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14
exerceo
2y

I despise it when software developers remove features because "too few people use them".

Is this what those shady telemetry features are for? So they can pick which useful features to get rid of because some computer rookies whined that it is "feature creep" rather than just ignoring it?

Now I have to fear losing useful (or at least occasionally convenient) features each time I upgrade, such as Firefox ditching RSS, FTP, and the ability to view individual cookies. The third can be done with an extension, but compatibility for it might be broken at some point, so we have to wait for someone to come up with a replacement.
Also, the performance analysis tool in the developer tools has been moved to an online service ("Firefox profiler"). I hope I don't need to explain the problems with that.

But perhaps the biggest plunge in functionality in web browser history was Opera version 15. That was when they ditched their native "Presto" browsing engine for Chromium/Blink, and in the process removed many features including the integrated session manager and page element counter.

The same applies to products such as smartphones. In the early 2010s, it was a given that a new smartphone should cover all the capabilities of its predecessors in its series, so users can upgrade without worrying a second that anything will be missing. But that blissful image was completely destroyed with the Galaxy S6. (There have been some minor feature removals before that, such as the radio and the three-level video recording bitrate adjustment on the S4, but that's nothing compared to what was removed with the S6.).

Whenever I update software to a new version or upgrade my smartphone, I would like it to become MORE capable, not LESS (and to hell with that "less is more" nonsense).

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  • 7
    2y
    At the end of the day, it's about the cost of supporting such feature which is why it gets removed unless it's a feature that basically doesn't need to be changed in the future at all, like 10+ years in the future the feature will still be doing its job.

    Also, if not enough people are actively using the feature it basically becomes technical debt that only snowballs out of control as the project changes.

    So at the end of the day you can either A) spend money on maintaining features not being and increase technical debt or B) reducing the amount of money needed to maintain useless features and reduce technical debt by removing it.

    Personally I'd go with option B, specifically to keep technical debt down as unchecked tech debt is just asking for hell when layoffs, retirements or days when your short staffed begin to happen.
  • 0
    2y
    Find inner peace by finding alternative methods to get the job done……

    Breath……
  • 4
    2y
    The funniest thing was a few weeks ago when github said they are going to remove the explore tab. The telemetry told them that it isn't used that much. Many users were really angry and a few days later github removed the notice that they are going to remove the tab, because they realized it was used very often.
  • 1
    2y
    I liked FFs the tab group feature a lot but appreantly we were only a few.

    @TestInProds123y Argumentation amkea sense but on the other hand: every features removed was the key feature for a certain user group which made them not use Chromium. If you remove alle of them, the browser will die like opera.
  • 0
    2y
    @horus doesn't this still work, you mean the feature where i could put all my "shopping" tabs in a group and etc?
  • 0
    2y
    @jonas-w and you could arrangw those groups graphically on the screen. I think it's a plugin now, maybe you have it installed? Or i am a complete idiot.
  • 0
    2y
    @horus right click on a tab and "open in new container tab". I have not installed an extension for it as i never use this
  • 0
    2y
    @horus maybe this is something different 🤷🏼‍♂️
  • 0
    2y
    @TestInProd423 Honestly, if those features could be fully retrofitted without much effort or negative side effect, it would not bother me much.

    Unfortunately, that frequently is not the case.
  • 1
    2y
    @jonas-w

    Not in my FF-version apparently..?
  • 1
    2y
    @jonas-w i meant this feature anyway. It was build-in for a small time some years ago.
  • 1
    2y
    @horus have a look into the "general" settings there (at least i can) you can activate "container tabs".

    But i think this is more privacy stuff than what you meant.
  • 1
    2y
    @horus serious question, what exactly is the point of grouping tabs?
  • 1
    2y
    @jonas-w idk when you work on different projects you could group the taps by project and when you have to switch them. You can do the same with bookmark folder, but i found it nice to group them visually.
  • 1
    2y
    @horus It used to be possible to simply add it back through an extension, but then Firefox 57 Quantum came. We know the story.

    However, "tab grouping" is anyway similar to having multiple browser windows.
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