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Re:Why Did Mozilla Remove XUL Add-Ons? by kmeisthax on Friday August 21, 2020 @12:32AM (#24231984)
The original design goal of Firefox was to be a "90/10" browser (relative to the old Mozilla suite). e.g. 90% of the people only need 10% of the features. Catering to power users was never the goal of Firefox and they lost users to Chrome when they did. What people want is a browser that loads webpages quickly and doesn't use a lot of system resources doing so.
Re:Why Did Mozilla Remove XUL Add-Ons? by m4rtink on Friday August 21, 2020 @05:46AM (#24233480)
These "most people only use 10% of the features, so we can drop the rest" ideas are just soo stupid & can quickly kill otherwise good projects. And it's not just about chasing away power users, who are about the only advocates and marketing you have. Its mainly about the 10% being different for every user, effectively covering the full feature matrix!
Re:Why Did Mozilla Remove XUL Add-Ons? by Dagger2 on Friday August 21, 2020 @06:36AM (#24233716)
Exactly. There's no such thing as an average user: https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-...

If you design your thing for the average user, it won't work well for any user.

Re:Why Did Mozilla Remove XUL Add-Ons? by Karunamon on Friday August 21, 2020 @12:47PM (#24236531)
Yet that seems to be precisely who they're targeting.

The only benefit Firefox now has over Chrome is a vague political notion of not using Google-made software, something that there isn't enough call for in the real world to drive significant marketshare. Their real differentiation was sacrificed on the altar of ease of development, and now what we're left with is an also-ran, in multiple meanings of that term.

Worse, an also-ran that's doing increasingly arational things, almost as if they're wildly groping about for the mythical marketshare.

Re:Why Did Mozilla Remove XUL Add-Ons? by Izkata on Friday August 21, 2020 @02:06PM (#24237339)
Well, perhaps not the only thing: Tree Style Tabs opens in a sidebar in Firefox (and with user CSS, can be made to auto-expand), while in Chrome it opens in a separate window.
Re:Why Did Mozilla Remove XUL Add-Ons? by arp242 on Friday August 21, 2020 @01:11AM (#24232169)
Well, Mozilla included email, chat, and whatnot. Regardless of what the goals were, it did cater to power users and clearly many people don't want the direction Firefox went in.
Re:Why Did Mozilla Remove XUL Add-Ons? by Semaphor on Friday August 21, 2020 @02:08AM (#24232461)
> and clearly many people don't want the direction Firefox went in.

A majority? I doubt it. I think it’s an extremely vocal minority that don’t care about the slowness of their browser (pre-e10s, pre-quantum), about things breaking (XUL extensions) or about UI features for the broad masses.

I’d bet money that FF’s 25% in Germany would be far closer to US numbers if they stayed where those vocal people want them.

Re:Why Did Mozilla Remove XUL Add-Ons? by arp242 on Friday August 21, 2020 @05:13AM (#24233332)
I never said majority.

All I'm saying is that based on my observations people's views on what Firefox should or should not be are different, and that this explains why people are still "angry" about the extensions breaking and such. I'm not having an argument with anyone.

Re:Why Did Mozilla Remove XUL Add-Ons? by cedilla on Friday August 21, 2020 @05:51AM (#24233503)
That may seem like bloat today, but in those days, web mail barely existed and was inferior.

If anything, using the MUA bundled with your browser was less power-userish than using a stand-alone client.

Re:Why Did Mozilla Remove XUL Add-Ons? by arp242 on Friday August 21, 2020 @06:05AM (#24233572)
I still miss the old Opera, including the built-in email client I used. So yeah, I agree.

Honestly, Opera is one of the best pieces of software I've ever used. It had tons of features and customizability without being slow or feeling "bloated". I never quite understood why it failed to gain marketshare 10 years ago while Firefox did.

Re:Why Did Mozilla Remove XUL Add-Ons? by zokula on Friday August 21, 2020 @05:50PM (#24239235)
> I never quite understood why it failed to gain marketshare 10 years ago while Firefox did.

Firefox was free and Opera wasn't. Geeks don't trust proprietary garbage.