The dumbing down of Firefox

The developer of foobar2000 (another very configurable piece of software) did such a thing, making a simpler music player called "Boom."

 

Options which allow users to control what their browser/web-platform does *is* a problem from the perspective of someone who wants to control that them self. Not everyone that works for Mozilla or contributes to Mozilla software is interested in empowering users. You will find evidence of this if you watch the newsgroups, bug reports, spec work, etc. For some, what is best for Mozilla and/or platform developers takes precedence over what is best for Mozilla end users. For others, what is best for advertisers and/or web developers and/or corporate admins takes precedence over what is best for Mozilla end users. Some of these people do twist things to make it sound as though they are addressing end-user problems or otherwise improving things for the end-user (a classic sales/PR technique). In that sense they could be said to be inventing problems. However, perhaps it is more accurate to say they are misrepresenting what the actual problem is.

This distinction may be obvious to some or otherwise considered non-helpful. I think it important to make because a bogus problem requires no action and often simply fades away. People (end users) take the threat posed by bogus problem solvers less seriously. A real problem, even if it isn't a legitimate one from an end-user perspective, tends not to be ignored for long. People (end-users) *have* to take that seriously and constantly work to protect themselves.

 

This, coming from a man who oversees a new release of Firefox every few months?!?!?!?!

I was also one of the first to start using Firefox around '05 or so, because of all of IE's vulnerabilities and flaws. And over the first few years, Firefox was a godsend! I gradually started using it more and IE less, and from around '06 through very recently, it has been my primary browser. Problem is, from around '06 to '10, I liked it A LOT!!! From '11 to current, though...not so much. It seems that as recently as '09 we were on Firefox 3.....but now, we're on Firefox 20!!!! And with each release, the browser seems to have become slower and more bloated, but yet I lose more and more extensions and have fewer add-ons. So go figure