
Firefox 15 now supports in-content preferences - girishmony
http://www.browsomatic.com/2012/05/firefox-15-now-supports-in-content.html
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crazygringo
For me, this is step backwards, because it breaks existing UI paradigms.

Why is it a good thing for the preferences pane have to appear in a different
place from where it does in _every single other application on my OS_?

And this deliberately confuses application content versus Internet content. Do
you have to scroll down to click "OK"? What if it isn't visible? Or should it
be labelled "save"? Why learn a new dialog-style interface? And why on Earth
does this need to be a tab -- are people going to be tabbing between their
stock quotes, news, and browser Preferences tab?

~~~
mhansen
I daresay by now users are more familiar with web-based UI paradigms than
traditional OS paradigms.

I think they'd spend more time interacting with web-based applications than
traditional OS applications.

If that's the case, then Firefox is actually adapting to people's expectation
of the UI.

~~~
crazygringo
I dunno... people still use word-processors, spreadsheets, sometimes e-mail
clients...

For me, this still makes as much sense as Excel opening up its preferences as
a new spreadsheet, or a 3D rendering program asking you to edit a 3D wireframe
to change options. Content is content, application is application -- I don't
understand why confusing the two could ever be a good thing.

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SaulOfTheJungle
I like this because the current options window is modal and often I need to
change an option while browsing the web.

I hope they do the same with the downloads list.

~~~
joenathan
They already have, the new download manager landed in the nightlies about a
week ago, no more download window to get lost.

screen
[http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pjn0wvYUwbk/T5FWuH_MLUI/AAAAAAAAIj...](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pjn0wvYUwbk/T5FWuH_MLUI/AAAAAAAAIjA/FC-5PRB3gOg/s1600/firefox-
nightly-download-button.png)

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stephenr
Explain to me how this is a good thing?

~~~
gcp
It's no longer a modal dialog. Seems like a simple GUI improvement.

~~~
Aloisius
On a Mac at least, the Preferences window is not modal. You can still interact
with Firefox even though it is up. Is that not the case on other OSes?

~~~
gcp
On Windows it's modal. Dunno about the others.

~~~
idleloops
Not Modal on Nightly Linux.

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nodata
I'd like to see per-tab offline mode, a-la
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=226096>

~~~
obtu
in-content means the preferences dialog get changed to a tab (à la Chrome).
It's not about changing preferences to be per-site (there are some per-site
prefs in right-click, view page info, permissions).

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gbaygon
At this rate (and with Australis) firefox will end up looking exactly like
chrome.

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hello_asdf
I really don't care for Firefox's new versioning scheme. I'm still on Firefox
10 on Gentoo, and I don't feel much of a reason to upgrade. I felt that
incrementing that number should be reserved for major changes. I didn't intend
for this to be taken as a complaint about the Mozilla development team. It's
just something I've found unusual in the development community. It's been
confusing me, and I never understood their reasoning behind it.

~~~
keeperofdakeys
Major changes are occurring, especially regarding memory usage (and security
bugs, so I seriously suggest you upgrade). Your main gripe is there isn't very
many of them at each release, since they have changed development style. This
kind of development style is what I'd call rolling release, "ship changes when
they are ready", instead of the usual "ship changes in the next version". The
classic version numbering fails with this kind of development style, since the
differences between major/minor start to fall apart. Look at something like
the linux kernel, which follows a rather similar system. Every new version
adds major features, just not very many, but they build up over time. In fact,
the major-minor meaning was so useless Linus could just change the version
from 2.6 to 3 without any significant changes.

As a gentoo user, I would expect you to be very familiar with the rolling
release paradigm. Personally I think it works well for something like Firefox.
I'm pretty sure I'm getting way more major features per unit of time now then
before, since the waiting time between releases was so long. There are
definitely some disadvantages to this approach though, but the advantages are
worth it.

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hello_asdf
Thank you for the detailed explanation of it. That's actually kind of fitting
for them to do away with major/minor versions. I like the idea that they
implement major changes quickly, and I'm currently compiling the latest
Firefox.

