Talk:Firefox3/PRD

Content in Context

If you are seriously going to look at improving the content experience for users, then you need to look at putting and keeping content (pages cached, bookmarks, etc.) in contexts which are useful to the user. Folder based structuring of bookmarks, or date based ordering is not enough for someone to consider the whole, rather than as a jumble of disconnected pages. We need navigation type information (this page is sub to another, this page is in the same area of the site), we need purpose information from the user (why was I looking, what does it mean), we need automatic clustering of content found (cf Google News), we need ease of processing/mining the information. Ata minimum we need adhoc tagging of pages.

Core should probably be the concept of being able to cache the text (and maybe images) of all pages viewed, with versioning and reloading of new data. The user would be able to select/deselect/customise this (eg I'm researching topic x, I want everything I do stored) and be able to combine, summarise results.

Graphical display of the pages and interconnections found should also be included. Scrolling through stupidly long bookmark lists for something should be a thing of the past.

Think less page viewer centric, more knowledge corpus being addressed for purpose.

Freezing

One thing that I would like is the freezing problem firefox has when you download something and your download history is big and bloated. I know that I just need to do a cleanup but it's quite handy to have the list of completed downloads as it is quicker to open the download from the list than actually going to the directory. It would also be nice if it is date stamped. Just my 2 cents.

I would like to see a debug tool to investigate CPU time and memory usage of single addons. I use several addons and after 3/4 days Firefox really slows down (memory usage is around 500MB), I want to know what exactly causes this.

Pelican Shit

Life generates the frequency, and the frequency regenerates the life. The totality of the system is there for all to see, yet Kenneth alone, among the multitudes, perceives it. It is indeed a sad commentary upon the squash courts of Devonshire, the blades of which are so firmly in the grasp of the rulers of Downing Street.

The door of oak most solid hideth the deed. Closed is the door, and closed it shall evermore remain, for the keyhole is plugged, lest anyone should peek through.

Yet the frequency refuses to be hidden. It seeps through the door, through the very walls. It hangs silent upon the air, roaring with the sounds none can hear save Kenneth alone, and it reveals the dark deed within the hallowed halls. In due time, all shall be made clear. In due time.

Drag and drop to Search bar suggestion

To go with 'One time search engine use', there should be an enhancement of the drag and drop procedure for dragging some text onto the search bar. Frequently I find myself having to interrupt my drag and drop because the search engine that I want to search with isn't selected, then select the correct engine and drag and drop again. A way to fix this without adding any extra UI would be to allow dragging and dropping of text to the search engine selection button; after a short delay it would open the search engines drop-down, whereupon the user could drag the text to one of the search engines. When the text is dropped onto one of the search engines, the search box would be populated with the dropped text, and the search initiated.

Extended download history management - suggestion

You could integrate the download manager as a sidebar. It would be even better to make the sidebar floating. This means it would only appear when the user moves the mouse pointer over the collapsed sidebar. You can take a look at netbeans or Visual Studio in order to get a feeling of floating sidebars.

Printing - suggestions

I often find the need to have Firefox print landscape for the user. When you are re looking at the print section of the Firefox code, could the CSS @page landscape/portrait function be understood. Often, the user will need to print 2 pages portrait and then a different page in landscape. It would be nice if it would just set to landscape before print dialog, but could ultimately be overridden by user from the dialog box. Thanks for your time

Can extensions be prevented from breaking other extensions?

The only feature I really want in Firefox 3 is to prevent a given extension from breaking or impairing the operation of other extensions.

As it stands today, there are numerous extensions, many generally included in most users' "must have" category, that interact in undesirable ways with other extensions. This is Firefox 2's biggest shortcoming!

I realize this will be difficult to achieve. But it's the only thing that's on my Firefox 3 wish list.

Customizable Keyboard Shortcuts

I concur with the previous comment - extension conflicts are becoming a big problem. One of the biggest conflicts is over the use of keyboard shortcuts. I'm the developer of Firebug, and one of the biggest complaints I get from users are that they aren't happy with the shortcuts I've chosen, usually because they conflict with shortcuts from other extensions or the OS itself. Some extensions (like Web Developer) have a limited way for users to change keyboard shortcuts, but this is really something that should be built into Firefox itself if you ask me.

Documentation note

On the main planning page you say:

FR: Add-On can be installed in fewer than 3 mouse clicks

How about change this to "at most 2 mouse clicks" as an aid to readers, so they come away with the number "2", which is what you really want them to be thinking of if you mean that 3 mouse clicks is too many.

Optimize User experience: Startup

With Fx2 we get quite a few complaints from users about slow startups. Mostly had to do with their networks or the config for add-ons & auto-updates. What those users bothered is that someone on a slow network may not 'see' their Fx start up for as long as a minute, thinking it is broken. Is there a way to postpone all net activity (including add-ons) until the GUI is fully loaded and visible? Sure would help the 'feel' of a fast application. Maybe make it configurable with a central option: "absolutely no net activity until i call a web address, please" would e.g. make sense for people who do only local browsing or live on costly on-demand network links.

Improvements to the download mechanism

1. Something similar to the "Download Statusbar" extension should replace the current implementation. Having the downloads in a separate tab or sidebar, as suggested by others, is also a good idea.

2. When downloading a file, there should be an option to save the link to that file in the same directory, for example under the name FILE-link.txt. Also, a user-supplied description should be saved, either in that file, or in a separate one. I hope someone comes up with an even better idea for easy access to all downloaded files, e.g. by using a small database which contains the link, the filename on disk, a user-supplied description, and the download time.

Improvements to the bookmarking mechanism

1) I'd like to display the Bookmarks Manager in a separate tab so that I can drag and drop links in a larger pane, and I do not need that much screen space.

(Note to author of 1), this is available by following the following link: [chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksManager.xul])

2) There should be an option to sync all bookmarks with a bookmark store on a (private) web server, using ftp, sftp, WEBDAV, or another useful method. Using that option, the bookmarks should first be loaded from that server after the browser is started and when the bookmark manager is called, as well as each time the bookmarks are changed (either after each change in the Bookmarks Toolbar or after closing the Bookmarks Manager). Remark: Seems this is already - at least partially - covered by the FR: "ability to synchronize bookmarks with remote service" on http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox3/Firefox_Requirements.

Places

This is how I see a future bookmarking system:

1) Tags - this will allow a bookmark to be at more than one place, it will place a bookmark in more than one 'folder', so you will still have hierarchal bookmarks

2) Later - a special tag (user-defined of course) that will store a page the user want to read later (for whatever reason, like saw it at work, but want to see it at home), this should have some time since the bookmark analogy, something like the color of the text goes from black to white in 30 days ( the time also should be user defined), the main reason for this is to alert the user to read it, after that time, the bookmark will be erased (or the user should be presented of a wway to store the bookmark on his system as definitive ( this is a brainstorm of the idea, it's all open for discussion ).

3) All of this should be able to sync between computers

Searching features in bookmarks

As it is bookmarks are fairly well set out with a couple of extensions that can help personalise it, however there is one big flaw when the list of bookmarks gets too long. With 200+ bookmarks the search capacities of firefox would be much appreciated if they were more useful, we need options so that the search bar in the bookmarks sidebar searches not only in a page's title but also URL, key words and description. Possibly an extra tab in the options page for this feature.

Security

Recently, there has been an increasing amount of security problems discovered in Firefox. Since September 2006, there hasn't been a month without an update fixing several severe security problems. While I welcome these problems being found and fixed, I am a little worried about the quality of the Firefox code. Security problems get exploited more and more agressively. Many users originally switched from IE to Firefox for security reasons. That's why I feel it is important to make sure that the current code is relatively secure. While absolute security probably cannot be reached it is important to get the code to a quality level where new security issues come up at a much slower rate, hopefully no more then one severe issue per year. Making sure existing things work isn't as exciting as creating something new. That's why the new Feature list should be kept relatively limited so more resources can be used to improve the security of the existing code instead of adding new, potentially bugy or dangerous features.

Internationalization/i18n

Thai

Thai line/word-breaking issues has been a major drawback of Mozilla product for a long time (since Netscape opensourced in 1998). Nowaday, Mozilla is the last major open source project without Thai line/word-breaking capability (OpenOffice and Konqueror solved this). More details on this bug could be found in this bugzilla bug.

This issue may be fixed by Robert O'Callan new text rendering engine. But he can't guarantee it will be finished in time. Setting this issue in high priority goal might be help. ROC and Mozilla i18n guys may have some opinions on this.

GUI: Quick access to cookie policy for the current site

Being a little paranoid, I like to allow cookies only to the web sites I find trustworthy, and even then I only grant cookies if it has substantial benefit for me (comfort or that an important site would not work without it completely).

Often I find myself denying a site a cookie and afterwards realizing it was not a so-good idea. To find the blocking rule for the server is then rather hard, as there is no search view and most servers start with "www". There should be a quick way to adjust the cookie policy for the current site.

I'm thinking of something similar to the button the NoScript Addon is putting in the bottom right corner of the screen, where you can change the script execution settings for the given site.

Government Audience

Although you may be bunching it in with Enterprise Users, I suggest to add a Government audience. Government has some significant differences from the other four audiences that should be addressed.

ogg theora/vorbis playback

It would be great if ogg theora playback made it into Firefox 3 :) ... at the FOMS conference where open media developers meet last Thursday and Friday we identified the inclusion ogg theora into firefox as important goal. [1] An early version of liboggplay was demoed at the conference. Liboggplay is a small statically linked ogg theora, vorbis and possibly Speex playback library. I will query about logistics in the newsgroup.