I know there are plenty of more serious issues people have with Mozilla's direction and focus, but patronizing stuff like this really grinds my gears.
> Which animal best represents your Firefox browsing style? [List of emoji animals]
The marketing/PR trend of speaking to communities as though they're kindergartners is distracting and off-putting. This is the most egregious part but the whole post has a similar tone.
I'll note that I'm not saying outreach should necessarily be professional or devoid of fun/humor. There's just a sterile, saccharine way about Mozilla's community engagement that evokes artificiality.
"Surely, you have one job and that is to deliver tech that works—not to waste users' time by giving them irrelevant copy to read which has no functional value."
Microsoft has been doing this for years, with its messages during Windows setup, along the lines of "sit back and relax while we work our magic" which is at best annoying.
95, 98, Me, and XP all at least provided screenshots of some new features in the release. 10 and later just have the fuzzy "getting things ready" flavor text.
Tbf most os‘s including windows install extremely fast. It’s the shit show you need to do after the installation that is annoying. Even starting edge after you did the worlds slowest after installation wizard. You need to fucking await it’s fullscreen feature announcement until you can download another browser.
Is it? The guy is "highly offended" (???) by playful language and color themes and does the performatively enraged internet guy thing of being shocked that Mozilla has a political agenda, despite the fact that Mozilla, a purpose driven non-profit has had a manifesto written by Mitchell Baker since 2007?
If you're enraged by an emoji or by someone saying thank you for loving our browser it's probably time to turn the computer off or something
I find it concerning that my top-level comment is garnering a lot of support and agreement from people who see my complaints and this ranting guy's performative indignation as aligned. He pretends to not understand vague, virtue-signally marketing speak rather than be honest about the fact that it just bugs him. Maybe for reasons he doesn't understand, or maybe for reasons he's uncomfortable with sharing.
I want to make it as clear as possible that my primary issue is Mozilla's insincerity. I'm also put off by the particular tone they're using, but that's just a matter of aesthetic preference.
If you are just a freeloader sure, but someone who's been involved and supporting the project for years would certainly be right to be offended at the blatant abuse and wastage of his efforts.
The rant makes a great point that professional writers should be able to write substantially better than we're seeing from Mozilla.
It's easy to take pot-shots at complaints about usage of "upleveling" (which is not a word, for the record), but his point is well-taken. Take a look at the Mozilla's blog post that has that sentence: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/news/privacy-online-just...
The writing is just weak, pretty much across the board.
> October is one of our favorite months of the year with autumn and Cybersecurity Awareness Month.
"favorite months", "with autumn"? I feel like a 5th grader wrote this from the get-go.
Second paragraph is almost incoherent:
> Earlier this year we celebrated our 100th Firefox release and reaffirmed our commitment to put people first. For today’s release, we’re rolling out new features that deliver on our user promise to provide web experiences that prioritizes people’s privacy and needs whenever they go online.
The writer is somehow trying to tie the idea of the 100th release to "people first", but the 100th release has nothing to do with what this paragraph is about, and neither does "people first". This paragraph is actually about Firefox's privacy features. If that's "people first", any user feature is "people first", right? The writing is a bunch of fluff around "We've improved the usability of Firefox's privacy features". My summary is just a better way to say that than the original post.
It's a slog to reading writing critique, but let's do one more: Firefox View
> We created Firefox View to help users navigate today’s internet. For today’s launch of Firefox View you will see up to 25 of your recently closed tabs within each window of your desktop device. Once you’ve synced your mobile devices, you’ll see the last three active tabs you had open on your other devices. You’ll also get to refresh your Firefox with a new Colorway inspired by the Independent Voices collection. Firefox View will continue to be a place where you can quickly get to the information that matters most to you.
I can do a lot of critique of useless words here, but let's put that aside. They seem to be explaining that there's a new feature that shows recently closed tabs. Cool. And then the second to last sentence is just jammed in there, unrelated to anything else in the paragraph, and introducing terms I'm not really sure about.
> You’ll also get to refresh your Firefox with a new Colorway inspired by the Independent Voices collection.
No clue what that's doing there. I'm an engineer, so I thought Colorway was a Firefox feature or something, but I looked it up and it seems to be a term-of-art:
> The scheme of two or more colors in which a design is available. It is often used to describe variegated or ombre (shades of one color) print yarns, fabric, or thread. It can also be applied to apparel, to wallpaper and other interior design motifs, and to specifications for printed materials such as magazines or newspapers.
And then I realize all the links to Colorways that should have been in the post, are in the post! They are just at the end. So all the mentions of Colorways are unlinked until the end of the post, where they finally explain what they are referring to. This is just basic editing feedback that any decent editor would provide. The fact is Mozilla is just not paying people to write well for them.
It's a short post that's mediocre end-to-end, not because of playful language, but because it's bad writing.
The reason this kind of critique seems so lame is that I don't think people think very much about what they're reading (when reading stuff like this, at least), so they just don't care that the writing is sophomoric. But that doesn't mean the rant isn't fundamentally correct that Mozilla is doing a poor job in their writing.
>>"Last year we upleveled our Private Browsing mode."
>> Sorry, "upleveled" is not a verb I've ever heard of, in decades of using the Web. Why are you beginning articles with made-up verbs that you know people aren't going to understand? Why not use standard, plain, clear English?
Just because the person ranting had never heard of it doesn't mean that uplevel isn't a verb; and I am not sure how their amount of time spent using the web would correlate to their grasp on the English language.
>Ngrams not found: upleveled what, upleveled which, upleveled you, upleveled all, upleveled both, upleveled certain, upleveled several
>Ngrams not found: upleveled various, upleveled few, upleveled little, upleveled many, upleveled much
>Ngrams not found: upleveled my, upleveled his, upleveled her, upleveled its, upleveled our, upleveled their, upleveled your
This suggests all the supposed matches for the word alone could be OCR errors or typos. If "upleveled" is a real word it's so rare that it has no place in any writing that you expect to be broadly understood.
We should stop inventing useless words. "Footgun" has some use because it's shorter than the alternatives. "Upleveled" is just a worse version of "improved".
No, Firefox is the conduit through which the funding provided by Google to stave off claims of monopoly are used for pet projects and padding CVs by people wholly uninterested in Firefox.
I know everyone says you should use Firefox not Chrome but one of the nice things with Chrome is for the most part it just works without that kind of thing. Just looking at switching over after they scrapped Manifest V2 and I ads popping up on youtube!
"Last year we upleveled our Private Browsing mode."
Hah, perfect. I recently got a contract to "upskill" a team. I mean, I kinda get it: training, right? But I was not confident that I really did understand it, specifically. I asked what the hell that meant and was met with a lot contorted phrases to describe it. Sure enough, training.
while i agree that mozilla is silly for thinking they're bring about positive social impact, it's also concerning for the author to call DEI (as a sentiment, not as a flawed implementation) "divisive politics" when it's just basic recognition of being a decent human. It makes me think the author is an "all lives matter" person.
I think the root problem here is that the communication isn't genuine. It's marketing trying to craft a certain brand image instead of actual stakeholders being open about the what is going on with the project.
Don't forget colorways, the non-feature that still needed to be force-fed to us. I assumed people who wanted to change the color theme already could, and that the limited time and ebergy available were being spent on things like compatibility and escaping from Google.
> Don't forget colorways, the non-feature that still needed to be force-fed to us. I assumed people who wanted to change the color theme already could
Most average users don't ever change settings or otherwise customize stuff, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't enjoy a different theme. Colorways saw good adoption according to our internal Telemetry. In fact, three years later colorway themes combined remain more popular than either Dark, Light, or Alpenglow, despite not being offered or advertised directly in Firefox anymore.
Not surprising, since I believe Firefox gave everyone the Colorways screen when that feature showed up, but nothing equivalent happened whenever it went away.
My current desktop has been Fedora since Fedora 16, and I just upgraded from one release to the next continuously. So yes, whatever choice I made back in 2013 is just going to stick around on my current machine unless it goes away entirely or I manually change it. Colors are just not that important, if I like it well enough, it's going to stick around forever.
The only one that caused intense feelings in me was the "Dreamer – Bold" theme that caused a fair amount of confusion about why the heck couldn't I tell which tab was active, and what could be possibly broken. Because it never occurred to me that the theme could be designed that way intentionally.
> Not surprising, since I believe Firefox gave everyone the Colorways screen when that feature showed up,
Right, I assume that's what the parent comment meant by "force-fed to us." That screen was indeed the whole point: It made the theming feature visible and accessible to the average users.
Drop the hyperbole for a second. It was a choice screen, a far cry from force-feeding. I'll grant you, somewhat wide adoption is almost a given when putting this kind of UI in front of all users, but that still doesn't mean that it was a mistake or a net loss to give folks who wouldn't normally customize Firefox a chance to do so. So, what's your point?
It was something I didn't want, put between me and my browser, because someone at Mozilla decided they wanted wveryone to stop what they were doing and pay attention to this new method of self expression. If it wasn't a big deal them why do I still care about it? Maybe I should just change my desktop theme until I feel better.
> I'll grant you, somewhat wide adoption is almost a given when putting this kind of UI in front of all users
I see now that "force-fed" is hyperbole. It was merely "put in front of all users". And then the thing that happens when you put this kind of UI in front of all users happened.
Does your internal telemetry tell you that "average" users don't know what Firefox is, and that proficient users who might recommend it to them are sick of the mismanagement of the browser?
> In fact, three years later colorway themes combined remain more popular than either Dark, Light, or Alpenglow, despite not being offered or advertised directly in Firefox anymore.
People using colorways after the feature was removed? Well, that sounds like a failure of the feature then.
The whole crux upon which the colorways marketing rested, was they were temporary! You get to change your theme for a few months, and then later on at some random point, it changes again as it's taken away from you.
If users have managed to continue using those themes, well, that's in spite of what Mozilla did with them, not because of them.
The criticism of colorways wasn't because people hate browser themes, it's because making features that self-destruct after indeterminate amounts of time is user-hostile. "Limited time features" is alone enough to make someone want to swap to a fork.
> People using colorways after the feature was removed? Well, that sounds like a failure of the feature then.
> The whole crux upon which the colorways marketing rested, was they were temporary! You get to change your theme for a few months, and then later on at some random point, it changes again as it's taken away from you.
It was sort of a marketing gimmick, one I wasn't particularly fond of. (I was the lead engineer for colorways.) What it really meant is that we'd offer the onboarding screen and colorways built into about:addons for a limited time. The intent was never to remove them once users installed them. We have since migrated them to AMO where they can still be installed: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/collections/4757633...
Yes, and when people complain about colorways, the marketing gimmick is what they are complaining about. No one objects to colored themes, and adding a UI "hey this is a feature" isn't a thing people really dislike either beyond a few.
People know when they are being sold to and emotionally manipulated, and they don't like it, even if it's effective.
That's why colorways was a failure, complained about years later, even if "the metrics look good". People don't remember what you did, they remember how you made them feel.
There's for sure a lesson to be learned in here. The product owner who had decided and pushed for making it seem like colorways were ephemeral has long left Mozilla, so you're preaching to the choir at this point.
I still don't consider colorways a failure, all things considered. To me, the fact that colorways are still some of the most used themes outweighs you remembering that you were angry three or so years ago, but thanks for the feedback.
I think perhaps we are using the same words to talk about different things.
It may well be that colorways are used and loved by many users and that's a success. You made something people like; well done!
That we are having this conversation at all I think could be considered evidence, though, that it was a strategic failure for Mozilla. How much public opinion is worth burning for how much increased usage of a new theme feature? In my opinion, very little.
That colorways work well, that the people who use them continue to do so, that they were technically well designed and well engineered, is one yardstick by which to measure success/failure. By that measure they are certainly a success. But another yardstick is "did they have a net-positive or net-negative effect on the organization", which is where I think it came up short.
Based on the things you've said it sounds like you and I are more or less on the same page.
> How much public opinion is worth burning for how much increased usage of a new theme feature? In my opinion, very little.
I think we're squarely in the "very little" range here in terms of how much public backlash we saw. You might be overestimating how widely folks got angry the same way you got angry, or perhaps we weren't monitoring the right forums and channels when releasing the feature, who knows.
Most of the Firefox adoption I've seen has been driven by tech evangelists pushing it. It's a vocal minority that is upset but it's also a vocal minority that was responsible for a lot of growth.
Firefox Mobile is great, it has uBlock Origin. I'm not recommending it to people though.
Oh... I'd completely forgotten that I picked a theme when those were offered.
So it hadn't occurred to me since then that I could change it.
I guess I count among the users who are still using a colorways theme. But after getting used to it, I ended up thinking of it as being what current Firefox looks like by default.
> Colorways saw good adoption according to our internal Telemetry.
The users who regard colorways as frivolous likely also disabled the telemetry.
Rather like how the "psychological profile of a serial killer" is merely the psychological profile of a serial killer the police are capable of catching.
What do you mean non-feature? What do you mean force-fed? It’s literally just themes my dude, they just had a first run dialog for users to select one.
Agreed, this just looks really tone deaf and amateurish. And it's avoiding the bigger issues. There are plenty and they actually need dealing with. Even just acknowledging some of those issues would be progress.
There must be internal discussion on this. I imagine more than a few shouty meetings might have happened. This indicates to me that management doesn't know how to deal with that and clearly isn't dealing with anything effectively. If anything this makes me more worried, not less worried about how things are going at Mozilla.
More rust/C++ writing, less cuddly animals please. Firefox needs more people that work on the product and are allowed to work on the product not people that do busywork like this and just get in the way.
I'm an actual user BTW. The product is fine for me. Performance is great and steadily improving. My main concern is that the developers are allowed to stay on mission and empowered to do that. Which means doubling down on making sure I never get confronted with shitty ads, popups, and other advertising abuse. And that it keeps up technically with Chromium and Webkit in terms of standards support.
It does not, and that is fine. That ship sailed a decade ago.
What they could do is something the other guys are institutionally unable or unwilling to do: build a proper user agent for power users. Radically transparent, trustworthy and extendable up the wazoo. With footguns and everything.
That gives you a comfortable moat, a raison d'être and a stock of rabid, technically inclined fans which spread the word for you to their friends, family and coworkers the next time Google tightens the thumbscrews again.
Basically: repeat what happened the last time when it was Firefox vs. IE, twenty years ago.
uBlock Origin is a selling point for everyone now that it's been kicked out of Chrome.
I recently got an M4 Mac Mini to replace a failing Windows laptop that my wife was using to access the network. Previously she was using Firefox with uBlock Origin, but she was absolutely livid after browsing the web with Safari and being harassed by horrible ads which got me to install Firefox right away.
This all started with the "Engagement Team" like … 15+ years ago. I was there (part of the team). They started with mascots, being cute, having this infantilizing attitude towards users.
Kinda hard to be inclusive if no one uses your browser. The greatest thing Mozilla could do for inclusiveness is to have more users. Not treat your users like children.
> This all started with the "Engagement Team" like … 15+ years ago. I was there (part of the team). They started with mascots, being cute, having this infantilizing attitude towards users.
Having mascots is fine. It's like having a logo. Having multiple mascots is not good. What does a dinosaur have to do with a Firefox? The dinosaur was supposedly Mozilla's logo, as in Mosaic and Godzilla. Firefox is one of the many projects under the Mozilla umbrella. Keep the fox theme in Firefox communications, leave dinosaurs for Mozilla's one.
The people I know that were using special dashes since before AI were all technical and precise writers (which is probably why they paid attention to it in the first place).
I've never seen this unique mix of listicle-like light-hearted fluff with emojis AND special dashes written by humans. LLMs seem to love it, though.
It doesn't have em-dashes and although a list where each line starts with an emoji is very LLM-coded, the lack of capitalization after the dashes does not feel like LLM output. And if something isn't plainly LLM generated, I do not want to accuse it of such. That's incredibly insulting to the author if they didn't actually use an LLM.
I agree that it feels LLMish (though the LLMs learned it from humans and it's always possible that whoever wrote it just has that sort of style) but the dashes there are en-dashes rather than the longer em-dashes that LLMs seem particularly fond of.
I will be sad if en-dashes come to be seen as LLM fingerprints, because I rather like them.
When I'm writing, I've always used en-dashes, but only because it's on my keyboard. Until people recently started talking about this, I didn't realize there was such a thing as en and en-dashes.
It's common knowledge that em-dashes are a sign of LLM writing. This incentivizes anybody who generates slop to manually search and replace with a different dash or hyphen in an attempt to hide what they did.
> This is for those who insist they can easily spot AI-generated text. Many of us old farts were using bulleted lists and em dashes and en dashes long before artificial intelligence was no more than a (usually) reliable plot device for sci-fi, much less the fever dream of tech bros. So, for God’s sake, stop using those as “proofs” that some text is AI-generated. As for my own writing, I reiterate what I said over two years ago: “... although the stuff on this site ... may not be any good, it always has been and will be written by a human, namely me.”
Stop this. I use em-dashes all the time. Em dashes are cool and I don't want some knob to eventually accuse me of being "an AI" because of this kind of thing. :{
>> The marketing/PR trend of speaking to communities as though they're kindergartners is distracting and off-putting.
I think this is just changing with the times. Go back a bit further and the idea of communities around products is the new cool thing. Personally I find that a bit weird. We have a whole generation of people who find social media managers talking to each other hilarious.
> Which animal best represents your Firefox browsing style? [List of emoji animals]
The marketing/PR trend of speaking to communities as though they're kindergartners is distracting and off-putting. This is the most egregious part but the whole post has a similar tone.
I'll note that I'm not saying outreach should necessarily be professional or devoid of fun/humor. There's just a sterile, saccharine way about Mozilla's community engagement that evokes artificiality.