Mozilla Connect

I searched before posting, sorry if this is a dupe.  But I hope to bring a fresh take, you be the judge. After decades of observing industry dialog around cookies, internet privacy and everything in the browser ball park, I have the sense that most folks seem to be missing the forest for the trees when it comes to managing privacy.  I have only recently (after decades of struggle) gotten Firefox to manage browsing in a “have cake and eat it too” way, however it has required several add-ons and delicately tinkered FF settings.  Along the way, some broad realizations came to me with regards to how privacy policies are broadly managed in Firefox and browsers in general.   Observation:   People -know- what sites they trust.  Browsers simply aren’t listening in an accessible way.   People -know- that the rest of the internet should not be trusted by default.  They read the news.   Yet browsers only provide an all or nothing ultimatum when one visits the settings.  Trust everyone or nobody, or cook up a custom policy.  Access to any other approach is barred to all but those with quite high browser tech-fu skills, like us in these forums. Recommendation:  The privacy model and related UI elements should be shifted and centred around the user’s personal mental model of who they trust.  Forget distrust, that’s merely the inverse set of the trusted.  And to be clear:  by trust, I speak of persistent local data, cross site scripts, redirections, browsing history, and any other reasonable capability a site might want, which we would most likely grant if we feel they’re serving our best interests.  Everything the browser does on the privacy front can be aligned around such high level directives far more accurately than a one shoe fits all approach as it today stands. Example method:  Add a UI element in the “address bar shield button dialog” so that in 2 clicks we can tell Firefox “I trust these guys, anything goes!”  or “I kinda trust these guys, remember my login.” or the default “Untrusted”.    This would end the pointless futility of trying to craft one policy for all browsing.  We’d be able to craft several default policies based on the user trust levels, and rejoice.  A majority of creepy tracking cookies fall off the edge of the earth a few hours after their last tab closes, if not granted the mercy of a user trust click. That’s it.  Not earth shaking perhaps, but I think it’s a small idea that can have a huge impact.  I know it’s not fundamentally new, we’ve seen it before in a few forms, and a basic whitelist / blacklist tool exists in Firefox today.  But none I've seen have been terribly usable or intuitive, and the privacy model out of the box doesn’t take our trust opinions into account beyond the level of a cookie.  Cookies alone don't encompass the whole topic. We also should not let the horrible implementations of the past deter us. (I’m looking at Microsoft trust settings – gag.)  All past whitelist tools have failed to take hold because they haven’t cracked the nut of making it effortless to manage while browsing in real time.  Also the global climate on this topic is shifting and I believe people are ready to provide two clicks to teach the browser which sites are groovy in their mind.  For most people I doubt it’s more than a dozen sites which deserve the “remember my login” honor, even fewer for deeper levels of trust.  (Some will trust many sites, some will trust none, and most will trust a reasonable list of their most frequent and highly trusted destinations.) I could write a ton more on the topic, i really have given it a lot of thought.  But to keep this short-ish I'll wrap this up by saying this.  I believe user assigned trust values are the missing piece that Firefox needs to finally be equipped to do a near perfect job of letting people have their privacy cake, and eat their yummy websites too.  Firefox can then roll out the feature carpet for sites a person cares most about, and take off the gloves wen it comes to the rest.  All while relieving users from needing to worry about "private browsing" or "containers" or any other features which bring higher cognitive loads.  If a site isn't trusted, we can treat them like a private browsing session.  Done.  Pretty straight forward from the end user's perspective. Happy to hear peoples thoughts and poke holes in my logic. All the best. ... View more

I want to suggest creating a notification icon widget for https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/. There is currently no such feature, and I must rely on email to keep up with new responses to my questions. A notification icon widget on the website would provide a more efficient and convenient way for users to keep track of their questions and receive notifications without repeatedly checking their email. It would also improve the user experience and make the website more user-friendly. This feature, I believe, would be beneficial to both users and the support team because it would reduce the need for email communication while increasing the speed and efficiency of the support process. ... View more

Hello, I think it would be a great idea to be able to delete or edit a bookmark directly from the url bar. To clarify, here are some screens : Currently, this is what happens  when typing in the url bar, with search in bookmarks enabled (sorry my firefox is in french) : https://imgur.com/a/pYp9Prh  What I would like is to have a more/settings button at the right of the search result, just like it is done for results found in history, but this time opening the bookmark window allowing me to edit and delete the bookmark (settings button could be in the red circle) : https://imgur.com/a/KfnKa1P  Just a QOL idea 🙂 ... View more

The Chrome browser and Chromium-based browsers have an interesting add-on manager that allows you to quickly find the right add-on, disable, remove or hide it from the toolbar, a very necessary and convenient feature, please implement it, Thank you!   ... View more

Sometimes on Firefox desktop I drag URLs from the address bar or from webpages to the bookmarks bar to quickly add a bookmark in the desired folder / position. It would be useful if after adding a bookmark this way, Firefox displayed the bookmarks editor to allow changing the name (because sometimes the default page title is too long or not descriptive enough), just like when a bookmark is added by clicking the icon on the address bar or via Ctrl+D. Opera browser has this behavior and I find it extremely useful, but I would suggest adding an option to enable or disable this because some users might prefer the current behavior since it’s also the default on Chrome, Edge and other browsers. ... View more

I'm a big fan of using search engines but I want to use the @ and # symbols to find users and hashtags easily. Basically, when using a search engine, e.g. Twitter, when you use @ at the beginning of your search, you're opting to be directed or search for a user profile. The same goes for # where you're opting to be directed or search for a tag or hashtag. Facebook and Instagram are other examples that uses @ and #, and I would like Firefox to add these as optional reserved keywords for developers to use. Even if a website doesn't have users or hashtags, that's fine, its up to developers to decide how @ and # work for their engines, or choose not to use them at all. This shouldn't affect the way search engines work (apart from the search shortcuts) but compliment how the Address Bar works as well.     ... View more

This idea Came to me when I was trying to turn off dark reader this morning, on Firefox android it takes 5 clicks to change it back and forth. On Samsung internet, which has its own built in dark mode function, takes only 2 clicks Now I only use this as an example, could be usefull for ad blockers or really any add on. Having it so they can have toggles in the add on drawer or even "higher up", existing in the drop down menu, could improve user experience as for stuff like dark reader or ublock, all I need to do is toggle it for night time or sites that don't like ad blockers Alternative could be having them when clicked instead of entering a "pseudo" window of their own, taking up the whole screen. instead go into a space roughly the same size as add-ons or menu tray. So one can still see the page their on, for dark reader and read aloud this would be quite usefull I think. Now for configuring of these add ons a full pseudo window would still work great but for quick toggling of things it's not the best way.     ... View more

Just a small thing. I noticed that the sidebar doesn't hide when going full screen (F11): Not sure if there's a reason for this, but it would be nice if full screen also hid the sidebar.   ... View more

Panel suddenly collapses when Full-screen window Mode is enabled. Even cursor moves top of window accidentally there should be cross button animation which will not disturb user while working in Full-screen window mode, Because it irritate ‌💢‌ while working #full_screen #window #fullscreenmode   ... View more

Firefox Android's toolbar can now only choose between the top and bottom, but I prefer to be in the middle, and I feel that the toolbar is more reasonable and user-friendly in the middle. Because when I hold my phone with one hand, my thumb is in the middle of the screen, and if the toolbar is in the middle of the screen, it's quicker when I want to click on the search bar ... View more

After opening an email in a new Tab, and then archiving or deleting the email, the tab remains open (as long as the (filtered) Inbox still contains more emails) and shows the next email. I would like some kind of toggle switch, or key combination, that changes this behavior to instead close the tab. (Similar to the pin in the Inbox quick filter, which toggles whether the filter settings get reset when opening a different inbox) ... View more

In Thunderbird, reaching about:config would be much easier if it was accessible throughout “Search… [CTRL]+[K]” bar: ... View more

In the Thunderbird toolbar there is an option "Move to folder" (maybe it is called something else, but I don't have the English version of the app). Moving to recently used folders is tedious and requires more user attention when using the mouse. It would be nice if a few folders were listed in the main section directly under the submenu (see picture). This would save the user from clicking and unnecessary zig-zag mouse movements. ... View more

kindly add search bookmark option at top in right hand side of tool bar, as it will be easy to search straight forward bookmarked pages , thanks ... View more

Some other browsers have a thin sidebar with icons that allow you to open internal browser pages (bookmarks, history) or websites themselves (mostly in a mobile layout due to the small size). With some even having extra functionality for messengers. Sure, Firefox already has a sidebar, but you open it from the toolbar (you can change to other pages from within the toolbar, but it's done via a dropdown menu that eats up space from the sidebar), you can't keep it open and "minimize" it to only show the icons of the pages that can be opened, and only extensions are allowed to open or add pages to it. I don't think it currently sees much use natively either, as even the default Proton layout has it mostly hidden unless you use an extension that makes use of it or get the sidebar icon back into the toolbar. Overall it's would be an excellent productivity tool, as you could use it to quickly look up the term you have highlighted without having to leave the page, pin a dictionary site to it and look up definitions as you are reading an article or to read your mail or new texts as you are working on the main tab. Extra integration with popular messengers to get new message notifications from a pinned site even if the site isn't currently open in the panel or the ability to drag toolbar icons into the sidebar would be nice to have, but probably not strictly necessary either. ... View more

Suggestion to improve the existing unifiedExtensions button to be more enhanced like the current javascript extension "Extension Options Menu". Note that there are click modifier shortcuts and a tidier compact UI. ... View more

Frequently when browsing the web, and increasingly with all the active content out there, websites will often load/reload more content without the browser considering it to be loading. Thus Firefox's smart button that alternates between reload and stop depending on context will often be displaying the "reload" option, when the "stop" is what I really want. Ideally, this would be a "stop all activity/connections" behavior that interrupts all loading and other activity. Ideally, this fixed-purpose stop button would be an optional one that people could choose to put into their toolbar, but not be forced to do so. The extension store does have an extension that adds a stand alone stop button... But I have to give that extension access to my tabs in order to work, and it states that it isn't monitored or verified by Mozilla, so "I should be sure that I trust it." I have no way of knowing if I should trust it. I don't know where the source code is, or even if I did, no way to know if the source code is actually what the extension is, and probably couldn't understand the code anyway. Likewise, I have no idea who the developer is. In short, there's no way for a regular user to know if they can trust it; and it's such a basic feature of a web browser that users should be able to have access to it without needing to install extensions anyway. Thank you! ... View more

Change the sidebar dropdown navigation to a more convenient Icon navigation e.g. pictured below.   ... View more