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

[chance]

(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

[Arutemu64]

And... done! Hope this helps!

[Jon]

Appreciate the feedback 😀

[chance]

Thank you so much @Arutemu64!

[rb124]

Completed it myself too 🙂

[Jon]

Thank you!

[chance]

Thank you @rb124 ! 🎉

[ffffff]

Thanks, Miku!

[chance]

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

[lackey]

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.

[chance]

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

[Yump]

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.

[chance]

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

[the__geekboy]

Done 👍

[chance]

Thank you! @the__geekboy 😊

[ffffff]

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.

[chance]

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.

[ffffff]

---

@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.

[chance]

Got it, do you know which site @ffffff ?

[ffffff]

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

[okay_okay]

completed! 

[chance]

Thank you, thank you! 😊

[ikjadoon]

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:

1. Blocking trackers, ads, etc.: uBlock Origin
2. Saving articles: I cannot use the outdated Pocket extension in Firefox anymore and moved to Omnivore.
3. 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).

[chance]

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! 🙌

[OutlawHusbando]

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

[chance]

Thank you so much @OutlawHusbando! 😊

[myspace]

Done! Thanks for including community in the survey 👍

[chance]

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

[wutongtaiwan]

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.

[chance]

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

[d1]

(◔◡◔)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 💕😄👍

[chance]

Thank you so much @d1! We appreciate you 😊

[wutongtaiwan]

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

[wutongtaiwan]

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.

[chance]

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!

[Ponda]

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).

[chance]

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.

[Synchro]

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.

[chance]

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

[Jon]

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!