Firefox/Feature Brainstorming:Other or Uncategorized

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Contents

Mouse gestures

Allow the user to use mouse gestures.

Examples (Functional when the mouse is located anywhere within the program window):

  • Hold right button + click left button = page back
  • Hold left button + click right button = page forward

Opera web browser has had this functionality for quite a while now. Try it out to fall in love.

References

Kiosk Mode / Shell

  • Firefox has poor handling of Kiosk mode lockdown. Opera is far ahead regarding this feature.
  • Ability to boot directly into Firefox is a key feature.

Firefox as OS?

  • It is possible to use just Firefox and Google apps for most basic business applications. Perhaps its time to start looking into ways to create a simple Firefox-only OS.

Widgets

  • In my opinion, that's the only feature lacking in Firefox to create first-quality "mozlets", similar to the Opera's widgets or Safari's dashboard (if not better, since Opera's widget goes nowhere farther than using XShape).

Built-in Tools

  • I think Firefox should come with a built in calculator, unit converter, currency converter, and a translator. These should be accessible via the Tools menu.

Editions

  • Create several Editions for example standard edition, web developer edition, low memory edition, kid's edition, or even google edition
  • and maybe even a simple/lite version(extensions and themes are not installable)
  • An official portable edition to run from a USB stick, with the ability to sync bookmarks with your main computer edition, would be great for those who regularly use multiple computers.

"Open page in another browser" option

  • Simple, useful, and easy to implement.
    • Already exists in the form of Launchy. I don't think that Firefox should, by default, give an option to use another browser. I know Firefox isn't 'anti-IE' or 'anti-Opera', but it is 'pro-Firefox'. This would be admitting that other browsers are superior to Firefox, and you should use them if things happen, rather than fix it, ask for help, or use Firefox anyway. (on IE-only sites, by using User Agent Switcher)

Conditional Comments

Allow users to add CSS filters for version compatibility that doesn't rely on a CSS rule being implemented. Arguably, this is the unofficial standard for dealing with Internet Explorer bugs and it would be nice to have a simple interface for doing this with any browser (just in case things change later on down the line). The syntax should be about the same, so something like <!--[if lte FF 6]> <![endif]--> would be appropriate.

Comments

That's a very good idea! It could prevent use of CSS hacks in future. Opera could do that too. --Alenonimo 15:41, 27 October 2006 (PDT)

Glow Text

Allows text to Glow when the glow HTML command is used, such as in IE7.

Gradient backgrounds

Make a process for implementing gradient backgrounds in a table or web page, such as in IE.

Page autorefresh

Create a new "Automatically page refresh" submenu in page's content menu (and inside "In this frame" submenu). It might contain items like "Stop autorefresh", "5 seconds", "10 seconds", "1 minute", "5 minutes", "Custom...". The page should be automatically refreshed untill "Stop autorefresh" selected or user navigated away from the page. In case of page was loaded by 'POST' command the new item should be "disabled" or user might be asked about "repost data every time".

There is already a couple of extensions for that.

Synesthetic Surfing

Synesthesia, or the cross-linking of senses, has been long known to be a powerful nmonic for anyone with the ability to tap it. Richard Feynman often thought of complex physics equations in colors, and these powerful associations can be used to assist in surfing the web.

I am a synesthetic of a few different flavors, one of which is letter/number to color associations. Whole words have color averages usually dominated by the first letter. The word "Web" for example, is orange with some blue hues at the end. I found a plug-in for Firefox that colored your tabs, but it was random. I would like to see user-picked colors for specific domains. For example, www.google.com would be a yellowish-orange color on the tab. I would select the specific hue I wanted and the tab would be colored so. That way, if I have a many tabs open at the same time, I will know which one is google at a glance. The ability to associate tonal sounds with the tabs as a mouse-over function or click function would also be very helpful. Those who are more inclined to audio cues would benifit from this immensely! I love designing GUIs, so don't worry, if you don't code this, I will ;) -NeuralZen

References
Commentary
It shouldn't be user picked, but extracted in some ways from the URL domain and optionally changed by a meta tag in the XHTML. This is important to make it a useful feature for both sites and communications (on other computers, the same site will have the same colour). Also it doesn't overload unneeded customization.

Propietary Anchor mode

Many pages don't have anchors so linking to Content that is somewhere on the page can be a pain. Make possible custom anchors like this would make firefox scroll 0pixel to left and 555pixel down: 

url#custom(0,555)

This make firefox scroll to the 5th H1 element on the page and highlight it decently: 

url#custom(h1/5)
References
Commentary
  • Pixels are unsafe (depending on fonts, zooming etc.)
  • This looks like reinventing the wheel. use xpath instead?
  • This implies support for XPointer

Smooth vs Raw Page Transitions

There isn't any *good* point to have the previous page "visible but unusable" until the new page starts rendering, a block a time. This is aesthetically awful and without any useful gain at the UI level.

Details & Commentary

Smooth Page Transition: when someone clicks on a link, the page will slightly fade out, indicating that it is refreshing until the new page is fully ready, when a smooth (really fast crossfade <0.5sec, maybe). On the page there should be some form of interaction that could allow to see - and browse, and use - the previous page until the new is fully loaded AND the possibility to switch to the new one, displaying it a block a time.

  • If implementing this, Firefox could adhere to some of IE page/site transition definitions from HTTP response or meta http-equiv headers.
    • Please no: this is a step back in the past using BAD transitions that were just annoying. This feature, as stated, is conceptually DIFFERENT and must NOT be assimilated with the IE page transitions.
  • The point here is to make the navigation softer and nicer for everyone (cool-factor), not only occasional user, and behaving more like an offline app. The "freeze page, load the other one block a time" is obsolete and should be improved into a new form of page transition: unobtrusive, aesthetically pleasant and without drawbacks (on slow connection, seeing the page loading a block a time is useful, don't avoid it if needed).
  • To be clear: this is COMPLETELY different from the "page transitions" concept seen before on some browsers as site behaviour. This should be an integrated feature, well balanced and without annoying drawbacks. Also, this should be default but disabled.
  • The interaction could be:
    • On a full-page location refresh (i.e. non javascript) the current page should be lightly dimmed until the new page is ready.
    • When the new page is ready, a fast crossfade should display it.
    • If the page loads slowly, clicking on Forward (a button not really used since now) will show the page loading a block a time, like now.
    • If the user clicks on the dimmed "old" page, it could interact with it until the new page is ready (and faded in). Any click event of course blocks the page load (and the Forward button will turn disabled).
References

Link navigation using arrow keys

  • Using shift+arrowKey, the selection "hovers" to the nearest link in that direction
  • With this feature remote controls can be configured to navigate pages
  • Same as Opera feature

Remote Control

Support for Red/Green/Yellow/Blue remote control buttons

  • The ability to configure keyboard shortcuts to select HTML elements that have the accesskey attribute in the format: accesskey="{red}" | accesskey="{green}" | accesskey="{yellow}" | accesskey="{blue}"
  • e.g. configure Alt-F1 to select the element with accesskey="{red}", Alt-F2 selects element with accesskey="{green}" etc
  • With this feature the RGYB buttons of remote controls can be configured to select links
  • This would make Firefox compatible with the Netgem iPlayer facility

Possible tie in with Accessibility/AccessKeys

Scripting

  • Implement a possibility to record short macros/scripts in order to automate task done on homepages, e.g. login and print a specific table, etc.
    • Support for regular expressions so that pages with broken URLs can be fixed, HTML can be converted to another format, etc.
References

Patching display

Let the user configure the display of their page and 'patch' them.

For exemple, change some image, text disposition or even the whole design of the page using regular expression. (Maybe witch a WYGIWYS editor-like to be more user friendly ?)

(I used a while ago an adblock proxy who do that, but it's really slow, whith something directly coded in firefox, this will be great ! No more forum witch crap animated smilets if we can change them on client side)

I think about a way that users can themselfs modify a whole page, and submit their 'patchs' to a centralized server.

When an other user navigate on the page, he can use a button on the navigation page to switch between the different patches submitted by other people and vote for them.

So for one site, we will probably had a lot of version : Ad-free, Alternative design (Sorry for my bad english, if you can reformulate my proposition more clearly, don't hesitate)

JavaScript Performance

JavaScript engine is too slow. When a script on page is become unresponsive - Firefox hangs, until window, proposing to stop that script appears. Enclosing enhancements are good, but functionality and quality are the main thing, we must to follow.

Letting user to preempt time hog scripts on all pages of a website

Firefox is already capable of detecting executing time hog scripts and offering user to kill them. However, consider a website with multiple pages each of which has such script (in some cases that would be e.g. Yahoo.com and Slashdot.com). If you open several such pages in separate tabs, Firefox will execute time hog script for each tab for the fixed minimum time and then offer to kill it. As a result:

  • browser is less responsive for awhile during this time
  • user gets to deal with the kill time hog dialog multiple times

To solve this I suggest allowing user to use behavior of scripts on page/tab 1 to predict behavior of scripts on other pages of the same website as follows:

include in time hog dialog "kill all occurrences of this script" button. This allows user who decides to kill script "ScriptHog" on page1 because it ran for too long to also kill this "ScriptHog" on all other pages already being opened or that will be opened in the immediate future (e.g. during this browser session) preemptively.

Note that this assumes that the script's behavior is not due to unique features of the given html document but instead due to network problems or Javascript bugs. IMHO this will usually be a good and perfectly safe bet, all the more so on sites that are known by user from experience to always contain time hogs of no apparent benefit.

PDF Reader

Make a quick-opening pdf reader, just for text. In other case, run adobe or similar

Rename tabs

It would be useful if end users could rename tabs after opening. Oftentimes, pages with wildly disparate content have similar headings, particularly if browsing forums or newspages or anything where a lot of content comes from a single site. If you could take six tabs all saying "CNN.COM - YOUR SOURCE F..." and change each of them to the subject of the page, it would greatly simplify things.

It really does come up quite often, even if you use separate windows instead of tabs, that the data listed in the browser summary field is basically useless due to excessively long page titles. This does sound like a good feature.

Incorporate Wizz RSS

To incorporate the Wizz RSS. It becomes it native of the program.


Web services integration

Automatically create a web services test form by inspecting a URL to a WSDL file. For comparison, ASP.NET can do this by browsing to a web services URL like foo.asmx?wsdl

Web mail integration

Following Firefox 2 support for online web feed readers, it could be extended to web mail services like Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail and Gmail at least. Users should be able to select one or more web mail providers and set a default or just keep the default stand alone email client. The idea is not to develop a complete email client but to provide minimum integration:

  • New mail notification through an alert a la "Downloads complete"
  • mailto: handling
  • File/Send link... overlay
  • More providers can be added with preferences for compose URL and new mail XPath

Email pseudo-url

Presently the mailto: pseudo url simply opens up a mail client. In the old Netscape/Mozilla days, the mail client was part of the package, so it wasn't necessarily such an issue. Perhaps Firefox could incorporate a lite smpt component which could actually send off data, perhaps as part of a form's action.

Explorer files integrated

Firefox 3.0 should integrate a file explorer of your system, while having the same characteristics as a web page: Tabs, mouse gestures, bookmarks. etc.

Explorer integration (Windows)

In Windows allow file system browsing (ie C:\windows), perhaps by calling on MSHTML APIs.

  • Preferably using default file manager -open Koqueror in the current tab when a local directory path is entered

In Windows, allow Firefox to change global settings for preferred browser; not only changing preferred browser for files-types, but also to change what browser applications start when they want to access a webpage.

Link Activation

  • Allow popup windows (ones that don't currently work in tabs) to appear in tabs.
  • Add option to pre-process Javascript (and Flash?) links - enable MMB/CTRL-click to open these in new tab, by tracking the target before obeying the command
  • Improved functionality when opening embedded Windows Media Player video files.
  • When hovering over a link, show its target in status bar (e.g. "Open http://example.com/ in a new tab") as in Safari.
  • Allow the user to draw a box on the webpage that launches all links within the box bounds, as new tabs
  • User key for this could be MMB, Drag or a modifier key with LMB, Drag.
  • if a large number of links are selected, a confirmation box could ask weather this was the users intention.
  • A simple example of where this would be useful is opening a number of items in a list of links, including the results of a search engine.
  • Text highlighted that starts with http:// can be opened in a new tab by dragging the selected text upward.
  • Any link will open in a new tab if dragged in any direction rather than being clicked.
  • Boss key, hot key combo that minimizes and removes from task bar, same combination brings it back.
  • if a link links to an image an preview of that image after 1 second of hovering over that link would be nice. The picture should have some kind of [X] to close it (or clicking somewhere else) and a resizer of that preview image would be nice too.
  • if I mark a text which contains a URL that does is not clickable it would be nice to have a right click option to open that link (marked text need to be parsed. if a collection of links is in that marked text a chooser would be nice (seen in opera) + "open all links in tabs" would be nice too
  • an option to parse all links in a website for dead ends. example: software collection of a 5 month old website. with an option to check (behind the scenes) all links for working results would be nice. If a link returns a "not found" or so, FF could darken that link (or alter an tiny image in front of the link - sad skull - or so.
  • When downloading a pdf (non HTML file) with target="othertarget" in link check mime type first before opening another (empty) tab and download / process the file directly.
  • An integrated prefetching mechanism (use free bandwith to load in background all the static pages linked from the page) - similar to Fasterfox plugin.
  • After i click Shift + click of link i open a link in other window. Now Gecko focuses a loaded window after loading but it's very bad! I suggest to do not focus loaded windows after a loading page through "Shit + click of link". It puts off from browsing :(
  • Same as the one above when reading email with several links: Every click on a link brings FF to focus. Better would be keeping FF in background so that one can read the whole mail undisturbed.
  • Make an option that Ctrl+Alt+Click, or some other combination, that will open a "preview" of the like page in a "bubble" or some other form of preview.
References

Link Context Menu

  • Add a command to open selected text in a new tab/window.
  • Allow to customise the links context menu. I for example have never clicked on the "Send Link", "Bookmark This Link" on purpose and i hate it when it starts my outlook or opens up the bookmark dialog.
  • Add an "Open link in this tab" command. I hate websites that open shit in new windows, and I'd rather keep everything in the original tab.
References

Additional Mouse Interactivity

  • Grabbing whitespace within the document act as grabbing the icon in the address bar. ie: it becomes the link. To avoid issues with selecting text make it a right click+drag as the trigger. This would make bookmarking easier, as well as open options for duplicating tabs without duplicating the history of the tab.
  • Dragging links to whitespace opens the link in new tab or window. - SuperDragAndGo extention provides this.
  • Highlighting text causes it to be treated as a link in all of it's functionality. If it is a valid, unformatted URL, go to that page. If it is text treat it as an "I'm feeling lucky Google search". Apply a max length of 256 characters to prevent shift+a+click overloading.
  • Shift-click, alt-click or whatever on any graphical object (animated gif, flash etc.) hides the object
  • Opera has a nifty feature with it's Mouse Gestures when you visit an Apache Directory Index or a Gallery site, and a few other sites. When you are on the index, you can just "go forward" in an imaginary history and it will start with the first link. Continuing going forward, will result in the second link, third link, etc... And when you've seen them all - you're back at the Index page.

Javascript Links

  • When ctrl+click or middle clicking a void() + onclick link browser opens current page in a new tab or window then performs a click on the requested link.
References

Tab Refresh

  • Allow to refresh Tabs automatically by a counter
    • When a change is made to the page on a reload, the tab should change visually

Independent tabs

  • The main browser interface should be on a thread that MUST never stop responding (and have a bigger priority). Each tab, should have it's own thread used to fill it's content. If a web page from inside one tab stops responding (or takes too much to load - such as big pdf files or sites that use java - but not resticted to those) the tab should be coloured in a different way (and maybe some text: the web page is not responding). The user MUST be able to either stop , go back, or close the tab, even if the content is not responding. It's VERY anoying now if I open lots of tabs, and the last stops responding, I must close the browser. (true the session restoration is a good step, but it's only a workaround, not the real solution to the problem).

Quick Top of page/Bottom of page

  • Perhaps a Goto Top and Goto Bottom button in the Find bar at the bottom of the browser. This would be faster than using the scrollwheel, which many mice don't have.
  • Duplicates Ctrl-Home / Ctrl-End functionality. Would an extra icon to do this be useful?

Uploading Files

Auto-zip multiple files in upload dialog

  • Implement multiple file selections in the upload dialog that automatically generates a archive (.zip) for easy transmissions of many files.
  • After selecting multiple files a dialog shall appear that asks for the file name of the archive (to be transmitted, auto-naming already included) and confirms the archive type (.zip/.tar.gz/whatsoever)

Support drag and drop files from OS into a text box / text area

  • Dragging a file icon from an OS file browser window should drop the name of the file in the target text box. Main use would be for uploading files, but it can be convenient for any other case when a file name and path must be used. It would be a must-have for web-based Document Management Systems, like eGroupWare's DMS.
References

Provide secure scanning and image capture

It isn't possible to safely build a distributed document management application using Firefox (or IE for that matter), but it would become possible if FF or javascript supported scanning. Imagine a web-based equivalent of PaperPort. Yes, you can run a client application to scan to a file, then upload that file - which is about as pleasant as doing the reverse every time you want to print something. It should be possible to make this appear fairly platform-neutral, using SANE in the *nix world, and TWAIN on Windows. I don't know how it should be presented. A new kind of input field in forms? The problem there is that developers will immediately want 40 different options: Pixel depth, resolution, single-page versus multipage, simplex versus duplex, etc. etc. So it seems more like some kind of object. A DOM object?

  • The GoogleDocs crew are going to want this one of these days...

Dynamic Font Support

Support dynamic font such as prf, eot or svg. Considering the huge advancements made in with SVG in the Firefox browser, I really can't see any excuse for NOT including this technology.

From a designer's point of view it makes just about the most amount of sense - with IE4 onwards supporting font embedding, gifting this technology to FF would just about cover 99% of browsers - the possibilities from a typography point of view are fantastic.

References
Comments

No. Firefox should support dynamic FON, TTF and OTF fonts. --Alenonimo 15:43, 27 October 2006 (PDT)

It would be grate if Mozilla can help W3C to create a Open Font Embedding platform and integrate it into Firefox Or they can use Embeddable Open Typeby Microsoft --Arjunatgv

Syntax Highlightning

  • Devloper aware syntax highlightning
    • No language includes these words &nbsp;, <th> and such. The spellchecker should know about symbols used by developers, bloggers and wikiwriters and not to highlight them as a syntax error at least.

Linux compatibility

  • Render embedded buttons with native GTK2 widgets
  • Make keyboard shortcuts work with non-Latin keyboard layouts in GTK2 (currently, GTK1 builds work as they are supposed to, as well as GTK2 under GNOME. But wth, not all people use GNOME!)
  • Make sure GTK2 builds do not screw up the keyboard focus: focus is periodically placed to the improper widgets which effectively disables keyboard shortcuts until mouse click inside browser.
References

Mac OS X compatibility

  • Support Command-Option-F to select search toolbar (standard for Mac applications).
  • Render embedded buttons with native Aqua widget
  • Dragging favicon to bookmark bar: Expand bookmark folders for bookmark placement when hovering -- FF 1.X+ under other OS's have been able to do this.
References

Long term target

On a long term basis Mozilla has come to a cross-road. The current XUL technology can't be used on a PAD/Smart phone nor on an OLPC. Yet there's a need for such a browser/mailer and it's just a matter of time somebody starts such a project. But I'm sure if such a browser/mailer gets built, it will be ported to the ordinary desktops slowly starting to replace Mozilla. And since switching technologies isn't a task done in a few weeks this subject has to be taken care of ASAP.

IMO it's important for Mozilla to start a task force now to think about the long term future. The PDA/Smart phones are already on the market almost exclusively using IE/Outlook and the OLPC and other embedded devices is just on the brink. So the pressure of this task, to prevent Mozilla from lagging behind again, is imminent.

Evaluating the future of XUL

  • It's essential to first evaluate XUL in the light of new requirements, especially about new devices ranging from the OLPC to embedded devices.

Evaluating possible alternatives

  • Alternatives should be based on the cornerstone "runs anywhere". Possible is IMO only wxWidgets yet others like Java or .Net/Mono should be rated against XUL as well.

More vs. Less

Well it seems like we could divide the users' wishes into two overall categories: While the ones can't get enough features, want more of them and through that keep pushing new technologies and conveniences for the user, the other fraction just want a quick and stable browser, supporting all the W3 standards.

I belong the other category, I want a quick and stable browser with a lot of Extensions and at least 5 distinct good looking skins. Still, I've got to admit, that without the more-and-more fraction, I still would not use the Mouse Gestures. So on the one hand, I am by all means interested in the ideas of the other users, on the other side, I got to admit that I am _saturated_. The new features in version 2.0, I do not want them. Honestly. Yeah. That's it. So, unlike most of the users who posted here, I simply do not have any _new_ ideas thus I would prefer to vote uppon the most wanted features.

Instead, you could focus on Sunbird. And of course some of the more interessting extension could some help to improve faster. I do not want to tell anybody how to spent his or her time, but if I am asked, this is my answer.

"Core Firefox" & "More Firefox" (Packaging options)

  • Distribute a single, lightweight feature-wise version of Firefox WITH a set of Mozilla Firefox developed and branded extensions in a specific extension pack (se the matching suggestion above). With this solution you will have:
    • A Firefox "Core" with just essential features (based upon XULRunner...)
    • A Firefox "More" with many features, released WITH Firefox as Extensions, by the Mozilla Firefox development team, and updated in sync with Firefox "Core".
  • Marketing wise, it could be like now a SINGLE installer, with an optional flag to be turned off during install. Still, after the setup, you could remove the extensions and you'll be "light" again.
  • How about something like this? A Foxmarks-style login that lets new users pick extensions and old users log in and immediately retrieve their favorites. A more detailed description of the idea and mockups are here: [1]
References
Commentary
I fully support the idea of a minimal firefox with official extensions from the devs and unofficial extensions from the communitiy. Firefox is getting too big. The first time I used Firefox (around 0.5 ?), I used it, because it was small and fast! Now it just takes too long to load. This also helps the core team to do it's core stuff, and the extensions people to work on thier extensions separatly. If they want to update a feature or remove some bug, only the new extension has to be upgraded and not the full Firefox package. Official extensions would also allow the devs to adopt community extensions, if they are deemed usefull for (nearly) everyone, and add them to the offical Firefox extensions.
Probably a better idea would be to have two separate packages. The package hosted at getfirefox.com and other official distribution channels would be the Firefox package as currently distributed. Think of this distribution as Core + Standard Addons. Having an installation option to remove or otherwise not install options would more than likely confuse some users (read: my parents).
Firefox Core would be stripped of non-essential features and be available as a separate package. Think Firefox 1.0 or KMeleon with Firefox XPI support. Users of Firefox Core could pick and choose from the Standard Addons and any other addons currently available.
Benefits of a distributing as Firefox and Firefox Core
Probably a better question to ask is what benefits would be gained by this packaging method. I believe there are several:
  • The method allows for the continued distribution of Firefox, unchanged.
    • The method is friendly to average users.
    • The Firefox brand is not diluted as the standard distribution is still Firefox.
  • Power users won't be tempted to smaller, lighter browsers.
    • An increasing number of power users are discontent with the Kitchen-Sinking of Firefox.
    • Many options are not required elements of even a modern browser.
    • Interestingly, I was going to use KMeleon as justification for packaging a smaller browser, but KMeleon rings in at a 5.2 MB download, Firefox 2.0.0.11 at 5.7 MB.
  • Most important: Key features of the Firefox 1.0 Charter:
    • Delivering the right set of features - not too many or too few (the goal is to create a useful browser, not a minimal browser)
    • Keeping the download size down - to less than 5.0MB on Windows for the installer.

Extension packs

How about a extension 'mode' pack or something? This could be a bunch of plugins grouped under a certain name like 'Standard','Ultra Fast','WebDeveloper','Kiosk' etc... and then have a simple drop down where one could select the 'mode' and only plugins for that mode would be loaded. This way we get the fast version, and the features packed versions for those who want it (and we can easily switch). Ofcourse let the user modify the mode pack if they wish, but this can be hidden somewhere so beginners don't stumble upon it by mistake and mess things up.

It really is not a 'fast mode' vs 'feature packed mode' only, as it depends very much on what features a user wants and what they are doing at the time. By creating a couple of common usage mode packs it will make it easy to customize without having to individually download and install each plugin (though one could still do this). Maybe this is what a 'profile' is all about, but then again I still like to share bookmarks no matter how I'm browsing.

I for one sometimes like the browser to be very fast, at other times I prefer all the web developer options, and at other times when browsing for personal use I'd like other plugins loaded.

This way the core can stay small but first time users still get the cool behaviours they like without having to understand this whole plugin install business.(so a standard download and a core download without the mode packs for example)

The use case I see is that first time users will want all the whiz bang toys to atleast match other browsers, and don't want to go through and figure out what extensions are and how to install, they just want to click go and off they go. Experienced users on the other hand may want other features or a slimmed down feature set. I think this approach solves both issues.

I love the idea of official extensions! And I'd definately like the ability to strip down firefox to the core. This method of development and packageing gets my vote!

Perhaps the installer could be a bit more than just Core & More. You could for example have a check box for extra features, and another for web development tools. Each check box could be expanded to get individual extensions like no-script.

And of course the defaults will be well chosen.

The more functionality you add, the more words and submenus have to be created. And both is confusing for beginners and older folks. What is the difference between words, that seem to mean the same thing at first glance ? Do I have to understand "all these new words" like "javascript", "PlugIn" ? Keep in mind, not all of the users are like the Techies who develop !

Firefox already has all the necessary stuff. There must always be an easy way for "lightweight-users" to use firefox without getting confused about words, large submenus or confusing questions.

The more functions, the more words, the more confusion. Please, always offer an easy way for the non-techie user ... !

I agree that a much smaller (memory) footprint is needed (even on desktop systems), and love the extension pack idea. I'd like to also strongly suggest looking at the reason for the memory size with the current feature set - 225 MB with just 3 tabs open just seems like too much.

The subject of More vs. Less is quite interesting. A good starting point might be to ask "what recent features are being used?". In that vein, maybe one of the "pre-release" versions could be "instrumented" to count the features used and (with the permission of the user, of course) report back those. Another way might be to do a web crawl, and see what features are used by various "popular" web sites. As with ANY feature set, one should realize that "growing featureism" is a very slippery slope. I suspect that many web users would be content with the features of an older browser (say back to 1999) to do their work. Remember that each added "feature" involves code, and with any new code comes both bugs and vulnerabilities. The user community wants neither.

Please focus more on stability, robustness, and security than on adding fun features. New features are nice, and fixing bugs isn't so much fun, but I find Firefox to be more of a memory hog and less stable than IE, and that's pretty sad. Stop competing against other browsers because you're afraid of losing market-share. The only way Firefox will ever be truly great if it's designed to be great from the ground up. Focus on changes that are less glitzy and more on changes that are fundamental to making a good browser platform. When something needs to be re-architected, re-architect it. Don't assume that bugs will ultimately get fixed; so far, Firefox has added features faster than bug fixes. Rather, focus on design principles that minimize the chances that problems will happen and minimize the consequences when they DO happen (and they will!).

I agree with the above. Firefox also has a reputation for being fast and relatively slim and there already is a plugin system for those who want a feature laden browser, so the focus should be on essential improvements that will have an impact on usability for the majority of users. A lot of the proposals here go way beyond what a dedicated browser should be able to do (more or less why Firefox was created from the Mozilla suite in the first place, no?) and would just add a lot of bloat.

I concur with the above two requests. Fix all the memory leaks! Firefox leaks memory like a sieve. I hate having to restart it periodically in order to get it all reclaimed. A web browser shouldn't be using nearly 150 MB of ram. That's 15 MB for each of my open tabs!

(removed further repetitive commentary here)

Customizable extension sets

The ability for each user to create, save, install, and manage "feature (extension) sets".

Rich Internet Application Support

There is an opportunity here to lead the way in supporting the growing number of DHTML- and Ajax-heavy applications and to provide the browser support needed to eliminate some of the drawbacks of these apps. In all cases a security model will be necessary, probably including some automated safeguards and some user confirmations.

Preloaded javascript libraries

  • with AJAX large javascript libraries (e.g. "dojo.js") have to be downloaded which need a lot of time. It would be nice if such libraries could be downloaded local in the background and taken from this local store instead of downloaded from the web when referenced by a page. This would speed up any AJAX page considerably. Which libraries are handled this way may be configured in the "offline" settings.

Local filesystem access

  • Allow pages to request access to the local filesystem or some subset thereof (for example, a user's home directory, desktop, or docs folder) for reading and/or writing.

Hear hear! This would enable productivity applications on the web far beyond what we can do today. Mozilla has an opportunity to create a standard API for local storage.

Access to global UI elements (menubar, taskbar, panels...)

  • Allow a page to request access to major OS-level global UI elements like a first-class application. Such elements include the Mac menubar, Windows taskbar, GNOME/KDE panels, Mac Dock, etc. Some are more important than others; for example, being able to write menus to the global menubar is far more important on the Mac platform than Dock access. However, Dock access on the Mac is probably more important than taskbar access on Windows because Windows will already have an entry for each browser window (though being able to define that window's icon would be nice so users can distinguish between "regular" browser windows and in-browser apps).

Enhanced clipboard integration

  • Provide APIs to allow non-text apps to manipulate the system clipboard/pasteboard more.

More robust file uploads

  • Provide single- and multi-select access to standard OS Open dialogs for opening/uploading files. Include an upload manager for asynchronous uploads. Include functionality to resume interrupted uploads. For apps that store data, combine with local filesystem access to allow easy setup of sites that keep local and remote data seamlessly synchronized.
  • Provide drag and drop file uploads.
Commentary
A standardized synchronization protocol would really help on this one. Why does every photo site need to make their own bulk uploader? A sync protocol could send the sha1 of the files in the local directory tree to the server and then let server request upload of the files that it is missing. Even better, make this a two way sync protocol.

An alternative view of the web browser

  • Firefox as a new kind of desktop manager.
  • Active front end.
References

Enabeling new Top-Level-Domains (TLDs) on browser basis

  • Top-Level-Domains for regions, cities and others
  • Top-Level-Domains with IDN characters

The ICANN process for getting approval for a new TLD is quite slow and very stressful for TLD applicant. Making new and by ICANN not yet approved TLDs available could help to foster the development of the DNS. Firefox could easily enable lots of new TLDs and thereby give regional, cultural, linguistic or ethnic communities the opportunity to present themselves by an own identifier. Not to split up the Internet there can be only domains at those TLDs available for which the community indicates to apply at ICANN for an official approval of their TLD.

References

Annotations

I think it would be really great if there would be enhanced possibilities of graphical marks. It's tough to explain. I think of an complicated scientific text. If I print such a text. I highlight some words, cross other chapters out, add some notes. That's the big advantage of printing a page. If I could mark within a browser wouldn't have to print the page. I could work on screen.

Decentralized/distributed browsing

In case a website has been slashdotted, Firefox should still be able to reach to its data by using the offline website data which is stored locally at other Firefox users, who were able to connect to it, their disk. Firefox should act as a kind of a torrent client. Of course, there might be some security issues. Https websites should be denied and the user itself should be able to disable this "torrent functionality".

Offline browsing

I don't know where this would go, but how about a really easy off-line browsing agent? Here's an example of what I do. Every morning I pull up about a dozen web pages in tabs, as a sort of 'newspaper' I read specific articles that catch my eye, or have an interest, like say the North Korea problem. I then go to the next article. (just like a newspaper.) I'd like to be able to click a 'offline this link' (or something like that), where it downloads just that article, as deep as it needs to go, with all the stuff that goes with it) then save it. I can then take this on my laptop and read it at work, in the car or such if/when I don't have internet connections. The off-line browsers I've used want to download the entire site(s), and are so hard to configure I give up on them.

Thunderbird Integration.

  • Ability to load Thunderbird as a tab.
  • Mail notifiers.

(Perhaps Thunderbird would take off if it were packaged with FF?)

All Mozilla applications in a tab ?

Why not opening FileZilla, ChatZilla, etc... in a tab : it's kind of firefox suite ... but the programs are installed separately to avoid one heavy program and get several light ones. Firefox could become an interface for any Mozilla program installed by opening it in a tab.

Bookmark behaviour

Two buttons for favorites that open as many tabs as there are links in a special folder: One for daily checked pages (e.g. news paper, special forum a.s.o) and one for pages you check only sometimes (e.g. homepages of former friends or employers, news of your hometown a.s.o.)

Comments

Firefox should Import/Export with more formats. XBEL, xFolk, OPML or even create a new one. Support for tags would be cool too. --Alenonimo 15:48, 27 October 2006 (PDT)

Socket connection

I think the possibility to setup and use a socket connection for client-server communications would be a great improvement for Firefox to use it in Web2.0 / intranet-webapplications.
I know it's already possible, but it requires 'signed/secure javascript' through a plugin to deploy the possibilities, but it would (and should) be a lot easier if a could just setup a javascript object, like so: 

 mySocket = new SocketClient("tcp://domain.com/application");
 mySocket.onData = processReponse();
 mySocket.connect();

If you look at the flash player for example, it is used a lot in all kinds of applications, not just gaming or chatting, but it's also penetrating the intranet-applications business.

HTTP Sniffer

Have a HTTP Sniffer, where you see what exactly is transmitted, which POST / GET parameter, cookies, loading times etc. Something like httpwatch, see link. That's why I have to start IE in regular intverals.

References
Commentary
Should this functionality really be in the browser itself, when there are things like Paros Web Proxy?
Sometimes we are required to use a different proxy (e.g. in corporate networks). Besides, when using HTTPS and gzip compression of pages, the external sniffer will not show the contents of the page. It would be better to sniff by means of the browser itself (both for outgoing requests and for incoming pages, when they are about to be encoded or have already been decoded, respectively, by browser), and to be able to manage these requests in the browser and/or extensions (allow, deny, save, redirect etc.).

Security

  • I see many attacks upcoming, which manipulate the DOM-tree inside the browser, altering transactions in banking-systems a.s.o.
  • What i wish for Firefox is, to have ONLY signed extensions!
  • I want a default block of all extensions to manipulate SSL-protected sites.

This security-feature will be a boost for the usage of Firefox, because all banks will promote FF.

Flexible table element selection and copy

For example, select and copy a column (or columns) from a html table

  • Press Ctrl/Cmd when selecting

User dictionaries

I have an existing "user.dic" dictionary, and a couple of specialist dictionaries ("avifauna.dic", "lepidoptera.dic"). They are used by several of my apps, including my e-mail client (Turnpike) and various MS Office apps. I should be able to direct FF to use the former as its dictionary to which new words are added, and to check against all of them when spell-checking.

Also, when the word I'm spell checking is at the bottom of the window, then the suggested replacements should be at the bottom of the context menu.

Various

  • Move all MPL code to GPL

Better Support for Web Apps

See my article on that topic.

Memory management

Try to minimize the memory usage of Firefox. May be we can have one feature (one button click), which enables the browser to run with minimum feature and there by reducing the memory usage.

As an additional memory usage related feature a (on/off switchable) display of memory usage in each browsertab would be interesting (not only for developers). It may be colorcoded as well to see instantaniously, which tab causes the memory usage spike. Telling me for instance to close the tab with the still running buggy JS on that not so well coded Web2.0-page I left open in the background...

Save web pages in pdf or odt format

Allow save html pages in pdf or odt format.

Spell-check support for multiple languages

I'm doing a doctorate in a French university, on databases, and I'm Romanian. This means that I mail/post/write things in French, English and Romanian all the time, sometimes even in the same text box. I'd like a way to tell FF what languages I'm likely to use so that it can use those dictionaries at the same time. If it's really smart, it should also detect what language each sentence/paragraph/text-box is after a few words and restrict the dictionary automatically to that language. And, perhaps, it should use a different underline color for words that are not in the "current language" dictionary but are in another "in use" dictionary, for cases of code-switching (it happens very often when discussing computer-related things in another language than English).

Restart

Restart the firefox browser, but restore the session. So that you can get extensions working without losing all your tabs etc.

Comments

That's implemented already. Just change the Home Page settings to load your previous session. --Alenonimo 15:49, 27 October 2006 (PDT)

Quick Restart extension is similar to that used when updating addons, takes Firefox down, restarts and restores all windows (Ctrl+Alt+R).

Built-in Flash Support

Forget about SVG and Canvas, build an open source Flash implementation into the browser and get rid of the plugin. You could start from gnash http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/ Use the MIT license and give the source code to Microsoft, they might even help write it.

PopUp Blocker

The popup blocker need not have the "Options" button at the end. Instead, clicking anywhere on the popup blocker, we should be able to bring the pop-up blocker options menu (ala IE). Also, add the "Temporarily allow pop-up for this page" option to the main options menu.

CPU usage when minimized

Stop flash animations and other CPU power stealers when Firefox window is not selected or is minimized, and for no selected tabs.

New User Agent string layout

The actual User Agent strings are confusing and should be deprecated. Firefox 3 could use an User Agent strings simmilar to Opera. Ex: 

Firefox/3.0 (Windows NT 5.0; U; pt-BR)

Or yet: 

Gecko/1.9 (Windows XP; pt-BR) Firefox 3.0

--Alenonimo 15:41, 27 October 2006 (PDT)

Process Isolation for each Web Site

With web browsers becoming the de facto application launchers in desktops and several web applications (e.g. gmail) being used continuously, it is very important that an ill-behaved web site is not able to crash the entire web environment. At most, it should crash itself, without affecting the other web sites showing on other windows/tabs or requiring firefox to restart. Mrcgran 19:34, 27 October 2006 (PDT)

Independent sessions per tab/window

Currently, any web browser I am aware of shares sessions across all instances of the browser (windows/tabs). It would be nice to separate a window or tab and create a new session within it. This would allow you to have, say, two different GMail accounts logged-in at the same time without needing to have two different web browsers.

Won't comeback button

In order to minimize the "leak" of memory that the "quick back" and "quick forward" features use we should have an button "I won't come back" this will close the tab and unload everything it had in the memory so that if you close every tab the memory usage will drop back the their 30-40MB that are used on start. Also we should allow the user to define this as his/her normal closing button (so if you close the tab and have that option checked will unload automatically the memory).

Easier tildes, ñ and Cyrillic characters

I usually use the ZombieKeys for that, however in some text areas I can't use it, and it seems that the creator of that extension will no longer update it, so, we should have it "by default" (sadly ala IE7). This could be an extra extension (also might be an extension for Cyrillic characters) because I agree with the core/more Firefox movement.

Page split

Add ability to split Web pages display. Web pages may be splited horizontally as spreadsheets does. This feature should include two panels display, each one with its own scrollbar on the right and ability to display result of a link clicked on one panel on the other panel as long as link refers to the same page. This may be very useful for long pages with multiples internal links and especially for pages containing a table of content on the top (as this one :-) ). This way we could keep TOC on the top panel and navigate through content on the bottom panel.

Export/Import config to/from XML

Add ability to export selected config elements (arrived at by running a search within the about:config page) to a file in XML format. The file should have some version info in the header. Each record should optionally contain an extra field for a URL that will point to description of the config element. It should be possible to import the XML back after editing.

Easy Mechanism/API for changing/adding client-side scripting language dynamically

Javascript is the default scripting language in Firefox, but javascript is not the best language to use in every problem domain, due to its nature or to legacy code.

Therefore, Firefox should add an easy (standard/documented with examples) mechanism/API to allow developers to plug in new scripting languages (such as python, haskell, lua, ruby etc) with full access to standardized DOM/CSS, and to users to download them (in the form of some add-on/plugin) and switch them on on-the-fly without resetting the browser.

With the continuous trend in executing client-side web applications, this would be a boost to using Firefox as an OS-agnostic desktop application provider environment. The scripting language name should be as easy to choose as putting the name inside the [script language="[name]"] tag attribute. It should be possible to use several scripting languages on the same web page.

Microsoft Internet Explorer already implements something on these lines with their ScriptHost API, that allows any script engine to be hosted in Internet Explorer (there's even a HaskellScript language that uses this API on top of IScript, a COM interface). Why not implement some similar IScript interface on top of XPCOM? Mrcgran 23:42, 4 November 2006 (PST)

Support for the MNG format

The MNG format would be an alternative to (and intended to replace) the old GIF format, which is used really often (eg: boards' smileys, animated buttons, etc ...). It's lack of Alpha channel support is really annoying when you start to create animations not to be used on only one colored background.

The MNG format, which is based on the PNG format, has many features that the popular GIF format does not. MNG supports alpha channel and animation, object or sprite-based approach to animation, nested loops for complex animations, better compression than the GIF format, integration of both PNG and JPEG-based ("JNG") images, support for transparent JPEG images, but it's not yet a standard in current web browsers. This format needs to be helped in becoming one, but if there was only Microsoft who could do sommething by intergrating the format in IE, we could wait for a long time. Thus, I think Firefox should follow Konkeror in the integration of this format to accelerate the "standardization" of MNG and the "elimination" of GIF, to help the World Wide Web in becoming more user friendly. Not supporting new and better media/technology for viewing and experiencing the web prevents its progression and stagnates it's growth.

References
I'm afraid those were supported by the browser, but were deprecated because it's low support by the Web.
I don't think that it will be supported cause According to Unofficial Mozilla wiki Mozilla decided to use APNG over MNG even though APNG violates section 5.2 of the PNG specifications. this was discussed at BUG 257197
Nevertheless i think that if Firefox adopts it the popularity of MNG will grow. We should support it, firefox then would be the most standardized browser, like Konqueror, and right now it's impossible to insert a decent animation (gif sucks at the so used degrades) (as a side note very good that Firefox support alpha channels in jpg unfortunately i can't use them!, over here (Mexico) IE is in the 99.999% of the machines).

Save page independently

Option to save page into all-in-one html. Images can be included with data URL-s, javascript and css can be included to page naturally. Flash, java and others are more complicated, but in first step these can be ignored...

<link src="my.css" ...> will be <style>...content of my.css...</style> and <script src="my.js" ... /> will be <script>...content of my.js...</script>. Images will have src="data,..."

Spatial navigation

Please, support by default spatial navigation. References:


Favourite web pages performance

I would like to have a macro to open my favourite coffee morning web pages in a special way. Now, if i command to open simultaneously 30 web pages that i use to visit i have obviously many performance problems. What i propose is to have 2 or 4 web pages loaded (a visible window of 4 web pages) that i can cycle like a powerpoint presentation by all over my 30 web pages as i close one. In this way a have only 4 slices open but i can continue with my non seen web pages. In this way it would be good if i could go forward and backward in the macro list.

Like slices in Powerpoint

Clipping extra information

This is a function that can also improve the performance. Firefox could check for some frequently visited web pages extra information from the user. The extra information could be "mark from here as read" "I like this paragraph" and so on. This context information is very useful since the web browser can use this to avoid load information repeated. It would be nice if the browser could understand the information and filter the same news or easily the same words in the news and remove it from the loading task. Other information like "I like this paragraph" could be shared by the community or simple with the web page that we read. There is a extension clipping or something like this that try this concept but in a private way.

Extra information button about the web page

Mouse cursor variation

  • Visual feedback in the form of different mouse cursor appearances informs the user whether a link will open in the current tab/window or in a new tab/window. Just as an example, when a cursor hovers over a new window link, the cursor becomes a "hand" and a mini plus sign attached to it, sort of like the green plus sign you see when you option-click drag a Finder file in OS X.

Page Info

  • "Page Info" dialog should have links on Links tab clickable, saveable, bookmarkable, etc, like any other links. Media in the same dialogue at Media tab should be clickable etc. Probably it would be reasonable to attach a usual right-click context menu.

Toolbar icons in customise' view

  • The ability to sort icons in the "toolbar " / "customise" view, alpahbetically, or "newest first", would be beneficial. Pigsonthewing 11:07, 4 January 2007 (PST)

MAC version: Please be Cocoa

  • I don't know how feasible this is, but if Firefox were native Cocoa on the Mac, we could take advantage of cool things the Mac has to offer like: SERVICES

I don't know how many times I reflexively go to Services to save a snippet or something and forget that Firefox isn't Cocoa.

"Smart" scrolling ("Pg Dn" and "Pg Up" i mean)

Whit the growing popularity of the blogs reading a bunch of articles might be hard, what if Firefox might recognize where is the next header and if i press, lets say Control+Pg Dn it jumps to the next header, that way i can cycle through the headers of my the blog or the news.

Plain text link detection

The text selected on the browser, and right-clicked must be evaluated if it represents a URL or just a word. Now Firefox 2 has "Search Google for 'xxxx'. There are still many blogs or forums that does not permit auto-hyperlinking on URL posted by non-HTML educated people. This feature in FireFox may just ease this problem of "copy-paste" in the address bar, instead of just right-clicking, and open in a new tab/window. Again, insisting for an extension is out of the topic. People don't always download extensions.

Multiple Dictionary Features

A certain dictionary can be "paired" with a domain by the user: Something in the languages context menu like: "Set Spanish as default language at meneame.net", and then a editable list in the Options. Of course you can always change dictionaries with a right click just like you can right now if you want to write something in a different langiages, but you usually use the same languages in a given domain, and that will make things easier.

CSS 3

Firefox should be compatible with, what has been released of CSS 3, like Safari is. I think this would vastly improve it.

Acid2

Would it be possible to make Firefox 3 pass the Acid2 test?

Personal Web Page Integration

I would like to be able to right click on highlighted text, pictures, or whatever, an have an option to "Save to my home page". This would open up a seperate application, or call some outside function, that would let you specify just where on your site you want to put it.

So Firefox would just link to this web-site app rather than integrating it. This app might have to be written, or maybe there is a suitable open-source stand-alone program out there.

Somewhere in the process of setting up this function, a user could define a default behavior. Maybe someone has a site that's just one huge page, so everything they save just lands at the top of the page, or maybe it's a multipage site, with a "Pictures" page, a "Blog" page, etc. There could be templates and so forth. Maybe someone just want to keep a personal folder on the internet somewhere. In simple cases, right clicking and choosing to save to your web page would be all you have to do.

Also, posting links to what's on your page might be automated to some degree. Say you're typing in a text field, like a web forum, you could right click there and get a "Post link" option. So whenever you have saved something to your personal site, a reference to it's position on the page has been noted in the html. How this could be made simple on a site with a thousand links on it I don't know.

Shadowing the Session

My computer is unstable, programs crash a lot. I notice in Opera that when I get a message that "Opera has crashed", the browser doesn't close. There's no apparent change. I love this feature(?).

So I'm wondering if Firefox could run a shadow in the background somehow so that if it crashes it (apparently) doesn't crash at all.

Edit Menu Additional Options

In addition to the cut/copy/paste options, another one would be "Copy Title," because the only way to copy it now is to view the source and search for the <title> tag.

Network Proxy - Save user name and password

Firefox does not remember Network-Proxy user name and password. Currently it is too repetitive to type the network-proxy username and password for every session, especially if one has opened several tabs and restarts Firefox with restore session. Saving the username and password for all the network-proxy once for all, I think will make Firefox very much user friendly.

Middle-Click Goes Back In History

  • It's a very small request, but I think it's a very cool feature. My mouse (via special software) can take my browser back [to the previous page] with a middle-click. It's 10 times faster than any keyboard shortcut since navigation is mostly performed with the mouse anyway. I would use the software today if it wasn't so unreliable. I think it would be great if this feature was built in.

Partial Session Restore

  • After Firefox crashes, the user can choose to restore only some pages.
  • This way, if the crash really was caused by a page, users need not lose their session, only the offending pages.
  • There might be a tabbed dialogue with checkboxes, each tab representing a window, and each check representing a tab, and users can select which tabs are restored. There might be a select all and select none button, and on the title of each tab, there might be a checkbox to select all in a tab (i.e. select all tabs from a window).

Page Loading Priority

When loading multiple pages at once by opening links into new tabs, users should be able to make a page have higher priority (i.e. loads first) or lower priority (i.e. loads last) simply by right-click the tab and choosing a priority. This would be especially useful when researching and one page appears to be the most informative and therefore it should have a higher priority then the other pages; Or when bulky websites take a long time to load and holds up other sites from loading quickly.

CURIE Support

Support for the CURIE Syntax would be nice. It has working draft status, so the developer who implements it would also have to maintain the code if the draft changes. MovGP0 12:20, 11 October 2007 (PDT)

Safari Style Activity Window

A Safari style "Activity" feature would be nice. See [2] for details of what it does. Matturn 18:42, 11 October 2007 (PDT)

Better rendering of iTunes podcast XML

An iTunes podcast specific XSLT could be applied, giving much more meaning when iTunes xml is rendered. Matturn 05:06, 28 November 2007 (PST)

Source code guide

Source code phrases - urls, image links etc. should be highlighted and when clicked should show corresponding icon on web page.Xyzzy613 14:13, 10 December 2007 (PST)

Merge RSS

RSS feeds should be able to combine so as not o have to check so many.Xyzzy613 14:13, 10 December 2007 (PST)

Screen saver

I think a good feature would be to have a defined URL come up as a PCs screen saver. I'd choose Radar weather or my email but it could be performance graphs or vendor could come up with interesting pages that may include advertising.

Zebra striping

When reading articles, I usually use text selection for a better contrast and ergonomy, but I have to select lines by lines, in order to keep something readable.

I just got a simple idea: allow a "zebra striping effect" on text selections, or even the possibility to automatically apply one to any text paragraph on some critters (site url, text length / # of lines...)

(hope I posted this in the right place, I didn't see any section related to Ergonomy, except accessibility)

Desktop Icon

A better looking desktop icon, the one at the bottom of this page looks pretty cool. Khindjal 10:16, 4 March 2008 (PST)

Consistent Center

Firefox only adds a vertical scroll bar when needed. This causes the "center" to be different. It is either the center of the entire window, or the center of the entire window minus the scrollbar. Going between http://wiki.mozilla.org/Main_Page and http://wiki.mozilla.org/MozillaWiki:Site_support the top wobbles. The scroll bar should always be present, like in Internet Explorer. Another option would be for center to always be calculated the same whether or not a scrollbar is needed.

Better Font Support

As a developer I am really limited in what fonts I can use. Most of the time I need to make them into images, which are limited.

Consider sourcing out several hundred open source fonts and embedding them into firefox. Everything one might need, nice serifs, nice sans-serifs some modern, transitional, and old fonts & some funky fonts. Some major typographical tools for creating stunning, flexible, fast loading pages.

Alternatively, firefox could implement the ”@font-face” CSS2 spec

Just having some good open source fonts to choose from would be a good start.

A repository for open-source fonts


Audio Management

Firefox should have a audio management tool. maybe on the right-click menu. so users can control what sounds they hear. this would be useful when multiple web pages are open playing different sounds, or when listening to music while on a game site (the game sound interferes with music). not all web designers make their pages/flash/java apps/audio with a mute button or volume so it might be easier for this to be done through the browser. for example there could be a category on the right-click menu called "AUDIO" then a sub-category "MANAGEMENT" then options like (sub-category allows for additional features later on) "DISABLE ALL SOUNDS ON THIS PAGE"/"ENABLE SOUND ON THIS PAGE", "DISABLE SOUNDS FROM THIS FILE"(when mouse is over a flash document)/"ENABLE SOUNDS FROM THIS FILE"(when mouse is over a flash document),"DISABLE ALL SOUND IN FIREFOX"/"ENABLE ALL SOUNDS IN FIREFOX", (when mouse is over a tab) "MUTE TAB"/"UN-MUTE TAB". this way users can have several tabs open at the same time (isn't that one of the main features) WITHOUT different sounds playing at the same time making a messy noise (you could mute the computer, BUT: what happens if you are listening to music OR... if you need the speakers on for other reasons like phone calls (skype and stuff)). and one more thing:

History Delete Problem

This one is not the most important, BUT: there is no option to delete the last term searched for in CTRL-F "find" tool. if i clear my search history, form history, everything else, then the "find" history should be cleared too. could be a security problem on public computers. or a privacy problem.

Startup

  • I like the option to reopen the previously opened tabs from last time on startup. One annoyance though, if I close my main browsing window first and I don't realize a popup was open I lose my tabs. Maybe there could be an extra option (in about:config) to ignore popups when remembering last opened tabs? Either that or set a time limit, if all windows are closed within 10 seconds they're all saved for next time.

Refresh (i)Frame

In IE8, when you right click in a (i)Frame in a page and choose Refresh only that frame is refreshed. For me as a developer this can be real handy. Maybe it's a good idea to also have this functionality for Firefox?

Close Only This Tab

Also in IE8, when you close the browser window and it has multiple tabs it offers you the option to only close the current tab. Sometime I'm not aware that I had another tab open and indeed I only wanted to close the current tab. Then this feature comes in handy.

Search Engine Bar: Ctrl+Enter -> New Tab

It is possible to configure about.config to open Search Engine toolbar searches in either the current tab or a new tab. I would love to be able to open a search in the current tab with [Enter] and a new tab with the combination of [Ctrl]+[Enter]. I really would use both.

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