Comprehensive Feedback Report: Addressing Critical User Experience Failures and Underlying Philosophical Misalignments

[ndj_11]

Comprehensive Feedback Report: Addressing Critical User Experience Failures and Underlying Philosophical Misalignments

To: The Mozilla Community and Development Team

Re: Feature Request: Enhanced Video Quality Switching & Feedback (as per discussion thread: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/feature-request-enhanced-video-quality-switching-amp-feed...)
This document serves as a comprehensive and formal submission of feedback, building upon the existing discussion to highlight not just a single feature request, but a critical, underlying philosophical issue within Firefox's approach to user experience and feedback collection.

Section 1: The Case Study - A Failure to Support Basic Text Selection on YouTube
This specific issue, while seemingly minor, is a perfect microcosm of a larger problem. For a significant period of time, users of the Firefox for Android browser have been unable to select and copy text from the comment section of YouTube videos in the default mobile view.
* The User's Reality: This is not an obscure bug but a failure of a fundamental user action. On every other major Android browser, including Chrome, Samsung Internet, and Opera, this functionality works flawlessly and intuitively. This failure forces the user to choose between a degraded experience or switching to a competitor's browser.
* The Official Stance: The official developer response, documented in Bugzilla (Bug 1642073) and Webcompat (Issue #65492), closed the issue as "INVALID." The reasoning was that Firefox is correctly adhering to a web standard by applying user-select: none to a <button> element, and that the fault lies with YouTube for its improper use of this tag.
* The Flaw in the Philosophy: This response is a strategic misstep that puts rigid adherence to a standard ahead of a usable product. The principled stand of waiting for a competitor (Google-owned YouTube) to change its code for the benefit of Firefox users has proven to be an utterly ineffective strategy. It has not changed YouTube's behavior, and it has only punished Firefox's own user base.

Section 2: The Strategic Blind Spot - A Deeper Analysis of the Problem
The rigid, standards-first philosophy is not just ineffective; it is actively working against the user and the browser's own interests. The inability to select text is likely a deliberate design choice by YouTube to maintain a consistent user experience with its own native app, where comments are also unselectable.
* You're Asking a Competitor to Help: From YouTube's perspective, Firefox is requesting that they alter their product to benefit a competitor's users, and that they create an inconsistency between their native app and their mobile website. This is a "brainless" request that demonstrates a complete disconnect from the competitive landscape.
* The Burden is on Firefox: The responsibility to provide a functional and competitive product rests solely with the Firefox team. The existence of third-party add-ons that easily fix this issue proves that a solution is both possible and simple. Choosing not to implement it is an act of defiance against the user's needs.

Section 3: The Broader Failure - A Rigid Feedback Philosophy
This issue is not an isolated incident; it is a symptom of a much larger problem that prevents Firefox from adapting and hearing from its most critical audience: the non-technical user.
Firefox’s reliance on formal channels like Bugzilla, GitHub, and specific forum threads is a major barrier to collecting a broad range of feedback. This "rigid mentality" assumes users are willing to navigate a complex system just to report a single issue.
* The Modern Standard: Every major app now provides a simple, built-in feedback section. A user can tap a button and either provide quick feedback directly or be guided through a simple, pre-formatted process that funnels their specific concern (e.g., bug, feature request) to the right place.
* The Practicality for the Average User: A non-technical user experiencing a problem on YouTube is not going to know to go to a web compatibility forum, search for the issue, and create a formal report. They will simply assume the browser is broken and switch to one that works. By not having a simple, accessible feedback mechanism within the app, Firefox is missing out on a massive amount of valuable data that would highlight these critical user experience failures.

Section 4: Conclusion and Call to Action
The current philosophy is failing. It has led to a stagnant user experience on a major website and is preventing the very people you want to serve from providing the feedback you need to improve.
The solution is not to double down on an ineffective strategy but to evolve and adopt practices that serve the user.
* Fix the Specific Issue: Implement a site-specific fix for the user-select property on YouTube's mobile site to restore basic text selection functionality.
* Fix the Broader Philosophy: Develop and implement an intuitive, in-app feedback system for Firefox. Make it easy for any user to quickly and effortlessly submit a bug report or a feature suggestion without having to leave the app and navigate to a separate website.
By taking these steps, Firefox will demonstrate a true commitment to its users, acknowledge the realities of the modern web, and position itself to truly compete as a viable, user-centric alternative.

[igorlogius]

not 100% sure, but it's likely a youtube decission to have the comment text not selectable , like by just setting the user-select option (ref. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/user-select )

If you have uBlock Origin installed (which you should), you can add a "My Filters" rule to overwrite the user-select which should allow you to select any text you want. 

##*:style(-webkit-touch-callout: default !important; -webkit-user-select: text !important; -moz-user-select: text !important; -ms-user-select: text !important; user-select: text !important;)

Obviously you can do this with violentmonkey or any other userscript/style manager too, just be aware that youtube is kind of a special site that doenst completely reload each page when you swich videos but uses ajax to rebuild its content, so that means your modification triggers need to account for that. 

[ndj_11]

i edited the whole post and clarify everything.

Please upvote.