Re: Firefox 4 dumbing down?

"Peter Boulding" wrote
> As a new user of Firefox, who is fast coming to appreciate it--now that I've
> found the add-ons that give me back Opera's must-have features--I couldn't
> agree more. It appears that no sooner have I decided to make it my default
> browser, Firefox--and for no obvious reason--is planning to jump the shark
> and I sure as Hell won't be bothering to up/downgrade. 
> 
> <goes to Tools > Options > Advanced and switches off auto-updating> 
> 
> Your comments re Excel 2007 are spot on. (BTW, I take it you are *that*
> David McRitchie?)

Thanks,  and  yes, I am.

With Firefox things probably won't get so out-of-hand, because there are
a lot of  people watching the development process.   Nevertheless, we do
have a horrible waste of space in the default toolbars, specifically empty
space above/below navigation bar and a huge back/forward button which
can be fixed with the "Stylish" extension and use of small style code changes.
There are lots of extensions and styles that will hide toolbars until you move
cursor past were they would be, so from looking at pictures it is hard to tell
what is actually planned.   In general,   I don't like things that jump around,
but will sometimes switch to disappearing  toolbars as opposed to full
screen view.  

Sometimes something better comes out of bad development before it actually
gets implemented.   This one appears to be obviously targeted to the few
people who appear to be using Firefox without any extensions (and possibly
those who turn off tracking mechanisms).

The "Stylish" extension itself though has "jumped the shark"  which is quite
unusual when the developer of a single developer application does that to 
his own application.