Once Firefox's Bloat Set In
You had to realize this is where it would end. I think 1.5 was the last version that didn't include a "gotcha" with its release. Every major upgrade since then has involved giving up one feature in exchange for another.
Symptoms of a software project with Microsoft Envy:
- Every version was released with obvious lies like "5 times faster than the previous version".
- The bloat just wouldn't stop.
- More effort was spent on eye candy (aka skins) than fixing long standing bugs. Form obviously took precedence over function.
Some examples? The switch from plain text to db config files made administration a nightmare. No, I don't want to hear that there is a utility to address that because by the time it came out for version N it was already nearly obsolete by the release of version N+1 with which it was guaranteed to be incompatible, both in implementation and probably a whole new paradigm.
The TV remote control style forward/back button introduced with 3.0 gives you less usable forward and back entries in the history than previous versions. But I guess it looks cool so its better? I liked having the ability to skip more pages at a time.
Firefox still has years old print bugs that will never be fixed.
Every bug I've ever posted or followed on Bugzilla has remained unfixed, passed from maintainer to maintainer until it was finally closed due to being "obsolete." A bug I reported back in MOZILLA 1.7 (Yes, Mozilla, BEFORE Firefox) still exists but has been closed repeatedly in Bugzilla.
Every security rewrite broke all your extensions yet Firefox became increasingly dependent on extensions to replace core functionality they were abandoning. Right now I haven't gone to 3.6 because all the utilities to get cookies out as text are incompatible.
Maybe they can redefine the project and get back to the basics but I doubt it, I think chrome has stolen the lightweight, functional, utilitarian crown from them.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
