Talk:Firefox/Feature Brainstorming

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Why the revert?

I'm wondering why user:Benjamin Smedberg reverted my addition to this article. He gave no reason, and the page itself says "This page is intended to collect ideas...", so I see no reason why I shouldn't put things here. The page is for collecting ideas, and I gave an idea, so it certainly doesn't seem like vandalism to me. If there is a good reason, then someone please TELL ME, and point me to a page where it does belong. Until then, I'm putting back my text. -FunnyMan3595 20:28, 25 Aug 2005 (PDT)

FunnyMan3595: I created a page off your User page and then linked to that, as it's how we're hoping to catalog all the design thoughts for the various issues. Thanks! -Beltzner 10:45, 31 Oct 2005 (PST)

FunnyMan3595: I wonder how I can easily spot who did revert my proposal, how did you do it?
- HighFish 12:39, 15 October 2006 (PDT)

Tabs switching via Mouse Scroll Wheel

This is one of the absolutely coolest Features of KDE/Qt Widgets.

It would be nice, if Firefox would allow this also, so it is blending more nively into a KDE Environment.

Tutorial Mode

I think that relying on a tutorial mode (or indeed any online help) to train anyone is a waste of time. The trouble is that all users, regardless of experience expect to be able to sit down and start using the software. People are never in the frame of mind to read documentation and instructions on how they can improve their experience, they have their own ideas about how things work. Did you read the instruction manual for your car cover to cover? For your microwave oven? No.

That said, I think much of the online help could be /replaced/ (instead of augmented) by some thoughtfully designed audio/visual tutorials that linked to various help buttons, the start page, etc. E.g. a discussion about being safe online, etc. Ben 21:20, 18 Jan 2006 (PST)

All users? I know with games, I find it inconvenient frequently enough when I am thrust into the game without a tutorial mode, and furthurmore when it's hard to revisit the tutorial mode to brush up. Though I do expect to be able to skip freely around the tutorial though, addressing your "cover to cover" statement. Hackwrench 11:58, 13 October 2006 (PDT)

Mockups

Since uploading is disabled there is no way to put mockups up. Change the description in the page or turn uploads on. :-) Rauh 16:29, 2 Mar 2006 (PST)

Adding feature

I'd like to add the idea "'Make Copy' in tab context menu", but I'm not sure how to add it. Do I put it in the already-existing Tabbed Browsing cell, or do I make my own row of cells? If anyone would like to put in correctly for me, or tell me how to add it, I would be very grateful. --Svank 18:37, 11 June 2006 (PDT)

Autoupdate

When I tell the browser to restart it still asks me to close tabs for every window. Actually, I find this a nuisance whenever I want to close the entire browser. Hackwrench 11:44, 13 October 2006 (PDT)

Available in 1.5.0.7, as Tools->Options->Tabs->Warn when closing multiple tabs. TehTreag

Disable Pictures and Flash animations buttons

Printing

I added some references to Printing, Print UI, and Page Setup. Wildman 12:46, 13 October 2006 (PDT)

How about LESS Features?

Here's a thought: Why not focus less on adding features and more on stabilizing and slimming down the browser? There are lots of things that can be done to Mozilla that can be provided by add-ons and don't need to be in the core product. If the goal is an easy-to-use, slim browser, then we should be taking design cues from Epiphany more than Galeon (to use a Linux metaphor).Stray 21:07, 13 October 2006 (PDT)

    • What about just giving the user the option to install the non-essential features during the install? This way the minimalists can have their lean browser while it will also be able to scale up for the feature-hungry user. This would actually make the "custom" option during install capable of actually customizing the browser. I think this would be a better option than just removing everything and leaving advanced features to extensions. Extensions can be intimidating for the average user and are somewhat cumbersome to maintain between browser releases. --Cloudkiller 09:38, 14 October 2006 (PDT)
    • How about packaging those non-essential features as extensions, and have the installer able to install those if you want the full version? You could then put as many features in extensions as you like and still have the lean browser many want. You might need to extend the extension interface to do everything necessary but that's not necessarily a bad thing, I don't know what's possible or not at the moment. --CRedpath 17:53, 14 October 2006 (BST)


    • @Cloudkiller, I think that'd be great, but in addition to the Custom mode, I think that there should be multiple installs. A lot of installers these days have complete, minimal and custom options for installation. You could have a minimal option, a luxurious and feature-packed option, a developer option and a complete installation in addition to the custom. I don't think having four options there would be too intimidating. @CRedpath, the only problem with that is that the extensions don't update with the browser. I really hate how I have to wait sometimes months after updating to a new version before a particular extension will work with my browser again. However, users being able to make extension packs is a great idea. Ayavaron 20:49, 14 October 2006 (PDT)
    • I like this idea. There's also some interesting suggestions in section 6.2 of the article under Architecture. I think the biggest problem with this would be speed. I haven't written any extensions myself but form what I can tell their mostly done in JavaScript. Having 20-30 small JavaScript extensions running will simply be slower than having them build into the browser. Perhaps a different more efficient form of extensions (such as DLL/.so's) could be added (or is this what 'pluggins' are for?) @Ayavaron Some extensions could be considered 'supported' extensions and be developed by Mozilla people themselves, that way they could be released with the browser. --Andy753421 08:54, 15 October 2006 (PDT)
    • Yes! Please! A minimal version! Smaller is better! --Genevieve 12:54, 15 October 2006 (PDT)
    • I agree wholeheartedly with the concept that the basic browser should be small, but simple, stable and secure as well ....... with the ability to make the browser YOUR browser with the add-ons and extensions. This for me is what makes FireFox SO SPECIAL, THE ADD-ONS AND EXTENSIONS. In the past in general, many have created good software that has been "improved" untill the software has become too complex and USELESS. Please, Please, don't let FireFox go down this pathway. A 'Simple' browser needs very little explanation in the "Help" files.


    • This seems to be a quite important point to a number of users (including me) - and a pretty crucial one, as it really affects the direction future development is to take. Maybe you'd like to take a survey of users (and developers), whether a diet for Firefox is wished for by the general public? Daemonflower
    • I don't know what the logistics would be of adding new features in this manner, but it sounds good. You would need to be able to supply 'supported' extensions in the installer and also update them through the automatic upgrade path. I think in order to guarantee compatibility and timely upgrade these would have to be under the control of the main team and not 3rd parties. It's possible that there would be some testing benefit in delivering additional features in this manner since you would be able to install beta versions of these extensions before they became part of the normal package without needing to change to a developer build. Also, although some would no doubt be slow if written in javascript, I would expect a lot of things would perform perfectly adequately. I have seen the example extension with the java code in it. That may be good enough for some other use cases. Credpath
    • I don't think anyone is saying that most of the FireFox functionality should be removed from the Core distribution - but I for one would like to see the Core distribution split into its own set of add-ons, plug-ins and extensions. This would mean that the Core Extension Set (if I may so call it) should always be in step with whatever version of FireFox is released... whether the code is being maintained as part of one big executable or as one executable and several smaller dynamic libraries/extensions should not really make that big a difference, right? Maybe? Perhaps?... anybody? Neoculture

Better memory management

I'm not sure if this is already planned... But at least Firefox 1.5 is not good in memory management. For example, if a page has an applet and the Java VM is called, I seem to not be able to get rid of it, and it eats a lot of memory. If I kill the java process, Firefox dies! This and other little things make Firefox very slow and unstable for me (I usually hit the machine's memory limit). I wish Firefox was faster and used just the amount of memory it needs, and /only/ when it needs it.

I completely agree with this request, please just do something about memory management. You may use valgrind, efence lib, or whatever you want, but please don't force me to kill Firefox every Week because it wastes hundreds Megs of RAM and gets too slow...

Totally agree too. For me it is the most important point. I stopped to use Firefox because of this point. Firefox uses 135mo RAM just for web browsing with one tab / Opera 60mo. Furthermore gecko has a lot of performance problems : scrolling lags, with beryl or compiz with 5 tabs it's not usable... It is very important to improve this point. You can stop adding features that only few people need and improve the memory management. I think gecko need a lot of changes and maybe you use too much javascript in your application because this problem of memory management is also in Thunderbird (I stopped to use it too).

Arabic language and complex scripts

I user:Alharaka do not know who this is acutally addressed to, but I am part of a i18n group called arabeyes.org that does Arabic translations of FOSS stuff. I referred people to the Slashdot.org article about this list of suggestions. I have had several Arabic language suggestions:

Implementing of the bidirectional algorithm *1 if it isn't already implemented so that Firefox could render Arabic phrases embedded in English texts correctly.

There were another thing which happens when you type Arabic text in the location bar and click 'Go' .. the text gets converted to something called 'byte indicators' *2 which is very annoying ... if that could be fixed it would be great.

Please contact me if you want to get in touch with our group about any of these issues.

Cleaner Uninstallation/Extension Management

Almost a year ago, I somehow broke my Firefox installation and when I uninstalled/reinstalled the program, all my extensions and settings were back to normal. I made sure the install directory was emptied and tried again. Eventually I figured out I had to delete the Firefox registry values in order to fix it. I know that there is a portable version of Firefox [1] so there is no reason I should need to muck around in my registry to uninstall things.

If extensions could install to a folder like the plugins in Photoshop, they'd be much easier to deal with. I have no idea how technically possible that would be and I'm almost certain that it'd break a lot of existing extensions. There could be an option to delete the extensions and settings folders during uninstallation too. It'd be nice also to be able to manage extensions in the file browser just by deleting them from the extensions folder. Ayavaron 21:10, 14 October 2006 (PDT)

Message for Microsoft

  • I see neither use nor fun nor any kind of satisfaction in this. MS knows Firefox exists. Also, this could be seen as a recommendation to spam MS. I wouldn't even encourage an extension doing this. --PullMeUnder 11:44, 15 October 2006 (PDT)

Tabbed Download Manager

How about having the choice of having the download manager become a background tab instead of being another window. Also having options of it being in the background or foreground tab.

Have something like Mercury Test director, while opening the Test director page for the first time in browser, it basically downloads different plugins and we see the status of each plugin download.

Backgrounds Management

How about Backgrounds Management . The main source for desktop Backgrounds is the internet . Why don't we build Backgrounds Management that hold all the recent backgrounds that the person download .We can add a preview to background that the muse is on top of it . maybe we can have folders organization in it as well . shortly jast have a Backgrounds Management ...

Minimize tab

  • Keep it open, but hidden from tab bar; probably will be still visible in the list. Notify user when title changes. Think Gmail, Yahoo Mail, which you want to keep open, and get notified when there's new mail.
  • I feature I would've never thought of, but it sounds very reasonable. Also this sounds so integral to the browsing experience that I think an inclusion in the browser itself rather than in an extension would make sense.--PullMeUnder 11:46, 15 October 2006 (PDT)

Fast bookmark search

Auto-complete style, by keyword/name/address/description.

Form navigation via keyboard on Mac

On windows, I can tab through not only text fields, but check boxes and form buttons, and change or activate them using the space button. On the mac, I can only do checkboxes and buttons with the mouse. Please provide an option to be able to tab through these things on the mac. Thanks.

UTF-8 on URL bar

It would be nice to add support to enable UTF-8 in URL bar, Opera have this "option". Currently Firefox show utf-8 urls like this: "%D0%A1%D1%80%D0%B1%D0%B8%D1%98%D0%B0" instead of this: "Србија".�One sample is Serbian Wikipedia. There is bug for this feature here. Thanks a lot --Djevrek 07:59, 15 October 2006 (PDT)

Javascript-Div-Update-Replacement (Ajax topic)

It would be great to have mechanism to define a panel, where data may be send to a server and its response is rendered into a certain area like:

<asynch-panel refpanel="myPanel" refid="test" /> <asynch-panel name="myPanel" target="http://blabla.de/bsp.jsp"> <input type="text" id="test" value="<%="blabla"%>" /> <input type="submit" /> </asynch-panel>

Of course such panels would allow nested panels and form elements to have maximum control.

I know that such an extension would be only usable for Firefox users, but it would speed up asynch development at leat in closed user groups with certain system requirements.

What do you think about this?

Take over browserhistory when opening a new tab

Hi, i think it would be fine, if firefox takes over the surf history (for button-back) when opening a new tab by a link of the currently tab.

The Ctrl + Enter opening new tab

  • Hello, I wanted to know - is it podsible to add a feature that was in mozilla to firefox - when you used mozilla and when you was writing some site in the address bar and by clicking Ctrl + Enter it would take you to another tab - it was almous as duplicating tabs ( F6 and the Ctrl + Enter was the duplication itself ).
  • I might be stupid and fail to see what this is about, but: This already works perfectly, an has done so for ages. When I enter an address in the address bar and hit CTRL+Enter, a new tab is opened. If that is only because I have installed Tabmix Plus, somebody please remove this remark.--PullMeUnder 11:54, 15 October 2006 (PDT)

Add a Page Zoom feature (like IE7)

  • You need to put a little zoom-in and zoom-out feature in the bottom right of the browser.
  • As far as I know, pictures that are to large to be displayed are automatically shrunk. You then have the option to display the picture fullsize nonetheless, then having to scroll, of course. For full zooming capabilities, there is a respective extension available. --PullMeUnder 11:54, 15 October 2006 (PDT)
  • The current Firefox PageZoom extension only modifies the page's CSS, which NEVER scales correctly - that, and it is extremely slow. IE7's new zoom is very slick, and I can only assume it uses some kind of compositing engine, as the scaled pages look perfect. This feature is a must-have for v3 - as screen resolutions like 1600x1200 and up become standard, this feature will be a necessity.

cache managment like in IE

an option to manage the cache like in "temporary internet files".

multiple processes

Firefox runs in one process, which is problematic if this process freezes on must load JAVA or acrobat reader. the solution is to enable running multiple processes, using the same profile

Additional user feedback

[[2]]

There's a lot of it here, including:

much like what Pandora did for music, I want firefox to do for porn. If I allow it, it can read the porn sites I frequent and suggest new sites that I might enjoy.

..and a lot of serious suggestions too ;)

Ad-Blocking must have.

must have its own adblock

I agree, please integrate Ad Block and filterset updater so all users can benefit from an ad free web. Hit Google and another annoying ad companies where it hurts.

would be nice, but might be dangerous as removing an ad could be considered a copyright violation. Also don't forget that lots of sites can only be kept on the net by money from advertising. --Fluffysheep 14:56, 16 October 2006 (PDT)

You're right, but still anyone can install an Ad Block extension and most people do this. Why not making it easier by just leaving it there? If someone don't want using it, he/she won't. Nobody says you must use a feature just because it's there. cafeina 16:40, 17 October 2006 (CET)

Don't display blocked sections of pages

I'm a zealous HOSTS file user and I'm still using FF 1.0.7 because it looks much cleaner without all the the "unable to connect" messages where all the ads would be. PLEASE put in an option to hide these messages a la 1.0.7.

Reload all tabs

There's a View->Reload for the current tab, and bookmark groups to open several new tabs at once, but there's no "Reload All" to refresh all currently visible tabs.

Usage example: I often use to "open in tabs" a bookmark group, then start closing some tabs and then I want to "Reload All" periodically the remaining tabs. Right now I have to either reload each tab manually (tedious if you have for instance 20 tabs), or re-open again all links in the bookmark group (this will open more tabs than the ones I have now visible and want to reload).

Edit: This can already be done (at least in Firefox 1.5 under Windows). Right-click on any of the tabs and select Reload All Tabs. -kcolagio

HTML Validation

I don't know if this is already planned for versions 2 or 3, so please forgive me if it is.

As Firefox gets better at standards compliance, it could help the cause by alerting the user (who is often a developer) in a not-too-annoying way whenever it encounters malformed HTML, instead of just silently ignoring and reinterpreting it. This would be similar to what it does with bad JavaScript. Besides helping the cause, this would also be useful in cases where FF and other browsers interpret the same HTML differently, because FF would at least have something to blame. (Assuming FF's interpretation is correct.)

There's an HTML validator plugin, but why should Firefox have to interpret the same code twice? (Once by Firefox for display, and once by the plugin for validation.)

Multiple tabs actions & too much tabs

Is it posible to do some actions to tabs like say to move them from one place to another but say with "Cntr" to pick a couple of them an do whatever you can do.

ahh and P.S. - I think it would be good if you will add a scroll bar to the tab meny when there are more tabs then it shows - something like say 50 tabs and I can see it all - it would be great if I would have an arrow to get to the next tabs as well.

I think what this user wants is already possible with a variety of tab-enhancement extensions. I personally couldn't live without the some of the features of e.g. tabmix plus, but I don't see any necessity for this to be core material.--PullMeUnder 15:51, 16 October 2006 (PDT)

Keyboard Shortcuts: Web Address Localisation support

At present, it's possible to shortcut domain names for .com .net and .org addresses by using CTRL (or Option on Macs), Shift, or a combination of the two (i.e. type getfirefox in the address bar, then use CTRL+Enter to fill in the www. and .com parts).

I use this feature regularly, but come a cropper every time I try and do this with a .co.uk address, and end up having to go and edit the beginning and end of the address.

I suggest it might be a handy improvement for the user to be able to choose the function of at least one of these shortcuts (or add a 4th one) so that it will autocomplete for their desired country. (So typing bbc would be expanded to www.bbc.co.uk for example)

Link Activation

It has been suggested that when you mouse-over a link it will display the link. I think it would be great for Firefox to display the type of file being linked. This can help people who are less computer-literate avoid falling for phishing scams and downloading executables when they expect to go to a webpage. This should be optional to enable, and it should only show common file types that can be potentially dangerous.

Improve RSS presentation

I've never been happy with the way Firefox displays RSS feeds, and version 2 is no improvement. IMHO, the user experience of both Safari and Google Reader are vastly superior to FF:

  • Unread articles are collected into a single page, not one article per page or per tab. Reading through all new material is simply a matter of scrolling down (just like reading a newspaper or magazine!) instead of having to switch tabs.
  • Article summaries are shown, not just titles. (Or complete articles if you prefer, which I do.)
  • In Safari, the number of unread articles is shown in the bookmark as a number next to the name, like this: "Slashdot (8)"

The experience I want is to be able to get up in the morning, walk over to my computer, and read the newspaper while I am waking up. Only in this case, the "newspaper" is something the browser assembled for me based on my interests. If I am not interested in an article, I can just scroll past it - I don't want to have to manually select which articles I am or am not interested in.

Allow plugins and skins to load without having to restart

This has been a constant annoyance, and I know there's probably some security reason for it, but I'd like to be able to enable and disable addins and switch skins without having to restart firefox every time. I wouldn't mind if there was still a restart on initial installation, but for already installed skins and addins, it gets tiresome quickly.

display

It´s possible to display the page on the entire wide of screen as in Opera (Ctrl F11) - or to set display of all pages e.g. for 150 % (as in Opera) - not to have to scroll each individual page to legible appearance?

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