topic Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do? in Discussions

Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Jon — Thu, 08 Sep 2022 13:03:06 GMT

Let’s have fun with this one…

If your browser could do anything—no limits—what would you want it to do?

Could be features that positively impact entertainment, social, work, personal, family, education, shopping OR any scenario where you wish Firefox could help make an experience better OR even create a new experience/develop a brand new product.

When participating in the discussion, please remember to:

-Follow the

Anything that violates the guidelines will be flagged and removed.

-Stay on topic

Let’s keep this thread focused on the 'blue sky ideas' theme. If you have additional product feedback or ideas unrelated to the discussion topic, create a new post.

Thanks so much and looking forward to hearing all of your amazing ideas 🙌

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Anonymous — Sun, 11 Sep 2022 04:22:03 GMT

Resist the economic exploitation of big tech
This is a discussion I have already raised, but unfortunately it is not well supported. I have also suggested, as a related discussion, increasing performance per resource. Specifically, there is a need to work comfortably with a 64-bit dual-core or so CPU. This would require the courage to give up on meeting all web standards.

PS: Web browsers should be expected to be used simultaneously with other applications. It is not comfortable for the browser to use up hardware resources.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

CubeOfCheese — Tue, 13 Sep 2022 03:54:22 GMT

I wish it could automatically close out cookie popups and fill them out for me so all tracking and marketing cookies are blocked. Those cookie popups are super annoying

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Jon — Tue, 13 Sep 2022 15:08:21 GMT

Thanks for sharing! This thread will be shared with the Product Team, so feel free to add any more details or submit another 'Blue sky idea.'

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Jon — Tue, 13 Sep 2022 15:10:37 GMT

Thanks for participating in this discussion—and linking to your related posts. This thread will be shared with our Product Team, so feel free to add any more details...or even submit another 'blue sky idea' for a new feature/new product/whatever you wish your browser could do.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Anonymous — Tue, 13 Sep 2022 21:35:09 GMT

I don't know what you want to be more detailed.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 00:08:08 GMT

This is not my idea, but I think that enhancing the optimization to the hardware is a good one.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 16:02:52 GMT

To stop all page activity/manipulation (by javascript, css animation, video, pending web requests, ... )

Kind of like taking a freeze frame of an existing tab.

But in comparison to a screenshot a user can still interact with the page content.

That would also be a cool alternativ to a fully discarded tab, which needs a full page reload. This suspended (frozen) tab would kind of be a middle ground between an active and a fully discarded tab. Oh, and of course a user should be able to unfreeze the tab again, when he wants.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Jon — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 19:31:59 GMT

This is great, thanks! Yea tagging favorite ideas here works too...especially if they've already been suggested in the community. It will add to their visibility for others to see and support (if they choose to).

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Jon — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 19:34:29 GMT

Thanks @Anonymous!

So something similar to this idea here: ?

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 22:39:25 GMT

Similar in that it seems to be a subset. Stoping media Animation (from CSS/SVG/APNG/GIF/videos ...) is one thing part, but suspending Javascript execution like if a debugger statement had been inserted and preventing DOM manipulation doesnt seem to be mentioned in this idea as far as i can see.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 23:48:22 GMT

I looked for existing ideas that embodied my ideals. These already have a lot of support and should proceed to the development stage.

To avoid wasting user resources, it is also necessary to isolate features that can be implemented with extensions. Also, since not everyone has a large display, the display area is one of the resources.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Jon — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 17:02:02 GMT

Thanks for the quick response and clarification. Super helpful!

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

laWiskaPY — Sat, 17 Sep 2022 03:51:28 GMT

Delete the space between tab and url bar.
there is a bug that prevents firefox from starting if you changed the variables in windows.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Jon — Tue, 20 Sep 2022 18:08:55 GMT

Thanks @laWiskaPY! So you're looking for more of a compact UI to free up screen space?

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Zalathar — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 00:07:07 GMT

I would love to have a browser UI that is stable and under my control.

Right now every browser update is very stressful, because I have to worry that it's going to jumble things around, or remove accessibility features that I rely on, or insert new ads and distractions that I need to waste time getting rid of.

It would be nice to have a browser that I can set up based on my needs, and then be confident that it isn't going to forcibly change itself behind my back.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

ansiklopedici — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 06:58:32 GMT

Editing and integration of features such as Pocket, Reading List and Reader View in favour of the user. Actually, this idea seems non-bluesky, but I feel it is bluesky as it doesn't seem likely to happen anytime soon.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

dhruvit_r — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 10:05:19 GMT

Please work on making Profiles a first-class feature. I love the philosophy behind Firefox, and I love to use it, but Firefox implements the UX for Profiles in such a crude manner that it becomes impossible for me (and probably many others) to use it. This feature has so much potential, but the poor UX choices make it very hard to use.

Switching profiles is so clunky. This discussions delves deeper into this topic. In addition to the "Profile Switcher" toolbar icon mentioned in the thread, Chromium-based browsers allow the user to select Profiles from the context menu of the Dock icon (on macOS, not sure about other OS) and from the "People" menu item in the menubar. This flexibility make using Profiles extremely convenient.
Opening external links: Firefox always opens external links in the "default" profile. Chromium-based browsers, on the other hand, open the external link in the profile which was most recently opened. So if I have two windows open running two different profiles, I can open an external link in either of the windows without changing any configuration. This simple interaction is so intuitive.

There are a few more pain points, but solving these two issues would make using Firefox so much more convenient for me.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Jon — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 22:24:14 GMT

Thanks, this is great feedback! And appreciate the link to this idea that also dives into the topic of profiles: This will be shared with the product team.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Anonymous — Thu, 29 Sep 2022 00:10:15 GMT

There are many ideas for UI, some with a lot of support, but it is strange that they have not progressed to the development stage. For example,

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Jon — Fri, 30 Sep 2022 00:45:31 GMT

Hey, blue sky is anything you think will most improve your browsing or overall internet experience...so thank you for sharing and adding the direct links to your favorite ideas! This thread will be shared with the appropriate product teams, so hopefully we'll have some more info soon 😃

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

kryton — Fri, 30 Sep 2022 10:52:36 GMT

1. Give me back the larger icons on the new tab shortcuts, release 94 (I think) changed them to tiny icons in big buttons. We used to be able to get them back with browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.newNewtabExperience.enabled = false but that went away as well. I really liked the aesthetic of the larger icons. Make it easy, when clicking the gear icon to customize the new tab, right below the # of rows of shortcuts, please give me the option for large or small icons in the shortcuts.

2. Limit each tab's ability to HOG system resources. It's really annoying when I am researching "how to do X" and the whole browser is slowed down because 1 of the 5 tabs open is on a page with a resource abusing script.

3. I really want the "do not autoplay ANY audio/video/stream" god button. Yes, sites have the right to put up ads to generate revenue, but that stops at the point where they are burning through my monthly data allowance consuming it with their auto-play ads. Clicking the X to kill the floating media player window works for about 10 seconds and then another starts right up. It's annoying trying to watch a video I started on "How to do X" in one tab and the audio is getting stepped on by an auto-play streaming ad from another tab. They are consuming my resources (bandwidth/data allowance) without my consent, much the same way a telemarketer is illegally consuming my minutes allowance when calling my cell phone.

Thanks for hearing me out.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

ikpjr — Fri, 07 Oct 2022 11:23:03 GMT

To me Firefox (Developer Edition) is best or among the best in performance and the best for full customization. In my experience Edge's performance is somewhat close, but I should note that I have disabled some Firefox preferences (in about:config) like accessibility services I don't use and have Auto Tab Discard to discard after 3-6 tabs loaded and 10-15 minutes of inactivity, so that they don't consume much CPU or RAM resources. On the customization side Vivaldi has some UI settings for this as well the possibility of limited CSS customization but its performance is noticeably terrible on older machines with a fraction of the tabs of the other browsers.

Still, I think it could be made better if it offered a "sessions" mechanism and session organization feature. The benefit of it is that it would improve user organization and workflow. In fact, under my profile you can find replies (pick one - they are similar but with different analogies) related to tab management that elaborate these in detail and if modified a bit they could fit this session mechanism well. Existing addons don't quite offer this because they are lacking in robustness by losing user's session data. Pre-quantum(or pre-XUL?) addons(session managers, panorama, tab groups) were more robust in that respect, in my experience. Also, having different profiles wouldn't be a solution, as it is cumbersome for the user because (s)he has to go through the work of configuring browser preferences, installing addons and configuring them and all other customizations including userchrome CSS and JS, yet again. This session stuff would therefore be advantageous if implemented and integrated natively. Probably will post an idea related to this somewhat later, when having the time to elaborate on the complete thing or someone else could take on this meanwhile.

"Idea" number 2, would be burndown and time chart(s) of tabs related to a particular scenario. This could be useful if someone only wants to spend a certain time on such scenario and/or to have a vision of the progress on the numbers of tabs (increase, decrease numbers, percentage and estimated time to complete or reach a certain marked point based on past data) on a more permanent scenario like a project of any kind. This could be achieved by addons not necessarily be native.

Another "idea" would be for example a reader view that summarized a page's text and a section for stats related to reading time for the day, week, months(s) and with option for grouping stats per site/domain. Going even further, what if it was possible to have articles on a site filtered by their content, like some RSS readers do(by word filtering on title and body) but on a different (an additional level) by using techniques from the field of natural language(I'm not quite acquainted with this). For example, having paragraphs to be reorganized (to be closer) by their similarity or intersection of concepts - which could make texts more intelligible by having fundamental concepts in their proper order before more advanced concepts that rely on these more fundamental definitions or a (fiction) narrative arc that is all over the place and one would like to read a character's story or events sequentially. Or having generated graphs that would identify cause and effect between subjects and objects via actions/verbs, their properties via adjectives and state modification - (kicking a black rugby ball would create an entity or node named ball with tuple state (rugby, black, kicked) - since modified subjects or objects (the effects) would be of more interest than the causes because from a learner's perspective state modification(effects) is more interesting than events(that caused it or not). This, if possible, would enable automatic content curation and filtering by user relevant and supplied concepts, subjects, objects, categories or topics (I'm not sure of the correct terminology). And the learner would more rapidly build their rules/policies for quicker decision making and knowledge building while going through more signal than noise. I guess that this would be an ontology graph (or knowledge graph?) that enabled filtering (for example being applied on a generalist news site - but not exclusive to this kind of site).

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

ikpjr — Fri, 07 Oct 2022 16:35:55 GMT

Expanding on the last paragraph, one could have highlighted a few top articles of the month ranked by their quality by proxy metrics such as cohesiveness and original order of paragraphs (and paragraphs with no mention of salient concepts would contribute to noise in the calculation). Such metrics could be the ratio of depth of content (judged by level of dependent/mentioned relations between concepts and/or number of concepts) to length of text or number of sentences thus measuring quality density and conciseness. Articles which are overly descriptive and with excessive prose or adjectives and more about events than facts would be ranked lower by default.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

ikpjr — Fri, 07 Oct 2022 17:15:28 GMT

Remarking on "blue sky ideas", I understand that among these ideas, can be some for longer term roadmap consideration and that on other hand smaller features and options, when added together can make a great product.

However, as a Firefox user, I wouldn't like if it at some point is headed the same path of Vivaldi. Vivaldi has added features natively like mail, notes and RSS support that shouldn't be part of a browsers core function. For that there addons, and even better standalone dedicated applications or even websites.

Among those added "features" or bloat, as well as extensive settings and UI customization and JS libraries and frameworks, there may be the culprit(s) to its abysmal performance and playback and windows responsiveness when opened with similar number of tabs.

There still could be some level of inter application protocol communication/addon integration if that would be advantageous to do or even some browser API endpoints accessible by applications - apart from extensions remote communication with apps there is also devtools protocol for Chrome and marionette/gecko (projects available on github) for Firefox.

I think that some user requested features are a bit lazy because there addons or apps that do such things capably and the performance or other benefits of having those integrated natively are dubious or marginal while adding to the maintenance, bloat size/attack surface, time and integration costs.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

ikpjr — Fri, 07 Oct 2022 17:58:06 GMT

Regarding "blue sky ideas" vs incremental improvements, consider this: PWA support.

Maybe the reason PWA support is not currently widely available is its lower priority and/or implementation complexity.

I'm making a suggestion for an alternative to PWA support, while the latter is not implemented, that could make user's workflow a bit closer.

What I understand of PWA's, is that to have PWA support, a site must implement some number of things. What if, instead, opening a site from a phone's or desktop (home)screen (not installed PWA but added) would make it available on a dedicated window(separate from the user's sessions or profiles windows) making a "fake" PWA without need for install - a technique that would work for all sites regardless of PWA support. For one time use tools/calculators/(web)apps or reference sites without need to browse other sites, this would be useful and even more advantageous than pinned tabs without the need to load a main session with lots of tabs and dragging performance down unnecessarily. This solution would be like having bookmarks to sites on the desktop/phone's (home) screen that open in individual windows. On the desktop it would be more useful because multiple "PWA" that are needed for the same task could be tiled side by side while also(the desktop form factor) allowing more screen for multitasking.

On the implementation side, some considerations about security and storage efficiency would presumably need to be thought of, so that said solution would scale well with number of "fake" installed PWAs and respective resource usage, namely storage and compute (CPU/RAM/GPU) because a user could have the need for several PWA's opened and loaded.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

ikpjr — Fri, 07 Oct 2022 21:10:31 GMT

Those mentioned scenarios remind me of a digital personal assistant that would surface with relevant(interactive) notifications, a use case that I'm not particularly aware of (its details) or found usefulness right now. However, I'm mentioning this in case other people would find this feature valuable to them or as a starting point for others.

One other idea thing:

Let's imagine users have ranked their favorited resources in a list (e.g reference sites they trust or products) for each of a number of distinct scenarios. Would it be possible, given the ranking data for all users and for each particular user and user list, make recommendations if an item has been popular overall in rankings but is missing on this particular list and ranks higher than some number of items present in this user's list. The goal of recommendations would be to improve user's lists and choices over time by not only expanding choices but making alternatives visible. Items could optionally have user generated tags and/or values/properties for establishing better why an item was chosen for that ranking and why it places better than other options. These could also be visible to all users who then could find ordered tags/properties by their popularity when tagging their own items. Lists would also need to be in the proper categories for them to be "compared" properly? All of this would be desirable while maintaining maximum privacy for user's list ranked collections and transmitting the least amount of info for gathering stats and leaking minimum data. On the technical side, I guess it would be sort of a distributed ranking system. Does it make sense?

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

MattAuSupport — Sat, 08 Oct 2022 05:32:53 GMT

I would just like Firefox to put the default input somewhere that works when you open a second window. Typing just does nothing. You have to manually select the url input area to type there. Almost as bad as a text input area in the middle of the screen that by design does not accept text. Instead, placing it on the URL bar.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

ajp1228 — Sat, 08 Oct 2022 22:20:09 GMT

Yes. I would like Firefox to remember the old saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Sometimes the updates change things around and the UI and/or behavior of Firefox becomes different than what long-time users are used to. Then we have to dig around and find out how to change the setting back to how it used to be using about:config settings. The fairly recent update having to do with Windows DPI settings was one of the worst. However, there have been others in the past. If Firefox wants to "improve" something, they should not change the default settings for current users. Instead, they could change the defaults for new users, if they think it's truly easier to use for newbies. For current users, those settings could just be treated as user options (the same as the settings we have previously manually changed). Firefox can put information in the release notes telling us how to make the changes if we want to try out the so-called "new and improved" version. They should also add more of these settings to the settings menu, instead of forcing users to use about:config, which many users are not comfortable changing.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

ajp1228 — Sat, 08 Oct 2022 22:33:47 GMT

1. I wish FF would stop doing funky things with Facebook after the buffer fills up. The current problem (listed on here as well as on Bugzilla, I think) with the auto scroll jumping down several posts has been going on for several months and is still not fixed, either by FF or by Facebook. Prior to that, I had an issue with FB not loading pictures after I had been scrolling for a length of time; I had to close FF and restart it to clear it out. However, that issue did not happen as often as the scrolling jumps. Now I have another issue with FB; some of the buttons stop working, usually when I am trying to view individual pictures from a post with multiple picture. FB will not scroll through the pics, other buttons on FB stop working, and when I close out of the pics I am directed to some random page instead of back to the news feed where I was. My dream would be for FF to work smoothly with Facebook!

2. I would like to be able to stop the videos from news sites and other pages to stop dropping down to the corner of my screen when I try to scroll past them. They are annoying and distracting, and they sometimes cover up the text I am trying to read. Sometimes I even have to zoom out on my browser before I can X out of the videos. Let us have the option to move the video to the corner, but let us turn off the setting which does this by default.

3. This is a minor issue, but when I go to a new, blank tab which has the box in the middle of the screen saying "search with Google or enter address," I wish FF would keep the text I type inside the box intead of moving it to the address bar. I like being able to search on the fly using the address bar, but when I go to this new tab and start a search, I would like the text to stay inside the box just like it does when I search from Yahoo, Google, Duck Duck Go, or any other search engine. It's not a big deal, but I find it a bit annoying...LOL

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

mp1982 — Mon, 10 Oct 2022 04:36:55 GMT

Have mousewheel events on the tabs (the tabs in the tab bar) that website devs and addon devs can use to map to actions. For instance if my website has a music player, I could listen to the wheel event and let the user adjust the volume, without needing them to click/focus the website first, if they just hover the tab and use the wheel.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Jon — Mon, 10 Oct 2022 14:11:56 GMT

Thanks for this insightful response, @ajp1228, and sorry to hear updates/changes are a pain point. Really like your point about release notes. There is a similar idea here in the community that has been shared with our product team:

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Jon — Mon, 10 Oct 2022 15:48:46 GMT

Thanks for this feedback, @Zalathar. We want to make sure the update experience is seamless and stress-free.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Jon — Mon, 10 Oct 2022 15:52:40 GMT

All great points, thanks! And there are some similar ideas already trending here in the community:

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Jon — Mon, 10 Oct 2022 18:13:27 GMT

This is great. And thanks for the specific example...always helps!

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Jon — Mon, 10 Oct 2022 18:17:02 GMT

This is very helpful, thanks! Any way we can improve the experience, including eliminating annoyances, is what we're looking for.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

ajp1228 — Mon, 10 Oct 2022 20:21:22 GMT

Thanks. Can you add to that being able to stay logged into this site for a long period of time? It logs me off every time I close the browser window. Why can't I stay perpetually logged in, like I do with Facebook? Or even Bugzilla? LOL...Thanks!

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

ajp1228 — Mon, 10 Oct 2022 20:47:23 GMT

I just remembered a minor change I made a few months ago in about:config. I added extra zoom values. I added 95% and 75% and perhaps a couple of others in-between. The 75% is very helpful, because there is currently a huge difference in the default 67% vs the next default level up. Having 95% allows me to tweak the page if it's just a little big too large for my DPI settings and doesn't decrease the font size nearly as much as going down to the default of 90%.

I find that the "zoom text only" option isn't usually helpful and causes the web pages to not display correctly. If there's any way to "zoom text only" without moving the pictures around on the web pages, that would be very nice. Many sites use large pictures and small fonts, which make it difficult for us who are not 20 years old to read the text. Many pictures and videos, for example those on Facebook, are taller than the height of the browser window on my laptop unless I use "full screen" mode.

Another issue is that some websites have headers which remain at the top of the page while you are scrolling through the content. These headers cover up too much of the screen and make it difficult to see the content. (A shopping site I use is bad for this, and I have to use full-screen view to see the merchandise I'm browsing.) If there was a setting we could click to turn this off for an individual site, that would be nice. I'm sure it's part of the code the web developer added to the sites, but the sky is the limit in this thread, right? 😊

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

ajp1228 — Mon, 10 Oct 2022 20:55:22 GMT

Thanks. I actually haven't had any trouble finding the release notes. My point is that when you make changes which affect the normal historical behavior/appearance of FF, you need to keep our default settings as user-preferred settings, but just alert us and let us switch to the new default if WE think it is an improvement. The update a few months ago which tied the zoom level to the Windows DPI settings was a nightmare for many users, and we actually had to ADD a setting in about:config to undo the change!

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Jon — Tue, 11 Oct 2022 16:00:11 GMT

Hey, you're right—the sky is the limit and then some! Thanks for sharing. We'll pass this along to the right team and let you know if there are any updates or follow-up questions.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Jon — Tue, 11 Oct 2022 18:10:42 GMT

Haha keep 'em coming! But yea we'll look into this.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Jon — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 14:13:49 GMT

Thanks for sharing this. So when you open a new window and start typing, nothing happens?

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

ajp1228 — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 19:07:36 GMT

What do you have set as your home page? My home page is Yahoo, and when I opened a new window just now, the cursor was already inside the Yahoo search box. But my new tab page is the default Firefox page and the cursor is inside the url box; the search box is in the middle of the page but when I type there it moves the text back up to the url line - I would like to keep it inside the search box. My "new private window" also opens up the default Firefox page, and the cursor is still in the url line, ready for me to type a website name.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Jon — Sun, 16 Oct 2022 21:10:19 GMT

This is great...and a ton of really valuable info! Sessions/session organization is really interesting—plus a popular topic in this community. We'll take a look at that along with your replies in other threads related to tab management. Will follow up with questions to learn more. Thanks!

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Jon — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 19:23:31 GMT

Hey all!

This has been fun AND very insightful, so we're gonna keep the thread open a bit longer to:

1) Continue reviewing all posts

2) Hear more of your 'blue sky ideas' — and again, this can be a new feature / feature enhancement / brand new product / anything that helps build a better internet

Thanks for your active participation in the community 💪💡

-The Community Team

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 19:39:47 GMT

Are you looking for broad guidelines or specific ideas? If the former I would continue the discussion here. If the latter, then you should move forward to develop an idea that already has a lot of support.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

ajp1228 — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 20:12:50 GMT

I'm not sure if it fits this thread, since the original post is about the "browser." However, I would like to be able to connect my calendar in Thunderbird to a calendar on my mobile devices (iPhone/iPad) and still be able to continually "snooze" the reminders. Sometimes I like to have a reminder showing days or weeks in advance, then snooze it for a few days until time gets closer. Today I have a reminder popping up on my laptop about an appointment tomorrow. I am snoozing it for two hours at a time, so I won't forget to set my alarm clock tonight. Occasionally it would be nice to be reminded of things when I'm away from home, especially on a trip. But I don't want to keep two calendars, and I also haven't figured out how to "snooze" reminders on the phone calendar so they will pop back up later.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Jon — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 14:01:38 GMT

Yes to both 😀

We'll take a look at this thread as well as ideas from the ideas board when planning and prioritizing future projects.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

longtimeffuser — Wed, 19 Oct 2022 07:48:53 GMT

Do not change anonymous view colors, icons on every on every other version.

Keep it simple, fuctional, stable - you know browser.

It is not some banner that needs updating, it is a tool. Keep it safe, simple, stable.

If you want to add some new thing let user decide, do not push it on user so they have to fiddle with it to make it like before some randome update.

Frustraging all of this. Thinking of leaving Firefox, seriously. Every new nagging update just gets on user nerves and they are leaving. Exactly for this unstability. I have patience but that is limited and you are pushing at its limits.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Oct 2022 08:20:53 GMT

I would like feedback from developers in reviewing ideas. If we can identify information that is missing or technical issues in the review process, the discussion will be more meaningful.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

ajp1228 — Wed, 19 Oct 2022 21:03:45 GMT

I have another one. When a new version of Firefox is released, please find a way to keep sites with 2FA from not trusting the browser. It's frustrating to visit and log in a site with 2FA (two-factor authentication) and have to wait for an email code - or, worse, have to get up and get our phone to retrieve the code - when we have previously checked the box for the site to trust the browser. The site will trust the current version, and maybe the sub-versions, but when there is a major update (such as from 105 to 106) evidently the sites no longer trust the browser even though it is still Firefox and still on the same PC.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

JohnFifty — Thu, 20 Oct 2022 03:04:12 GMT

Lock Tab Page extension is close to this. I've used it to prevent split-second redirects or just freeze a page mid-load. Extremely simple but very handy idea.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Oct 2022 08:54:58 GMT

The bloat of web standards and web browsers

My concern right now is the bloat of web standards and web browsers: every time the W3C adds a new feature to a web standard, the resources needed to develop a web browser increase, and I believe this is allowing Chrome to monopolize the market.

You can create a new browser by forking Chromium. However, if more Chromium-based browser developers are involved, this will encourage the development of Chromium, and the results will be used for Chrome.

While the multifunctionality of web browsers may improve user convenience, it would harm the user's interests if it prevents market competition. I hope Mozilla stop this vicious cycle.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

flyerxl — Thu, 20 Oct 2022 21:14:18 GMT

How about just being a web browser. Stop trying to be "helpful" by changing all of our settings and home pages. Browsers are just that, a way to browse the web. Firefox isn't the destination, it's the car.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

ajp1228 — Thu, 20 Oct 2022 21:48:05 GMT

Yes, and keep the UI small and don't take up too much of the top of the screen, especially for those of us who have large DPI settings in Windows or whatever OS we are using. You might allow some settings changes for people who want to change the size of the UI, but the default should use a minimal amount of the screen. But keep the menu bar with text available for those of us who prefer words rather than icons (and don't change the default and hide it if we already have it showing). The big update when FF started adjusting the UI according to the Windows DPI ("Make everything bigger") setting was a nightmare! We actually had to add a setting under "about:config" to fix the problem!

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Jon — Fri, 21 Oct 2022 15:22:40 GMT

This is great feedback...and exactly what we're trying to work towards here with Mozilla Connect. Feedback going both ways, more meaningful conversations, and more opportunities for you (the community) to participate.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

BrokenChef — Fri, 21 Oct 2022 22:16:03 GMT

I wish Firefox would work with Yahoo mail! Every time I download an attachment, the yahoo mail tab closes out. I recently switched over to Outlook to avoid this issue.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

ajp1228 — Fri, 21 Oct 2022 22:24:39 GMT

I use Yahoo mail and don't have a problem with Firefox; however, I rarely receive attachments in my Yahoo account. I use Mozilla's Thunderbird program on my laptop for my other email account (the account from my ISP). I consider that account my "primary" email; however, I get a lot more email in Yahoo...LOL Anyway, I'm sure Thunderbird can be configured for a Yahoo account using the same IMAP configuration that I'm using for my ISP email account. There's also a calendar feature. It's not the same as the old Outlook mail and calendar that I had at work before I retired, but it's similar and it's free!

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Anonymous — Sat, 22 Oct 2022 05:17:29 GMT

I feel that Firefox development has stalled because Mozilla is not addressing important issues and developing features like Colorway that are just for looks. If there are not enough resources, then new features should not be added carelessly, and the current rapid releases are inefficient and the release interval should be extended.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Jon — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 14:34:42 GMT

Thanks for the feedback—very fair. And appreciate the analogy...but even a car comes in various shapes, sizes, colors, and with several different features. Speed/performance, comfort, and safety are all important. And some prefer to drive in style. We want to make sure we're hitting the mark for as many people as possible. I'd love to hear what features are essential for you in a web browser, including some that may be missing from the Firefox experience now. Excited to continue the conversation!

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Anonymous — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 14:53:46 GMT

However, Firefox will not be able to become Jaguar.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Uncle_D — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 00:58:52 GMT

Hello Jon! I started using Firefox when Netscape,(remember them?) , went south, no longer offered email, was not updated, etc.. I asked around and was told about a fairly new browser called Firefox. It was user friendly, easy to get along with and seemed to integrate with most any piece of software anyone had. So, I got my 16 bit Firefox and went to work. To this day I have NO idea what all my Firefox then or now can do. We all know it can open web sites with stunning clarity and accuracy! But all this talk and all these posts makes me think there is more to it than that. Which brings me to my personal request. I wish Firefox could tell me what it can do! When I open a web page that does not "fit' on my screen, it could say"You know, I could resize this so it will all fit on your screen and you won't be losing the information that is cut off on the edges. THAT would be helpful in many ways!

Now, first let me say I mean NO OFFENSE here! NONE! I have stayed with Firefox since 199X because there is nothing better! It is not like I am still making payments on my browser and cannot afford to switch. It is because it is doing 95% of everything I need it to do. And it probably does 100% except I am too ignorant to know it. So, my one complaint, if you must call it that, is so many of the explanations, etc. under settings, tools and the like are in "techno babble". PLEASE understand that is what I call it. You would likely call what I write "dumb donkey" or a synonym thereof. Neither of us want to invite the other out to the parking lot to duke it out, it's just what we usually call it. No offense intended. Then I get:"Well, OK, what don't you understand?" and I reply, If I understood it well enough to tell you, I might know what it means." A couple of times my big fingers went past the backspace key and hit SOMETHING that brought up some wild stuff. Like: BroadcastService: received BroadcastMessage: handler for remote-settings/monitor_changes threw error: Error: Polling for changes failed: NetworkError: Network request failed.
pollChanges resource://services-settings/remote-settings.js:334

Man oh man, I was so lost, neither Voyager nor Cassini could find me! Polling is a place I go every four years to vote. It has nothing to do with my PC. At that point all I wanted was a way to close that and I'll pretend I never saw it,. if it will let me continue on. Knowing how well Firefox does what it does, I am certain that whatever part of it that refers to is a top notch whatever that does great things I am totally unaware of. And, sometimes I think about that message and kind of wish I knew what it meant and what it did. So, one time I got brave & typed "polling for changes" into the HELP screen, under HELP at the top. Now, maybe I should be embarrassed about this, but I do not know enough to know if I should be, but there is not one single line on that screen I could decipher enough to have any kind of idea what it was talking about! I suppose I am one of those dummies the guy in the second comment is referring to, that has caused Firefox to be "dumb ed down" to the point he finds it difficult to use. All I can say is: Mister, even in dumb mode this guy has no clue! Does it come in moron or maybe even idiot?

Wow, did I digress! All I really wanted to say was: It would be nice if Firefox let me know what it could do in a very plain vanilla way. Such as:" Do you change your font to Franklin Gothic only to have the machine switch it back on you? Well you can KEEP Franklin Gothic the font you always see by doing this:________." Heck, that alone would make my day!

Best Regards,

Doug

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Jon — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 16:24:18 GMT

Thanks for sharing this, @Uncle_D! Your line "I wish Firefox could tell me what it can do!" really grabbed my attention...and I'm sure you're not the only one. What do you think would be the best way of sharing that info with you/others? Pop-ups or? Trying to think of what will be most beneficial without being too obtrusive.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Anonymous — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 18:55:35 GMT

Just my 2 cents, since i find this suggestion interesting too.

Instead of a popup i think a dedicated passiv area/space on the about:homepage or about:newtab would be better ... that displays "Tips of the days" like messages. I think more people would be happy this. And having an option to remove it for those who absolutely dont want it should be part of the experience. That way nobody has any serious reason to complain, but new and old users can still get some infos when they want.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Jon — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 19:34:20 GMT

Yes please, all the cents. Always like seeing other people hop in and join threads within threads. A dedicated space (that is easily enabled/disabled) makes a lot of sense.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

RioBravo — Sat, 29 Oct 2022 07:17:25 GMT

EVERYDAY !!! I would Love It if my Firefox browser had a simple menu button that would STOP the web page that I am trying to view/read from doing that ever annoying webpage automatic "re-fresh".😠

I have tried all work around including the true/false autorefresh etc and nothing works and/or stops working after a few updates and WISH there was a simple "permanent" easy clickable menu button that stopped the webpage auto refresh 👍😉

*Just a thought:🤔

What if there were a "Restore Firefox Browser (not OS) to Previous Saved State" as to try and repair UI and users nerves 😲 after a buggy update - then ability to avoid certain buggy updates.🤗

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Jon — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 13:41:30 GMT

Yes, PWA support is a popular idea here in Mozilla Connect (and other online spaces where Firefox users gather).

We'll hopefully have a follow-up to that here soon. Thanks for continuing this conversation!

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

nobodybutme — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 17:46:39 GMT

it would be great if you would stop updating every three seconds (I exaggerate for effect) and taking away / changing the things that work well and replacing them with things that are, in fact, a step backward.

Re: Blue Sky Ideas Thread: What Do You Wish Your Browser Could Do?

Jon — Wed, 02 Nov 2022 15:51:01 GMT

Hey 👋

Thanks for sharing your ideas as we explore ways to improve already existing products and potentially develop new ones. Your feedback helps us make more informed decisions, and we will continue using this community to connect (sorry, had to) and collaborate more with you all throughout the product development process.

We learned a lot from this thread and will dig deeper into all the comments, but here are some key takeaways/themes that emerged:

More user control and customization options - new features should be easily enabled or disabled, if needed
Profiles need to be a first-class feature
Focusing more on developing popular ideas from the community/users - (Note: we are aiming to do this with Mozilla Connect, but yes there is still plenty of work to be done there)
Before pursuing any "blue sky ideas," improve overall performance
Much, much more!

It's great seeing these valuable insights. Thanks again for your participation. We are closing out this thread now but will provide updates on any of these themes in the future. In the meantime, we encourage you to continue sharing your feedback and ideas in new posts. Just remember to use the necessary labels and tags, so your posts are easily searched for and discovered by our teams (and other community members).

Looking forward to continuing to work together 💪

-The Community Team