
Lightspeed – A Browser Experiment - khc
https://blog.mozilla.org/verdi/463/lightspeed-a-browser-experiment/
======
phlsa
Hi, I'm one of the people who worked on this and I wanted to provide a little
background and a few clarifications.

Lightspeed is currently not a product. It's a collection of sketches and
thoughts. It is also NOT the next version of Firefox. While some ideas might
find their way into mainline Firefox at some point, many of the assumptions on
which Lightspeed is based are the exact opposites of Firefox core values (e.g.
no settings or customization in Lightspeed).

More than anything else, Lightspeed helps us think outside the box that
Firefox is. It's a place where we can dare to explore more radical thoughts
like not having any settings or or even menus. Having constraints like these
stimulates creativity much like, for example, the character limit on tweets
forces you to make your message more concise.

Ideas are worthless when they just exist in your head. Sketching out
Lightspeed has helped us to make make lots of ideas more tangible, so they can
be evaluated.

That being said, just reading through this thread has sparked some interesting
new thoughts – we'll keep experimenting :)

~~~
Pacabel
Based on the comments here and those that appear under the article, people in
general are not at all impressed by these ideas.

I don't think the hatred is as universal as it is for, say, Australis, but
it's close enough that it should be discomforting.

What is your response to this? Do you think it's right to continue work on a
project that the majority of people dislike for a variety of very legitimate
reasons?

~~~
ZenoArrow
"Based on the comments here and those that appear under the article, people in
general are not at all impressed by these ideas." I wouldn't say that is a
fair assessment, many people took it for what it was (a UI/UX experiment), and
quite a few people who did take to it badly mistakenly thought it was a
Firefox design concept.

~~~
marcosdumay
Well, to be fair, the last 2 Firefox "design concepts" got almost verbatim
into the mainline despite almost unanimous complaints, and now I have 2
different plugins installed to correct the mess they created.

~~~
ZenoArrow
It's only a "mess" to some, I personally have no beef with Australis, and the
beauty of Firefox is that it allows for you to customise it to work how you
want (hence you were able to 'fix' it). This flexibility means there's still
plenty of room for UI experimentation. Besides, this Lightspeed design is
explicitly not for Firefox, the designers acknowledge part of what makes
Firefox what it is is the customisability, this design is seeing what could be
done with an alternative browser.

------
bane
At first I thought "oh no, another distraction for Mozilla", but then I sat
through the presentation and thought there was some really cool ideas
(amazebar!). In fact, I think it can be simplified and paired down even more.
Even better, some of the assumptions here even make the software portable (as
in doesn't really need to be installed and could just run off a usb drive/out
of my dropbox).

Automatically being in a private/secure mode makes lots of sense to me as
well.

Some ideas I don't like:

\- get rid of loved sites/bookmarks altogether. Frequent usage should just
percolate autocomplete suggestions to the top. This design doesn't really need
them, and tbh I've barely used bookmarks in any browser in a long time.

\- too much going on in the amazebar, drop all the suggestion (which will
quickly get stale, tabs, email search, etc. Just focus on most frequent sites
and autocomplete, it feels like the presentation is just burying lots of the
clutter that used to take up GUI space in the amazebar.

\- please don't default to a "downloads" folder. I've never liked it and
before I bother to change it, my downloads folder quickly turns into a "random
junk I've downloaded" folder. Forcing me to put it someplace actually is
simplifying my workflow. It's almost the first option I change as soon as I
install a new browser.

\- keep tabs more present, don't bury them in the amazebar

~~~
troymc
I agree with not defaulting to saving downloads in the "downloads" folder.
Many people don't really know how to use their file manager. (For years, my
mom would open Microsoft Word and organize files there.)

Why not default to saving downloads on the Desktop? Where did that file get
saved? Oh, there it is!

~~~
weavie
What happened to just asking the user where they want to save it? To download
a file I now have to download it, then open Finder, navigate to Downloads and
copy the file, navigate to the folder I want to place the download, paste the
file. Then navigate back to the folder and delete the file from Downloads ..
because Macs don't give you a Cut option.

~~~
Pacabel
You make a very good point.

That sensible and effective approach has become yet another victim of the
failed quest to "improve the user experience" by throwing away or changing
stuff that was working perfectly fine before. The new approach is almost
always far worse than whatever minor flaws might have existed with the earlier
approach.

And allowing the old, working approach to be toggled back on through some
preferences dialog, through about:config or through some extension doesn't
justify the bad change. If anything, it's actually somewhat offensive, because
it now requires users to engage in yet more fixing of things that just
shouldn't be broken to begin with.

When I start using a fresh installation of Firefox, I have to spend at least a
good 10 minutes installing various extensions and reconfiguring it just to get
a minimally usable experience out of it. That's not acceptable, and it's not
justifiable.

~~~
acdha
> When I start using a fresh installation of Firefox, I have to spend at least
> a good 10 minutes installing various extensions and reconfiguring it just to
> get a minimally usable experience out of it. That's not acceptable, and it's
> not justifiable.

You're assuming that this is widely applicable — very few people have spent a
decade building a highly customized browsing experience and most people don't
customize much at all. Ever walk around the office and notice how few people
even removed Microsoft's default bookmarks from the toolbar so they spend all
day staring at links to a service which they don't use?

I would also note that the history of computing is littered with loaded
descriptions of things which were reflexively described as a "bad change" and
a complete non-issue a year later. Mouse wheels, tabbed browsing, fonts and
later CSS, JavaScript, all got the kind of grumbling you made above from a few
people. Sometimes it's worth asking whether you really benefit from the old
way or are just reacting to something being different.

~~~
Pacabel
I think your understanding of the history of computing is flawed.

As somebody who lived through the events you mentioned as an adult working in
industry, I can assure you that the sentiment you believe was felt was
actually not felt.

Mouse wheels were seen as a very good thing when they first came on the scene.
They gave the power of the three-buttoned mouse, but also made scrolling much
simpler.

The same goes for tabbed browsing. It was one of the best features of Opera
for a long time. Everyone I showed it to at the time thought it was very
useful. And it was one of the best features of Firefox, too, when it was still
Phoenix.

And the same goes for fonts, and CSS (although to a lesser extent). Their
benefits were obvious from the beginning, and I don't remember them facing
really any resistance.

Contrary to popular belief today, JavaScript was not seen as good when it was
first released, and it should not be considered good today. In the mid-1990s
it was generally seen as a rather bad and limited language. That's why it
didn't see much use until the mid-2000s. The first generation of developers
who experienced it found it inferior to existing technologies and generally
refused to use it. Even today, it's still a very flawed language (the problems
with it are well know; I'm not going to regurgitate them here).

The problem with Firefox lately isn't that there has been chance. Of course
change can be good. In the case of Firefox, though, the change has been
utterly horrible, and caused far more problems than it brings in benefits, for
a huge number of people. This is reflected very well in Firefox's ever-
dropping market share.

~~~
acdha
> As somebody who lived through the events you mentioned as an adult working
> in industry, I can assure you that the sentiment you believe was felt was
> actually not felt.

My comment was based on my experience as someone who also lived through that
period as an adult working in the industry.

> Mouse wheels were seen as a very good thing when they first came on the
> scene. They gave the power of the three-buttoned mouse, but also made
> scrolling much simpler.

That's easy to assume now but at the time there were people who complained
that they required more precision to use, were inconsistently supported by
existing software, etc. I remember people complaining that clicking the wheel
was less reliable than using a proper third-button — no doubt true for the
people who did a lot of pasting in X11 but that number was an increasingly
miniscule fraction of the computing world and no doubt most of them adjusted
after they stopped grumbling.

> The same goes for tabbed browsing. It was one of the best features of Opera
> for a long time. Everyone I showed it to at the time thought it was very
> useful.

… and yet other people complained that it was confusing to have tabs when you
also had windows, duplicated with the OS window management, made it easy to
accidentally forget you already had something open, etc. I'm sure all of those
people use tabs now without even thinking about it but that doesn't mean that
they didn't grumble first and learn how to use them second.

> And the same goes for fonts, and CSS (although to a lesser extent). Their
> benefits were obvious from the beginning, and I don't remember them facing
> really any resistance.

Outside of your corner of the web, there were impassioned rants about how the
font tag overrode the user's font selection – that was one of the early
selling points for CSS! Some people complained about CSS because it was harder
to use than the font tag while others complained that it made pages slow or
required downloading more data, etc. Some people complained about both because
they made it easy to make pages which were hard to read on the wrong browser,
operating system, or if you had a very small or very large display, or were
color blind or visually impaired.

> Contrary to popular belief today, JavaScript was not seen as good when it
> was first released, and it should not be considered good today. In the
> mid-1990s it was generally seen as a rather bad and limited language.

I started writing JavaScript back when it was called LiveScript (oh, those
heady days of downloading Netscape 2 betas when their FTP server wasn't
overwhelmed). Then, as now, people complained about JavaScript being bloated
or slow and there's a long tradition continuing down to your comment of
complaining about the technical merits of the language. This wasn't wrong –
even Brendan Eich is apologetic about most of it – and yet here we are in a
world where the one language you can assume will be taught in 10 years is
JavaScript because a billion people interact with JavaScript programs
constantly.

Again, I'm not saying that the complaints are entirely without merit – only
that there's a long tradition of people who overestimated either how serious a
problem was, the degree to which their reaction was representative of the
general computing public, or both. I remember plenty of advocacy that pages
should work without JavaScript – and personally engaged in a fair amount – but
much of the web today assumes JavaScript without any of the predicted
disasters.

> The problem with Firefox lately isn't that there has been chance. Of course
> change can be good. In the case of Firefox, though, the change has been
> utterly horrible, and caused far more problems than it brings in benefits,
> for a huge number of people. This is reflected very well in Firefox's ever-
> dropping market share.

As they say, citation needed. That trend started well before the new UI and
appears to have rather a lot more to do with Google's successful promotion of
Chrome. Even in technical forums, there will be a ton of messages but they
always seem to be posted by a small percentage of highly vocal users who
assume everyone who isn't commenting agrees with them.

------
insky
The problem I have with Firefox is that it just doesn't really innovate. We've
had some small UI changes. But there's legacy cruft still in there that isn't
addressed.

Like the bookmarks and history manager. There isn't anything particularly
wrong with these data-table windows, but I don't really enjoy using them
either. In some ways I think they should be at the heart of the browser.

I think a lot of people use tabs because bookmark management is so crap.

The only bit I resonated with was the similar sites suggestions. But you'd
need a setting to setup suggestion services. There's a privacy concern with
that.

Other helper features:

Pagination buttons were built into Opera driven off the rel=prev and rel=next,
link elements. Navigation could further be ripped out the page window into a
browser control. Searching sites and pages could be friendlier. Better form
helpers needed. A good feed reader would be good. Tools to help read web
content more simply (readability style) would be nice. Plus I like
personalising the look and feel of my web browser ever so slightly, and even
Firefox doesn't do that particularly well (it ignores some of my desktop
theming).

So I think Firefox should really be thinking how to answer the question: 'How
can we make it easier for users to consume web content?'. This has to go
beyond the rendering engine. So actually a fatter featureful browser I think
would be better - but with some very intuitive and simple controls.

~~~
lucb1e
> Like the bookmarks and history manager. There isn't anything particularly
> wrong with these data-table windows, but I don't really enjoy using them
> either.

And here I was thinking every browser should have such powerful tools instead
of optimized-for-grandma windows.

~~~
insky
There's nothing wrong with optimising for Grandma. The key is to make the most
useful features easy to get at, and the more powerful ones discoverable.

The bookmark/history manager could be better. It has no
autocomplete/awesomeness in the search. It's actually quite an awkward UI.

It's not keyboard friendly. And their are odd inconsistancies. Should the
default behaviour of clicking on a link open it in new tab?

Recent bookmarks and most visited are nice smart bookmark folder, these are
useful but hard to reach in that tool. Some bookmark management feels a little
like a black box.

At least you can tag bookmarks. Scrolling through a massive list of tags isn't
much fun.

------
mkohlmyr
I was surprised to see this rise on the front page. Am I the only one who
didn't get excited at all by this?

When I see a post titled "a browser experiment" from mozilla.org I tend to
think I'm going to get more than some wireframes and talk about "busybees". It
will be an experiment once some (any) of it has been built.

In any case from what I did see in the video I would say: 1) Bookmarks are
broken, but removing them is probably the wrong approach. Tagged searchable
bookmarks would be more useful - they don't need a bar in the ui, but make
them full-text searchable and put them at the top of auto-complete options.

2) Tabs are an ingrained key-part of how people interact with browsers. They
need to be (obvious) in the ui and easy to use. Do not go the mobile route if
that is the plan. Tabs on mobile are the way they are because of constraints
of the form - not because it is good ui.

There are quite a few other suggestions I would take issue with but I realise
I am not the target market. E.g. I don't want or need huge tiles of sites I
love - I can enter their url and autocomplete. If its a site I frequent it
should be at the top of the list - navigating to it is not a problem that
needs solving with more ui.

~~~
ersii
To nitpick, in the suggested experiment - bookmarks aren't removed. Although I
guess you could compare the solution to "completely remove" them since they
work a lot different, I guess you wouldn't "Love"-click something to read
later or go back to, but their main site (Like NYT.com, BigBank.com etc).
They'd be integrated into the ""amazebar"", but they'd still be there.

As has been mentioned in other threads to this discussions, tabs aren't all
that important for the thought of userbase. They are people who sometimes uses
tabs or never uses tabs.

Also, I, as a "Wizard/Enthusiast" user - got somewhat excited by the suggested
experiment and think it kind of make sense. I wouldn't prefer using this
myself, but I can certainly see benefits to a significant user share.

~~~
mkohlmyr
I understood that was the thinking re: tabs, I just think it's wrong. I can't
think of anyone I know who doesn't use tabs, including my parents. In fact
anecdotally I would say that the considered user base might use (or abuse)
tabs more than most. They are the people who have 40 tab sessions that they
never close.

As for bookmarks that is exactly my point. To "love" something is closer to
marking as a favourite than as a bookmark. Bookmarks are things you want to go
back to at a later date, favourites are things you go to a lot.

I think the idea that they should experiment is a good one and the idea that
they might start to is exciting. They should make a dozen experimental UIs to
try things. This video however doesn't do much for me - if they had a basic
build to showcase it would be different, but I don't see much point in
publishing a 10 minute presentation about some wireframes.

------
jbardnz
Pretty interesting video. A few things of note:

-Tabs are important to almost all web users these days. Maybe you could hide them and display them on hover but I don't think you should ever move them an extra click away.

-Not a huge fan of the click-to-play feature. Maybe it would work if you could whitelist plugins rather than websites, I guess you lose most of your security benefits by doing this though.

I think he actually raises a good point at the end though, he wouldn't use
this for work but may use it elsewhere. That's great, but typical web users
only want to use one browser, they get familiar with the interface and stick
to that everywhere they go. If people use a certain browser at work chances
are they use the same one at home, and I don't think this is powerful for many
people to use at work.

~~~
gioele
> Tabs are important to almost all web users these days

Tabs would be a useless feature, if the window manager did a better job at
what they should do. In a "tabbing" wm like the one BeOS has you are much
better served by one-page-one-window application.

With a bit of cooperation from the window manager you can get rid of tabs. I
did it few years ago and my browsing behavior and habits have changed for the
better.

~~~
felipeerias
The way we browse the Web is fundamentally different from the way regular
applications are used: we explore several paths at the same time, branch,
backtrack, revisit, keep things open as reminders... Tabs make this navigation
visible and enable the conscious building of a trail, which can be a very
useful aid when browsing and when trying to make sense of the collected
information.

Tree-style tabs (Firefox extension) are an even better solution: each new page
becomes the root of a "tree", and the tabs that are opened from it become
"branches". There is also a very interesting contrast between following a link
(so the previous page is available on the Back button, and therefore either
accessed right away or soon forgotten) versus opening it in a new tab (so the
parent remains visible as a remainder of an interesting place or a branching
point in the navigation).

Since we don't use desktop applications this way, I don't really see why we
should modify our existing desktop window managers to accommodate this style
of navigation. If anything, we could think of doing it the other way around
and fitting desktop applications into a browser-like navigation structure like
the one described above.

~~~
gioele
> The way we browse the Web is fundamentally different from the way regular
> applications are used: we explore several paths at the same time, branch,
> backtrack, revisit, keep things open as reminders...

I disagree: if I could I would do all these things also in desktop
applications. Web makes it easy to do, but that does not mean that we do not
have the same needs in other applications.

I explore several paths also in my email application: indeed I open messages
and thread in separate windows, now that Thunderbird allows me.

I branch and backtrack my terminal: I often open a new windows just to run a
command and see its output, then I close it and go back to the original
window. If my window manager could track that and visualize it for longer-
lived shells it would be great.

I keep many applications application open as remander, yet I would like to
close them if I knew that there were a simple way to recall them, or if the
system would remind me about them.

I would love to bookmark application statuses and store them.

All these needs are present in the web and would be nice to have in desktop
applications. My point is that tabs are not required to support these needs, a
good windowing manager and some synergy with apps is all is needed.

~~~
Ygg2
I agreedly disagree. Windows managers are apparently not interested enough or
advanced enough to do this, but having branchable/rewindable/taggable history
is something most Window manager don't do.

Hyperlinks on the other hand are easily tracked, moved, rewind, etc.

------
cypher543
> Auto-updates are always on

I really hope this isn't going to become a standard thing. There are still
plenty of people like me who are stuck with something like satellite internet,
which forces us to micromanage our data usage. I can't afford to just have
things auto-updating whenever they want.

~~~
nemothekid
It was the default in Chrome, and I believe its the default in IE as well.

It has its upsides as well, you generally only need to target the latest
stable version of Chrome.

~~~
krisgenre
Its been a while since I used Windows but doesn't IE update through "Windows
updates"? Is it on by default?

~~~
fournm
It does now--older versions did not.

------
shurcooL
A very specific thought on this:

I love the fact that there are no settings because of one advantage it offers
(it has disadvantages too, like any trade-off).

Namely, that you can always be sure of what settings you've changed. The
answer will always be none, since there are no settings.

Removing settings altogether is not the only way to achieve that; for example
see how Sublime Text does its settings, you have a very easy to read explicit
list of all settings you've changed. So resetting to default or undoing a bad
chance is as easy as removing unwanted entries from that Preferences.sublime-
settings file.

Having less choices is nice for when you don't want to change anything, since
you know your settings are optimal defaults and you don't need to spend time
on making sure that they are. If you use 100 apps and each offers 100 choices,
that's 10000 settings to ensure are optimal. If you don't, they likely won't
be.

99% of software pushes towards more choices, more settings, more
customizability, which adds to cognitive overhead of using said software if
you care about having optimal settings, so I'm glad to see an experiment that
boldly pushes in the opposite direction.

------
vacri
I felt my hackles rising throughout the video, then I realised I'm not the
target audience - I'd loathe most of these ideas to make it into a general-
purpose browser (though I can't see FF's separate search box surviving much
longer, sadly).

Still, 'no settings'? How do you do 'no settings' and also do "with your
permission, we'll search your email"? Ultimately I don't really understand the
difference between a "no settings" browser, and a browser where you just don't
bother to change the settings.

------
justfooit
They should remove all the crap that is non-essential. For example, social and
other things. Firefox size has nearly doubled in size between version 15 and
31. Also, I don't think that security would be good. I run noscript and
similar. Notice how around slide 33 they said 3rd party cookies would be
cleared? 3rd parties should not be allowed. Also, what if my trusted sites
does not match their trusted list? Also, what if I don't want certain plugins
to be enabled. Sounds less secure to me.

------
cowchase
This is a great concept. Getting rid of settings, add-ons and plugins for
people that "just want their browser to work" is a good thing, especially when
this is paired with good privacy defaults.

However, I see the auto suggestion features of the Awesome Bar at odds with
the goal of protecting the user's privacy. This essentially means that all
search terms that you enter into the search field will be sent to to all web
services that were integrated by Mozilla, including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft,
Bing, Wikipedia, Amazon etc.

Just imagine using the Awesome Bar to search your inbox for a (business)
"proposal". Then, a little while later, your partner uses your laptop for
online shopping and Amazon helpfully reminds him or her that you recently
searched for "proposal". Depending on your relationship status, this could
become very interesting...

------
ben0x539
I'm surprised "private & secure" only goes as far as deleting the browser
history and cookies every once in a while.

Shouldn't a privacy-by-default experience get rid of many of the information
leaks currently inherent in the web browsing experience? Shouldn't it disable
the http referer header and third-party requests to tracking sites? Shouldn't
it sandbox flash so that it respects the browser's proxy settings and doesn't
persist its own cookie-like objects?

Just hardwiring the current porn window behavior into the whole browser seems
to create more problems than it solves privacy issues. (Makes search through
weighted entries in the browser history impossible, which has 99% replaced
bookmarks for me; makes restarting the browser a lot bigger of a deal,
especially if it also disables opening recently closed tabs).

------
owlish
Disappointed that there isn't any innovation wrt tabs; they aren't mentioned
at all.

I understand Lightspeed aims to be minimalistic, but many of these defaults
are just illogical. Default click-to-play at the moment already ruins many
audio sites where the flash applet is hidden, and turns others into a game of
Where's Waldo.

Completely dropping extensions is antithetical to the central idea as well.
Ideally, the browser would be barebones and fast (what Firefox once was) and
any features would be an addon. Otherwise, you get sucked into the mentality
of "if only there was this one feature".

All in all, there seem to be several inconsistencies in the central idea, but
it could definitely turn out to be an interesting idea.

~~~
fletchowns
He does mention tabs @ 4:18.

The click to play behavior doesn't have to be on the actual applet, it could
be a popup just under the top bar or something. Use some imagination.

Dropping extensions is not antiethical. The people this browser is targeted
for don't care about extensions.

I don't see any of the "inconsistencies to the central idea" you are talking
about.

~~~
krisgenre
In my experience with non technical people, they are always interested in that
one addon that helps them download YouTube videos.

~~~
cpeterso
The browser could just bundle the functionality from popular add-ons like
download YouTube videos. On Firefox's add-ons website, six of the top 20 add-
ons are video downloaders! :)

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/extensions/?sort=us...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/extensions/?sort=users)

~~~
krisgenre
That's the catch. I believe YouTube's terms and conditions don't allow you to
download videos ( not sure ). If FF bundles such an addon, they could get into
trouble ( again not sure, jus speculating ).

------
Pxl_Buzzard
I wonder if this could be made into a modification of Firefox, such that a
user could choose the "simple" version when installing for the first time. If
you wanted to switch between browser modes, just visit "about:config" and flip
the switch to have the full experience of Firefox. Not to say that Lightspeed
would be bad as a standalone browser, but the install base and the code base
already exist for Firefox.

------
GhotiFish
Given your target demographic, I wouldn't willingly install this for a family
member, as there is no ad block.

Without being able to protect my family from scams/manipulation/malware, this
is a non-starter. I'd have to alter the hosts file. I'd need to install
something that updates it. Erk, and then some sites would just break
permanently with no recourse.

I would say the answer would be to add filtering as part of the interface.
"Hey, lightspeed filters websites so you can read them easier, is the site
misbehaving, try turning me off!" Or something.

That said, even if everyone was fine with the UI proposed, there is no way the
idea would be implemented. Regardless of how much of a benefit it is to the
consumer.

------
gatehouse
Having an intelligent non https submission warning could be good... You could
go so far as to flat out refuse to send a cc number in the clear.

The degree of dependence on the search engine is troubling, would be
interesting to see how much could be handled by a local mini index without
involving a 3rd party.

Also think browser history could be a lot more useful if it were organized
better. For example, maybe grouping pages by the search terms that led to
them... Also would be nice to have a quick way to get a detailed history on
any given site, along with the pages led in and followed out.

The main way I still use bookmarks is for organizing reference material, I
think this could be automated partially as well.

~~~
cpeterso
Here is a Firefox bug about highlighting or warning about insecure password
fields:

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=748193](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=748193)

And a bug for Chromium (that also mentions credit card number fields):

[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=399416](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=399416)

------
ejr
I had a flashback to the days of web portals. This isn't necessarily a bad
thing, I like that they're trying _something_ because complacency is never a
good thing. You have to try things to see if they work.

I think the biggest allure of this is that there are people with simple needs
that want their technology to "just work" as they said. I also agree with
owlish's comment in that there are some quirks that need rapid alleviation
that aren't being addressed like click-to-play and dropping extensions doesn't
seem like a good way to approach this.

I applaud the experimentation so long as the end results are choices we can
make for ourselves.

~~~
pessimizer
>I applaud the experimentation so long as the end results are choices we can
make for ourselves.

I don't understand why Mozilla works like this, but they won't be. They'll be
pushed into an update with an option to turn them off, after 3 or 4 releases
the old behavior will be pushed into the about:config, and 3 or 4 releases
after that, it will be removed completely.

------
ChikkaChiChi
Not a bad start.

This can be pared down even further:

* Adjust search results based on your own clickthrough rates. If you bounce out of a site a few times (hello, quora) then it grays out or falls off. Sites you go to and stay on become more prominent.

* Kill downloads. I know this won't be popular, but the ability to download a thing isn't necessary for everyday use. There would be a heightened awareness for the user if they had to switch browsers to download something.

* No cross-site loading of any kind; all source material MUST come from the domain you are on. This would seriously break some sites but it would close large gaps in security and tracking.

A browser just for browsing!

~~~
lemieux
> No cross-site loading of any kind; all source material MUST come from the
> domain you are on. This would seriously break some sites but it would close
> large gaps in security and tracking.

This would probably break almost everything. Who doesn't use some sort of a
CDN nowadays?

~~~
Zikes
A better alternative would be to promote the use of Content-Security-Policy,
perhaps by requiring it be used in order to load source material from an
alternate domain.

------
MarkMc
I wonder if natural language processing could remove the need for a dedicated
settings page. For example, just type "Change search engine" or "use this page
as my homepage" or "search my bookmarks for obama" and the amazebar shows the
appropriate widget or result.

In fact, I think that Siri-fication could be a huge step for a vast number of
applications. I develop an accounting app and it would be a huge benefit to my
users to be able to just type, "pay invoice 364" or "print a statement for
John Smith" or "add my logo to documents"

~~~
Excavator
There was the Ubiquity project¹ by Mozilla Labs which was officially
discontinued but still lives on as a community project².

1:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquity_%28Firefox%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquity_%28Firefox%29)

2:
[https://bitbucket.org/satyr/ubiquity](https://bitbucket.org/satyr/ubiquity)

------
dclowd9901
My first thought: "Well, this is just the new Spotlight isn't it? Why do we
need another Spotlight?"

My second, more intelligent thought: "Oh, most people don't have Macs." I
think there's some pretty great ideas here, and since my gut tells me 95% of
computer time is spent in a browser, it makes sense for it to be extremely
intelligent about inferring what you want.

------
phloxicon
Wouldn't no plugins mean no adblock? I would never go back to not using it.

~~~
ben0x539
Just lobby for adblock to be built-in with a Mozilla-curated block list. Seems
to fit the idea of a safer/simpler-by-default web experience. ;)

------
danialtz
OT: anyone knows which tool he uses for the mockups?

------
cgio
>Plugins are click-to-play everywhere except for a whitelist of trusted sites
(e.g. YouTube, Netﬂix).

what is the impact from a neutrality perspective?

------
greglo
I like the idea, although really this is very similar to Chrome (and other
browsers) where you just never open the settings tab. Except for the search
bar, this is just one of today's browsers with tweaked defaults.

I really don't see the disadvantage, minus the small developer overhead, of
having all the choices they have made here configurable.

~~~
golemotron
I wonder.. is it built on Chrome under the hood?

------
izzydata
The one thing I find very weird is how this guy designing this and other
people are saying "Well, I can't use this for work of course because I have
hundreds of tabs open." Wouldn't make so much sense to try and solve that
problem in particular? It seems like everyone does this, but it seems
worthwhile to ask why everyone does this.

Do you have a tab open because you don't want to lose unsaved data? Do you
want a tab open because it is faster switching to that tab than reloading the
page? There must be some reason and I believe it can be integrated into a much
simpler navigation than looking at hundreds 16 pixel icons squeezed side by
side horizontally.

~~~
hackuser
> I believe it can be integrated into a much simpler navigation than looking
> at hundreds 16 pixel icons squeezed side by side horizontally.

Try one of the vertical tab bar extensions (i.e., the tabs are stacked on top
of each other in a sidebar) such as Tree Style Tabs. It displays many more
tabs (mine displays ~40 before it overflows) and you always can see their
titles.

------
richard-cliqz
Hi there, adding to the discussion a little late, but grateful for your
comments on this one. We at the small Munich-based start-up cliqz are heading
in a kind of similar direction - please have a look at
[https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/cliqz-
beta/](https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/cliqz-beta/) German-heavy
at the moment, but going international soon, hopefully by the end of August.
Please let me know your thoughts - we would be happy to take your suggestions
and together with you make it more "amazing"! Thank you! Richard
(richard@cliqz.com)

------
lucb1e
Something about the "there are no settings to adjust" makes me want to fork
Firefox and only apply security updates from the version before this new UI
gets out of beta.

And tabs a click away? That's a nightmare.

Mixing what I type with search results, history and suggestions? Hello Chrome
lookalike. I thought the separate search bar and awesomebar was one of the
killer features for Firefox. Once that's gone, odds are I'll be switching
browser.

Like with Firefox 4, it seems they are trying to redesign the browser like
Chrome and doing it badly. Last time they did that I switched to Chrome for a
few years before going back to open source (Firefox). Here we go again.

~~~
Svip
But this Lightspeed experiment is at first, just an experiment. Moreover, it
is heavily implied it is not going to be the new Firefox. He also suggests
that the idea is targeted at more simple Internet users. As in, not us.

I am not concerned.

~~~
Pacabel
It may just be a thought experiment at this point, but I think it's pretty
clear now that all of the major browsers are unfortunately headed in this
direction.

This rush to target "more simple Internet users" hasn't gone well for Mozilla
and Firefox so far. All they've managed to do is create a dumbed-down UI
that's harder and less efficient to use, and this has alienated a lot of
Firefox's existing users. This is a big part of why we keep seeing Firefox's
share of the market sliding lower and lower.

Users can forgive Chrome for its bad UI experience because it offers quite
good performance and resource usage. Firefox, unfortunately, does not offer
that (I know, I know, Mozilla has benchmark results that will show the
opposite, but these aren't indicative of actual user experiences). When faced
with two browsers offering basically the same flawed UI, then users will use
the one that offers the best runtime performance and the lowest resource
usage.

Going forward with this sort of a design, or even continuing down the existing
path that Mozilla has been taking, ultimately won't be successful. Users have
very obviously been rejecting Firefox because it now no longer offers a usable
UI, nor does it offer acceptable performance and resource usage.

~~~
pessimizer
>When faced with two browsers offering basically the same flawed UI, then
users will use the one that offers the best runtime performance and the lowest
resource usage.

I don't think that Chrome wins decisively on resource usage. It cheats a lot,
and if you use your browser in uncommon ways, it degenerates.

I think that Chrome will win over Firefox's 'be like Chrome' strategy because
people like leaders rather than followers, and would rather have Chrome-like
features _now_ on _Chrome_ rather than waiting a year for Firefox to copy
them, slightly differently.

------
romaniv
Okay, let me go over the things I don't like about this concept.

1\. Everything is hidden by default. No signifies. That looks less
confusing... until you want to find something or something changes and you
don't even notice until it's not "there" anymore. It's not clear what will
happen when you interact with the UI.

2\. Everything is mushed together. I type something and zillion things pop up
on the scree. How am I supposed to know what are they and where they come
from?

3\. No settings in this context sounds like no choice. I don't want every
download go to Downloads folder, because it will become a bloated mess in
about 3 days. .

------
ZenoArrow
Lightspeed could be an interesting alternative browser, if it could be made
without diverting too many resources from Firefox then I'd like to see more of
it. Could be a good browser to recommend to the less tech savvy.

------
SaveTheRbtz
Looks a lot like Yandex.Browser[1]. Also built around Search, Favorites, Quick
Links, Synchronization and Security.

[1] [http://browser.yandex.com/desktop/](http://browser.yandex.com/desktop/)

------
jfeser
It's interesting that his concept for inline search looks almost exactly like
a current google results page. It would be very cool to have something like
that available without necessarily relying on google for it.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure that a composite view like that, which queries
multiple services, can be created quickly without aggregating the data before
the search is performed. That's problematic if you want to avoid relying on a
single search provider.

------
zawaideh
Bookmarks should be replaced by "app/website" drawer that shows up on your
homescreen. They are useless when they are hidden in a separate window and you
have to always remember to go to them. It is faster to search for them or have
the them come up in the amazebar.

Instead if the new tab window provided a list of
"installed/bookmarked/recently used" webapps/websites, then it will make the
experience of bookmarking a lot more relevant.

------
channikhabra
I really like the popup from the url bar. Safari 8.0 on Yosemite already has
it, but the one they show in the presentation is more interesting and useful.
I already use Spotlight as the only way of accessing applications on OSX
(habit most emacs users get from using smex), so I +1 a universal "Search
interface"; it's much more useful/productive then moving your mouse and
pointing to icons or open an application and look for stuff.

------
jumpwah
I already sort of have the amaze bar with pentadactyl and using duckduckgo
bangs so... no, keep this to the buzybees and don't change firefox into this.

------
mproud
This guy has too many ideas, and the ideas he has conflict. How can you offer
contextual links without saving _some_ information?

I’m not sold yet.

------
webwanderings
I would like to run this browser on an OS which is nothing but CLI. This
imagined CLI based OS will come with two things only: A gigantic and
thoroughly indexed PDF file containing hundreds of commands to do all kinds of
things (so you would only use Ctrl+F to search what you're looking for); and a
modern browser with least minimum settings.

~~~
TuringTest
If you haven't yet, you may want to read _The Humane Interface_ [1] (and test
is working prototype Archy).

It's a description of a user interface that works exactly as you say, yet
looks completely different that what you describe.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Humane_Interface](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Humane_Interface)

~~~
webwanderings
Well, this idea came to mind as I was taking that Linux Edx MOOC course. I am
not a programmer, but if I were, I would have built that kind of OS for
myself. I think the GUI movement in the history of computers, has
fundamentally diverted the real nature of computers. I am not a CLI-Nazi but
going back to basics in a substantive way, is not a bad idea. Besides, there
has been too much significance for mouse/pointing-device. Could we possibly
have directly jumped from keyboard-only computing to touch screen? I see why
not.

------
yeukhon
The no setting part is not really an option. No matter how simple you want to
the browser to be, if you want this to be the one browser for the personal
use, you need some settings.

* setting search engine - this should be dead simple to implement and totally should be customized. I don't mind using Google but some people just don't like that.

Actually I don't get why Firefox search engine customization is the way it is.
If you want to SE that is not part of Firefox's bundle choices, you have to
install add-on. To me, this should be simple to implement. A user click on
"manage search engine preference", press "Add", gives a URL of the search
engine (e.g. [https://google.com](https://google.com)) and then OK. Firefox
should just take whatever user types into the search bar / address bar (this
case needs to know whether the "keyword" is url or not) and just redirect user
to [http://mysearch-engine.com/?q=](http://mysearch-engine.com/?q=) / ?query=.

I can even imagine this useful when I want firefox to do code search. Imagine
instead of me going to dxr.mozilla.org to find the code I want, now I just
need to set the search engine to [http://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-
central/search?=](http://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/search?=) yay!

I can even write an addon that does that right now in probably 30-50 lines of
JS right now.

* home page. I think many older Internet users still set a home page.

* Download folders - you still want to expose where to set it because some people prefer to set it somewhere else.

* Bookmarks - if there is no concept of bookmark, how exactly do I find the things I want quickly? Imagine I <3 a bunch of stuff today and tomorrow I want to find that one awesome blog post I want to re-read. If I can't recall the blog title or the domain, how do I do search?

What really helps users, including me, when I just want a browser.

* security, private, clear cookies - awesome, lightspeed would be super awesome on shared computers

* Big buttons. When I first install Lightspeed I should just be prompted a couple pages with big buttons and bars to set homepage / search engine preference

* When I <3 a bookmark, fade in search bar or show me a page with big list of bookmark categories.

And personally, a little cuteness like the wireframe in the demo is always
welcome.

See these scratch drawing 1 and 2. I am not a designer, so pardon me. I am
also trying to do a mobile experience here. In the bookmark case, you can
type, you can mouse over / click and expand to see the top 5 in that category.

[1]: [http://imgur.com/Bvtrnhi&WjAoic8](http://imgur.com/Bvtrnhi&WjAoic8)

[2]: [http://imgur.com/Bvtrnhi&WjAoic8#1](http://imgur.com/Bvtrnhi&WjAoic8#1)

And yes, as a developer, Lightspeed is awesome to me.

~~~
masklinn
> A user click on "manage search engine preference", press "Add", gives a URL
> of the search engine (e.g. [https://google.com](https://google.com)) and
> then OK. Firefox should just take whatever user types into the search bar /
> address bar

That means you don't ever get suggestions or autocompletion in the search bar.

> I can even imagine this useful when I want firefox to do code search.
> Imagine instead of me going to dxr.mozilla.org to find the code I want, now
> I just need to set the search engine to [http://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-
> central/search?=](http://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/search?=) yay!

So you go into firefox, switch the search engine, type your query, then switch
the search engine back because dxr makes no sense as a default? You know you
can add keyword shortcuts to search engines and just type `dxr query` to send
the query to dxr right?

Hell, you don't even have to set up a search engine: create a bookmark for
"[http://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-
central/search?=%s"](http://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/search?=%s"), add
a keyword e.g. !dxr then type "!dxr $query" in your address bar.

~~~
yeukhon
Auto-suggestion: that's fine if I don't have it because when I search, I
expect to see result displayed on the web page, which means I will spend most
of my time on google.com rather than that looking at that tiny search bar.

> You know you can add keyword shortcuts to search engines and just type `dxr
> query` to send the query to dxr right?

You know why this Lightspeed idea exists? Because users don't need to consult
you or a user guide to find out these fancy shortcuts. I am sorry, but true
story. Actually, sample 20 Firefox developers randomly and ask them a bunch of
Firefox shortcut and "hidden" features questions, I bet there is a high chance
many of them can't answer or don't remember the syntax.

No. I don't want to do bookmarklet or bookmark. It's a simple feature.

My proposal is simple. Any real security risk? No. Privacy? You choose the
search engine you want. Just because solution x y z exists, doesn't mean we
can't make things simpler for both end users and power users.

------
yarou
The design choices really look interesting. But shouldn't Mozilla focus more
on eliminating the ever persistent memory leak bug that has plagued it since
forever? I can't even use Firefox on a netbook. I end up installing Midori.

~~~
nsmartt
Mozilla is comprised of a lot of different people working on a lot of
different things. There are people focusing on various memory and speed
issues, but they can't (and shouldn't) allocate all their resources to
focusing on just a few issues.

~~~
Pacabel
yarou obviously didn't say that they should focus everyone only on reducing
Firefox's memory usage and performance problems. I'm not sure how you
mistakenly got that impression, because that's clearly not what that comments
suggests.

The main issue here is that we've been hearing that these problems will be
fixed, or even that they supposedly have been fixed, yet they're still present
years later.

Whatever work is being done clearly isn't having much of an impact. Users are
still reporting problems with Firefox's performance and memory usage, even if
those within the Mozilla community wish to deny these problems exist, or claim
that they'll be fixed "soon".

Users can only take so much of this. With Chrome and Firefox offering UIs that
are pretty much identical these days, but Chrome offering significantly better
performance and significantly lower memory usage, any reasonable user will
obviously consider switching from Firefox to Chrome. Many have done so
already, and many will continue to do so as time goes on.

~~~
nsmartt
yarou's comment is in response to a presentation about unrelated features, and
his/her response suggests knowledge that Mozilla isn't focusing on memory and
performance problems.

Many of the memory leaks have been fixed over the years, benchmarks suggest
[Firefox can compete with Chrome in terms of
speed](www.tomshardware.com/reviews/chrome-27-firefox-21-opera-
next,3534-12.html), and Mozilla, realizing their UI still _feels_ sluggish,
launched a project (called Snappy) to fight this UI sluggishness.

Many improvements have been made over the years on all counts.

------
marcoms
See [https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Web/](https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Web/) for a
similar (released) approach

------
NickWarner775
I love the idea of the simplicity. Would be especially useful for not so tech
savvy adults.

------
drivingmenuts
In only 20 short years, we've gone full circle back to AOL, but now with an
amazing new interface.

Feh.

------
NanoWar
Two questions: What are the 1 % wizards? :D And how can I block ads without
add ons?

~~~
blueskin_
According to mozilla, only 1% of users are technically competent and customise
their browser or use advanced features. As for blocking ads, you can't -
lightspeed is designed to make the browser a passive content consumption
device like a TV. Welcome to the Brave New World.

------
therealunreal
Maybe "LightFx" would be a more fitting name for this experiment.

~~~
catern
Or "Firelight".

------
yazaddaruvala
If it doesn't have a debug console. I'm not supporting it :P

------
html5web
Time to use Firefox!

------
xj9
I think Mozilla should focus on making Firefox fast and easy on memory usage
before they start trying to "innovate" in the UI space, even if it's just
conceptual.

~~~
Zikes
This is assuming that everyone at Mozilla is capable of focusing on
speed/memory. I'm betting there are several dedicated UI developers and
designers who would not be able to meaningfully contribute to the core
browser, and conceptualizing things like Lightspeed is their primary job role.

------
murali89
I don't know why this is getting up votes. This looks like a browser for
bimbos. No, seriously. I don't want the browser telling me what sites to go to
and while doing that, blocking my view when the address bar is in focus. 10
minutes (well, 6) wasted!

~~~
userbinator
It's getting upvoted because it's interesting to discuss as well. A lot of
users here don't seem to agree with the choices made in this UI either.

