Re: Removing Firefox Version Number

fzammetti wrote:
> On Aug 16, 7:13 pm, Reuben Morais<[email protected]>  wrote:
>> This is how things work, people will spend time to complain, but not
>> to agree. A clear example is the Mozilla Firefox page on Facebook -
>> every post receives dozens of complaints in the comments, but much
>> more (thousands of) Like's. The fact that most of the replies in this
>> thread have been against the change doesn't mean 85% of the users are
>> against it - this thread isn't anywhere near a good sample of 140+
>> million daily users, and most of those users won't even notice this
>> change if it happens.
>
> You're right, that's fair... I shouldn't have said 85% of users are
> against it, I should have said 85% of those who take the time to
> comment are, that's more accurate... but I'm using things like
> Slashdot commentary in drawing my conclusion too, not just what's
> posted here... I think it's fair to say most of that commentary has
> been negative, and that's got to count for something.

I agree and do think it's reasonable to expect "that to count for 
something."

I'd like to share with you, however, some history as to why I don't 
think it "counts for everything".

Back in 2001-ish, most of the response to tabbed browsing when we first 
integrated it was negative too -- and that's after it had "proved 
itself" as an extension. Even usability people were screaming abou thow 
it was the OS's job to manage windows and why were we ruining Mozilla by 
trying to do a poor-mans version of a window manager. I'm glad we stuck 
to our guns and pushed back against the nay-sayers and today everyone is 
copying Firefox's tabbed browsing. We didn't ignore the feedback, but we 
also didn't let it steer us away from a design decision that we wanted 
to pursue.

The same is actually true for extensions. When we started Firefox we had 
a plan to not put any "geeky" features in and make Firefox the best 
possible browser for the largest possible audience. That meant building 
an extension ecosystem to give all the not-included features a chance to 
live on. (We were actually removing features that had been in Mozilla's 
previous browser for years.) You should have heard the howls about how 
no one will ever use extensions and how if we didn't include this or 
that feature Firefox would be a total failure.

Today every other browser is trying to be the best at extensions. Again, 
I'm glad we didn't change our plans based on all the "OMG Change" 
whailing that we heard when we were stripping out features and pushing 
them off to an extension platform (itself costing lots of engineering 
resources.)

That's not to say that we didn't listen. I don't think ignoring feedback 
(except the comparisons to hitler or the death threats) is ever a good 
idea. I read it all and try to respond to the ones I think are sincere 
or offer new information or insight into issues.

That being said, because we should all listen doesn't mean we should put 
all of our plans or features up for a vote.

> Also, I'd submit that with a popular project like Firefox, where
> you know you've got a large user base, NOT hearing negative feedback
> is probably a fair indication that you're on the right track, or at
> worst you haven't pissed off too many people :)  There will always be
> some of course.  If that's what happened here then I think Asa would
> effectively have tacit support for the change... that's pretty clearly
> not what's happened if you look at the blogosphere, loathe as I am to
> use that meme :)

Indeed. And even better than the backlash, a few people have actually 
engaged in thinking about how to accomplish the feature goals in even 
more usable ways. I'm increasingly optimistic about this feature change 
-- certainly more than I was when I read the death threats :-)

Thanks for the thoughtful post.

- A