topic Re: Firefox's hidden potential: Important features disabled in Discussions

Firefox's hidden potential: Important features disabled

Krazy — Tue, 19 Sep 2023 22:32:00 GMT

There's a lot of features (privacy, security, performance) that aren't enabled by default, which is unfortunate. The features exist, despite many users forget to enable them or are unaware of their existence, which is why they end up not taking advantage of Firefox's full hidden potential. Firefox need to suggest to users to enable them (even after installing or updating) so they have the best experience possible.

Re: Firefox's hidden potential: Important features disabled

Jon — Fri, 22 Sep 2023 01:11:33 GMT

@Krazy Thanks for sharing this — it's a really interesting point and potentially a great discussion, especially for Connect.

So I'd love to hear what some of these features are. Feel free to drop them in this thread ⬇️ — and that's an invitation to all of you 💪

Looking forward to seeing these responses!

Re: Firefox's hidden potential: Important features disabled

Krazy — Sun, 24 Sep 2023 04:44:48 GMT

@Jon I mean that Devs implement new options/tweaks for a better performance/privacy/security and should leave these improvements enabled by default for all supported platforms

For example:

General -> Performance -> Use recommend performance settings

Privacy & Security -> HTTPS-Only Mode -> Enable HTTPS-Only Mode in all windows

Privacy & Security -> Enhanced Tracking Protection -> Strict

There are also some flags (in about:flags) that can improve performance, if enabled and/or configured correctly 😉

Re: Firefox's hidden potential: Important features disabled

Suraj_Mishra — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 15:50:26 GMT

Hi! @Krazy , I have some inputs for your suggestions. I maybe wrong so take it with a grain of salt.

1 - Isn't recommended performance settings enabled by default?

2 - HTTPS only mode on all windows might cause some confusion for non technical users. Not everyone is using HTTPS on their websites and not many users are even aware of what HTTPS is. I believe making it on by default will not be good at the moment. But in future it should definitely be made an opt-out instead of opt-in.

3 - Using Strict rule sets increases the chances of web pages breaking. The last thing we want is a non technical user facing issue caused by the browser. Balanced is more or less an optimal choice for people who want to install a browser and just use it. Some people don't like turning knobs and switches.

Re: Firefox's hidden potential: Important features disabled

Krazy — Fri, 20 Oct 2023 21:33:26 GMT

It makes sense. I know that some security and privacy features can negatively impact the performance of any program. But in this case, Firefox would alert/recommend users to disable some of these features in case of performance issues or web pages breaking. 🙂