kron says:

It looks awful on Vista/7 and isn’t native GTK/Qt on GNU/Linux.

Tollef Fog Heen says:

The only one of the suite which I use is firefox (or rather, iceweasel). My main gripe is it is slow and memory hungry. Fix that and I’ll be much happier.

Ray says:

I am concerned by the level of arrogance and elitism that many developers exhibit from time to time. For example, when they introduce something new–geolocation, jetpack, personnas, the complete overhaul of the default theme–they should expect a push-back from long time users. Instead, they seem to take offense at these comments to the point of ignoring and/or avoiding serious discussions about the issues.

Few, if any, developers monitor the mozillazine forums. Those with blogs often moderate their comment areas and do not approve comments that they do not like. An example is not approving negative comments about the safety and security concerns of integrating geolocation into Firefox.

Geolocation is an API that can provide the location of the user–an actual physical location of a mobile user–to a web site or other web connection/person they are in contact with. While it has been implemented according to international standards meaning no information is provided unless the user approves it first, it remains on the user’s installation/device whether he or she wants it there or not. More importantly, there is no stated advantage to having geolocation integrated into the browser meaning there is no reason why geolocation cannot be a stand-alone add-on or option that a safety- and security-conscious user can opt against installing.

Try bringing this subject up in the comments section on a blog pushing geolocation. Do not hold your breathe waiting for it get approved.

My opinion is that geolocation is being pushed by one or more benefactors of Mozilla–Google comes to mind and who is, by the way, the developer of a geolocation API. I do not care if this is the truth. What I care about is Mozilla being open about why they are integrating geolocation into Firefox especially when they cannot provide a technical reason why integration is superior to an add-on or an optional installation.

To boil down the responses, geolocation will be a wonderful new feature so you should just trust the technology. On several occasions, NASA just “trusted” the technology. How’d that work out for the Apollo One crew and the two space shuttles that were lost? Remember Murphy of Murphy’s Law. Murphy was an optimist. He understood that despite people’s best efforts, something can still go wrong, thus it is better to be prepared for the possible failure rather than think it won’t fail. Mozilla is not preparing for the possible failure of geolocation and making it not just a pref that can be turned off, but, instead, making it something that the user can opt to not install in the first place.

A browsing of the mozillazine forums and Planet Mozilla blogs will provide a number of posts and/or comments expressing displeasure with the apparent move to Jetpack for extension development fearing that this will reduce the extensibility and creative that is seen as possible with XUL. You can find similar controversy with the proposed changes to the default theme and the potential new headaches this may mean for those who make their own theme.

Why I am mentioning these controversies is that the original mission of Firefox–as I understood it–was to be a lean, fast, safe, secure and highly customizable and extensible web browsing alternative to IE which was at the time none of these. Microsoft let IE slide as they took web browsing for granted and thus opened the door for Firefox, Opera and other browsers. Now, it seems as though Mozilla is taking the web browser market for granted–ignoring the users’ feedback–and moving Firefox towards a similar conformity that still marks IE.

Philipp says:

It has been said before, but must be said again: MDC! API documentation inside a wiki simply does not work. XULPlanet was shut down, and replaced by a horribly slow Minddev wiki, which has no real search function (only Google and site:developer.mozilla.org gives you good search results), which uses HTTPS for no reason other than to make it even slower, which is down a couple hours every week and has no real structure (well, it’s a wiki, I know …).

Documentation IS important and it would be so much easier for developers to get things done if I wouldn’t have to grep + google all the time.

Robyn Wiles says:

Thunderbird can’t migrate its own files from one HDD to another automatically. It gives options for the competition but not for their own client! How shocking is that?

Janson says:

I’m yet to get a single mail reassuring me that my bug has been fixed. Numerous crashes. I’ve always made effort to type details about the crash. I just pray and keep using Firefox. Hope my crashes are fixed sub-rosa.

Startup time is unpardonable. ’nuff said.

And firefox is bottom heavy, obese even. It just doesn’t go away when i close it. The process runs in my Task Manager forever.

I’m averagely literate and so have no problem in navigating the SUMO. But could i expect it from my bright yet old-school grandpa?

Why would any sane netbook user install firefox?

Add-ons guys are great though. They are geniuses, their apllications mirror my mind and most of them always painstakingly answer my dumb e-mails asking them questions. In fact add-ons are single greatest the reason i love firefox. Community, rightly, is the strength of the fox.