Fear of Porn URL Exposure Discourages Firefox 3 Upgrade 673
Barence writes "Mozilla's Security team has disclosed a very interesting piece of research which suggests people refused to upgrade to Firefox 3 because they were afraid the browser would expose their porn collection. Mozilla's research found that the number one reason for not upgrading was the new location bar, and the fact that it delved into people's bookmark collections to suggest sites as they typed. 'When we expanded the capabilities of the location bar to search against all history and bookmarks in Firefox 3, a lot of people contacted us to say that they had certain bookmarks they didn't really want to have displayed,' Firefox's principal designer, Alex Faaborg, tactfully explains. 'In some cases users had intentionally hidden these bookmarks in deep hierarchies of folders, somewhat similar to how one might hide a physical object.'"
Browse safely (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Browse safely (Score:5, Funny)
Ahh, but you won't be using IE for much longer. Now, Mozilla have finally put the last nail in IE's coffin. Now, you MUST upgrade to Firefox 3, or be branded a pervert.
Re:Browse safely (Score:4, Funny)
But I *am* a pervert. I have many, many children to prove it. And wives (shhh).
.
But seriously - The reason I didn't upgrade to Firefox 3 is because I'm too lazy to wait 30 minutes for the download and install. So I just keep clicking cancel. It's the same reason why I still use Azureus 2 instead of the latest setup, although I did *finally* install Utorrent last night. I think I'll switchover to that now.
BTW does anyone know why Windows 3 won't talk to my new USB flash drive? Perhaps I need new drivers.
Re:Browse safely (Score:5, Funny)
If two Anonymous Cowards speak to one another, does anyone hear them?
Re:Browse safely (Score:5, Funny)
That's why I use IE.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are"
Your ability to combine those two statements into a single post makes you one of the most irresistable trolls I've seen...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, with IE you get TONS of porn in the form of pop-ups... even when you're offline.
Great idea.
Re:Browse safely (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but Chrome doesn't even have Print Preview [google.com]
At least IE has some nice page formatting options.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
IE also has this nifty feature that lets something called "Virus Protector" sneak past its wall, install itself on my c: drive, and turn my entire desktop into a white banner that says, "You're infected. You're infected. You're infected," over and over and over.
Thanks Mickeysoft.
- "Uninstall Innerweb Exploder?"
- "Absolutely positively most-whole-heartedly, I concur."
-
- "A simple 'yes' would have sufficed number one."
- "I wanted to make sure there was no possibility for doubt."
Re:Browse safely (Score:5, Interesting)
In general, IE has tons more vectors for drive-by malware, but Firefox isn't immune, if for any other reason, because third party plugins can be the attack vector.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Meh. Just drag the icon off the address bar into a folder. It'll create a .URL internet shortcut – exactly like a regular Windows shortcut, but an internet link. Opens by double-clicking, or if you've got the browser already open you can drag one into an empty tab if you prefer.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
A few things:
First, there should really be an option to disable the awesome bar if there isn't one already (I quite like it personally, but I can understand if others don't find its suggestions useful).
Secondly, you could also try using online bookmarking services; that along with an extension that clears your browsing history when you close Firefox, should keep your porn surfing pretty well hidden.
Lastly, you can create a separate browser profile for your porn surfing. I do this on my own computer, not bec
To be more specific (Score:5, Funny)
I'm guessing "they were afraid the browser would expose their porn collection" at work.
Re:To be more specific (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Maybe you don't want your wife and kids to have porn urls popping up on the browser
2. Maybe you don't want slashdot popping up at work, thereby allowing them to realize that it's not blocked like every other site.
Re:To be more specific (Score:5, Insightful)
That would certainly be a problem, but I think for most people porn and work are kept separate and yet they still have those concerns
For the most part I'd agree. I know personally that though I surf a decent amount of porn, and I surf a lot of "non work related" sites at work (gotta break up the monotony somehow), I know very well not to touch porn sites with a 10 foot firewall when at work. It's just not something a smart person does. They'll forgive you for playing solitaire at work. They'll forgive you for Slashdot. They'll even forgive you for Myspace. You get caught surfing porn at work though and 99% of the time you're gone, no questions asked. Still, every so often we'll catch some idiot doing it, much to my amazement.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I know you're joking, but browsing myspace is far less likely to result in a sexual harassment suit than farmsex.com.
Since when can farm animals file sexual harassment suits?
How many offices even employ farm animals who might be offended?
I just don't think you're thinking this one all the way through ;-)
Re:To be more specific (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh stop with the morals and ethics stuff. I should be able to do whatever I want to do, regardless of what I promised or said I'd do or what is good for my relationships with other people or what is good for other people. And, by the way, all this corporate and political corruption is really getting on my nerves, why can't they be good, ethical, moral, scientific, non-hypocritical promise-keeping citizens like me?
[/sarcasm]
Re:To be more specific (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:To be more specific (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe if you're married & have children you shouldn't be looking at porn, then you wouldn't have that problem...
Wrong. Maybe you just need a wife and children who are into porn as well. Having a healthy sex drive is not a fault.
There, fixed that for you.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
>>>need a wife who is into porn as well. Having a healthy sex drive is not a fault.
I was watching "the Doctors" yesterday and a woman called-in who said she used to get orgasms when she jogged or did jumping jacks in high school gym class! We used to have a saying about those types of coed girls - "Date 'em."
Re:To be more specific (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:To be more specific (Score:5, Funny)
It's not an either/or. You can do both. For more fun, you can do both at the same time
Carefull: you can propose to do both at the same time and end up doing neither. ... I probably shouldn't have suggested the paper bag
Re:To be more specific (Score:5, Insightful)
My wife and I are 41 and 43. That "old fart" stigma is not related to age but to how far a stick is up their rectum.
Naked bodies are not "dirty" sex is not "dirty" Those that believe it is have a serious emotional problem or physiological disorder. and yes I know this goes against the grain of the Puritanical popular stance that has overtaken the United states.
Who cares, My wife and I have sex with the windows open in the summer when it's a nice night out, and she is one hell of a screamer.
I can watch a movie where someone gruesomely tortures people to death in a public theater, but god forbid should we watch two people love each other in a sexual moment.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The reason I don't watch porn has nothing to do with thinking that sex is dirty.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Is that in the bible or something? Seriously, I get the prohibitions in Leviticus and the admonition not to covet your neighbor's wife (Presumably, their daughter is OK), but I don't recall any specific restrictions on watching sex acts on the internet. I'm guessing that their partners are not their wives.
.
Sorry. Christians are very confusing to me.
Re:To be more specific (Score:4, Informative)
Is that in the bible or something?
The Jewish variant (which is basically the Christian variant without the whole sex is dirty insanity) boils down to: sex is a special/holy act to be shared with a spouse (bonus points if it's for the production of children) and therefore viewing/reading/doing it outside of marriage cheapens the act/takes away its specialness/etc. There's also all sorts of old testament stuff about viewing immodest acts/immodestly dressed women that porn also falls under for hardliners.
Re:To be more specific (Score:5, Funny)
Re:To be more specific (Score:5, Funny)
...not related to age but to how far a stick is up their rectum.
Hey, if that's what they're into, who are you to judge?
Re:To be more specific (Score:5, Insightful)
Is watching others have sex instead of having sex with your spouse healthy?
I don't know about "healthy", but a bottle of wine and some porn can often lead to "sex with your spouse", quite the opposite of what you imply.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Are we now down-modding people as trolls for asking honest questions? I realize that he probably asked it rhetorically, but it is a legitimate question nonetheless. For all you people who would usually just take offense to his question, instead show him proof that pornography is not an unhealthy addition to a relationship. And, even if you ultimately find that it is provably healthy for a relationship, don't mod him down for asking the question.
Also, "I like porn," "sex is good," and "I can
Re:To be more specific (Score:5, Insightful)
For all you people who would usually just take offense to his question, instead show him proof that pornography is not an unhealthy addition to a relationship.
Is there any evidence that it is? Aside from the morality brigade, that is.
Re:To be more specific (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe you don't want your wife and kids to have porn urls popping up on the browser
Maybe if you're married & have children you shouldn't be looking at porn, then you wouldn't have that problem...
Fortunately the male sex drive ceases immediately after marriage begins, so this should be an entirely sensible solution...
Re:To be more specific (Score:4, Insightful)
My experience says that it's the female sex drive that ceases.
Besides, I don't see an issue: I have my account on the computer, she has hers.... She doesn't know my password. I surf anything I want and she won't know.
Every user on a computer should have their own account... no excuses...
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when marriage ends your privacy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Marriage is an arrangement between two people that want to live together (in civilized places this is not even attached to the sex of the partners).
Nowhere in that arrangement isn an implicit or explicit agreement to share absolutely everything about yourself with your partner.
Such complete encroachment in your private life will only undermine a relationship, each person needs his own private space in which to express himself. For some that is pornography, that is their choice, frankly it is nobody's business to tell those people they have a problem just because they chose not to share this with their partners.
Some people may, most people don't, so stop making these stupid generalizations about people's problems and projecting your own arrangements regarding personal privacy as some kind of universal golden rule.
Re:To be more specific (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe you don't want your wife and kids to have porn urls popping up on the browser
Maybe if you're married & have children you shouldn't be looking at porn, then you wouldn't have that problem...
Hah, are you kidding me!? I date girls that don't care if I look at porn because they like it too, and I'm not gonna marry anyone so prudish that she cares, because it's just porn! My only concern would be my kids finding it, but really I'd just have my own user account or my own computer so it wouldn't be a big deal.
You seriously are ridiculous if you think that being married means you can't enjoy porn, with or without your wife.
-Taylor
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
...All I said is that if you don't want them seeing your porn collection, maybe you shouldn't look at porn...
No, that's not what you said, even if you *intended* to say that. What you said was:
"Maybe if you're married and have children you shouldn't be looking at porn..."
Not "Maybe if you're married and *worried your spouse will see the links*..."
Although you may have *thought* you were saying the second one, you didn't.
For the sake of making an argument, it's important to be clear when you misspoke, not just go back and claim you said something else - that irritates people.
-Taylor
Re:To be more specific (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe if you're married & have children you shouldn't be looking at porn, then you wouldn't have that problem...
I don't hide my porn browsing from my wife, but I still don't want it popping up every time someone starts to type something into the address bar. I always cringe when a guest comes over and types "a" into the address bar and "Amateur Porn Blog" comes up as the first item in the list.
Re:To be more specific (Score:4, Insightful)
Two words: "Guest Account"
I do not get this, in the day and age of computers that are finally pretty much all multi-user capable... nobody uses it.
Re:To be more specific (Score:4, Informative)
Psh. Have you seen the new temporary guest account in Ubuntu? It can be used basically as the Private Browsing mode for the entire computer. Complete lockdown, new Firefox Profile, etc. and when you log off, everything is erased.
And all I have to do is click my username on the top right and hit Guest Session.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:To be more specific (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:To be more specific (Score:5, Funny)
where's the porn-block extension for autocomplete?
Or a porn-get extension with autocomplete?
Re:To be more specific (Score:4, Informative)
Re:To be more specific (Score:4)
No need. Use profiles. For bonus difficulty, tell it to store the profile's files on a removable drive, encrypted volume, or other manually-mounted location.
Definitely a good idea to keep your porn in a manually-mounted location.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:To be more specific (Score:5, Insightful)
forget porn, the last thing I need is my boss over my shoulder instructing me to type in a link and my prevalent searches of hot jobs, career builder and our competitor sites career section to pop up.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't search for new jobs at work. Aside from the ethics, it is a good way to get fired.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's still possible to find your browsing history in other browsers
Re:To be more specific (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but unfortunately the message you're sending may be, "Despite the fact that I'm doing a fine job here, I'm actively searching the market for a new job. You may now consider me a short-timer that may bail out in the middle of my next project and cost the company a goodly amount of money to bring somebody else up to speed. Please move my name to the top of the RIF list."
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Because the job search isn't always fruitful, and if they know you're looking to replace them, then they may well set in motion the plan to replace you when it's more convenient to their schedule, rather than whenever you decide to thrown down your 2 week notice. Better to keep that information to yourself - you owe them 2 weeks notice and that's it.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'm guessing "they were afraid the browser would expose their porn collection" in bed.
Fixed it for you.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I wrote up a proposal for a passive solution to hiding porn results from the AwesomeBar, much in the same way that AdBlock Plus passively solves the problem of preventing ads from being displayed on websites: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2009/2/5/43412/24669 [kuro5hin.org]
Apparently there are already hooks present in Firefox's userChrome that allow the user to specify, on a per URL basis, sites to be prevented from appearing in AwesomeBar results: http://ed.agadak.net/2009/02/hiding-history-with-userchrome [agadak.net]
Umm .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Umm .... (Score:5, Insightful)
What you're missing is that the FF developers think they know better than you. Personally, I hate the "awesomebar" because it's slow. If I have to wait for an auto complete function to catch up with my typing, something is very wrong. Auto complete should always be faster than manual entry.
Re:Umm .... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not only slow: it also takes up way too much screen space. A line of text per entry is all I want to see, and in a nice small font. I use a plugin called Old Location Bar which solves that problem, although it can't do much about the speed.
Re:Umm .... (Score:4, Interesting)
I didn't like the "awesome bar" (is it really called that?) at first, but now it has become a killer feature. It has practically replaced short-lived bookmarks I used to make for sites that I'll likely want to visit again in the near future, because now I need only to remember something about the page title or the URL and I'll probably find the page again in seconds.
It's a bit slow, but not disturbingly so to me -- and my home desktop hardware is 5-6 years old. Of course that might also just mean I'm less sensitive to a little bit of slowness here and there...
Re:Umm .... (Score:5, Informative)
Technically, it is configurable (about:config has a property that disables the bookmark searching), just not with a neat radio button.
Easy to find with a little googling, as well. I'd think that anyone trying to "hide" bookmarks in this way would have already figured it out.
True, but it should be easier to turn off (Score:4, Insightful)
Technically, it is configurable (about:config has a property that disables the bookmark searching), just not with a neat radio button.
Sure. In fact, I've done this myself and it wasn't that hard.
It's still annoying as hell that they made a totally major UI change... and they didn't also make an easy way to turn it off along with it.
Re:Umm .... (Score:4, Insightful)
Then making it a configurable option: Enable/disable. Or am I missing something?
That was suggested when Firefox 3 and the awfulbar first came out, and the general response to "this sucks!" was "they'll learn to like it, or they can use something else."
I just wish Chrome would get extension support already...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And are those plugins proprietary closed source binary blobs?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that no other program interface uses this system.
Not saying I like it (personally I'm indifferent - the ribbon works just as well as the old system did for me, though functions I use rarely take more seraching to find again), but for any new interface somebody has to be first. Microsoft is pushing the ribbon method for other apps as an option now.
I'm sure there are others, but one program we purchased at work, EDraw Organizational Chart, happens to use the ribbon in it's newest version:
http://www.edrawsoft.com/ [edrawsoft.com]
Re:Umm .... (Score:4, Funny)
It can't be that hard.
That depends on the sites you go to doesn't it? If your fetishes lie with something easy to spell and remember (grannysex) then it's probably easy to memorize the urls. If they lie with something harder to spell (bukkake, yes I had to look it up) or a strange combination of fetishes (bukkaking russian granny foot sex hairy gang bangs) they might be a little bit harder to memorize ;)
Re:Umm .... (Score:4, Funny)
memorizing the porn URLs does NOT help.
Imagine discussing something with your boss, and saying "there's a good instructional video over on YouTube".
Boss: "Show me"
You key in "www.you...."
up pops:
http://www.youporn.com/ThreeHotChicksTakeItInTheAss [youporn.com]
http://www.youtube.com/ [youtube.com]
Yeah, this is a serious issue.
Re:Umm .... (Score:4, Funny)
This is why I type "yout" so quickly when I want to show the family videos on YouTube. :-)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'd suggest using tinyurl, but that might make some guys self-conscious.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'd think that seeing tiny "urls" might make them feel better about themselves!
Scary (Score:5, Insightful)
As time goes on, will we learn to be more circumspect, or will society change to accept that people are not perfect?
Wait...what? There's PORN on the Internet? (Score:5, Funny)
Why didn't someone tell me about this sooner? I wouldn't have wasted all this time on Slashdot, Digg, and Fark.
HistoryBlock (Score:4, Informative)
Re:HistoryBlock (Score:5, Insightful)
So if someone snoops around in your browser, they would see an addon called "HistoryBlock" which contains a list of all the sites you didn't want them to know you visit.
Classic.
Duh (Score:4, Insightful)
So if someone snoops around in your browser, they would see an addon called "HistoryBlock" which contains a list of all the sites you didn't want them to know you visit.
If you're worried about nosy people digging through your shit, you encrypt your files and lock your machine when you're not in front of it.
If you're worried about everyone seeing a list of your favorite porn sites every single time you type a URL, then you use the addon.
If someone's going to go out of his own way to embarrass you, then you're going to be embarrassed. When your web browser goes out of it's way to do that for him, whether he had the inclination to do it or not in the first place, then that's just fucking stupid.
GP, thanks for the link, good sir!
Re:HistoryBlock (Score:4, Funny)
So if someone snoops around in your browser, they would see an addon called "HistoryBlock" which contains a list of all the sites you didn't want them to know you visit.
Classic.
Duh, that's the reason the extension ExtensionBlock exists. You can configure it to hide any extension you do not want other people to see (HistoryBlock, refspoof, firefusk, etc).
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It seems to have hidden itself [mozilla.org].
Some things never changed (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was in tech support 10 years ago, "How do I get rid of things in the drop-down?" was a common Netscape support question.
Some of them were very cool and didn't say why they wanted to get rid of it. Some said "I accidently hit this link". I think I may have had one or two guys who were honest about it during my entire time there.
Re:Some things never changed (Score:4, Insightful)
10 years ago [...] Some said "I accidently
hit this link".
That was before pop-up blockers, IIRC, so I'd give them the benefit of the doubt there :)
Here's a clue... (Score:3, Insightful)
What's the ranking of the question "How do I get rid of the Awsomebar" on various forums?
Pretty high, I bet.
about:config (Score:3, Informative)
Re:about:config (Score:5, Informative)
You need to use about:config for 3.0, but in 3.5 they included the option to disable location bar searching in options... that's the whole point of this story, Mozilla took user feedback based on users who wouldn't upgrade to fix the issues they had with 3.0.
It's very easy to find now, under Privacy in Options at the bottom.
Re:about:config (Score:4, Insightful)
You need to use about:config for 3.0, but in 3.5 they included the option to disable location bar searching in options... that's the whole point of this story, Mozilla took user feedback based on users who wouldn't upgrade to fix the issues they had with 3.0.
Yes but it still is missing the option that everyone I know wants which is the ability to remember sites you manually type in and not go searching high and low for random crap to fill in...
Changing autocomplete behavior using about:config (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Changing autocomplete behavior using about:conf (Score:5, Informative)
There is no "browser.urlbar.matchonlytyped". At least not in Firefox 3.5.2...
Turns out it's got something to do with the "browser.urlbar.default.behavior" entry, which consists of:
1: history
2: bookmarked
4: match tag
8: match title
16: match URL
32: match typed
So to kill the annoying bookmark/tag/title matching, set it to 1+8+16+32 = 49
I've also been told you can modify "places.frecency.unvisitedBookmarkBonus", but every time I do that Firefox changes it back.
So much for user friendliness...
Simple Answer (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, use Google Chrome for your porn browsing, and then Firefox for your legit browsing.
In other words... Don't cross the streams!!
Re:Simple Answer (Score:4, Informative)
Use different browsers for different purposes.
Or, just use different profiles for different purposes.
If you start firefox with these command-line options:
-no-remote -ProfileManager
you get a pop-up asking you which profile to use. You can have completely seperate profiles with different themes, different plugins, different bookmarks, different histories, different caches, etc -- they do not share information across profiles. You can even set a default profile so that if you don't use the profile manager, that specific profile is the one that gets loaded.
I have a default for general browsing with almost all cookies and javascript blocked, one just for google mail that lets google set cookies and use javascript, and another one called "blank man" which is pretty open, but deletes everything on exit (cookies, history, etc) which I use one-shot at a time whenever I go to a website that wants personal information like amazon or my bank. One could easily have a 'pr0n' profile that they only run when they are in the mood and is otherwise never even seen.
Nothing to do with Porn, it's the Awfulbar again. (Score:5, Insightful)
Translation: People who typed "en." to bring up the last few times they'd visited en.wikipedia.org, "fi" to bring up the last few times they'd visited "finance.google.com", or "fa" for either "fark.com" or "failblog.org", were sick and tired of having to deal with "English, ASCII, and Unicode", "How to manage a thousand Files of data", and "The Awfulbar is a Failure because it mixes URLs, "TITLE" fields in bookmarks and TITLE headers all into one giant mishmash of UI hell."
It's got nothing to do with pr0n, it's got everything to do with the fact that some people want a URL bar to act as a Bar with URLs, and the Firefox Design Team wants the "Location" bar to deal with "everything you ever visited, ever, with ever-changing menus".
What's the first thing experienced Windows users do when they sit down in front of a new machine? They turn off the "Disable infrequently-used menu options" option in the Start Menu, and again in all of the MS Office apps.
Software that automatically changes menus or frequently-used options around as a "favor" to the user was bad UI practice five years ago in Windows and Office, and it's bad UI practice today in Firefox. Unfortunately, it's such a clever bad idea that it'll never go away.
Re:Nothing to do with Porn, it's the Awfulbar agai (Score:5, Interesting)
Hey, I like the awfulbar -- but I think I may have its only solid use case. When bored, I typically go through the alphabet with the location bar to find some site which I've visited before, but is not in my usual rotation, to see if there is something interesting and new posted there.
With the awfulbar, I get a much greater cross-section of weirdness with each letter. Just the letter C, for instance, could have Camera-related sites, Cinemark, and for no reason at all the Washington Post.
Two-letter combinations are even better. "GH" gives me Ghostbusters, and a random Mac vs Linux thread. "EW" gives me BBC News and a review of Ponyo. The wonders never cease.
SHOULD a major interface element behave in a random and bizarre fashion? Well, probably not.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Translation: People who typed "en." to bring up the last few times they'd visited en.wikipedia.org, "fi" to bring up the last few times they'd visited "finance.google.com", or "fa" for either "fark.com" or "failblog.org", were sick and tired of having to deal with "English, ASCII, and Unicode"
I really don't understand this problem. The first time I typed in "en" to get to wikipedia, sure a ton of other stuff -- in my case all of it being other urls I'd visited that started with en -- comes up, but then I s
Re:Nothing to do with Porn, it's the Awfulbar agai (Score:5, Insightful)
It's got everything to do with the fact that some people want a URL bar to act as a Bar with URLs, and the Firefox Design Team wants the "Location" bar to deal with "everything you ever visited, ever, with ever-changing menus".
Amen, brother.
I didn't install Firefox 3 until there was a plugin to kill the Awesomebar. It really was a dealbreaker for me.
I hate UIs that try to be helpful but end up distracting or otherwise messing up a clean interface.
The old Google autocomplete was a great example of this - it'd type directly into the search bar while you typed in your search term, which means that if you typoed and needed to delete the last key entered, you'd delete the autocomplete instead, which broke, you know, typing. It was also distracting seeing text appear where you're typing, not only because it was constantly flashing words before your eyes, but also because if you're a touch typist you use the text up there to make sure you haven't typoed, and seeing an 'f' appear on the screen when you're about to type an 'm' triggers that correction reflex.
The current design is much better, with the dropdown box at least off to the side while you type in your search term.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And for another horrible decision, consider how they handle keywords.
The Keyword functionality is a great idea in Firefox, but it feels like the devs hate it - they hide it away in the UI, it's underfeatured, and it doesn't work with Awful Bar. If I type "wp Sasquatch" to get to the wikipedia page for Sasquatch, that doesn't get saved in the history - and the Great Bar doesn't realize that what you're typing may be using a keyword. So when I again type "wp Sasq", odds are I just get no results at all from
Profile manager is your friend (Score:3, Informative)
you can use the profile manger to make a "special" (/cough pron) profile then switch to that for your "special" browsing needs then swtich back to you wife/boss/kid ..etc safe profile when you are ummm done..... YOU SICK BASTARD =p
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Manager [mozillazine.org]
So? Fix it (Score:4, Insightful)
Firefox'es success is mainly tied to their focus on filling end user needs, listening to end users for suggestions instead of replying .
If this is a problem enough to make people stay on old version, it should be fixed somehow instead of blogging or joking about it. Think like they are your customers while you don't actually sell a product and treat them same way.
Do you know how Cisco etc. survived in darkest days of dotcom crash? Who needed the best routers and servers to serve their customers?
Easy workaround in 3.5 (Score:5, Informative)
Select "nothing" and it won't look through either your history or your bookmarks.
The most annoying feature of Firefox for privacy (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure that if you fire up about:config you might be able to tweak this behaviour but really by default it should be disabled, or at least disabled if history is set to 0. It's a monumental oversight to leave it the way it is and I hope it is fixed.
Sounds interesting (Score:3, Interesting)
take it or leave it (Score:5, Insightful)
I saw quite a few complaints about this behavior early on. The response was essentially that's tough, take it or leave it. Apparently a number of users left it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
CLEAR PRIVATE DATA DOES NOT WORK. (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is that Clear Private Data does not work.
I remember when I first upgraded to FF3, and was shocked to find that when I "cleared private data" and then clicked on the URL drop-down there were still all the web sites I had visited.
The "Awesome bar" does not get cleared out!
I had to install some plug-in to restore that functionality.
Re:CLEAR PRIVATE DATA DOES NOT WORK. (Score:4, Informative)
Your FF is bugged. Clear Private Data removes everything but the bookmarks from my awesomebar.
That's not the intended functionality.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Or even better, hum, opt-out? What if I reaaaally don't want the feature?
-dZ.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)