
Firefox Launches More Experimental Features - debugpoint
http://www.debugpoint.com/2016/10/firefox-launches-experimental-features/
======
SwellJoe
Min Vid is a great refinement over my video watching workflow...for _years_
I've been using the always-on-top feature of my window manager on Linux to
keep a video window open for watching tutorials on YouTube or for binge
watching mindless shows while I do mindless grunt work that doesn't need all
of my attention but also isn't easy to offload to a script. I dunno how
"always on top" is such a seemingly obscure feature that it's never been
standard on Windows or (I think) macOS. How do folks live without it?

Anyway, Min Vid means I can use that workflow even on Windows. I never used
PiP on televisions, and never understood why it was a thing...but, on my
computer I totally want a little video window in the corner!

~~~
city41
I switched to Linux about 2 months ago specifically to take advantage of
powerful WMs. My WM of choice handles the "always on top, small video window
in the corner" beautifully. It also works with any app, and any video service,
where Firefox's has to be custom tailored to different scenarios.

It all makes me wonder why both Windows and OSX are so unwilling to either
explore more powerful window management, or at least provide APIs to enable
power users to build their own.

~~~
newscracker
Could you list your window manager of choice and also which others you
explored (along with any observations)? I'm sure at least a few people here
would be interested.

~~~
shadeless
i3wm is a pretty popular tiling window manager which supports what parent
described - you can set a window to "float" (so it doesn't tile, you can move
around it like in a regular wm) and you can also set it to be "sticky" (so it
stays visible even if you switch to a different workspace).

~~~
city41
Yup, i3 is what I'm using. I admit my wm investigation wasn't that thorough, I
mostly chose i3 because coworkers use it and I really liked it right off the
bat. I also tried xmonad and awesome.

And not that anyone will see this now, but most people in this thread were
responding to my "OSX and Windows don't offer powerful window management
solutions" specifically in reference to my comment about floating windows.
That's just one example of many things OSX/Windows doesn't allow the user to
do.

Not to be too dramatic, but i3 has made me more productive, more focused and
happier while working. I now fear ending up in an environment where using
Linux isn't possible. It's really that good. But really, tiling window
managers are that good.

------
lewisl9029
These new experimental features have quickly become my favorite part of
Firefox. I've been enjoying Tab Center, Page Shot, Min Vid, and Tracking
Protection immensely and have them installed on all of my Firefox instances.

I'd really love to see Test Pilot begin to sync these extensions (and
preferably also their settings) across different Firefox instances through
Firefox Sync though. Right now I have to enable them separately for each
instance, and while it's not exactly the end of the world, it definitely is a
huge pain point for me (especially the lack of settings synchronization) and a
glaring blemish on the high standard of UX most of these experiments are
obviously striving to provide.

~~~
addicted
I like how Firefox is finally leveraging its greatest strength, the extension
system, as an integral part of the Firefox experience.

------
c0nducktr
I thought HN was supposed to have this "don't hate on people's projects"
thing, but when it comes to Mozilla, anytime one of their projects is posted
50% of the comments are low-effort trolling.

~~~
WayneBro
Really? Could you point one out then please?

I just read every root comment and I don't see one example of "low-effort
trolling".

~~~
bzbarsky
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12718876](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12718876)
is an example that involved not reading the article very carefully, then
complaining about the fact that some things that are already extensions should
be extensions.

------
ackalker
An experimental, no, production feature I would love to have in every browser
is a way to disable these _excruciatingly annoying_ full-screen popups which
some sites (including the one linked in the topic) show you on your first
visit.

No, I don't want to subscribe to your newsletter, I don't want email
notifications, I don't want to become a member (at least not until I've read a
few posts first).

Make it possible for me to make those choices my global defaults and I'll be a
very happy user.

------
yxhuvud
Wow, a built-in solution for vertical tabs. I'm surprised it took this long.
It seems to use a bit much screen estate per tab, so users with many tabs will
probably still resort to plugins.

~~~
onli
It works quite well. If you have many tabs open they do get smaller. I never
run into space problems with it, but okay, I'm not a tab hoarder.

People might still use an addon if they like the tree style tabs, to have them
in a threaded view. I would find it useful, but I also understand why it is
not there yet, it complicates tab management and not every user will need it.
But it would be a nice advanced option.

~~~
blfr
Is it possible to move the tab bar to the right side of the screen? I couldn't
find it.

~~~
onli
I did not see that option, no. The only option it currently has is to disable
the wrong default setting to place new tabs at the top. And in the UI itself
one can toggle autohide, which is very nice

------
benevol
What does "Tracking Protection" technically do? Unless it completely prevents
browser fingerprinting, I consider it completely useless (browser
fingerprinting being standard procedure nowadays, at least at the giant
internet/tech corporations).

Besides that, Firefox rocks, go Mozilla!

~~~
jgruen
So the other thing with the Tracking Protection experiment is that we're
soliciting feedback about how this feature breaks the web. We use a block list
from Disconnect for Tracking Protection in Private Browsing and for Focus on
iOS, but until now had very little understanding of how enabling this feature
might affect browsing.

For the Test Pilot experiment we're asking users to tell us where and how the
feature messes up websites so we can refine our Block list and improve the
experience for everyone. We're already getting a lot of significant data and
intend to share it soon.

~~~
supergreg
How about removing referral headers, report back very common user-agents,
accept headers, language headers, screen resolution, etc. Take a look at
[https://panopticlick.eff.org/](https://panopticlick.eff.org/)

~~~
pizzapill
Does anybody know if a extension/browser etc. exists that can spoof the common
JS features that make users identifyable?

------
supergreg
> The Page Shot uses pageshot.net for storing the images.

Showstopper right here. What's wrong with storing to my hard drive? Can I at
least choose my own server?

~~~
revelation
Smells like another dubious Mozilla integration.

They could have put an actual value-add over screenshot programs in there by
offering to make a screenshot of the _entire_ page but right now this is a
terrible image hoster hooked right into my browser. So tired of this nonsense.

~~~
fzzzy
It is not an integration, it is a service hosted by Mozilla designed to make
it easier to share things. You can run your own copy of the open source
backend if you want.

The full page screenshot feature is coming in the next version in a week or
two. We pared the product down to the absolute minimum for launch.

(I work on Page Shot)

~~~
revelation
Yes, thank you, I don't want the MSN webhosting service in my browser. It's
the equivalent of a Windows XP "publish to web" button only even Microsoft had
the clue not to restrict it to their own service.

[https://i-msdn.sec.s-msft.com/dynimg/IC420501.png](https://i-msdn.sec.s-msft.com/dynimg/IC420501.png)

------
JimmyBob2016
What was wrong with local storage for page shot?

~~~
kybernetikos
I absolutely don't want built in features of my browser dependent on
thirdparty services unless there is a standard way to attach it to
alternatives.

~~~
veeti
There seems to be an about:config key for the backend, but I'm not sure if
this is officially supported. The backend is open source [1].

[1] [https://github.com/mozilla-services/pageshot](https://github.com/mozilla-
services/pageshot)

~~~
kuschku
Actually, there’s even a setting in the settings menu of pageshot!
[http://i.imgur.com/NJI9FaN.png](http://i.imgur.com/NJI9FaN.png)

------
greggman
So Firefox is now picking winners? YouTube, Vimeo, and Pageshot get picked.

The features seem nice. The integrated to specific sites not so much. I know
they say they'll add more video sites. That still means if youre not an
established popular site you're basically 2nd class and your users may switch
away because they can not use the feature.

That doesn't seem proper for a brower and certainly not one with Mozilla's
M.O.

~~~
chuckharmston
The roadmap includes support of a number of additional video providers:
[https://github.com/meandavejustice/min-
vid/issues/6](https://github.com/meandavejustice/min-vid/issues/6)

Additionally, they're looking at supporting any old HTML5 <video> element:
[https://github.com/meandavejustice/min-
vid/issues/331](https://github.com/meandavejustice/min-vid/issues/331)

The intent is certainly not to be exclusionary; it's just a new, experimental
project with a small team.

Disclaimer: I work at Mozilla, on Test Pilot.

~~~
stephenr
So why does the playback of html5 video from a site outside the bounds of the
page require specific support for the service?

Why _wouldn 't_ you just make this play any <video> element in a floating
widow and be done with it?

------
stephenr
A built in screenshot tool? It's like Mozilla saw chrome's built in screen
sharing and said "we're Mozilla, anything you can do, we can do better,
including browser bloat".

And somehow people still wonder why Safari is so popular for Mac users.

~~~
lewisl9029
It's easy to dismiss Page Shot as just another screenshot tool. In fact,
that's exactly what I thought of it at first.

After actually trying it out, however, it quickly became my favorite
screenshot tool for web content due to its awesome UX made possible by having
full access to the actual DOM of the page it takes screenshots of, namely
things like being able to index all text in screenshots to allow you to search
through them, and being able to intelligently limit the screenshot area to
specific _elements_ when you click on them. OS level screenshot tools simply
can't offer an experience like this.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
That does sound really cool. I might grab it.

------
SNvD7vEJ
I did expect the Activity Stream to show the history in some sort of tree
view, where if you go back while browsing, and then hit another link on a
previous page, this will be shown as a branch.

Or did I miss something?

------
pmontra
The three new features are really useful and I look forward to using them. I
don't care about the others but I like seeing Mozilla testing new things. This
is the right way to keep a browser alive. And keep paying attention to the
basics, of course.

Update: About testing those features... I'm testing MinVid because they're
logging basically only the name of the service I'm using, not the actual
video. I'm not testing PageShot because they keep a copy of the screenshots:
they're safe for office but they're not Mozilla's business. Actually, I could
violate some NDAs by sending some of those screenshots to Mozilla. Worse, I'm
not testing Tracking Protection because "When you engage with a prompt, we
also collect information about the page you are on and the tracking domain
that is being blocked". Mozilla won't know what I'm browsing.

------
ersii
Will "Page Shot" be a removable addon or would it be forced upon us like the
Pocket integration was at first?

~~~
jgruen
Page Shot, like all features in Test Pilot is opt in. We have no plans to
force anything on anyone. A big part of why we built test pilot in the first
place was to give us a platform to test UX without going all 'Leeroy Jenkins'
on Firefox users every time we come up with a new idea.

~~~
ersii
That's great, thanks for elaborating - I had missed checking out what "Test
Pilot" actually was.

That said, what will happen to Page Shot if it's deemed a good/decent UX and
it's graduation time? Will it be an installable addon? Pre-shipped? Baked in?

I guess it's something to be decided in the future, yet it makes me curious
today.

------
JoshTriplett
Tab Center looks a lot like Tree Style Tab or other extensions to show tabs in
a sidebar.

------
ComodoHacker
I bet YouTube and others will fight Min Vid because users will see less ads.

------
cauterized
Isn't this what extensions are for?

When is Mozilla going to channel its resources into building a JavaScript
engine that can keep up with Chrome's so that the web is actually usable in FF
again?

~~~
qwertyuiop924
actually, on 64-bit, IonMonkey is within 100 milliseconds of V8 either
direction. With backtracking, it's within quite a lot less than that most of
the time. On some benchmarks, it's even faster than V8. Source:
[https://arewefastyet.com/overview/#/machine/29](https://arewefastyet.com/overview/#/machine/29)

~~~
cauterized
Well, I guess it's time to get better benchmarks. Because FF regularly
beachballs for me on web apps Safari and Chrome don't even blink at.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
...Some webapps just flat-out won't consistantly _run_ on FF. Given that FF is
fully standards compliant, some of both of these problems could be attributed
to shoddy web developers.

Then again, FF could be at fault. I don't really know in this case.

~~~
bzbarsky
"fully standards compliant" is definitely overselling it. Firefox aims for
that, but doesn't always succeed. (Disclaimer: I work on standards support in
Firefox, among other things.)

~~~
qwertyuiop924
Fair 'nuff. I'm more on the user side of the browser equation, so you would
know.

But you do have pretty good standards compliance, last I checked.

~~~
bzbarsky
Sure. We do try. :)

------
zanny
That video popup thing reminds me that browsers really, really need mpris2
support. It is super annoying not being able to use hardware / OS level
multimedia keys on the focused / current webpage because there is no browser
support for pause / play like that when every other media player in the
universe makes sure to support them out of the box.

------
eiriklv
Is there a way to enable casting to Chromecast with Firefox? I haven't found
any viable solutions as of yet - but if there were I would jump to Firefox
instantly.

------
naranha
Meanwhile the GTK3 styling of the address bar and checkboxes is still broken
and the support for HTML5 inputs is much worse than that of chrome.

------
lima
Still no sandbox. Using Firefox is reckless nowadays.

~~~
icebraining
It's a WIP. Still, you don't need to wait for the integrated sandbox, you can
sandbox Firefox as a whole using tools available for your OS (eg. firejail for
Linux).

~~~
lima
Nowadays half of what I want to protect are browser secret (AWS IAM
credentials and the likes), so this doesn't really help.

------
jdalgetty
Yes, but have they made it easier on our SSD's?

------
bananaoomarang
IMO Mozilla would be wise to spend time on improving Firefox’s memory
footprint and responsiveness. As it is it’s slower and more cumbersome than
Chrome (at least on Linux). Some of these features are nice, sure, but perhaps
they should be provided as extensions? The core user experience is browsing,
and right now that’s a huge pain.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
These _are_ all extensions. By default, you won't get any of this: it's opt-
in.

As for memory footprint and responsiveness, work is being done on it, IIRC, as
well as a lot of other things.

