison, the offical Twitch app doesn’t cause the same issue, neither does Brave. Watching YouTube on Firefox drains the battery basically 2% per minute. OK, my phone is older and runs a custom rom, but other apps run flawlessly.
As expected, nobody cares about “reader mode”. Only once in my life has it ever come in handy… It was a website that was so badly designed I swore never to go back to it ever again.
I forget what it was but apparently I wasn’t the only one and thus, it must’ve died a fast death as I haven’t seen it ever again (otherwise I’d remember).
Basically, any website that gets users so frustrated that they resort to reader/simplified mode isn’t going to last very long. If I had my way I would change the messages:
“This website appears to be total shit. Do you want Firefox to try to fix it so your eyes don’t bleed trying to get through it?”
I want an extension that does this, actually! It doesn’t need to actually modify the page. Just give me a virtual assistant to comiserate with…
“The people who made this website should have their browser’s back button removed entirely as punishment for erecting this horror!”
Reader Mode is 100% the best way to read a pay wall article. Turn it on, hit refresh.
Reader mode is really useful and I use it daily basis. It removes all the clutter and leaves just the important part.
As expected, nobody cares about “reader mode”.
Whaaat? Reader mode is fantastic! I feel like everyone who knows about it, loves it, it’s just that few people know about it.
Edit: ah, it’s top 10, so actually one of the most popular features.
The current era internet is full of web pages that can be salvaged with reader mode. It is an essential tool for my everyday browsing habits.
I love reader mode. It can force dark mode, a pleasant font and font size, and stop those pop-ups that appear as you scroll. Firefox reader is better than anything I’ve seen on Chrome.
There is only one caveat to it. If I’m on a forum with table elements, for some reason it only shows the first one or two replies and cuts of the rest. And there are a few edge cases when it doesn’t work well, but otherwise reader mode is the best mode of converting an unpleasant or unreadable page into something readable.
I wish Firefox for Android had the option to set reader mode to follow system theme like the desktop version.
Would be nice, but at least you can give it a custom theme colors.
Me, it makes me a bit sad it’s so low. Reader Mode is one the really cool features of Firefox, but I understand that consuming web content by reading is rapidly on the decline, as a result of the comparatively low information density of video and audio allowing bigger ad space compared to text.
Plus we know from the last 10-15 years how much reading comprehension has nosedived since the proliferation of video content.
Note that this is the “top 10 features” from the survey. So it’s ranked 10 of some larger number, not last place.
Ironic
What reader mode needs is a (possibly crowdsourced) setting to be the default view on a per-site basis. (I say this because my main problem with it is forgetting it exists and failing to toggle it on.)
To be fair, I imagine an entire browser just like that for a long time. You have your settings and every website would look the same. A default frontend for everything. No Javascript, just the content.
Ah, yes, the Web as it was intended to be, with semantic markup and separate presentation/styling that the user was not only able, but encouraged by design, to override as he saw fit.
I’ve spent pretty much my entire adulthood being low-key pissed off about how that got thoroughly and comprehensively fucked as soon as the marketing fuckwads got their hands on the Web.
Yeah that’s true, or at least I wish I could make FF remember my settings.
Reader mode is one of the reasons why I keep going back to Firefox or Firefox forks :). I really love how it just works, and how it also can unlock semi-paywalled (soft-locked) articles.
As expected, nobody cares about “reader mode”. Only once in my life has it ever come in handy…
I use this from time to time, the reader mode is an important feature to me at least and helped me making many sites readable. I think most people are happy with the mode as it is, therefore it was not high in the list for any upgrades. It’s not always bad design, but just having a different taste. Lot of people like black background and white text, but to me it bleeds my eyes. If lot of people like it, that the design isn’t bad.
Use reader mode all the time.
