Firefox, amirite guys



  • They are at it again

    TL;DR: Firefox used to have to option to make all the plugins only start once you explicitly clicked on them in a tab. Now the default behaviour is to suddenly allow the plugin to run in all tabs everywhere once you enable it once. Started a youtube-video? Start all the youtube-videos!



  • If it ain't broke, break it.



  • How the shit is that sensible?

    Maybe we should make our own gecko frontend. Just a crack development unit of TDWTF forum members - blakeyrat on UI and some random person (me) coding it in javascript.

    If you have a problem, if no one else can help and if you can find them, maybe you can hire The WHY-THE-FUCK-DOES-IT-DELETE-TWO-CHARACTERS-WHEN-I-PRESS-BACKSPACE-ONCE‽ Team.

     



  • @fire2k said:

    They are at it again

    TL;DR: Firefox used to have to option to make all the plugins only start once you explicitly clicked on them in a tab. Now the default behaviour is to suddenly allow the plugin to run in all tabs everywhere once you enable it once. Started a youtube-video? Start all the youtube-videos!

    Holy fucking shit.  You should download the customer research pdf referenced in that thread.  Apparently, based on studies of a grand total of 16 moronsusers over 4 days, they have decided that "convenience trumps security" should be their new guiding design principle.

     



  • @Firefox Click-to-play user research said:

    User sees: Where is Grumpy Cat? Do I have to click this every time?


    ...


    Annoying... to click the activate button before each youtube video


    ...

    Well, yes, you have to click this every time, because you explicitly told Firefox that you want to have to click every time. That's what the "click to activate" option does.

    Wow, how shocking, users complain if you enable an option that they don't want or need and interferes with their experience! We must remove that option at once!



  • @DaveK said:

    they have decided that "convenience trumps security" should be their new guiding design principle.
     

    It took Microsoft untold years to drop it, and then the free software guys pick it up. Madness!



  • @DaveK said:

    @fire2k said:

    They are at it again

    TL;DR: Firefox used to have to option to make all the plugins only start once you explicitly clicked on them in a tab. Now the default behaviour is to suddenly allow the plugin to run in all tabs everywhere once you enable it once. Started a youtube-video? Start all the youtube-videos!

    Holy fucking shit.  You should download the customer research pdf referenced in that thread.  Apparently, based on studies of a grand total of 16 moronsusers over 4 days, they have decided that "convenience trumps security" should be their new guiding design principle.

     

    Just... wtf. This pdf is probably the most broken thing from start to finish I've seen all year. Each page should be a thread in it's own right.

     I also have no idea why security is any factor here at all. If there is flash-content on the site that could exploit something, having to click a button isn't going to stop me at all. The feature was pure convenience as it is, and I'm not sure if people who can be quoted "I just want my video of a funny cat to play" are the people you want to design anything for, except maybe pepper spray.

     



  • I'm just surprised there are people who still use Firefox. I mean, besides my mother and 85 year old grandfather.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @DaveK said:

    Holy fucking shit.  You should download the customer research pdf referenced in that thread.  Apparently, based on studies of a grand total of 16 moronsusers over 4 days, they have decided that "convenience trumps security" should be their new guiding design principle.
     

    The WTF quotion of that file is staggering. Right off the bat you get this bad feeling-- one of those canary in a mine things. Nothing big, nothing huge, but just a hint about the quality of the work you're going to see.

    Filename: attachment-0001.pdf  [mod - now https://what.thedailywtf.com/assets/uploads/files/1544720399376-attachment-0001.pdf - @PJH]

    Is this important work hosted on a Mozilla knowledge base?  In the Firefox Research Centre? On the Github Micropilot site? No, the permalink is an attachment (called attachment) in some random user's mailbox.

    Some highlights, once you get past the crunk-ugly orange and grey fonts that just prove this "study" was someone's 10 minute Lunch-and-Learn powerpoint exported to PDF:

     p8: "User's don't understand why these are important" (emph mine), followed by a list of such advanced concepts like "Flash" and "Security".  If your users are incapable of understanding what the study is studying, then maybe you need better users!

    p11: "Extra click = extra step, not a choice for extra security"... did they run this thing through Google Translate a few times first?

    p13: "Even our most advanced users wanted content". Ladies and Gentleman, I present to you the face of Mozilla's Most Advanced User:

    [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/uvwG2JK.png[/IMG]

    p14:  There is an "always allow" option.  40% of their users wanted it.  18.75% knew where to find it.  But because Mozilla developers fail at UI design... I mean because their limited pool of Internet sourced morons are morons... I mean... um, fuck why not just change the goddman UI so "Allow Once", "Allow Always", "Allow All For This Site" are more obvious?  Maybe divert some manpower from the "Remove Features" team?

    p15:  "Participants missed the visual context provided by first frame preview":  An almost sane finding. So will they change CTP to show an overlay over a still image of the first frame, so that users get their preview, advertisers can show a "flash-blocked" still image, and people can about:config CTP to block even the first frame if they desire? NO BECUASE 16 USERS WANT GRUMPY CAT!

    p20: "Fix instead of maintain".  Even if it isn't broken.

    p21: "at least 15 minutes of multimedia required". What the fuck does that mean?  They were forced to watch Youtube? Their data was only collected on sites with Flash?  Does being on a page with Flash ads count?

    p23:  The flash-blocking CTP triggered on ad and analytical trackers almost 10x as much as usable content!  Doubleclick and the like are throwing TEN TIMES more Flash at the user than fucking YOUTUBE!

    p26:  Possible conclusion: users like ads. !!!!  

     



  • @DaveK said:

    Holy fucking shit.  You should download the customer research pdf referenced in that thread.
    http://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/firefox-dev/attachments/20130701/86725128/attachment-0001.pdf

    That has to be a joke.  Please tell me it's a joke.

     

    As I read it, only one thing kept going through my mind:




  • @fire2k said:

     I also have no idea why security is any factor here at all. If there is flash-content on the site that could exploit something, having to click a button isn't going to stop me at all.

     

     

     If a page has three "flash" elements -- a video, an ad, and a steal-all-of-your-contacts -- and i only click-to-play on the video, then my security has increaesed.

     



  • @fire2k said:

    TL;DR: Firefox used to have to option to make all the plugins only start once you explicitly clicked on them in a tab. Now the default behaviour is to suddenly allow the plugin to run in all tabs everywhere once you enable it once.
     

    Am I the only one who has auto-update turned off?  I ran FF 5, eventually upgraded to 19 and then 20, and now here I am happily on 20.

     


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @hymie said:

    @fire2k said:
    I also have no idea why security is any factor here at all. If there is flash-content on the site that could exploit something, having to click a button isn't going to stop me at all.
      If a page has three "flash" elements -- a video, an ad, and a steal-all-of-your-contacts -- and i only click-to-play on the video, then my security has increaesed.
     

    And furthermore, if you accidentally go to yuotube.com, you get a chance to realize your mistake and backout before all the steal-all-of-your-shit flash sparks up.

     



  • 16 USERS WANT GRUMPY CAT!




  • @DaveK said:

    Holy fucking shit.  You should download the customer research pdf referenced in that thread.  Apparently, based on studies of a grand total of 16 moronsusers who've never seen Click to Play in its previous incarnation over 4 days, they have decided that "convenience trumps security" should be their new guiding design principle.
     



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    @hymie said:

    @fire2k said:
    I also have no idea why security is any factor here at all. If there is flash-content on the site that could exploit something, having to click a button isn't going to stop me at all.
      If a page has three "flash" elements -- a video, an ad, and a steal-all-of-your-contacts -- and i only click-to-play on the video, then my security has increaesed.
     

    And furthermore, if you accidentally go to yuotube.com, you get a chance to realize your mistake and backout before all the steal-all-of-your-shit flash sparks up.

     

     

    Or maybe we could fix flash as to not be able to steal all of my shit, with, gee I don't know, a permission-based system for which subsystems on my PC it can access, a sane update mechanism and generally tangle it into less of my system.

     But I am persuaded, I guess. Click-to-play was useful, it made things more secure (for all the wtf reasons), and now it's broken beyond belief. Man, wtf.

     


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @fire2k said:

    Or maybe we could fix flash as to not be able to steal all of my shit, with, gee I don't know, a permission-based system for which subsystems on my PC it can access, a sane update mechanism and generally tangle it into less of my system.

     But I am persuaded, I guess. Click-to-play was useful, it made things more secure (for all the wtf reasons), and now it's broken beyond belief. Man, wtf.

    That'd be nice, but since Flash is third party, you'd be relying on Adobe to fully secure it. Adobe. Secure.

    CTP is one of those compromises, like "Fine you can come to the party at my house, but if you bring your tattooed boyfried that you met behind the sports bar last week, then he can't be alone anywhere in my house. I'll be following him."

     

     



  • @CodeNinja said:

    I'm just surprised there are people who still use Firefox. I mean, besides my mother and 85 year old grandfather.

    Because there's such an obvious alternative available, eh?



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    @DaveK said:

    Holy fucking shit.  You should download the customer research pdf referenced in that thread.  Apparently, based on studies of a grand total of 16 moronsusers over 4 days, they have decided that "convenience trumps security" should be their new guiding design principle.
     

    The WTF quotion of that file is staggering. Right off the bat you get this bad feeling-- one of those canary in a mine things. Nothing big, nothing huge, but just a hint about the quality of the work you're going to see.

    Filename: attachment-0001.pdf 

    Is this important work hosted on a Mozilla knowledge base?  In the Firefox Research Centre? On the Github Micropilot site? No, the permalink is an attachment (called attachment) in some random user's mailbox.

    No hold on, that's not fair.  It's not "some random user's mailbox", it's the dev mailing list archive, and it was an attachment to someone's post to the list.  The "permalink" isn't some official kind of recommendation, it's just some random forum thread where someone points it out to someone else for background info.

     

    Meanwhile, I just spent ages trying to read a post on science20.com, only to be repeatedly redirected to the Firefox update page.  A bit of investigation with wget showed me that they were sniffing the User-Agent, so I guess they were trying to be helpful and tell me to update my browser, but maybe redirecting me to an interstitial that explained what was going on rather than just looking completely broken would have been nice.

     



  • @fire2k said:

     But I am persuaded, I guess. Click-to-play was useful, it made things more secure (for all the wtf reasons), and now it's broken beyond belief. Man, wtf.

    If you miss it, NoScript and/or FlashBlock provide the same functionality.  I've never even used the official CTP, in fact didn't know it existed until today.




  • @DaveK said:

    @fire2k said:

     But I am persuaded, I guess. Click-to-play was useful, it made things more secure (for all the wtf reasons), and now it's broken beyond belief. Man, wtf.

    If you miss it, NoScript and/or FlashBlock provide the same functionality.  I've never even used the official CTP, in fact didn't know it existed until today.


     

    There is also an Add-On that restores the previous functionality: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/click-to-play-per-element/

    However, if the rate at which I'm currently forced to install add-ons continues, I will be at a 100 addons maintained by random people, updated at random times when Firefox 30 is out.

    Is there such an insane manpower crisis at Mozilla that every release deletes more features than it adds?

     



  • @anonymous234 said:

    @Firefox Click-to-play user research said:
    User sees: Where is Grumpy Cat? Do I have to click this every time?


    ...


    Annoying... to click the activate button before each youtube video


    ...

    Well, yes, you have to click this every time, because you explicitly told Firefox that you want to have to click every time. That's what the "click to activate" option does.

    Wow, how shocking, users complain if you enable an option that they don't want or need and interferes with their experience! We must remove that option at once!

    I don't have a specific position on this issue since in my opinion both Flash and Firefox are obsolete, still I have three negative comments to make:

    1. As with many other cases the threads on the Mozilla forums are filled with arrogant and narrow-minded people looking down on the imbeciles who use their product
    2. Just like it often happens with Wikipedia, the "source" that is supposed to give them credibility is a joke
    3. Again their silver bullet to solve everything is that people can use an add-on if they are not happy

    Fuck Mozilla. They are worse than OpenOffice.


  • Considered Harmful

    @Medinoc said:

    @DaveK said:

    they have decided that "convenience trumps security" should be their new guiding design principle.
     

    It took Microsoft untold years to drop it, and then the free software guys pick it up. Madness!

    Microsoft had it to avoid patent issues with Eolas.

    I know this because Eolas filed a lawsuit against my current employer for using Flash on our website. Yes. I'm not making this shit up.



  • [quote user="Eolas"]

    See also

    [/quote]This is the vibe I'm getting from both that Wackypedia article and the press releases on their homepage, regardless of other achievements they may have had.


  • @fire2k said:

    Is there such an insane manpower crisis at Mozilla that every release deletes more features than it adds?
    I don't see how a manpower shortage would result in features being removed.  It should result in nothing being done (good or bad) which would be a welcome relief.  As it stands now, they seem to be equally divided between adding useless crap and removing things that people actually want.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @El_Heffe said:

    I don't see how a manpower shortage would result in features being removed.
     

    It takes a lot of manpower to run those joke-fans to keep them breezing over your head.



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    @El_Heffe said:

    I don't see how a manpower shortage would result in features being removed.
     

    It takes a lot of manpower to run those joke-fans to keep them breezing over your head.

     



  • @El_Heffe said:

    @fire2k said:

    Is there such an insane manpower crisis at Mozilla that every release deletes more features than it adds?
    I don't see how a manpower shortage would result in features being removed.  It should result in nothing being done (good or bad) which would be a welcome relief.  As it stands now, they seem to be equally divided between adding useless crap and removing things that people actually want.

     

    I guess that depends. Less code means everything is relatively easier to maintain. Now for normal software that still would be no reason to remove anything.

    So let's cook up a scenario. Maybe you are depending on a cross-platform library, which is also known to randomly change and remove features and then patronize the users about it, an have to keep up with their stupid API-changes. Maybe you build your own garbage collector on top of a language in which you have to do memory management manuallly, because you couldn't figure out where all your memory leaks were and then you essentially gave up. Maybe you build an extension library which was so stupidly out of focus people started using it to rebuild tetris and started build operating systems out of it. Maybe you then actually build an operating system out of it. And maybe once you've replaced it with something more normal you decided to replace C++, because hey, Microsoft managed to do that, didn't they?

    Now I'm not saying they are lazy or stupid. I'm saying they are complete fuckups, who have now decided to patronize me about my usage of their software because everything else would be hard.

     



  • @fire2k said:

    There is also an Add-On that restores the previous functionality: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/click-to-play-per-element/
     

    I'm sure there's some law that states requiring a plugin to return to previous functionality is an indication something's badly fucked somewhere.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @joe.edwards said:

    I know this because Eolas filed a lawsuit against my current employer for using Flash on our website.
    To be fair, using Flash is an abomination. The sooner we can bury that fœtid mess in a mountain of fire and pain, the better.



  • @CodeNinja said:

    I'm just surprised there are people who still use Firefox. I mean, besides my mother and 85 year old grandfather.

    My parents might still be using some version of IE, sometimes. Anyone know if it's improved lately? I haven't had the patience to run the experiments yet.



  • @Shoreline said:

    @CodeNinja said:
    I'm just surprised there are people who still use Firefox. I mean, besides my mother and 85 year old grandfather.

    My parents might still be using some version of IE, sometimes. Anyone know if it's improved lately? I haven't had the patience to run the experiments yet.

    If for some reason Chrome is not available I prefer IE10 over FF. I will also take Opera over FF anytime. Actually I would rather use a cloud-driven browser (like Maxthon) than FF and the bar does not get lower than that.



  • Everything's moving to the cloud these days, even browsers.



  • Maxthon is not cloud-driven, it's a normal (but bad) browser that you can link with an online account to sync your data, just like Chrome or Firefox or Opera. They just market it as "cloud browser" for some reason I can't fathom.



  • @anonymous234 said:

    Maxthon is not cloud-driven, it's a normal (but bad) browser that you can link with an online account to sync your data, just like Chrome or Firefox or Opera. They just market it as "cloud browser" for some reason I can't fathom.

    Oh I thought it was like Amazon Silk:

    1. you type the url in the address bar
    2. some worker in Amazon Mumbai* data center receives it
    3. he asks to other workers in the data center if anyone has teh code for that page
    4. if not he opens the url in Chrome and when the page has loaded he copies teh code in his clipboard
    5. he opens the secret wordpress blog associated with every Kindle Fire
    6. he creates a new post with the content of the clipboard
    7. the blog is RSS-capable and sends the content to the Silk machine

    This looks clumsy but it is very reliable and is faster than browsing the web with Firefox.

    * could be a chinese prisoner/slave depending on when you bought the device



  • @flaneurb said:

    In Firefox 23, if I had the Flash Player set to "Ask to Activate" on the plug-in page, I could open several YouTube pages as separate tabs and play the videos one by one.

    I have absolutely no sympathy for people being inconvenienced after building esoteric edge-case workflows on top of fringe bits and pieces of unrelated behaviour. There isn't a software company in business that has enough spare hours in the day to give a shit about this strange habit of opening lots of YouTube tabs simultaneously and jury-rigging the plugin system to control the playback of those tabs.

    If you're gonna stick your penis in a vacuum cleaner hose to masturbate, that's your business, but don't send your dick measurements to the manufacturer expecting them to tailor the hose to fit you better.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @Zecc said:

    Everything's moving to the cloud these days, even browsers.
     

    I won't be happy until we have the entire Internet in a cloud.



  • @GNU Pepper said:

    strange habit of opening lots of YouTube tabs simultaneously

    What the arse are you on?



  • For the particular case of YouTube there are dozens of extensions that make their site considerably better (which wasn't exactly hard to begin with), and let you disable auto-play among other things.



  • @Cassidy said:

    @fire2k said:

    There is also an Add-On that restores the previous functionality: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/click-to-play-per-element/
     

    I'm sure there's some law that states requiring a plugin to return to previous functionality is an indication something's badly fucked somewhere.

     

    Well, Open Source technically has  a mechanism for correcting the course of any project. Forking.

    The only problem with forking is that you'll have to decide whether you want to fork from an early version and port all the security fixes, or  fork from latest and try to undo the feature cuts.

    Boy am I waiting eagerly to see what the Debian team will ship with their next release.

     

     



  • @GNU Pepper said:

    @flaneurb said:
    In Firefox 23, if I had the Flash Player set to "Ask to Activate" on the plug-in page, I could open several YouTube pages as separate tabs and play the videos one by one.

    I have absolutely no sympathy for people being inconvenienced after building esoteric edge-case workflows on top of fringe bits and pieces of unrelated behaviour. There isn't a software company in business that has enough spare hours in the day to give a shit about this strange habit of opening lots of YouTube tabs simultaneously and jury-rigging the plugin system to control the playback of those tabs.

     

     Yes, because there are no valid reasons (like let's a connection no keeping up with 1080p) where you want to selectively preload videos. And to anyone advocating YouTube-Extensions: There are other video sites in existence.

     @GNU Pepper said:

    If you're gonna stick your penis in a vacuum cleaner hose to masturbate, that's your business, but don't send your dick measurements to the manufacturer expecting them to tailor the hose to fit you better.

     

    Yes, that is a fitting metaphor and makes perfect sense. Are you on crack?

     



  • @OldCrow said:

    @Cassidy said:

    @fire2k said:

    There is also an Add-On that restores the previous functionality: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/click-to-play-per-element/
     

    I'm sure there's some law that states requiring a plugin to return to previous functionality is an indication something's badly fucked somewhere.

     

    Well, Open Source technically has  a mechanism for correcting the course of any project. Forking.

    The only problem with forking is that you'll have to decide whether you want to fork from an early version and port all the security fixes, or  fork from latest and try to undo the feature cuts.

    Boy am I waiting eagerly to see what the Debian team will ship with their next release.

     

     

    Because that worked soo well for Debian. They suceeded in getting the Firefox-license less restrictive and achieved all of their goals. What's that you say? All they suceeded in was wasting a lot of manpower in backporting software towards a shrinking userbase? Huh.

     Forking isn't a mechanism for correcting project courses, since the thing you are forking about has to significant enough to build a userbase on. See Oracle being huge dicks about MySQL and OpenOffice. The mechanism for correcting project courses is complaining a lot until stupid social media hypes and reddit annoy the shit out the sponsoring/project team, so that they either change things or ragequit.

     



  • @fire2k said:

    ragequit

    I had to look that one up to see if it was proper lingo or if you made it up. For some reason I had never seen it before - what a great expression!





  • @Ronald said:

    For some reason I had never seen it before

    HOW!?!?!


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    @Ronald said:
    For some reason I had never seen it before

    HOW!?!?!

    I was going to make a joke about nobody being smart enough to do that on this site, so it's understandable.  Then I googled, and it turns out the term was used here ragequite a long time ago.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @Ronald said:
    For some reason I had never seen it before

    HOW!?!?!

    It's one of those things that escaped me. Like Freud living in Australia with kangaroos and jesus.



  • @FrostCat said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    @Ronald said:
    For some reason I had never seen it before

    HOW!?!?!

    I was going to make a joke about nobody being smart enough to do that on this site, so it's understandable.  Then I googled, and it turns out the term was used here ragequite a long time ago.

    I can't keep up with all the crazy sayings you kids have.

     



  • @fire2k said:

    @OldCrow said:

    Well, Open Source technically has  a mechanism for correcting the course of any project. Forking.

    The only problem with forking is that you'll have to decide whether you want to fork from an early version and port all the security fixes, or  fork from latest and try to undo the feature cuts.

    Boy am I waiting eagerly to see what the Debian team will ship with their next release.

     

     

    Because that worked soo well for Debian. They suceeded in getting the Firefox-license less restrictive and achieved all of their goals. What's that you say? All they suceeded in was wasting a lot of manpower in backporting software towards a shrinking userbase? Huh.

     Forking isn't a mechanism for correcting project courses, since the thing you are forking about has to significant enough to build a userbase on. See Oracle being huge dicks about MySQL and OpenOffice. The mechanism for correcting project courses is complaining a lot until stupid social media hypes and reddit annoy the shit out the sponsoring/project team, so that they either change things or ragequit.

     

    Depends on how you calculate userbases. I think with the recent changes in Ubuntu and Firefox, Debian might be gaining. I switched over from Ubuntu, for example; got frustrated with Unity.

    In cases where a group inside the developer base gets the power to commit stupidity on the project and uses this power to do just that, forking is a viable option. See for example ffmpeg/avconv. 

     



  • @OldCrow said:

    ffmpeg


  • Considered Harmful

    @OldCrow said:

    Depends on how you calculate userbases. I think with the recent changes in Ubuntu and Firefox, Debian might be gaining. I switched over from Ubuntu, for example; got frustrated with Unity.

    Can't you just install gnome-desktop on Ubuntu? I don't get when people bitch about something that can be changed so easily.


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