Yes, a giant table filled with hundreds of rows like "network.auth.subresource-img-cross-origin-http-auth-allow default boolean false" is in fact arcane.

I've always thought it weird that Firefox's about:config UI is not much better than editing a flat configuration file. Clearly there wasn't much effort put into it. Even IE's configuration is far better organised than that, grouping everything into hierarchical categories.

Uhh, Firefox does have the a proper GUI settings area. about:config is for experiments, internal flags automatically set according to the user's system configuration, or niche features not useful to most users (and so not promoted to a spot on one of the graphical panels).

With the "user.js" feature [0], you can actually control them from a flat configuration file.

[0] http://kb.mozillazine.org/User.js_file

If I tell my grandmother to open about:config she probably will write me off her will

My grandmother is pretty good with navigating text; constantly changing animated UIs are what confuse her.

Everyones hypothetical grandma is a shitty proxy for all users.

I taught retired people how to use computers for 5 years, I met and saw around 100 retirees interacting with a computer and talked with them about it. It's a very good proxy. You could see it immediately - they can handle good UX with good defaults, but a computer literally scares them and definitely NOT just lightly, I had people that nearly started crying when they thought they broke it - and the failure was that wallpaper was black but they expected a picture; I saw people literally screaming because a popup window or a dialog opened and they (in case of error) thought the computer is broken forever - I wish you saw their surprise when I clicked OK. Teaching them what is a button took at least 3 lessons - and that was in Windows 2000 to Windows XP times when a button actually looked like a button.

They are seriously afraid to even use it normally. Expecting them to change configuration is utter bullshit.

For any given product there is an expected demographic and a reasonable projected demographic going forward.

Older people are not a special case of a class of people incapable of becoming proficient with technology.

Current older people are in the position of having grown up before computers.

For any given tech product the computer incapable are probably not your biggest segment and that segment will shrink over time.

All of our 80 year old grandparents who mostly don't use technology now will use even less in whatever afterlife awaits and pretty soon we will have 50 year olds who encountered computers in their teens and grew comfortable with them.

Actually we have a rapidly increasing number of teens that have no idea how to use a computer due to smartphones and it's normal in Asia (especially Japan) to not even own a computer as a household. I've seen teens who don't know what a folder is.

Configuring things is a repeated cost we needn't pay if the defaults were good in the first place

Not everyone wants the same configuration, which is the whole reason for its existence in the first place.

That doesn't change anything about what GP said though.

When suddenly everybody went to the internet and not just experts.

Seriously, people can configure things. But on their level. So a ordinary person is able to configure popups yes no and might understand the consequences - but if this setting is next to experimental new webgl module which might crash your browswr - and hundreds of other very technical ones, then clearly no. And firefox about config is lile that.

Eternal September?

What does being helpless have to do with anything?

If a behavior makes sense and no one would reasonably not want it (like blocking popups during page unload), why does it need to be an option? Why isn't it just "the way the browser works"? What other "unbreak my browser" options are buried under there?

Nobody has actually mentioned a way to block pop-ups on unload with about:config in the first place. Not having ever seen a popup on unload it may actually already work like this.

The option discussed was forcing new windows into tabs.