I don’t know . . . even in FF3v5b, I wouldn’t say there is any bloat — yet. Just my 2¢ opinion — not worth a holy war.

Firefox is becoming sluggish and unpredictable. Perhaps someone needs to rewrite it from scratch? Java and Flash are a mess. Seems Firefox has been slowly allowed to become bloatware …

I can see how the live bookmark indicator may seem non-essential, but I like that it gives users an opportunity to question/learn about rss feeds and how they can use them. Also, I think it’s necessary for users to discover them without having to search to install an extension.
I think I just started using the spell check suggested spellings yesterday….wow, it shows up first in the context menu…just like in word processors so it’s completely intuitive…bloat or not I think it should stay.
I’m still having trouble with users uncomfortable with tabs…especially more than one. I’ve started using stylish and a script to make the active tab stand out more.

I think my users also really like speed dial (new extension) because it gives them the ability to visually choose a bookmark. I’m considering making it the default homepage in my installations from now on.
Also I think the proxy button should be standard. But it doesn’t need to show up unless you use a proxy. (Which is the minority of users). It’s useful for company laptops when they travel away from the work place.
I think ietab should be standard for the windows binary.

While Fx 1.5 & 2.0 have added features, most are simply implementing best or most popular practice. Even if some people choose not to use them, they don’t get in the way of what Fx was made for: browsing the web as simply and effectively as possible.

If an add-on is really successful, with lots of people using it, why should it be added to the core code?

My logic sees it the other way exactly: if an extension is used by a large number of users it would make sense to include it by default and save them from installing the same extension. Now the thing is what is “large” enough. An extension with 1,000,000 downloads would have just proved to appeal to 1% of the estimates Firefox userbase.

Considering there are 1000s of extensions out there now it’s very very hard for Firefox to include a feature that is not already available as an extension. Then there’s the main problem with extensions: they don’t receive the full QA treatment Firefox or any other Mozilla product does.

However, this is not stopping Mozilla to further ease extension development with the inclusion of FUEL, a set of libraries for extension developers. FUEL 0.2 should be ready for Gran Paradiso Alpha 5. An added benefit of FUEL is that developers won’t have to implement some “low level” functions but instead will use the available API which has all the necessary QA.

Put another way … if it doesn’t help with the display and interaction with a web page, does it really belong as part of the core browser?

In the end it’s all about the interaction with the web page. Please provide some examples that don’t. Bookmarks, history, page save, open, options and similar which seem to be UI oriented, are all for a better, more personal interaction in the end.

Now I’m finding it harder to argue that Firefox is better when IE loads faster on a friend’s or family member’s computer that is a few year old.

I may be wrong but I don’t remember Firefox loading faster than IE, ever. Windows preloads a lot of IE components as they’re part of OS now, so it’s very hard to beat it.

Firefox has plenty of advantages though: much smaller security vulnerability exposure windows, extensibility, themes, spell checking (seriously, how can people don’t care about spelling? I find it insulting when I get a messy message), web standards, and of course a much cooler provider and community. ;)

I have two add-ons. Since day one I’ve had one add-on (IEView) and only recently added my second add-on (Canadian dictionary for the spelling engine). When they changed the tab behaviour to include some add-on that I don’t remember (puts the X on each tab and a few other things), I was one of the people that switched my UI back to the old style.

In effect, I am undoing added features because while they were popular add-ons, I never wanted them. I use the keyboard for closing/opening tabs … making the UI “better” to help mouse users doesn’t help me.

These add-ons that become core components are all bloatware to me.

Put another way … if it doesn’t help with the display and interaction with a web page, does it really belong as part of the core browser?

I too started to use Firefox because of the slim application. Now I’m finding it harder to argue that Firefox is better when IE loads faster on a friend’s or family member’s computer that is a few year old.

But for the rest of these:

* Broken web sites reporting (never used)
* Enhanced search capabilities (added engines but rarley use)
* Live titles (what the heck is this?)
* Web feed preview and subscriptions (that is what I use Flock for)

I would agree with you on!

And I find it odd that you think that the Web feed preview and subscriptions are bloat, seeing as it gives the clueless web user the ability make use of those features, as otherwise they would just be confused as to what exactly is these lines of XML code.

The only thing I think counts as bloat is the arrow that displays all the tabs in one click, the thingo on the side of the browser bar. I haven’t used that once in all my time using firefox.

how could you possibly mark that tab can be moved around?

For some time, Firefox 2 nightlies featured a move icon when hovering over tabs, it was obviously phased out later, but at least it has been tried.

I can name 50 things in Firefox that work but you have no idea unless you try.

It would help if you mention some of those 50 things. If it is true, Firefox would be a discoverability nightmare, which obviously isn’t. Note that drag and drop is the only way to reorder tabs which makes it a discoverability issue. The dozens of mouse and keyboard shortcuts are precisely that: shortcuts for two or three step discoverable tasks.

Spell checking. In use every day. My guess is everybody writes long text some day and we all need and appreciate good spelling.

I’m sorry but you must be kidding me… it’s definitevely bloat – a feature, that should be included in extension.

And you’re saying that tab reordering is bloat because users don’t know how to do it. I can name 50 things in Firefox that work but you have no idea unless you try. Interface isn’t perfect, how could you possibly mark that tab can be moved around? ;)

Mozilla should allow choosing officialy recommended extensions while instaling Firefox, not move closer to Opera.

Regarding the specific case of drag and drop, as I said I find it useful and while not discoverable at all it may be called a keeper because of its unobtrusiveness. However not because a feature is unobtrusive it can’t be considered bloat: think about Microsoft Office or Windows itself. There’s so much code, apps and services that remain hidden somewhere and doesn’t bother my interaction but are there stealig previous CPU cycles. The thing is it’s hard to measure how much it is taking to be able to balance cost/benefit.

Having said that, the purpose of the series is to dissect the whole bloat issue from an end user point of view. So the definition is over simplistic on purpose. But my point is that even from an oversimplistic point of view, a brief analysis reveals that claims of bloat creeping out are at the very leats, not accurate.

First of all, there some features which are rarely used, because of their very nature. This includes things like Page Info dialog, custom font and color settings, cookies manager, or even printing. All of those fall under the 90% mark, yet no one would reasonably want to cut them.

Second of all, your approach leaves too little room for innovation. It takes time for certain kinds of innovative features to catch on as users get accustomed to the new concept. Live Titles (microsummaries) is an example of that. I don’t if they’re going to catch on, but even if they’re going become the hugely popular the initial user base has to be small.

Number three: you are overestimating average users’ ability and knowledge. I can assure you that History is used by less than 90% all users. You’re not proposing removing History, are you? The “bloat threshold” should be much lower.

Finally, the most important point. If you evaluated the usage of all the features, you may see that there are twenty features which are used only by 7% of users. The point is that IT IS A DIFFERENT 7% OF THEM EACH TIME, so removing these things would affect half of the users, not 7%. I reckon that the amount of people that need a feature is only part of the criteria.

Let me describe my own philosophy by taking tab drag and drop as an example. It’s true that probably most people don’t use it. However, this feature is totally unintrusive. It’s right there if I ever need it; if I don’t then it’s invisible. It doesn’t slow anything down, it doesn’t increase memory consumption, and it doesn’t add any additional UI whatsoever. How can it be called “bloat”? To me, it’s a perfect example of a not-bloating functionality.