topic Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features! (updated 8-22-24) in Discussions

Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features! (updated 8-22-24)

chance — Thu, 22 Aug 2024 13:25:58 GMT

(Update 8-22-24: This survey is now closed)

Hello Mozilla Connect Community,

I’m Chance York, a User Researcher on the Firefox User Research team. I’m reaching out because our team has created a survey to gather opinions on a handful of browser features, some of which were suggested previously on Mozilla Connect. Your feedback on this survey is important to us. It will help us prioritize Firefox features to better meet user needs and enhance everyone’s browsing experience.

How to Participate: If you’d like to participate in this survey, please click on the link below. It should take about 5-7 minutes to complete, and all responses are anonymous.

Take the survey

What happens next?: The survey will remain open and available to take until Friday, August 9 at 5PM EST. After that, we'll close the survey and convert all answers into numeric data for aggregate data analysis. All data is held securely on our internal platforms. In the coming weeks, we’ll compile our findings into a brief report and share it with the Connect community.

Thanks for your time and feedback. We appreciate your contributions!

Chance

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

Arutemu64 — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 10:29:06 GMT

And... done! Hope this helps!

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

rb124 — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 13:24:18 GMT

Completed it myself too 🙂

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

Jon — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 14:18:09 GMT

Thank you!

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

Jon — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 14:18:31 GMT

Appreciate the feedback 😀

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

chance — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 14:23:54 GMT

Thank you so much @Arutemu64!

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

chance — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 14:24:29 GMT

Thank you @rb124 ! 🎉

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

chance — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 14:25:36 GMT

Thanks to everyone who's responded. Feeling the love from this community! 💌

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

lackey — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 14:45:39 GMT

The option to move things around the UI shouldn't have included "AI chatbots" considering the myriad privacy, ethics, and environmental issues with AI.

The Back button doesn't really contribute to Google's 50% surge in carbon emissions, but a Mozilla-endorsed Gemini chatbot does.

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

chance — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 14:47:26 GMT

Appreciate the feedback @lackey! I'll make sure our PM team receives this. Thanks

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

Yump — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 14:52:29 GMT

On some of the " Imagine you're about to choose a new web browser. Which of the following attributes would you most want your new browser to have, and which would you want least?" questions, my answer would've diverged based on whether it was a mobile browser or a desktop browser.

Autofilling addresses and credit card numbers is a lot more important without a real keyboard, and autofilling 2-factor codes is a lot more feasible when the browser is running on the same device the 2-factor codes are sent to (exercise for the reader: how many factors is that?). Similarly, text-to-speech would be a very attractive feature for me on mobile, but not at all on desktop, because I already use my mobile device to listen to audiobooks and podcasts while completing other tasks, while desktop browsing is single-focus.

I downranked "across devices (phone to desktop or TV)" because I don't consider a TV to be a device that might be used for web browsing, and I don't want resources directed to making TVs capable of web browsing. Also, that was paired with the AI assistant feature so it was necessary to countersignal the typical AI haterade. (That said, "privacy respecting" diddly-dang well better mean local.)

Also I downranked some features because the functionality is well covered by extensions (uBlock Origin's script/3rd party content blocking dashboard).

One proposed feature, "Option to optimize browser performance (such as speed) for both low- and high-end devices," is based on misunderstanding. Performance on low-end devices is battery life on high-end devices. There is no such thing as "too fast". But, given that such an option would let me pick "optimize for low-end" everywhere, I ranked it highest anyway.

Finally, I almost picked the wrong answer on the attention question, "twice as slow as your current browser," because, "Turn your favorite sites like Gmail into apps you can open from your home screen," made me recoil. It took a second to realize I wouldn't have to use it. But now that I think about it maybe that's intended for mobile? I suppose I am not a member of the radical PWA party.

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

chance — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 14:59:41 GMT

Hi @Yump, thanks for this feedback. All fair points. I'll send it along to our Product team

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

the__geekboy — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 16:45:34 GMT

Done 👍

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

ffffff — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 18:08:39 GMT

Thanks, Miku!

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

ffffff — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 18:35:49 GMT

Would sharing the survey help? Is there anything else we can do?

There was an option that made me really confused, "A privacy-respecting AI assistant that makes your browser smarter by learning how you use it." I have genuinely zero idea what this means. Chatbot? Something else? I probably would've chosen what I did regardless, but maybe this could've been a bit clearer?

That aside, survey done, hope it helps.

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

chance — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 18:59:29 GMT

Thank you! @the__geekboy 😊

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

chance — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 19:01:04 GMT

Thanks for taking the survey @ffffff. Appreciate the feedback on the survey, too. We'll certainly take your ideas into consideration as we iterate on the survey for different audiences. For now, we're trying to keep it restricted to Connect, but whatever you can do to make the survey higher visibility on this platform, we'd appreciate it.

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

ffffff — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 19:26:04 GMT

@chance wrote:
For now, we're trying to keep it restricted to Connect,

Noted. Might be worth mentioning that I found out about the survey through another website.

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

okay_okay — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 20:03:18 GMT

completed!

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

ikjadoon — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 21:46:41 GMT

Finished!

As a current Arc Browser user, I felt very seen with many of the proposed features: vertical tabs, video pop-out, pinned tabs (with synced page state) across windows, native split screen, etc.

I'm truly hopeful Firefox can consider these pivotal features. I will note that some extensions do some of these things better, namely:

Blocking trackers, ads, etc.: uBlock Origin
Saving articles: I cannot use the outdated Pocket extension in Firefox anymore and moved to Omnivore.
Autofilling SMS: 1Password can do this for normal 2FA TOTP, but not SMS.

As a macOS user, I pine for native vertical tabs (the damned macOS Menu Bar destroys Fitt's Law for horizontal / standard tabs).

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

chance — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 22:26:32 GMT

Got it, do you know which site @ffffff ?

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

chance — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 22:26:47 GMT

Thank you, thank you! 😊

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

chance — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 22:28:43 GMT

I hear you @ikjadoon! We want you to feel seen by us, too! We'll pass this feedback on to our product team. Thank you! 🙌

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

ffffff — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 23:41:07 GMT

I see that it has been shared on multiple, actually.

https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1el78bx/
https://lemmy.world/post/18341952
https://lemmy.ml/post/18835282

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

OutlawHusbando — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 09:16:34 GMT

Finished mine too, please keep it up you're doing great job.

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

myspace — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 13:41:13 GMT

Done! Thanks for including community in the survey 👍

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

wutongtaiwan — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 19:22:50 GMT

I'm done. I want the browser to be faster, I don't want it to be slower. I also wish Firefox would block more trackers. Firefox uses Disconnect's tracker list, but Mozilla could consider a tracker list that uses some ad filters, such as Adguard's tracker list. I've always felt that Firefox's ability to block trackers isn't strong enough and needs to be further enhanced.

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

chance — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 19:31:13 GMT

Thank you so much @OutlawHusbando! 😊

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

chance — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 19:31:35 GMT

Thank you so much for your time @myspace! It's appreciated!

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

chance — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 19:32:13 GMT

Nice! Thanks so much @wutongtaiwan! I'll share this feedback with our product folks.

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

d1 — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 01:31:24 GMT

(◔◡◔)ﾉ*:･ﾟ†∿✧*°♡･*` BravOo。❗ 😍 Thank you❣ Thanks to all Mozilla teammates & volunteers for sharing your expertise with all of us so that We All can Enjoy our Browsing Journeys!
been 💗'n Mozilla since pre-Firefox 💕😄👍

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

wutongtaiwan — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 07:02:53 GMT

Is the privacy-respecting AI you mentioned running locally? Can it be used in China?

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

wutongtaiwan — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 07:11:25 GMT

I have a couple of suggestions for privacy, and it would be nice if you could prioritize development, Firefox advertises itself as privacy-conscious, so the privacy aspect should be a higher priority. The first one is to block deep packet inspection, there is a project on Github called goodbyDPI, if you can build this project into Firefox, the security performance will be greatly improved. The second is the built-in AdGuard ad filter, which is designed to block not only intrusive ads, but also many trackers, which can effectively enhance privacy. The third is browser fingerprint randomization, to ensure that every time you start the browser, the fingerprint is different, just like Brave, Brave's way to fight fingerprint tracking is the most correct.

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

Ponda — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 09:40:31 GMT

I was working a little on social surveys last year and I'm not convinced that sorting 3 at a time is a better measure than setting a 1 - 10 priority per point. Current form may tell you that A is much preffered to B, but won't twll you anything about their relation to D unless you mix answers per survey, but then standard "on scale 1 to 10 rate how important it is" would provide you much more information overall while requiring similar amount of work from participants. Current system would make sense if answers were mutualy exclusive for technical reasons at least connected thematically, such as "AI search", "learning chatbot" and "no AI", where it is important to have a strict relationship between all options (which may still prove impossible since 1/3 may prefer A>B>C, 1/3 B>C>A and the rest C>A>B).

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

Synchro — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 16:43:34 GMT

Done, but it looks kind of strange. In the first part you asked about both mobile and desktop browsers, but in the second, where I have to choose most wanted and least wanted features you don't specify the platform while some of these features can be important only for one of them.

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

Jon — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 20:33:52 GMT

Hey all,

Feedback and participation has been great — let's keep it going 💪

Friendly reminder that the survey will remain open and available to take until Friday, August 9 at 5PM EST.

Thanks!

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

chance — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 14:08:23 GMT

Thank you so much @d1! We appreciate you 😊

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

chance — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 14:11:03 GMT

Hi @wutongtaiwan, thanks for your feedback. Let me pass your AI questions and your feedback on to our Product team and get back to you when I know more. It's appreciated!

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

chance — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 14:12:23 GMT

Hi @Ponda! Appreciate the feedback! All of our work is iterative, so we'll take these ideas into consideration the next time we deploy a similar survey.

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

chance — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 14:12:59 GMT

Hi @Synchro, got it! Thanks for your feedback.

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

chance — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 14:15:46 GMT

Thanks @Jon!

And a huge thanks to everyone who's contributed! 🎉

Like Jon mentioned, we'll be closing the survey today, Friday, August 9 at 5PM EST.

Appreciate all your amazing feedback! Thanks y'all.

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

brixter — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 14:42:52 GMT

Why was "Twice as slow" in the options? I didn't mark it as most wanted nor least wanted because I suspect it was a mistake. Is this a trick question to weed out people who don't read? Then my answers would be disregarded.

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

wutongtaiwan — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 15:32:25 GMT

I'd like to know what features you're prioritizing, and hopefully you'll be able to announce what features you're going to develop when the time comes

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

chance — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 20:52:08 GMT

Hi @brixter!For this particular type of survey, we use “anchor” items that we know browser users will tend to rank very high, or very low in the 'twice as slow as your current browser' case. The 'twice as slow' option also pulls double duty as an attention check, i.e., we can use it to detect users who might be rushing through for whatever reason and who may click “twice as slow” as their most wanted browser feature. In your case, your responses will absolutely count! Appreciate your time and care on this survey 😊

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

chance — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 20:54:08 GMT

Thanks @wutongtaiwan! Our Product Team pays attention to this forum, and I know they'll fill you in on which features they prioritize moving forward!

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

chance — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 21:00:11 GMT

Hi folks,

A final update: Our survey is now closed. Thanks to you, we had a phenomenal response of over 2,800 completed surveys. I want to thank everyone again for participating!

As a follow-up, we plan to release a brief report on Connect covering the major results from this survey on Friday, September 13.

Our research team loves hearing from this group! Your feedback on this survey will assist our Firefox product team as they plan for the future. We appreciate the time and care you took on this.

Thanks again and take care,
Chance

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

Blimpier — Sun, 11 Aug 2024 21:12:36 GMT

Hi @chance, @Jon, and the Mozilla team, I landed here from the link in your 'Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out in Nightly Firefox Labs 131' page. Unfortunately I just missed the deadline for your survey, so I'll tack my suggestions on here 😃

Firstly I'd like to second @wutongtaiwan "Firefox advertises itself as privacy-conscious, so the privacy aspect should be a higher priority" and their other suggestions (goodbyDPI, fingerprint randomization).

Personally, I am frustrated at (IMO) the poor usability of FF 'Profiles'. I like to work with what you might call 'separate workspaces', i.e. different subject areas that I want to keep separate. Depending on what I'm working on I will have just the one window open with a bunch of tabs to do with that subject. When I finished there and I start working on something else, I like to close down that Window and open 'the Window' from the other subject.

Had a really good try with your Profiles, had some six different profiles set up, but found it so impractical and cumbersome I had to move on. At least one of your competitors has excellent, easy to use, and well functioning Profiles (begins with V 😄), but I'm a FF guy.

In the end I've settled on using Simple Tab Groups in FF, which works very well (I have eight different themed Groups with their own icon, they are easy to switch between, and manual backups are a keyboard shortcut away).

In the fierce world of Browser competition, what is it that Firefox excels at over the others? To my mind that is flexibility (add-ons) and privacy. I am very much for 'hardening' FF, if this is an area that you see as a strength, I encourage you to develop here.

No doubt funding is an issue too. I pay for my VPN, I pay for my email, is moving away from your default search engine an option?

Other than that, I love the flexibility of FF, your add-ons, especially your 'Recommended' feature, that is really inspired.

Many thanks and I hope this feedback helps 😊

Edit: on my Android phone I mainly use Firefox Beta (I used to use the regular FF but found it very slow), and also have Firefox Focus with 'Block JS' turned on, the two together work brilliantly TYVM. The only thing about FF Focus, it only has four pinned 'Add to Shortcuts' spaces, with the rest of the landing page completely empty. Could we have more pinned places please 😅
On FF Beta you have 16 pinned places, the 'Jump back in' feature, Bookmarks, 'Recently visited' AND 'Collections' - now THAT is useful!!!

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

wutongtaiwan — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 07:10:17 GMT

I wonder when Mozilla will replace the browser kernel with servo. I'm looking forward to the browser kernel written in rust

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

HomerHossa — Thu, 22 Aug 2024 07:30:03 GMT

Since the survey is closed, it's perhaps best to frame that at the beginning of the post and to no longer put it at the centre of the starting page ?

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features!

Synchro — Thu, 22 Aug 2024 08:23:47 GMT

Good point. It's also strange that this thread (and some others) aren't mentioned here

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features! (updated 8-22-24)

Jon — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 12:31:54 GMT

Hey all, thanks again for the participation here - not only in completing the survey but also for the lively discussion! Since the survey has been closed, we're going to lock this thread and make it read-only.

We'll let you know as soon as the results are shared 😀

Re: Your Feedback Matters: Take Our Survey on Browser Features! (updated 8-22-24)

Jon — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 18:55:26 GMT

Hey all - the results have been posted! Check them out here:

And thanks again for participating 💪