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Firefox the Browser© Copyright Darrell Anderson. (Winter 2004–2005) I have been using the Firefox web browser since Phoenix 0.5. I waited a month after the grand release before updating to version 1.0. I spent several days tinkering and have been using that version since. Firefox 1.0 is a wonderful tool and enhances my web surfing in many ways. Firefox works as advertised. Yet, I am frustrated because I think Firefox is not ready for many users. There is room for improvement. My concern is not with basic function but form—usability. Firefox needs a lot of tweaking to realize full potential. Let there be no doubt that Firefox is a tweaker’s paradise! Yet, only those people who tinker will possess the patience and ability to customize Firefox. Many users likely discount Firefox because of this design. Many people today are true point-and-click users and have little interest in tinkering. Therefore, with a dose of tough love I propose some ideas to improve Firefox. Intuitive Tabbed BrowsingBy design and definition, hypertext reading is unpredictable. Users might want to open a document in the current tab, a background tab, or an active foreground tab. Firefox supports opening pages in the background or foreground, but in an awkward either-or manner and through awkward keyboard-mouse combinations because many people are not middle-mouse-button users. The hyperlink context menu should support three options: (1) Open the link in the current tab, (2) Open the link in a background tab, and (3) Open the link in an active foreground tab. For users preferring additional browser windows along with their tabbed browsing, a fourth menu option opens the link in another browser window, but that option should be missing if using single window mode. Context menus are second nature in today’s computing world. The only way to obtain these intuitive and natural menu options, however, is through two extensions: (1) Tabbrowser Extensions (TBE) and (2) Open Link In. This enhancement will help many users, teaching people the power of tabbed browsing. Context Menus, Keyboard Shortcuts, and ToolbarsThere is no easy way to modify Firefox context menus. One of the first extensions I downloaded almost two years ago was Close Tab Context. Oddly, Firefox provides no way to close a tab using the web page context menu. Similarly, some people need another extension to add a Print option. Without extensions, awkwardly editing userChrome.css is necessary to disable menu options. Fortunately, an extension helps avoid that problem and another extension helps modify keyboard shortcuts. Default ActionsNobody can predict how a specific individual wants to browse. Unfortunately, Firefox provides no intuitive way to define default actions. Consider that Firefox provides no intuitive way to configure bookmarks to always open in a new tab, although there are extensions to overcome that oversight. Similarly, unless one discovers the keyboard shortcut of Alt-Enter, using the Location and Search boxes force all results to open in the active tab instead of a new tab. Many people prefer to always open a new tab by default—this is the nature of tabbed browsing. Thus, pressing the Enter key should open a link in a new tab, not Alt-Enter. Why not provide a user interface to allow users to configure default actions according to their style of browsing? Hidden PreferencesThere are hundreds of user preferences in Firefox. Unfortunately, without extensions the overall Firefox interface provides no intuitive way to find and modify those preferences. Modifying these preferences requires something many users will not want to do—edit configuration files. Such a task horrifies many users. What many users embrace, however, is a GUI (Graphical User Interface) method of setting such features. Consider some of the preferences currently unchangeable without extensions or manual editing of configuration files:
Point-and-click is here to stay regardless of how minimalists try to discourage that. The typical user has learned to adapt to GUI dialog boxes, but most refuse to adapt to fine-tuning a computer by editing configuration files. Silent BrowsingSound support for specific browser events is lacking. Many people continually ask for such support. A sound extension exists for Firefox, but is an incomplete package. The extension also is buggy in my Slackware system while working fine in Windows. Audio feedback might be annoying to some users, but is an indispensable feature for disabled people or dial-up users. Sound events should be an available option. Everybody Does Not Have BroadbandDial-up users are forgotten people in today’s world wide web. Start a freshly installed version of Firefox and the browser immediately tries to connect to the Mozilla web site—the default home page. If the dial-up user is not connected to the net—typical for dial-up users, the browser spins its wheels looking for a response. The browser never checks if the computer is online. The download manager is a bandwidth hog and bully. No option exists to configure that tool to gracefully pause and yield bandwidth when concurrently loading new web pages. There is no option to provide audio feedback for completed downloads. An extension exists to provide a pop-up message, but that is distracting. A subtle background sound provides non-intrusive feedback. No option exists to toggle images for each specific tab. As a dial-up user I surf often with no images and maintain a short white list. Occasionally I want to enable the images for a specific web site but only for that session and only for that tab. The image toggle is an all-or-nothing approach. An extension exists, but toggling requires a full page refresh, instead of automatically loading only the missing images. On dial-up, concurrently opening more than one tab significantly slows loading times. A better method is an option to load tabs sequentially. Add the necessary tweaks so dial-up users are not alienated and can remain a part of the online community. Missing White Lists and Ugly Web SitesFirefox provides a white list for saving cookies. However, without extensions there is no easy way to toggle cookies for a specific site and only for the current session. Only one extension prevents third-party cookies while toggling cookie behavior. Oddly, Firefox provides no white list for JavaScript, Java, or Forms. Dial-up users particularly do not possess the bandwidth to have these options enabled full-time. Sorely missing from version 1.0 is the page style toggle button from previous versions. Version 1.0 provides a menu option for disabling horrific style sheets, but traversing a menu to perform a toggle action is slow and awkward. Opt-In?The Firefox philosophy is an opt-in approach. That means Firefox provides minimal features and users must decide which features to add. Unfortunately, there is an ancient challenge with this approach. How do people discover what features are missing—especially when there is no intuitive GUI providing clues? During my tinkering with version 1.0 I spent many hours searching for appropriate methods to improve my Firefox experience. Many users will not cope with that kind of exhaustion. The opt-in approach leaves many users stranded. Only experienced computer users or enthusiasts will possess the inclination or ability to investigate. The current extension and theme interface is slow. After mouse-clicking anywhere in the extensions dialog box I always wait a long couple of seconds before anything happens. Although a close button appears in the top right corner thanks to the window manager, there is no “Close” button provided within the window interface. Extensions enrich the Firefox experience. Rather than require novices and non-techies to search the web, the most widely used and popular extensions should be packaged with Firefox. The Firefox installation script should provide users an opportunity to install and enable popular extensions. Many of the features I have discussed should be native to Firefox without an extension. Minimalists and techies might not install or enable those options, but they would be readily available to many users. Unfortunately, many users are not going to understand the way they add those extensions. There is no intuitive way to install extensions and themes. Another extension provides this common sense option. Extensions or Contractions?A challenge with extensions is the potential for one extension to break another. After tinkering with 1.0 I discovered some extensions that do not work, or cause peculiar problems with other extensions. Some extensions merely failed. Others would not install without editing the “maxversion” parameter within the install.rdf file. Few users would have a clue about editing that file. Possibly worst of all for many users, there is no easy mechanism to roll back to a previous configuration if an extension installation fails. Multi-User? Not!After fine-tuning Firefox 1.0 in Windows I next tried migrating my configuration to my Slackware system. I found no way to do so. I had to manually install and configure every extension and theme. Perplexing is that extensions and themes no longer are supported globally. Phoenix/Firebird supported global installations of extensions and themes, but that seems no longer the practice. I was baffled that I had to manually install and configure Firefox for each login account on my Slackware system. In a dual-boot environment—common these days, as well as a network—common now in many homes too, extensions should be accessible from any operating system and by any user. Both Windows and GNU/Linux today are multi-user environments and Firefox does not support this? After more research, apparently global installations are possible, but not through the GUI. The lack of GUI support is the reason why I never discovered multi-user support to install extensions. To install an extension globally, you have to run Firefox from the command line with a special switch option: /full/path/of/firefox.exe -install-global-extension /full/path/of/nameofextension.xpi Although global extensions are possible, not being able to do so through the GUI is user-hostile. Yeah, the counter-argument is that only administrators likely will want to do this so the Firefox developers opted to disable global installations for the typical user and force installations locally to the user’s profile. Well, this is still dumb. Many home users run networks too, and by design, GNU/Linux is a multi-user system. Seems you can do the same with themes: just use the install-global-theme switch. Of course, to do any of this you must have administrator/root permissions to the main Firefox directory. I also have not yet found a convenient way to mass-install extensions and themes. Additionally, these options apparently are buggy, as reported in Bug 305361. Hopefully future versions will provide better global/multi-user support. ConclusionFirefox is a wonderful software tool. After several days of initial tinkering and now several months of full use, my Firefox 1.0 installation and approximately three dozen extensions all work great. Yet, using that many extensions indicates either I am a fussy user or I have been busy patching holes. I suspect the answer lies somewhere between. Yes, I found several solutions to improve Firefox, but only with much persistence and trial-and-error. Currently there are no remedies for some of the issues I discussed. Unfortunately, I am not a programmer to write my own extensions. Many users never will do what I have done to fine-tune Firefox. Most merely want to jump in the car and travel from A to B. Firefox enthusiasts are not going to change this simple observation of human nature. Currently, the Firefox interface fails to provide a necessary guiding hand. The concepts of free software and the open source development model are ideas still experiencing growing pains. Everybody is learning the ropes. I have not written this essay with any intent to destroy or ridicule, but with the hope of improving Firefox. My personal experience as a computer user for more than 20 years, as one who has helped others, and as a technical writer, provides me a unique perspective to constructively evaluate Firefox. I care enough about Firefox and the underlying philosophy that I felt motivated to write this essay. Firefox is stable and new but needs to improve. With widespread enthusiasm for the product I expect continued maturation. I hope the Firefox community will pause and reflect. They have accomplished something wonderful and unique. I want that momentum to continue. Firefox is ready for the knowledgeable computer user—the “techie.” I hope future versions of Firefox will win the heart of remaining users too. Finis. |
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