Asa Dotzler: Firefox and more

One thing I'd love to see dumped is all the email integration stuff left over from Mozilla. I've never, ever used that Send Link thing until just now... and it turns out none of them even work.

Things can only get better and better, and Firefox is by miles the easiest to use browser, over IE, Opera, Mozilla Suite, Avant, Safari, Konqueror, all.

So I dont think it needs worrying about to much, really. Many simple features can be hidden until the user looks for them, or needs them. Thats something Opera does very well, and something Mozilla could do just as well.

Its only when you get to complete changes that serious consideration needs to happen imo. Eg, if the fast forward/back buttons were on by default, that would be very confusing and un-necessary for most users, and a bad move. But having it easily turned on, perhaps in the advaned section of options or elsewhere/somewhere hidden/discreet - fine.

One thing I do feel needs to be easier is tabs. Yes 1.5 has its own Tab options in Options which is a great move, but it is still very difficult for the user to get very basic behavour out of tabs. On DP A2 I configured all tab options and still I got windows when I didnt want them.

What is the point in 6+ options, if the user is still going to get windows, when they may never want to, and that often is the case. Many whom have been sold on Tabs will use them if theyre easy, so want an easy tab/window choice, not endless of options be they in the browser by default, or as numerous of add ons elsewhere. 9/10 that just isnt even considered even.

Kris Silver says: if the fast forward/back buttons were on by default, that would be very confusing and un-necessary for most users, and a bad move.

why? from the users perspective its exactly like traditional back and forward. its just an under the hood change to make things faster.

Could you provide a couple of specific examples of features that should be removed?

i agree with ant. remove the "send link", "read mail", and "new message" menu items, but those are very small things. asa, could u post what features u would like removed? maybe if u could get support we could get some of those removed.

sorry, we posted at about the same time.

I'm for keeping the mail-related items, as I think they're using normal API calls (like MAPI on Windows) to do their tasks. Since it integrates with whatever mail client I use (and set as default), I doubt they're really much of leftovers from the suite.

In fact I wouldn't know of features I'd like removed. Looking at Opera would be good - it's feature-rich, damn fast, and still very easy to use, even for beginners.

I don't know how to do it, but there has to be a better way to make tabbed browsing more discoverable. Tabbed browsing along with the middle/wheel click to open a link in a new tab is a great feature that can go undiscovered for many users.

Basically I agree, but making extending the browser more popular would help. When everyone feels like "Hey, why can't I send a link of the page I'm visiting by e-mail now? Oh, lets check if I can add such a button" it would be okay. Otherwise I think we'll see people switching back to Internet Explorer, thinking Firefox lacks features they are used to.

On my nomination for removal are the Tools (although I don't really know where "options" should go as I won't remove it completely :P) and Go menus. More things should be clustered, like the printing options (as "Page Setup" probably is confusing anyway) and the "Options, Extensions and Themes".

The above addresses the default GUI, but I do disagree that Firefox should limit the features offered otherwise. I think everything should become as powerful as possible and it's up to extensions to exploit the power of everything Firefox manages by offering end-user features.

One option in the "Fonts & Colors" window works in a very confusing way that I'm still not sure if I understand it correctly. In the fonts fieldset of that window you choose alphabet you want the fonts to set but the "Proportional" field included in it works globally not on a per alphabet basis. If you change it in Western alphabet, the change affects all other alphabets so it shouldn't be included inside the fieldset but outside.

The "Enable Java" option is something that may confuse a lot of users too. There is "Enable Javascript" which if checked makes Javascript work out-of-the box. The "Enable Java", however, needs additional Java Virtual Machine but how is my mom supposed to figure out "Enable Javascript" doesn't require anything extra but "Enable Java" does?

i'm all for dumping all mail related stuff other than the [a href="mailto:a@b"].
the other thing i must add is that the tab bar is only really a half-bar, you can close it, and it has a slightly different appearence. i would like to see that made into a more static bar (take a look at ie7 beta).

Man, I hate to directly contradict people, but please do not adopt any part of IE7's UI. I, like not a few others, am appalled at what they produced.

I do use the mail features in Firefox/Deer Park, and they definitely work, and are helpful. At work, I use Thunderbird for e-mail, and when I want to give a coworker a useful link (oftentimes, for the article I'm showing them face-to-face for later reading), it's handy to use 'Send Link.' The mail count thing is kind of dodgy, though, and I usually open Thunderbird the first time around outside of FF. At home, I don't really use the mail features, as I use Gmail and mutt on OS X & Linux, but I still think it would feel kind of empty without some of those choices.

This things should be removed for normal users IMHO:
- Javascript console (as very advanced user I still don't use it)
- View page source (OK, I use it sometimes, but you can't expect normal people to deal with HTML)
- Read mail (why launching e-mail application from Firefox is more important than launching e.g Notepad?); I would keep send link.
- make Web search and Open site hidden/grayed out if address bar and search bar are shown (as they just move pointer to them - I would like to compare that to the word procesor which has menu item "Write" which moves pointer to plain paper)
- remove current Privacy settings (or move them to advanced settings) and put instead just plain menu item "Record surfing data" which could be checked/unchecked

I hope that Seamonkey can benefit from the lessons learned with Firefox. As much as there might be complexity inherent to a suite setup, I still think the suite works for many setups (especially on an ANCIENT Windows 98 laptop such as mine) and should continue to be improved to the greatest extent possible.

Right on Asa. I've always thought the right-click context menu in the HTML page area could be trimmed down quite a bit. I was never quite sure why the Back/Forward/Reload/Stop commands where in there (frames?).

I would be interested to do some user testing at a significant scale (testing pool of thousands) and see what features people actually do use and what they don't. I wonder if there's a project idea in there: a UI monitoring bug extension for Firefox that sends usage back for studying...

I love your focus and point of view. Power users get so wrapped up in wanting more "power" in an application that they forget truly great software would mean they didn't need to be power users! I talked about your article briefly in my blog.

Looking forward to the new feature of "Improved Ease of Use"! :)

just wonder if FTP upload will ever be added into firefox?

Um... excuse me? have we lost our minds?

I take pride in using the Suite because it comes with the kitchen sink. If I want a feature, I know its in there somewhere.

Shoulden't we be asking what people want before we start looking into removing features that have been standard for years?

How will this help Firefox? Will removing a java console save us 1mb of download space? Is the menu in a place that is annoing grandma?

Netscape/Mozilla has always had a "power user" background to it. How are power users going to use a product that does not have the items they want?

Has the idea been thrown around for 2 interface options? One for grandma and one for web developers/extensive users? I know there are kiosk options.. but that is not practical for a desktop user.

Ok. I'm done ranting.

*hugs*

Thats all well and great but I would like to suggest something to add, something to handle tab overflow. right now firefox doesnt handle this very well so...

I forget, although I use "Send Link" all the time in other browsers, did it ever work in Firefox?

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8b4) Gecko/20050904 Firefox/1.0+

FF does HAVE "send link" and it does open Thunderbird but I have to manually go back and copy and paste the link I was trying to send into a manually created new mail window.

Is this an improvement or a bug?

Take the Back button out of the context menu, and I will scream. I *hate* the absence of that in Safari's ultra-clean menus. Fitt's Law defines the area where your mouse is as one of the 5 most easily targetted spots. If my hand is on the mouse, and I want to go back, all I do is right click, and nudge the mouse a few pixels over to "Back" and click, and I'm happy. I certainly don't want to go all the way up to the toolbar, nor do I want to take my hand off the mouse to hit Cmd/Alt-←. Normally, I'm rather keyboard-centric, but when my hand is on the mouse, it's wasteful to switch back and forth.

Let's keep a few features in, please? If you alienate all the people who sing the high praises of your products, it's very hard to keep the momentum going.

--a Firefox user who is deeply grateful that cool heads prevailed and Cmd+Left/Right Arrow were kept. (Cmd-[|] was really ugly.)

>> I certainly don't want to go all the way up to the toolbar, nor do I want to take my hand off the mouse to hit Cmd/Alt-←

I prefer hitting backspace myself :)

Though the back button in the context menu is probably something that deserves to stay, do we really need forward, reload *and* stop. The problem with having so many items in there is that it can be hard to spot the one you want.

wfeng wrote: just wonder if FTP upload will ever be added into firefox?

I'm guessing that would be considered a complexity most users don't need, so no, not as part of the regular firefox install ;) However, you can easily add the fireFTP extension: http://fireftp.mozdev.org/

"Firefox makes people dread going online a lot less, but removing dread is just the beginning.

I can't wait to start work on Firefox 2.0"

Or Firefox 2.0 -- who needs "Tools -> Options" anyway?! ;-)
Seriously, those words did sound a bit scary to me.

"I prefer hitting backspace myself :)"

I prefer using my thumb button. It's clearly the best use I can imagine for a 5 button mouse. The back/forward buttons! Even the newb Linux user in me could get it to work there. Bliss! :-)

Just my two cents about the planned removal of the JavaScript console. Recently I've written a nice piece of JavaScript with some XPath query in it. It worked flawlessly in Firefox after spotting a typo within seconds thanks to the JavaScript console. But up until now I can't get it to run with IE because it just gives an error symbol in the status bar and no help whatsoever to debug it. There are probably tools that I could install for IE that would help me. But as I'm using IE under wine/Linux I really don't feel like installing anything else. And I wouldn't want to install anything in firefox either. And I really don't think that this menu entry comes into the way of the user.

If I want to use a minimalistic browser I use w3c.

Getting rid of the javascript console has been discussed before. Although the average user isn't likely to have any use for it themselves, it is used for diagnosing problems with sites/extensions/Firefox, and the answers for several average-user FAQs involve looking at it. If you make it optional, it would mean you had to get people to install an extension in order to help them.

And Steven has answered his own point - the context menu needs most of that stuff because of frames. I guess you could have a dialog or use the focus or something to choose which frame to view source or reload or whatever, but it would probably be less intuitive. More sophisticated users could use the menu editor extension to change stuff...

I'd happily see "Read mail" and "New message" be removed though.

How about hiding 'view source' and 'javascript console' by default and put a pref in, under advanced, that defaults to 'Hide webdeveloper features' or something along those lines...

Would I be shot if I suggested making the use of tabs more like Opera 8's? Feeds' contents are shown in a tab instead of a cascading menu; downloads open in a tab instead of another window; history opens in a tab instead of a sidebar; bookmarks open in a tab instead of another window and/or a sidebar.

There's a feature to remove - the sidebar.

The source view should open in a tab too, and the JS console and the DOM Inspector, and why not Help while we're at it?

One thing I would like to see simplified is the "clear private data" feature. It now uses 2 dialog for something that could be only one. First you have the first dialog under the tools menu, and then you have the second one in the options dialog, under the privacy tab. Other browsers with this feature only have one dialog where you can select what you want to clear + options for it (Camino and Opera, upcoming IE).

"Why technology misses the masses"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/4208658.stm

I think Firefox hits the sweet spot, although as a power-user
I'd probably still be using Mozilla Suite if Firefox didn't have
about:config for the times when I *did* need the extra power.

"A feature is a flaming hoop we make our users jump through"
I think you mean something other than "feature" here or that "feature" means something else. For instance I think it would be a feature if firefox supported all of css3 perfectly or if it magicly found out the best way to connect to a given server so all of the connection settings could be removed and I don't see how this would injur the user. If you mean "settings", I agree, that this is something that should be minimized, if at all possible, and the creators should be good/strong enough to choose the right setting a elliminate the choice so I have one less thing to worry about.

For instance I think that "Send link..." should be removed or renamed (eg. to "E-mail link..."), because it looks so similar to "Save link...", but I don't think there should be an option to set the "text" (and realy don't think "Send link..." should exist at all).

Supporting standards is not a feature, but not supporting it is a bug.

I'd like to see an icon on by default for options.

Clicking this will open the options window, but Extentions, Themes & Search Engine plugins would also be here.

In addition, the 'new tab' button should be on by default, maybe to the left of the address bar.

"How about hiding 'view source' and 'javascript console' by default and put a pref in, under advanced, that defaults to 'Hide webdeveloper features' or something along those lines..."

How about removing them instead and provide an option during install to include developer tools.

David: at that point, IE is going to become the "professional" tool for IT departments because "it has view source by default". What IT uses, the company uses. That would have a negative impact on corporate adoption.

I do kind of agree with having perhaps an "add ons" tab in Options, which contains 3 sections for plugins, extensions and themes. This is a much easier and more organised way to collate it all. There should at least first be an easy option for this, and to be honest I see no harm in it being default. Over from that as an extension of default, why not have the extensions manager, theme manager, and a plugins manager all then built into options.

So its all in one options, truly, and less windows. Really, I think it would also be great to have search engines here also. So users can easily delete engines they dont want, move other around in order of preference/alphabetical instead of having to go into folders and do it manually, which of course isnt attractive, efficient or user friendly, so hardly any do this.
The benefits of this organised fashion are endless.

Also, someone reminded me of another simplifying idea I long had, in 1.5 is the Sanitize Settings button. Well what a ridiculously over complicated, un clear, un user friendly descriptiuon. It sounds damn scary too. So most wont ever touch this. Something that makes far more sense, and related to the name of the entire section meaning users are guaranteed to know what it means and does: Clear All Privacy.

what about a "simple" and a "professional" mode in firefox?

The only thing that Firefox really needs to get rid of is clutter. In terms of actual features, I'm struggling to come up with something that isn't useful for a large amount of people. Here's my take (apologies for the long-windedness, but I have to fill this hour with something).

JavaScript Console:

Since Firefox isn't perfect (let alone extensions or websites), the JavaScript console still has a place in the default install. It's 100% better than throwing error dialogs whenever something breaks and countless problems (CSS, content scripting, chrome) can all be diagnosed with it upon request for info.

Removing it might declutter the Tools menu by *one* item, but it would be removing something very useful simply because of it's technical nature.

View Source:

I strongly agree with Robert Strong that axing this would be an unnecessary barrier to corporate adoption.

However, this is much less necessary for diagnosing problems on the day-to-day user side of things. I would be comfortable seeing this as an optional extension, like the DOMi (off by default, included with "Web Development tools" in the installer or in the zip builds).

Context menu items:

There's a load of cruft that can be purged without any real consequences.

Should be for frames only (except Send Link):
- Stop
- Refresh
- View Source
- View Page Info
- Save Page As...
- Send Link... (why does this have ellipsis?)

Bookmark this page - I think we have enough ways to do this. Axe it.
View background image - Is this even useful 99% of the time? Equivalent functionality provided by Page Info.

Tools menu:

Remove the mail intergration links - the numbers never update correctly and the feature itself isn't really that handy or useful at all. If it was an attempt to better integrate Firefox and Thunderbird, it utterly failed. Please kill it.

I disagree with most of the context menu changes being suggested. For one it should be easier to add/remove them as the user wishes.

Also, the Read Mail, dont use it much, but yes it certainly needs work, and work before dumping it, I think thats over the top, just dont use it. Again, it should be easier for the user to add/remove buttons here too, as with anywhere.

Yeah, David - that's an even better idea IYAM.

As I began discussion about Javascript console / View page source, I have one constructive suggestion:

Group all developers tools in one submenu under Tools menu (may I guess "Developer Tools" :). What will be installed by default is less important, though I am certain that they can be all shipped as DOMi. For example, Javascript console may help some people in some cases, but I don't think that it is more than one man on 1000 users, and I can think of many other features that could be of some use for 1 user in 1000.

I have some more suggestions:
- remove Home from toolbar (most people like blank home page, and I can't understand that there can be so important page that it needs toolbar button)
- clearly, Back button deserves to be in context menu (I also use 5 button mouse and don't need it, but many people do), but Stop and Reload make little sense - frames are hardly excuse, actually Stop and Reload frame will puzzle average user. Forward... I would remove it, but it is really on the edge to stay.
- bookmarks toolbar off by default - Opera, IE7 do this. I can find just one use in this, and that is if I put links for some sites to my father so that it is primarly navigational scheme for him, but as you can't put such good links by default, and everyone doesn't have so good sons ;), it should be off.

View Source: I'm sure everyone posting here uses this routinely. Personally, I've been using it since the first time I surfed the web (using NCSA Mosaic [mind you, I started using lynx/links much later on]), to learn how certain things work. Obviously, this is from a 'technically interested' point of view, and would be deemed unimportant to the average user. However, what about when a web page is broken, and I'm looking over an average user's shoulder, trying to help out. One day, my father complained that he couldn't access an important page in his company's online benefits site - clicking a link refused to bring up the ~Details page (didn't work in IE, either :D), from which changes could be made. What did I do? I told him to select some of the text surrounding the link (link inclusive), right-click, and do "View Selection Source." I fished around a bit, found the offending Javascript call, and the URL embedded in it, and pasted it into a new tab. The site worked, and a default build of FF made it possible. View source is a feature that belongs in every web browser.

Maybe some features could be moved to extensions? The mail integration seems a good candidate. I don't use it but it's not in my way either.

Then there is the menu. It's pretty complicated and I'm sure there should be a way to reduce clutter there without removing features. For example, I never use the go menu. I always use the back & forward pulldowns. Basically the only option under file I ever uses is print and exit. The same goes for the tools menu and the help menu. There's sort of a balance between easy to find and noise. Less options is easier but also means some features are harder to find.

The thing that annoys me most is that the features that I value most are sort of hard to find. This does not annoy me because I can't find them but because I see other users not using them. Tabs are a good example. They get really usefull once you figure out that you can open and close them with the middle mouse button or drag them to the tabbar (hidden by default!). New users do not find this out on their own. I've been using Firefox since 0.4 but did not learn until about 0.9 that closing tabs with the middle mouse button is possible (read this in a thread about moving the close tab button to the tab instead of the unusable position it is currently in). I've seen people using firefox without ever opening a single tab; even opening new windows to open pages in the same site!

Suggestion: on the first launch open with multiple tabs with useful information about the many features of Firefox.

Type and find is another example. Very nice to have, if you know about it. Where I work, people are mostly unaware of this feature.

Then of course many useful features are implemented as extensions. I have about fifteen of them installed and sort of take their presence for granted. Many users don't find their way to the extensions site though. First of all they don't understand extensions and second of all the option is hidden inside a dialog. They simply don't know what they are missing.

Finally the sidebar is perhaps the best hidden feature. If you don't know about this one, you'll never see one until you start messing with bookmark properties (currently a needlessly hard way to rename them).

Easy is not the only thing that will get more users on firefox the most important thing is added value. People are used to whatever they are using (ok internet explorer). For them to move over there needs to be some added value: productivity, coolness, security, usability and nice new features. Firefox 1.0 succeeded in producing a nice mix of all of these factors. It was sort of cool to say no to MS for a lot of people, they felt somewhat more secure and discovered a lot of new features they never knew they missed.
I hope firefox 1.5 and 2.0 do the same.

"For example, I never use the go menu. I always use the back & forward pulldowns."

The problem there is that for accessibility reasons everything needs to be on a menu - some people/equipment-configs can't use the buttons, only the menus. The menus are also a good way of learning keyboard shortcuts, and for users that don't know where to find a particular feature to find it by browsing. On a standards-compliance point, the interface guidelines for Windows and Mac both specify that everything should be on a menu.

I would imagine you could create different menu setups for people that didn't want all that stuff on menus, but then you have additional complexity in choosing different menu configs...

Firefox is complex, but not nearly as complex as IE. We're better than the competition, but not as good as we can be.

I've got a XUL based CRM application used internally, with people who have never used a computer before. They have no problems with FF, but IE is new to many of them and they easily get lost when having to use it(outside the office, normally).

It's not about removing features(although we could do without some, or as an extensions), but it is about making the UI easy to use. If things have to be hidden deep in a menu tree, so be it. Some people like to learn by moving around and exploring, others, peoples whose computers I've freed from spyware/adware, don't know FF has tabs or find as your type. And that's ok, it still works for them. I can see making features more accessible and easier to understand, but cleaning up the UI could work too. (Does anyone ever really use the Home icon? I guess so, but it's just so odd). We need flash movies or something about how to add bookmarks to the toolbar(incredibly easy and useful) and it should prompt for a name as well, instead of having to right click->properties everytime(Most page title's are useless as this point, a bookmark here would be Asa's Blog, I know what it is, that's why I'm bookmarking it. No need for "Firefox and More", but as a page title, it works).

Ben Basson said : "Bookmark this page - I think we have enough ways to do this. Axe it."

Excuse me, but that's the only way I know: I may get fancy sometimes and use "Ctrl+D" but Ben, if you want to send me some ideas instead of cluttering up this thread, I'd be willing to try (Lawrence111 _at_ hot mail dot com).

What I find could use a change is bookmarks themselves. My main complaint is that Manage Bookmarks *says* is has sorted the folders and links alphabetically, but when I look in the main FF window, they are grouped in an order I do not want... and I still have not figured out how to change that order.

I used to use "flat-bookmark editing" for this... but I do not believe that it works with the branch of DP yet. It's been so long since I used FF 1.0.6 :)

So my point is that the Regular User needs more control over bookmarks, not their complete disappearance.

Sincerely,

Lawrence
Ithaca, NY

Adrian D. asked: "Though the back button in the context menu is probably something that deserves to stay, do we really need forward, reload *and* stop."

As a start, the stop-or-reload button extension combines the two nicely (as far as regular use goes, I have *never* needed to press the two at the same time). I think that actually, that should be the default (and let power users have two buttons if they really need them ;)

This is also good because it frees up space. Too many toolbars takes away from browser space. Too many buttons takes away from URL/search space.

You know Asa, looking at the top of my browser, what really jumps out at me as a big waste of space is the text menu ("File Edit View Go Bookmarks Tools Help") If each of those was replaced by a button, it would make it quite a bit smaller. Or... if you could combine all of those into a single 'start menu' that would make it *really* small. Or make it hide on the far left under a little button like [>] that would expand (say at the expense of the buttons and URL/search bars, since those aren't used at the same time as the menu, ne?) when clicked or mouse-overed and then disappear when focus is shifted away or we click on it again (it could change to a button like [<] when fully expanded)

Also, looking through the menus, there is a LOT of stuff in there I never use and I'm sure most people never use either. Could we disable the display of most of that for the average user, but allow it to be turned on in preferences? An example: File -> Open Location. With the URL bar displayed (there by default, ne?) that just switches the focus there. In fact, just about anything that doesn't already get an icon from the Cute Menus extension should be a candidate for cutting.

"remove Home from toolbar (most people like blank home page, and I can't understand that there can be so important page that it needs toolbar button)"

I don't know what you're basing this on. "Most" people is subjective (and in this case probably wrong) unless you can back it up with something.

"clearly, Back button deserves to be in context menu (I also use 5 button mouse and don't need it, but many people do), but Stop and Reload make little sense - frames are hardly excuse, actually Stop and Reload frame will puzzle average user. Forward... I would remove it, but it is really on the edge to stay."

I don't see the relevance of back and forward (and Back _without_ Forward is even worse). Most people will use the toolbar buttons. If they don't want to, they could get a mouse rocker extension or use the existing keyboard shortcuts.

Lawrence, I'm talking about removing it from the context (right click) menu, not the Bookmarks menu. As of Firefox 1.5, the options will be:

Bookmarks > Bookmark This Page...
CTRL+D
Drag current tab to the Bookmarks menu
Right click on a tab > Bookmark This Tab
Right click on a page > Bookmark This Page...

This seems a little excessive.

Go menu- axe

Why is View Source under the 'View menu' while Page Info is under the Tools menu? Put the latter in the View menu I rekon.

Read/Write mail- axe it!

Forward, Stop & Reload in the context menu- axe it!

Lose the home button by default, replace with New Tab button.

Tools menu- sounds too scary for some, rename it to Settings?

Click on Settings and you could have just 2 options-

'Change a setting' and
'Change advanced settings'

Click on Change a setting, & the Options window opens as usual. Stick Extensions, Themes & Search Engine's here too, it makes more sense.

All other advanced settings can go under 'Change advanced settings'

Someone mentioned that tabbed browsing should be easier to discover, and I agree. A suggestion on exposing tabbed browsing:

On first use, the first time a user clicks a link, a modal assistance window should popup informing the user that they can open links in tabs by choosing the appropriate context menu option, or by middle-clicking the link. The window I'm thinking of would be similar to the one you see the first time you minimize the MSN Messenger contact list window, the helper dialog that informs you that the program has been minimized to the system tray and not the taskbar.

What do you think? Is this an appropriate way of informing the user that tabbed browsing exists?

someone above wrote "- View page source (OK, I use it sometimes, but you can't expect normal people to deal with HTML)"

I know this has been argued out many times, but I'm strongly against removing that, or making harder to find & use. Remember that a great many people discovered just how easy it is to make their own web pages by the early inclusion of view source in browsers. It's always been an important way that people learn how to do things, by popping up VS on sites that do something neat...

please don't take that away...

disclaimer: yes, I liked 'Reveal Codes' in WordPerfect too. ;-)

John Silvestri wrote: "Take the Back button out of the context menu, and I will scream."

I agree. Remember that there are lots of windows that get created without toolbars, so you need other (easily found) ways to go back.

"remove Home from toolbar (most people like blank home page, and I can't understand that there can be so important page that it needs toolbar button)"

I've never hear of anyone wanting a blank screen for their home page. Use of a home page is very personal to most users. It contains information the use frequently, important links, news, etc.

Fortunately you can remove the home button yourself. Try pointing the mouse to the 'menu bar' and pressing the right mouse button. Then click 'Customize'. Then use your mouse pointer to drag the button off the menu bar. Good luck!

As a nerd, I like a lot of features. Features For Dummies(tm) like Send Link could be removed however.

Go menu- axe - NO way - think already been said not an option anyway. For one, users can and do have the navigation bar hidden, but they can still navigate with this in this toolbar. Also its far more obvious and friendly for users to get quick mini history there, than have to learn and do right click on the back button. Not obvious or user friendly, and presents some comps/mouses with problems, for eg. macs. In anycase, it doesnt waste space or do any harm anyway.

Why is View Source under the 'View menu' while Page Info is under the Tools menu? Put the latter in the View menu I rekon. Completely agree, Asa/anyone - this noted?

Read/Write mail- axe it! Disagree, with TB/gmail/other it often works a treat. It should perhaps not be there if user never uses it or uses no webmail or something, and/or be easier to remove TOOLS, like other things should be too.

Forward, Stop & Reload in the context menu- axe it! Forward no, cant axe forward but not back, thats just not good. Stop & Reload, agree yes, but still, user can have navigation bar off and have full navigation with this. Thats one of reasons I think it is there, and should be!

Lose the home button by default, replace with New Tab button. Axe the home button, are you mad lol? Think that through from an average user/simple web browser developer point of view a little more. New tab button, well yes, I have it next to home and think its good to encourage awareness and good usage of tabs, but its not essential, most dont have it there, so it shouldnt go on by default.

Tools menu- sounds too scary for some, rename it to Settings? Tools is very standard in many browsers, its not scary, and is the best term. Also much of whats inside it is not Settings, so no.

Click on Settings and you could have just 2 options- 'Change a setting' and
'Change advanced settings' For above reason, and others, no.

Click on Change a setting, & the Options window opens as usual. Stick Extensions, Themes & Search Engine's here too, it makes more sense. Again now to the setting thing by far. But yes I agree perhaps Extensions could appear here, and search plugins maybe, somehow.
Themes not essential but then would be odd not having it there too. Needs debating, perhaps be an option/extension first, or only. There non essential items dont forget so they arent used, to minimise

All other advanced settings can go under 'Change advanced settings' Disagree, there aren't really simple or advanced settings as per such, and defining it would be a nitemare/brake things up. Plus it scares users away the term advanced, the whole browse is simple.

Warning! Off topic. Have you seen this?

FEMA disaster website IE-only

Do people actually use "View > Character encoding" so often it needs to be in the menu? I really don't know so correct me if I'm wrong. Can't this be placed somewhere in the options? Also, I never use the mail options, neither the "Go" menu. However, I doubt removing those features would be a good idea, at least not before you do a representative survey to see which of the functions are used the most. Wouldn't want to piss off users by taking away features that make them feel so comfortable with using Firefox.

Actually, in spite of the subject at hand here, there is one thing I would love to see integrated.

I'd love to see the functionality of the Context Search extension integrated into Firefox. It requires no settings, it only adds one item to the context menu (and this only when text is selected, which offers a small menu anyways, so no bloat here). It takes a basic function of Firefox and makes it much more comfortably accessible. I use it all the time.

One more thing. People are saying "take this out and make it an extension instead". I'm not sure I like the idea. I am using 8 extensions (used to be more). I use them all the time and they are what make Firefox even better than it already is, and I wouldn't want to miss them as I have gotten so used to them. The problem is... the more extensions I install, the slower Firefox gets. I haven't been reading up much on Firefox 1.5, does it address this issue? What about a QA team that checks extensions? The fastest and most secure extensions could get some kind of special label. You would't have to officially support them but recommendations might motivate extension programmers to speed up their extenions? Oh and I'd love some kind of tool with which I can analyse which extensions slow it down so much. As an extension, of course. ;)

I've used firefox for a long time now and love it. But has everybody forgotten about rss feeds? sure, you can get extensions, but i think Safari definately beats firefox in this area. RSS feeds could definately use some work for upcoming versions, i think.

What I would like to see is a startup screen when a new profile is created, where the user can select between basic, intermediate, advanced / web developer. Basic should be the regular Firefox, the other options would automatically download a set of (quality checked, official) extensions and install those.

Some advanced options would also be nice, such as an option to download a profile from the web, bookmarks and a list of selected extensions included.

I can't see any problems with that approach, since I don't really care if the functionality I use is a part of the core or an extension.

Another alternative would be to use checkboxes for enable "advanced browsing", "interface customization", "web developer tools", "kitchen sink" and so on.. The point is to make the possibility of more advanced functionality obvious to the user.

parasight : people from countries that use latin alphabet + diacritics or other writing systems (as the majority of Europe, or the whole Asia) NEED this feature, because of some pages containing wrong META informations. As long as Unicode is not widely used, "View > Character encoding" should not be removed.

For instance, there are at least 3 or 4 ways to encode Japanese text.

Erik Vasaasen - totally agree.

I really hope to see this happen to, it really needs to. Shopping in a market with thousands upon thousands of stalls, is not easy. They could be arrange to be though.

Some of what you said is being looked at, but yes, totaally behind what you said. Logical !!