Yes, this is exactly right, some things won't be for everyone. The best part of Firefox (for me, besides being able to have vertical tree-style tabs) is that more times than not, you can disable and/or hide the change you don't like, as demonstrated by the blog post.
Sure, I might not agree with every change they make to default choices but they at least let us power users configure the browser so it ends up just like how we want it to be, and for that I'm very grateful, as it tends to be uncommon in this day and age.
Nobody is saying the feature should be removed or scolding Mozilla for adding it, they're just explaining how to get rid of it if it annoys you.
Same as the AI integrations. There's obviously a market for them so FF has done some fairly sensible work to add them. And then people here explode like Mozilla has kicked their puppy.
But in all seriousness, it seems to me that firefox has relatively more opinionated users, or users who are very specific/strict about their setup and what they want, and many are often fast and vocal in expressing opinions compared to the other browsers. I don't think we see posts around with people complaining about features in other major browsers in the same way (of course I could just miss them because I would pay less attention to other browsers).
I am pretty sure somebody must have complained about the ff quantum update too, back in the days.
You're right, a bunch of extensions weren't working initially, large parts of the community were upset about that. Eventually, as more extensions were supported and new alternatives emerged, it eventually died out and was almost completely forgotten about, until you reminded me of it just now.
Honestly, I'm still sad about that. It caused a hit to the usability and functionality of Firefox. Some of that has since been compensated for, but parity has not yet been achieved and probably never will.
But even with the functionality reduction, Firefox is still better than the alternatives for me, so I continue to use it regardless. Perhaps, eventually, something better will come along.
Same as WebUSB - heaven forbid that a website can become more useful by flashing firmware to a device!!
The web is a platform. It will grow and mature into something we can't possibly imagine. It's OK for browsers to try new things to see what sticks.
I assume that Mozilla have done some research showing people like typing emoji but don't know how to use their system emoji picker. Even in an ultra-purist world where a browser does nothing other than render HTML (death to JS!!!) surely people will want to type into boxen and POST text somewhere?
Similarly, there were people who complained about forms and buttons at roughly the same time and, a few years later, img maps, frames, layers (okay, with good reason), and CSS.
They (or their spiritual heirs) always pop up on Firefox threads, for some reason. For those people, I want to point out that Lynx is right here and is as usable as it's ever been: https://github.com/ThomasDickey/lynx-snapshots
Useful for whom ? The CIA ?
The alternative would have been booting to Windows, downloading some dodgy .exe from an advert infested site, and running untrusted code which inexplicably required my admin password.
I'm pleased the Web is able to put a stop to nonsense like that.
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize.[1]
The only modern Firefox feature I like is the omnibar and the "bangs" - * for bookmarks, % for tabs, ^ - for history, @ for named search engines etc. But we have lost far more features then we have gotten. We don't even have configurable search engines from the settings anymore.
Emojis always felt juvenile to me, call me a boomer (not really a boomer in age), but they are an eyesore for me.
My ideal Firefox build would regain classic chrome from pre-Australis days with integrated omnibar. The UI would never change. Along this I would like some plugins that were only possible with XUL. But I know we will never get this unless someone actually makes these classic forks as secure and performant as modern Firefox.
If it weren't for prefs and userChome.css I would have long since abandoned Firefox. Those are the only things that makes it still worth using.
It's annoying, but you can still toggle `browser.urlbar.update2.engineAliasRefresh` to true and it will restore the add/edit/remove buttons for search engines.
so does cancer.
Is it? What website can you not view in Firefox today? I almost exclusively use Firefox on my computer (Safari on mobile), and can't remember the last time I encountered a website that wasn't viewable in Firefox. Even my bank, which tends to be whiny about what browser you use, works 100% in Firefox too, even with all the warnings.
Seriously? Have a few concrete examples to back that up?
"Mozilla needs to attract new users!!"
Mozilla proceeds to add new features which new users might like
"No! Not like that"
Like, what do you actually want? A browser with a UI that hasn't changed since Stallman was in nappies? Things have to change in order to grow. Not everything is going to be right for you and that's OK.