Asa Dotzler: Firefox and more

My favourite Firefox features are: spellchecking, tabs, "search as you type".

My most-wanted missing feature is the ability to move a tab to a new window, i.e. I open new pages in tabs, and sometimes I want to display the pages side-by-side to avoid the hassle of flipping back and forth between tabs.

Favourite features: Tabs, search-as-you-type, the theme (I'm a visual person and this UI is just great)

Most-wanted missing features: DOM Inspector (it's still included in the installer) and Error Console - they're not needed by 95% of your audience, and the remaining doesn't even know that it's here!
My wish: A better visible web developer-site that promotes DOM Inspector, Firebug etc. as consoles, but as by Mozilla _officially_ encouraged extensions!

You can do that for other target audiences, too! (Promoting certain extensions that are particularly useful for them)

The other day you mentioned that a lot of people find that FF uses waaaay to much memory, takes waaaaay to long to start up and is slow. Isn't this something to take into consideration in making the list of 'favorite feature'? My most favorite feature of Firefox was Phoenix... Fast, very usable, build in tabs and the fact one could add 'extensions' (why are they called 'add ons' now??).

I would like to be able to download a very minimal browser, no tabs, no spelling checker, no ad blocker, no fishing checker, no error console, and only add those extensions I like. Would that be possible? An ultra light Ff?

Like Camino :). But *with* the extension support.

It forces you to think more if you list one for each question.

Favourite feature: Find as you type, with the non-dialog UI. I find myself wanting this search mode in many other apps I use.

Most wanted missing feature: The ability to never, ever, for any reason open a new window - even if it's a drag and drop file open, a javascripted new window, anything... let it be a tab.

Least favourite feature: Work Offline. This mode has existed in browsers for ages, but nobody ever toggles it. The browser needs to be able to figure out if users are online or not for an offline mode to be used.

Oh, yeah. Let's remove Error Console, and make Web developers think everything is ok while they are making a piles of non-standard shit and lots of bugs.

The feature I'd like most is "Find as you type" and of course tabbed browsing. If you see "extendibility" as a feature that would easily out weight the previous two though.

The extension I'd like to see included is Tab Preview, that's just more useful than you'd first think.
Also AdBlock would be a nice feature to have, but I'm not sure it should be included per default. I don't think people would like the idea of their browser changing web content without their consent, even if they are just ads.

The feature that should really go is the Error Console and DOM inspector. I've had numerous people ask during the installation "What's a DOM inspector" , "Something you'll probably never use". A good idea is perhaps putting an "extension pack" on the default homepage for firefox. Like a "developers pack"(Firebug, DOM-Inspector,Error Console) a "safe browsing pack" (NoScript, Flashblock, AdBlock) and so on.

Favourite features - i.e. the ones I miss when I use something else - are spell-checking and find-as-you-type. Having the ability to install extensions is good too, although I don't have many since those that I use the most tend to get folded into the core.

Having Adblock included with Firefox would be nice, if switched off by default as I can imagine the outcry from web publishers if it was turned on. It makes browsing the web a much nicer experience.

I have to agree that the Error Console and DOM Inspector are both features which I almost never use, and these really should be extensions in my opinion. I occasionally use Work Offline when I'm on the train and have no internet access, as it works quite well with Google Gears for reading Google Reader. Page Info is occasionally useful and much improved in the Gran Paradiso alphas.

I also sometimes try to use "Find as you type" in other applications, which is not so convenient in Word for instance :)
So I'd vote for this one.

Something I would like to see included is the options from the "link widgets" extension (https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/2933?), i.e. buttons to go up one folder and to the root of the site.

Something I find useless... I never use the spell checker. I actually don't even know how to turn it on as I'm not interested in it. But I seem to be a minority here :)

Arne> Extensions are not called add-ons, add-ons include extensions and themes.

I like UI, big buttons specially. At some point they were made smaller before version 2 release, but luckily the old size stayed.

I don't like address bar, though other browsers are not better just worse. It is stone age feature and should be replaced with something more modern.

For removal: Reload button (doesn't it work exactly like go button), separate back and forward history, Error console, File/Open location and Tools/Web search.

What I love:
Tabs, extension capability , spellchecker (though it REALLY needs to install my local - real/British English - dictionary automatically for me).

Things I'd like to see:
A text area resizer (I never can fathom why some designers make them so small when there's plenty of spare room), a simple translation tool and maybe a money translation one, too (but that's probably better as an extension).

What I'd like to see go:
Sidebar. It's archaic and useless (at least loading a webpage or anything but bookmarks/history in it is; history could be much better served in a fresh tab, as it is).

Two buttons in the status bar (like the Firebug button):

Javascript ON/OFF
Flash ON/OFF

Hmm, make it three with the adblocker

Favorite features (Aside from the extension system itself):

- Tabbed browsing
- Spell check
- Find-as-you-type

Most desired features:

- One-click starring/bookmarking and tagging. I'm looking forward to Firefox 3!
- Non-retarded botton/input/etc. widget rendering on Linux. In the current Firefox 3 nightlies, everything has ugly grey backgrounds on ClearLooks and Aurora widget themes, and other apps don't have this problem even on non-solid backgrounds.
- AdBlock. The block list should be empty by default so as not to infuriate website owners, but it should have the ability to import lists from a URL.

Features I could do without:

- The non-native tabs and other widgets. Firefox 2 was a huge step back in UI look-and-feel for me, especially since Firefox's theme actually makes it *less* obvious which tab is currently selected than my GTK theme.
- Live Boomarks. Without a decent feed reading UI, live bookmarks have always felt pointless to me.
- The Downloads window. One of the first things I do when I install Firefox is get the Download Statusbar extension (in compact mode). I know a lot of people prefer the Downloads window, though.

I'd like to see a "mode switch" capability, that could toggle various extensions, features, etc. Scenario:

I'm a web developer. I need to have Firebug, the console, etc. going. But I also read news casually, visit metafilter, etc., and don't care that CNN's css is busted. So let me flip a switch to turn off the developer mode. (I know Firebug sort-of does this, and I use it.) Also, I do some security work, and intentionally go to malware sites from time to time. So let me flip a switch to turn off flash, JS, etc.

I know this is sort-of there with profiles, but it is a pain to restart the browser simply to change roles, especially because I change roles frequently in response to seeing something with a server state associated with whatever I'm reading. This is why I end up with FF and Safari both running on two different machines (not to mention IE on my windows box idling most of the time, with a crappy KVM to switch...)

Keepers: find-as-you-type, tabs, spell-check.
Want:
- ability to open new tab for POST forms
- spell-checker to auto detect the language I type
- measure converter. $->�, pounds->kg etc. Hover some value and it show metricated.
- Translate selected text block
- easy lookup of words on Wiktionary while remaining on the site your reading.

Favorite feature that hasn't been mentioned: The add-on manager...
Least favorite feature: Printing. Fortunately I print out very occasionally but it's rather buggy and unpredictable.

Favourite feature? The ability to install extensions. Spell checking comes in a close second.

Most wanted feature? A truly native theme - someone should destroy the terrible looking tabs we have these days. I note that native menus are now in Firefox 3.0, which is great news, but for some reason the Firefox 2.0 theme scrapped the native tabs that we once had.

Least favourite feature? The pointless "Web search" menu item in the Tools menu. Whatever happened to simplification? We don't need a menu item that focusses an input field. It's not even clear that it does this.

====

What's with all the "let's remove the Error Console" comments? Have you seen pages with JavaScript errors under Internet Explorer? They get the most horrid warning alert ever. At least Firefox shields the user from this experience while still providing debug information.

Removing it means that these errors have to be expressed in another manner (perhaps more intrusive) or, worse, silently ignored. I don't think any of us wants to use a web where errors are silently ignored.

Most-wanted feature: real native theme. Here is another Gnome user, that doesn't like the weird appearance of the tabbar and tabs.

Its really ugly. =\

The feature that i love is the extensibility, not only installing extensions, but by editing userChromes, etc.

Favorite basic features: Tabs (with reordering) and Find-as-you-type. I'd be able to function adequately with nothing but those two basic items. What I've seen of the new bookmark/tagging system looks very cool, though.

Features I'd want built-in? The main bar interface updates from Undo Close Tabs Button and Digger. It's a pain having to always navigate the menu to undo closed tabs in FF3 (since the extension isn't marked as compatible, and I don't mess with that anymore) instead of just having a button available on the main bar. And navigating up the directory hierarchy with Digger is just incredibly handy. I view them a bit like the ability to reorder tabs: something that should be at the most basic level of the interface. The things Asa mentions I prefer as extensions.

Things to remove? I'll admit I don't use most of Page Info much, but it is occasionally handy to see. Probably just as well to put it in a developer extension, though, along with the DOM inspector. Keep the error console.

Side item: While "Web Search" on the menu is kinda pointless, it does provide discoverabilty for the keyboard shortcut, which I use all the time now. Ctrl-L for the address bar, Ctrl-K for the search bar (and Ctrl-Up/Down for navigating the search engines).

Most favorite feature: saving and opening tabs from last session on start-up.
Most wanted feature: ability to put minimum font size above 24 pixels.
Feature to remove: DOM inspector as an option during installation.

Native features that I love:
- Find-as-you-type
- Alias for bookmarks
- "Add a keyword for this search"
- Tabbed Browsing

Features I want that Firefox had build-in:
- An incremented statusbar, with info about my downloads
- Paste-and-go (adressbar context-menu)
- Better context-menu, providing all kind of translations (languages, money) and better use of "Search (search-provider) for (term)", to a submenu useing all the searches the user has in the SearchBar.
- Opening the PAGE SOURCE must be in a new tab, not a new window, please.
- Reformuled and more organized "Customize" dialog for the toolbars.

Features that I want to be removed in Firefox:
- The "Web Search" in Tools menu
- Scrobbler (would be awesome a scrobbler like Opera has)

Asa, please read my opinions. Tell me what you think

In the 3.0 alphas I love the new Permissions tab in the Page Info dialogue, because it makes cookie handling a lot easier (previously I used the Cookie Button extension).

I'd love to see Sage-like RSS feed handling with custom style sheets and some mechanism of testing extension / theme compatibility before downloading (i. e. by sending the manifest file to the browser before the xpi / jar file -- it'd save a lot of time).

Menu items I don't use: "Open Location" and "Send Link" (in "File" & Context Menu), "Web Search" (in "Tools").

EXIF data included among a picture information shown after a right-click. Now, when FF3 supports color management it'll be of more importance. An extension that does exactly this has been available for a while. Check out Ted's Mozilla page (http://ted.mielczarek.org/code/mozilla/fxif/).
Would really appreciate.
Next one - an intelligent dictionary selecting when more then one are installed, in order to check spelling. Some extensions of with this goal are available but with poor implementation, AFAICT.
Will extend the list if concerned, just ping me via email, Asa.

Bookmark key is a nice feature too. It's very handy to access a bookmark you put several subfolders away just by typing 3 chars in the urlbar. Quite hidden a feature tho. I showed it to my father and he was amazed, and he admitted that he could never have discovered that feature alone.

Most-wanted missing feature: the ability to discover at least approximately how much CPU and RAM every tab is using. This way when Firefox starts using 100% CPU and/or several hundreds MB of memory, I know which window/tab I should close.

Most-wanted: some way of not rendering the tabs I'm not currently looking at. It seems if I open a few sites that run flash and intensive ads, my firefox pegs my CPU at 50%...even when it's minimised in the tray, or I'm not even looking at those tabs!

I can't think of anything in Firefox I'd like to see removed...so I guess that says you guys are doing ok.

Favorite: its very flexibility. The JavaScript/XUL/CSS backend, while maybe making it a bit more resources-intensive, provides a truly wonderful platform. Extensions can often do what binary libraries and applications can't really do to other browsers.

Most wanted: mouse gestures! Other wishlist features include reduce memory usage (bug 327280, etc) and better standards support (basically CSS3 and maybe a few missing CSS 2.1 stuff, since most of the rest is doing quite well in the trunk).

Least favorite: I can't really think of one. Those default search plug-ins seemed to return every time you made a manual upgrade, but I just had to reinstall Minefield and they didn't come back into my list. Problem solved, I hope. :)

By the way, just a random thought (sorry for the somewhat off-topic comment): now that Firefox uses Cairo and supports Gaussian blur on SVG, shouldn't box-shadow and text-shadow be a bit easier to implement?

My absolute favorite is search as you type. In my job as a reporter I often find long lists of phone numbers, but usually I know the name of the person... no scrolling, just typing, within two or three letters I am home.

Tabs is so standard I almost don't count it. I would never use a no-tabs browser.

I use 10-15 add-ons. Some like Firebug, who most ppl don't need, some like customizeyoutgoogle, who most ppl need, though they don't know it. If not for killing the ads, the for the automatic download of search results. I love that. So add-ons are very important to me. Maybe I would still be IE if not for the add-ons.

What dont I need, live bookmarks? I still haven't found out what it is, and haven't felt like finding out.

I don't like the download window, but it is easily remedied with download tool bar add-on.

Cheers

It's always staggered me that it is still not possible to sort bookmarks in Firefox without installing a hacked (for 2.x) extension to do so.

By sorting I mean they appear in alphabetical order under the Bookmarks menu item - the same way they do under IE and Opera.

Features I'd like to see added:

- Feed aggregation
- Tearing off tabs
- Automatically unpack downloaded .zip and .dmg files
- Send "mailto:" links to Gmail
- Page errors (in contrast with the current "global" error console)
- http pipelining
- more per-site options and easier access to them (e.g. which plugins are enabled, or whether the site's cookies persist across sessions)

Features that could go:

- Live bookmark folders
- Microsummaries
- "Load this bookmark in the sidebar"
- Master password
- Info bar for blocked popups
- "Page Style" in the View menu
- "Enable Java" checkbox
- Global error console
- MathML

Why less in page info, i would prefer more like the cookie,http headers ect.. but you're a mac user.. of course you'd want it simple :D

what are your favorite Firefox features? spell check, open in new tab (middle click), dictionary tip, keyword for search
what features do you wish that Firefox had built in? fireGPG, ftp, torrent, save as= publish to
what popular features would you like to see removed? bookmarks (alternatives: delicious, GBookmarks), save as and help shortcuts ( I constantly hit these buttons accidentally)
what totally new shiny thing would you like that Firefox had built in? all mp3 links turned into flash player. Never open standalone player.

It would help if context menu could be cleaned up by a user (move up\dow, remove, add), all add-ins would be in new menu item.

Favourite feature: Tabbed browsing, extensions.

Most wanted: A checkbox or about:config option to open new tabs next to the current tab. There are extensions that do this, but this would be literally one or two extra lines of code to add to Firefox itself! Most other tabbed browsers offer this option; it's great for keeping related tabs together.

Best existing features: tabs, and spell checking

Most wanted feature: automatic scaling of the text size to match the OS text zoom level. If I have my OS set to use "large fonts," I'd appreciate it if Firefox would oblige by automatically scaling all font sizes up by the appropriate amount. Right now, it seems to either ignore the font size setting completely, or apply it inconsistently. Opera gets this right, Firefox doesn't. This is especially important not just for users with poor vision, but for all users because so many LCD monitors, especially on laptops, have such insanely high pixel density.

I don't know about useless features... there are many menu commands I never use, but I don't ever really pay any attention to them so I don't know what they are.

Best three (besides those that have won popular acclaim):
1. "I'm Feeling Lucky" URL bar
2. search suggestions
3. speed/correctness of rendering.

When I have to use IE7, there is nothing more jarring than typing what I'm thinking into the URL bar and not getting the precise right page back. Plus, with search suggestions, I now know how to spell in searches too.

Features I'd like cut or re-designed:
* History menu (I've never used this, not even when it was the Go menu)

* Bookmarks menu (make a deal with Google or someone and get online storage of bookmarks, built in, no username required, and put them on the menu bar as top level items)

* Feed options/feed style sheet. IE7's feed view and feed discovery UI is beautiful. The current pair of feed options and feed view if you do click the very small feed button aren't.

* The default theme layout. I'd like it to look like this: http://acm.wwu.edu/~philip/firefox-layout.png. IMHO the current default theme layout wastes a lot of space, doesn't place bookmarks in the right context (as menu items) and makes it easy to confuse the search and URL bars by placing them right next to each other. I believe my layout has none of these flaws...

Features that I want:
* Automatic transfer of NTLM credentials on my intranet. My intranet is, like many, built using IIS and active directory. In order to access ANY site, I need to go to about:config and add it to the list of "sites that are OK to get NTLM creds"--network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted-uris. IE handles this much better with its zones.

* I'd love it if Ad Blocker got incorporated, but... I doubt that will happen.

* Some sort of Software Quality Monitoring, so that you (Mozilla) can get true usage data for Firefox, not just ask people to tell you what they think they use. That would drive your next UI improvements.

A lot of people have said they love find-as-you-type but I've never used it. I love tabbed browsing, although that;s standard on pretty much every browser nowadays.

I used to love mouse gestures but haven;t had it installed for months and honestly don't miss it.

I would like a feature that finds paragraphs complaining about the "OMG MEMORY LEAKS", and hides them.

>>Why less in page info, i would prefer more like the cookie,http headers ect.. but you're a mac user.. of course you'd want it simple :D

Good Question. Page Info, and History are main reasons for using Firefox. Camino's Page Info contains no value what so ever.

Features I like:
- Live Bookmarks
- Add a keyword for this search (These and search engines should be accessible from context menu.)
- General customizebility of Firefox

Features I'd like to have:
- Better bookmarking system (easier to add a bookmark to any subfolder, keyboard shortcuts to items in bookmarks toolbar)
- Less bloated Tools and Context menus
- Easier access to closed tabs

Features I never use:
- Offline browsing
- "Home" and "Go" buttons (I've removed them)
- Download window
- Master password
- Open in Tabs
- #context-sendimage, #context-openlink, #context-sendpage, #context-sendlink, #context-bookmarklink, #context-bookmarkpage

Has anyone seen the Slashdot story on the campaign to block Firefox users? I would like to here Asa's comments on this. This is from the same guy who came up with the Firefox Myths.

Grayson, I'd rather this post didn't devolve to that level. Please keep comments on-topic. Thanks.

- A

1. Less memory consumption
2. Ability to move tab outside the window
3. better search as you type (similar to Safari's 3 beta one)
4. Better DOM inspector (similar, or better than XRAY or Web Inspector form Safari)
5. Native Cocoa widgets

Favorite feature: besides extensions/tabs/spell checker, it would be Error Console. Seriously. As an extension/web developer, the first thing I ask someone when they have a problem is to open it up. 9 out of 10 times, the problem reveals itself in ther. And unlike IE it's not a cryptic "Object" error. It's actually clear and helpful. I absolutely love the fact that it's possible to get debug info from casual users without hassling them to "download _____, run _____". It's just another way Firefox makes life easier... even when things go wrong, it tries it's best. Other browsers just leave you in the dark, and expect the developers and users to be able to figure things out. The fact that you can copy the entire error by right clicking on it makes it just that much easier for users.

Most wanted? I'd say the ability to drag/drop tabs between windows and have them persist states perfectly. Just like Adium does with IM windows. Firebug for chrome would rock. One click backup of bookmarks, prefs, passwords would also be rather handy for people.

Favorite: Spell Check saves me from my most terrible spelling mistakes. Tabs (isn't this obvious). Find as you type makes more sense than the old find box setup. Extensions, I love the ability to customize and add features I need without the Opera problem of feeling overwhelmed by built-in options.

Most-wanted/Missing: An updated Print Preview/Print Page set up. The printing set up in Firefox feels like it came straight from Netscape 4 (and that is insulting considering that Netscape 4 is what drove me to IE back in the day). Making the Add-on Manager handle Flash, QuickTime, Java, etc. plug-ins.

Least Favorite: The Download Manager UI is very bad as it just doesn't give options and information or give options and information in a meaningful way to me. The History menu is almost completely useless in its current format (at least the name change from "Go" makes it more intuitive) and I don't know if it can be formated to be useful, added to bookmarks since that's what history sort of has become, or if it should be dropped completely. Memory "feature", memory leaks, extension leaks; I am hoping beyond hope that the Cycle Collector in Firefox 3 and the FUEL Extension code reduce my Firefox sessions from 350 MB to 100 MB like back in the Firefox 1.0 days.

Favorite feature:
It's hard for me to say because the foremost reason I use Firefox is the availability of Firebug (being an AJAX web developer). If I had to pick a feature of a base Firefox install, hmmm... The extension system!

Most wanted:
Perfecting the tabs so that session state is saved reliably (I HATE it when Firefox crashes and I start it up again, telling it to "Restore last session", and find empty tabs). I believe this is being addresses in Firefox 3 (according to the project wiki). Would also love to see tab grouping built in (only extension I found was http://paranoid-androids.com/tabgroups/ which works but I think the developer has stopped fixing bugs and adding new features.

Least favorite:
Well, not a feature, but I'd love to see the memory problems fixed and also some way to handle a killer tab (such as, if I load a bad tab with some funky JavaScript, it shouldn't hold up the entire browser but provide some way to kill just that the tab).

Lest Favorite/Most wanted:
My least favorite describes the most wanted. It would be really nice to disable the missing plugin warnings. There is a pref to disable the pligin finder/info bar, but then a popup warning takes it's place. Some plugins are not available on all platforms so there is really no way to install the missing plugin. The user is stuck being reminded about missing plugins that aren't available. This is way to intrusive and needs to mellow out a lil. a pref to only show the puzzle piece on a page would be a blessing. :)

Most Favorite feature:
mmmm, where to start :) Auto update is really nice and the time saved really adds up.

The ability to move tabs to another window would be nice.

Mozilla-written extensions would be welcome. If a feature is worth implementing with an extension that is used by a significant minority, it's worth guaranteeing that it's correctly implemented and will work with future Firefox versions. Currently, extensions are not tested to the same standards as the browser.

I don't know how to fix the character encoding menu, but it's a misfeature. It's complex, nonorthogonal, and requires too much from users. How is the user supposed to know how a page is encoded? (Let's see, do I select ISO-8859-1, ISO-8859-15, UTF-8, UTF-7, UTF-32 Bigendian? I have no frikkin idea, and I'm a computer veteran. What happens if someone changes the choice on my computer? I can also auto-select Korean, Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese or Universal. Never heard of Universal, and how does Chinese differ from traditional Chinese? I see that I get a choice of "Auto-Detect" or "More Encodings". Huh? Shouldn't the choices be orthogonal? I also note that I have 8 choices for Chinese, 9 for Cyrillic, and 5 for Hebrew. Some choices on my PC seem to be for Macintosh. Help!)

Expect major repercussions with ad-blocking. We all hate them, but ads power the Web. Also, is there any chance of blocking something that's not an ad? Or blocking an ad that someone wants to see? This may be a bad idea.

How about making NoScript part of the browser? I happen to think it's the wrong way to avoid script security problems, but it's better than always allowing scripts, and no one is proposing any other way.

I have seen credible reports of virus infections contracted while using Firefox, and they were all traced to Java. There has to be a means of warning users about outdated or insecure plugins. I can supply a very old bug report if you want.

Jesse Ruderman suggests removing the "Enable Java" checkbox. That sounds like a good idea, but see the previous paragraph. I rarely need Java on the Web, and it's always nice to turn off stuff like that when you don't need it.

The little bugs with Find As You Type need to be fixed. The theme needs to be upgraded. Other than that, the browser is my favorite feature.

Like others, I now expect all browsers to have find as you type and tabs. The other firefox only feature that I used excessively is bookmark keywords (and constantly forget that other browsers/other users don't have mine set up).

I never use firefox' live bookmarks, 'File > send link' (copy paste instead), Page Style.

Most desired is location autocomplete (and memory garbage collection of closed tabs!)

:New fav: DOM Inspector, took me a while to figure it out, but you can right click on part of a page, inspect the element, and see all the CSS that apply to that item. Someone should win an award for that! It is without a doubt the best thing ever for finding weird CSS bugs.

I like the page info, especially the media tab. Interesting.

I would like to see 2 versions of Firefox, a lightweight version for 95% of people and a 'debug the web' version for developers. Debug the web would have DOM inspector, page info, Firebug installed. Would be VVVVV coool.

monk.e.boy

1) Find as you type, customizable search box, tabs

2)
Customizable command interface; you should be able to assign every "command" an icon, a menu entry, a shortcut, a mouse gesture, to move add delete menu entries, and have mouse gestures. Some users navigate menus or use shorcuts, I like icons and mouse gestures.

Customizable "tab overflow" behavior like in SuperT; you could choose between current behavior (I don't like tabs disappearing), tabs on more rows (I'm on a dial up connection, and I like to se which tabs are loading), and so on. Every one has is pros and cons, so it's basically a matter of personal preference, there is no "right" way of doing it, so let the choice upon the user

Side by side tabs, with 2 or more tabs.

3)Spell checker. It should be rather offered as an add on.

The by far best feature of Firefox is the clever extension system. Another great feature that FX has (and IE not) is the spell checker.

The download manager is good (much better than IE).

Things to remove: Live bookmarks (what is that anyway?), and all the developer stuff. 99% of the users do not need it. And developers can always install extensions.

A print preview (like IE) would be good.

For security reasons, support for SIGNED extensions need to be improved. Now signing an extension so complicated nobody uses it.

Regarding the Page Style, I always found it useful for web development (selecting No Style to view with no CSS applied), but I now use the WebDev toolbar and does the same thing.

Middle-clicking on links to open them in a non-focused tab is probably my favorite feature. That allows you to open several interesting follow-up links and then read them one by one when you're done with the main page.

On second place is the text zoom feature (Ctrl+Scrollwheel), which unlike IE zooms any text into any size.

On third place is Find in Page with the "Highlight all" feature. It makes it that much quicker to find the info you want on a page.

Slightly off-topic, here's my favorite keystroke series: Ctrl+T, Ctrl+K, , Enter. :)

I agree that Page Info and Error Console could be removed. I never use them. As a side-note, I don't understand why Page Info is not under the View menu. [View > Page Source], but [Tools > Page Info]?

One feature I dislike and forgot to mention: the Downloads window. It's a bit intrusive and not very helpful. I'd rather have the download information in the status bar, which would expand by "popping up" when you click on it, and automatically disappear again if you click something else or return to the page. I.e. it should appear like a bookmarks toolbar button. Most people only download one or two files at a time, so I think it could fit in the status bar.

Maybe the Downloads window could still exist, but it should not pop up by default. It should only pop up if you e.g. double-click on the download area of the status bar. The download notifications should still be there, though, but they should appear/disappear near the status bar instead of near the clock, to make it easy for the user to see where the download info is located.

I have to say "amen" to David Tenser's list of favorites (message posted Aug 21, 12:38). Keystrokes rule for speed and ease of working. To which I can add Ctrl-middle-click to close a tab. Personally, it's Ctrl-click for me to open a tab, instead of middle-click, but they both work.

Things to remove: Why is a separate copy of every downloaded file kept indefinitely? Why is "Remember what I've downloaded" possible? Would it not be better to dump that cache on exit rather than optionally keeping it? Otherwise hard drives fill up and downloading becomes slow, and people blame Firefox, etc.

Top-five:

1) NoScript
2) AdBlock plus
3) Flashblock
4) PDF Download
5) Enhanced History Manager

I'd really like to have items 4 and 5 integrated to Firefox permanently.

Other extensions I use:

text/plain, Converter, New tab button on toolbar, Nuke Anything Enhanced and Controle de Scripts.

DO NOT REMOVE the Javascript console! Developers love Firefox, because it HAS all the tools developers need. Take them away, and you'll drive your core users away.

Page Info. Again, a developers treat. Do not remove.

Id love to see adblockplus or similar as part of core firefox, but there is a thin red line being crossed there, by adding it. Proceed with caution.

Down them all would be handy... Faviconize Tab or similar minimum tab size option... Fission is quite nice too...

The IEView/Opera View/... it would be nice if you could have a default action for "view in browser... [list of installed browsers] submenu". It bugs me that I need to install 3-4 exensions in order to be able to open links/pages in Safari, Opera, and IE (6+7)

I'd like to see the spell checker underline words that have multiple spellings in a different colour (yellow for example) as a gentle reminder that I may have used the wrong spelling. For example, underline 'weather' or 'there', as a reminder that I may have meant 'whether' or 'their', with the right-click offering the available spellings.