Talk:Criticisms of Mozilla Firefox

message: I know that we're Wikipedia, and most of us use Firefox, but I find this article to very POV in its use of weasel words and allegations that those who oppose FireFox are (pretty much) just stupid. By stating that a non-WC3-compliant website is built by someone who is "careless", or that people blame the browser instead of the website developer. I personally feel that FireFox could use a lot of improvement, and by attributing what "some people say" as encyclopedic, our NPOV policy is completely destroyed. The idea of FireFox is brilliant, and beautiful in its best, it is certainly not without fault. By depriving this article of being a true commentary, we are merely using it to push a Point-of-View, and are thus weakening its aims. -Mysekurity [m!] 23:50, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree.  One of two things should happen:  either counter-balancing viewpoints should be added (i.e. "Many people say that Firefox is considered harmful, but many others think that it's the greatest thing since sliced bread") or all pretense of neutrality should be dropped altogether. Struct 06:18, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, this article is just oozing the subtle undertext of "These are the common criticisms of Firefox, made by commoners who are too simple-minded to understand its goals."  I expect I'd read the same thing on a "Common criticisms of Linux" article.  It DOES contain useful information, but a lot of it is woefully out of date or irrelevant now.  I think it needs to become more of a "Firefox is not for everyone, and here's why" presentation.  I'm not the guy to do it though, because I'm extremely biased. Aguerriero (ţ) (ć) (ë) 18:40, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Agreed.  Article needs some stuff from the other side of the story.  -- N3X15  ( Scream · Contribs)  20:22, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Weasel Words 

message: What, exactly, is the point of the current section on ActiveX?  If there's a complaint about ActiveX, it's that Firefox does not support it by default for those few users who really do require ActiveX (and then that flaw is greatly mitigated by the ability to download a plug-in).  All of the stuff about ActiveX security holes is pretty well irrelevant to a criticism of Firefox, since Firefox does not include ActiveX support.  I'm confused.  SnowFire 02:55, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  ActiveX criticism. 

message: * The first paragraph of that section needs work. The first sentence is a criticism that Firefox doesn't support standards enough, which is the opposite of what this section is about. The second sentence doesn't make sense to me (see my comment above).
* Firefox being "overly strict" or "over-zealous" is definitely POV. Few would argue that Firefox is strict in its standards compliance, but many would dispute that it is too strict. Saying "correct" or "properly" is probably also POV, it should be changed to "as per the specification" or something. "Bad code" could be replaced by "non-standard code".
* What does a "flexible range of standards" mean, and how would supporting more standards make Firefox any less strict in its interpretation?
* "some other browsers" Why be wishy-washy when you can just say that it's IE? The complaint that Firefox is too strict is almost always from IE users.--Nonpareility 15:57, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Over-zealous standards compliance

message: Wouldn't it be better to have the response in each criticism's section?--Nonpareility 16:16, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've changed it around. Of the three response bullet points, extensions are already discussed in "Missing functionality", I've added the relicensing response to "Political criticisms", and I've removed the "Authenticity of downloads" criticism and response because it appears that the criticism no longer applies.--Nonpareility 21:12, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Response to Criticisms

message: This section doesn't actually mention that it is a criticism any more... Maybe it needs a slight re-word again to mention that people have criticised it.-Localzuk (talk) 11:27, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've switched it back to the previous version.--Nonpareility 03:21, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Missing functionality 

message: Deltabeignet redirected the article to Mozilla Firefox without substantial discussion. The article should not be redirected or merged, for the following reasons:
1) The Firefox article is already long. Subsections in long articles should be split off for readability and for dialup or slow-connection users (like myself when traveling). Hence why, for instance, the article on Indonesia splits off history and geography articles. Subpages were eliminated from the article namespace because "if an article gets too long, we can split off the subsections into separate articles." There is a brief discussion of criticisms in the main article, just as Indonesia has a brief discussion of history - it's a summary paragraph for people who aren't looking for a complete treatment.
2) This article has been getting consistently better. Criticism articles may risk becoming substantially bad, but there is a good discussion of perceptions of Firefox supporters and detractors in this article. Such problems that there are in this article are not terminal, and to halt that improvement in its tracks because some Firefox users don't like that people are pointing out perceived flaws in the software or disagree that they're actually flaws is simply wrong.
I really like Firefox, but I can't agree with this attempt to silence fairly decently sourced and notable criticism. Captainktainer * Talk 23:04, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If an article about criticisms is non-NPOV, I don't see how a section with the same content in a more general article could be NPOV. If you're saying the content should change, there's no reason the content couldn't change when the topic has its own article. --Nonpareility 04:07, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

text: As I said, the content is rational; therefore, it requires no major change. When included in the main article on Mozilla Firefox, the criticisms would be part of a larger, balanced whole discussing both the advantages and disadvantages of the browser: that article would meet the requirements of the NPOV. G. C. Hood 22:18, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Ignoring the intro and headers, on my screen we have 32 lines of text on this article compared to 16 in the main article, and that's not taking into account the fact that the main article has a section on MSI Support and we don't.--Nonpareility 04:12, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge/Redirect 

message: I've removed this section because it has no citation, the criticism reportedly comes from a small group of people, and I've never heard anyone complain about Firefox not being emacs-y enough.--Nonpareility 03:33, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Keyboard Layout

message: The article cited when referring to Firefox binaries not being free because of Talkback doesn't even mention Talkback. I think it's much more likely that RMS is referring to the fact that (at least at the time of writing) Firefox was licensed under the MPL, which allows non-free binaries.--Nonpareility 06:39, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've added another citation that strengthens the statement I made about RMS's objection to Talkback. This one specifically mentions Talkback. -- Schapel 11:52, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: RMS and Talkback

message: Is FSF's criticism applicable anymore? It still seems to be a valid criticism of MPL, but now that Firefox is trilicensed, it doesn't seem a valid criticism of Firefox.--Nonpareility 18:42, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This feature of the MPL has allowed developers to distribute proprietary products incorporating Mozilla code. (Netscape 7 is one example of such a product.) Under the MPL/GPL/LGPL triple license scheme developers may continue to create and distribute Mozilla-based proprietary products, by taking advantage of the option to use the Mozilla code under the MPL terms and complying with the various requirements of the MPL for those portions of the proprietary products based on Mozilla code.
Even when Firefox binaries become entirely free, it's still applicable.  The article will need to be updated.  Encyclopedias are historical.  --71.161.222.234 02:42, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I just don't understand what the criticism is. Is this that someone could take the Firefox code, modify it, and release it under the MPL (which is non-free is certain ways), so FSF believes Mozilla shouldn't allow MPL licenses? If so, it's not clear from the current text that that's what the problem is.--Nonpareility 03:59, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the FSF's criticism was that before Mozilla was tri-licensed, some parts of the source code may have been licensed under only the MPL. Because the MPL was not compatible with the GPL, that meant that some Mozilla code was not free to be used with other free code. Mozilla addressed this criticism by tri-licensing all the code, so now there are no license incompatibility issues with mixing Mozilla code and other code. Because the issue with Mozilla, and therefore Firefox, code was been addressed, I think we could remove it from this article. -- Schapel 04:14, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

text: To address these concerns, Mozilla has relicensed Firefox under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) as well as the Mozilla Public License (MPL).
I'm not sure why it needs to be removed. --72.92.129.190 17:47, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

text: No, that doesn't clarify it at all. If anything, it goes back to my original point: if Mozilla has trilicensed Firefox, does the criticism still apply?--Nonpareility 17:58, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

text: It seems to me the issue has been addressed, I don't think we need to keep that as a current criticism -- AdrianTM 04:09, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Encyclopedias should be historical, but I think going from a current critism to a past criticism crosses the "notable" line.--Nonpareility 21:19, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Emacs was often noticeably slower than rival text editors. Several joke acronyms allude to this: "Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping" (from the days when eight megabytes was a lot of memory), "Emacs Makes A Computer Slow", "Eventually Mallocs All Computer Storage", and "Eventually Makes All Computers Sick".
--71.161.213.84 03:03, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A program being slow sounds like something that users would notice as obvious, and Emacs probably had a reputation for being slow. It sounds like in the Emacs article, they're making the point that although Emacs has a reputation for being slow, it isn't any more. That makes the old criticism notable. I don't think that Firefox code has a reputation for not being compatible with other open source licenses, so I don't think that we need to clarify that the code is now compatible with the GPL. -- Schapel 11:30, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I don't see how the fact that Mozilla responded (Mozilla has responded to literally hundreds of thousands of problems in their software) and it's written somewhere on their site (a lot is written on their site) means Mozilla had a reputation for this. If they did have a past criticism notable enough to mention, should it be mentioned with the current criticisms or should it mentioned as part of the history of the project.--Nonpareility 23:49, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

text: No, I'm stating the reasons you say the license change is notable also apply to many non-notable bugs.--Nonpareility 03:53, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

text: Yeah, I thought we agreed that it is no longer a criticism of Firefox, and that people aren't generally mistaken that that is still a problem with Firefox. Is there still someone criticizing Firefox, or is there any evidence that people still think that the criticism still applies? If not, this is an old criticism that has already been addressed, therefore does not apply to the current version and should not be mentioned. -- Schapel 13:19, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

text: However, do we really want to include every criticism ever made, including ones that no one is criticizing Firefox for? My understanding was that this article describes current criticisms of Firefox. -- Schapel 20:56, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: FSF's criticism

message: The technical criticisms section seems to now be mostly about performance gripes. I propose we rename Technical criticisms to Performance, create a new section called Functionality, and put ActiveX, Web Standards, and Missing Functionality into that.--Nonpareility 18:48, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Technical criticisms -> Performance?

message: This seems to put the extension system of Firefox (which i find pretty good) in a bad light no?
"Even with high quality extensions, the user has to find and install them rather than them being available in the default installation."
I'm going to add a mention about the firefox site hosting extensions and the ability for users to comment on it. Mr toasty 01:19, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  extensions 

message: I have two problems. The word strictly implies an absolute (I'm guessing), but here it appears to mean a relative:
:Firefox strictly complies with Internet standards, [3] and many pages are not displayed as the designer may have intended.[4] While Firefox, like other browsers, has a quirks mode, this mode isn't completely compatible.[5]
Without looking at reference 3 (and from non-verifiable first-hand testing!) I know that Firefox is not 100% strict (look at Opera or online browser tests), hence my guess. (And having now looked at ref 3, they agree too.) Secondly what does the trailing compatible mean? Compatible with what? Internet standards? Web pages that were compatible with older Firefox/other browsers? I will ignore the impossibility of reading minds. -213.219.141.119 14:16, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've made changes that should address your concerns.--Nonpareility 15:30, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  strictly disputed 

message: I put back the reference to PC Magazine's article that compares memory use among browsers. Unless someone can show that PC Magazine is not a reliable source, I think that should stay in. If you want to put in a reference to another equally reliable source that disputes this information, go ahead. In the meantime, I'll look for an independent secondary source, as I can't put in my own original research to corroborate PC Magazine's data. -- Schapel 02:39, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a reliable source, and the mention of the memory use should stay. However, calling it "objective" is pushing the NPOV line too much. PCMagazine's objectivity is somewhat questionable. Captainktainer * Talk 08:51, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Memory use 

message: I removed this section, as it did not seem to be based on any source at all, much less a reliable one. The only source was W3School's stats for its own site, which were mistakenly claimed to be the stats for overall browser usage share. I suppose there was another source referred to, but that was about Internet Explorer security, not Firefox security. -- Schapel 00:30, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The link referenced in the last version containing the "Popularity" section does not state that as software is increasingly used, holes are found and exploited, nor does it say Firefox claims to have no exploits or offer any reasoning behind that. Regardless of what anyone's feelings about Firefox are, Wikipedia requires  verifiability, not truth, and the "Popularity" section was not verified.--Nonpareility 01:52, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

text: The link says "As Firefox gains market share its handling of security issues is drawing more scrutiny." The article said "As any software become increasingly used holes are found and exploited." The article said absolutely nothing about the popularity of a browser making it more likely that holes are found and exploited, just that the handling of security issues is more closely scrutinized. It's as simple as that. The article doesn't say what the text in the article said it did. This has nothing to do with trying to defend Firefox, as you're trying to make it out to be. If you can find a reliable source that is criticizing Firefox, write up a section and cite the source as a reference. But be sure to say what the source says, and not try to twist into what you want it to say. -- Schapel 02:23, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Popularity 

message: Many of the criticisms in the article seem equally relevant to all non-IE browsers (whether because IE is IE or because IE is the dominant browser; there is even leeway in interpreting the standards), tho some are not (notably extensions). I myself don’t use Mozilla Firefox (I use a self-compiled version of Galeon on Debian GNU/Linux, because the Galeon version in Debian is linked against Firefox—tho the reason I don’t use Galeon/Firefox is more Galeon’s fault than Firefox’s).
Without discussing personal preferences, I dislike Firefox because (this gets a bit ranty, so maybe skip this first list):
* Its user-interface is distinctly non-native on Debian and Mac OS X. Although it makes various considerations, these are generally at a macro-level, such as moving the Preferences dialog from Tools/Preferences to Edit/Preferences or Mozilla Firefox/Preferences. But there’s too many features in GTK+ or Cocoa and probably even in the Windows toolkit for XUL to ever be able to emulate them exactly. For instance, I’ve set a little-known option in GTK+ that means I can set shortcut keys in GTK+ apps just by hovering over them, and pressing the key. It also just looks uncomfortably non-native. There are solutions to this that work on cross-platform programs, such as using WxWidgets that actually does use GTK+ instead of just emulating it.
* Relatedly, it doesn’t respect system configuration. I need to set proxies under both Firefox and the System Preferences program (on the Mac) or the Gnome Network Configuration panel (on Debian). And similar. Again, these aren’t the cost of a cross-platform browser, they’re the cost of laziness. A good cross-platform browser will obtain the information differently on different platforms.
* Relatedly, the fact that they have to implement a toolkit just for themselves means that I keep getting weird-arse behavior. Like at the moment when I start it up, it gives me an empty dialog box with two empty buttons that do nothing. Why? I don’t know. Is it something to do with my configuration or extensions? I’ve deleted all my preferences. In any case, that’s completely irrelevant because a good program will cope. Preferences complete gibberish? Say something! How come every other program but Firefox manages to tell me something useful if it can’t do anything else?
* Extensions. They suck. You upgrade Firefox, and half of them break, or (worse) break Firefox. My solution on Windows where I have no choice but to use Firefox is to not use extensions, but then it has missing functionality.
Erm, so summarised, some additional more Firefox-centric criticisms:
* By implementing its own toolkit, the Firefox developers have put a lot of working on their plate to try and emulate a number of toolkits that a user is already familiar with, whose minor features they may be unfamiliar with. This means Firefox behaves differently from other programs.
* This implementation also means that bugs are more likely to creep in.
* Firefox doesn’t integrate properly into the system, not inheriting preferences that are meant to be system-wide.
* Extensions are a significant component of Firefox usability, but they can be of very dubious quality, and are often tied to a particular version of Firefox. (This one is already included in the article somewhat, but it rather non-neutrally seems to be highlighting the fact that extensions could be difficult for the ‘casual user’ to install. A potential problem with Firefox extensions are not in fact a problem, because the problem has not to my knowledge ever been exploited in the wild. So really they’re awsome. But umm .... some plebs (*snicker*snicker*) reckon they may be hard to install, or some crap like that.)
What justifies inclusion of criticisms of Firefox in this article? Coming from my perspective, I’m heavily biased against Firefox (but only because I think it’s a piece of crap) so I’m reluctant to directly add anything for fear of NPOV-ness, but I do and have criticised Firefox on these grounds.
—Felix the Cassowary 12:39, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: How about Wikipedia:No_original_research policy? This kind of articles are magnet for original research. -- AdrianTM 13:13, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. I would clarify that if you want to add a criticism, you should cite a reliable source so we can verify that the criticism has been made. You can't just make up your own criticisms or point out what people have said in forums and blogs. If we could, we could claim every browser crashes every few minutes, for example. -- Schapel 13:35, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Indeed, but in the case of an article on criticism, you’ll miss criticisms by relying on that level. It’s easy to verify that Firefox has the first and third problems I mention: Run Firefox on Linux or Mac OS X, and see how it behaves differently from browsers that do integrate into the system. But this sort of thing isn’t highlighted in the reviews of the browser; they focus on Windows or platform-irrelevant aspects. As far as I understand the policies, such easily verifiable things are exempt from them. In any case, the article currently isn’t really an article of criticisms of Firefox, as I said; it’s more an article on criticisms of browsers that aren’t IE or browsers based on the Mozilla rendering engine. As others have mentioned, it’s also very defensive (and offensive)... —Felix the Cassowary 14:26, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I don't think the criticism you mention is obvious enough not to need a cite. Obvious means obvious to any reader, like "the sky is blue" kind of thing. Every reader would need to know how Firefox runs on Linux or Mac and then know how it's supposed to run for the criticism to be obvious. I understand that this kind of thing isn't usually mentionned because most reviews focus on Windows, but if you can't find a single review complaining about it (even in Linux/Mac magazines/websites/whatever), doesn't that tell you something about how notable the criticism is? As for this being a criticisms of non-IE browsers or of Gecko article... If the majority of the criticisms against Firefox is related to the fact that it's not IE/is Gecko, so be it, those are the criticisms of Firefox. And finally, articles like this tend to have overly-defensive parts to them. If you point out what specific parts you think are unbalanced, we'll discuss. --Nonpareility 14:42, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I actually use Firefox on Linux and never thought is not well integrated or that a browser should be integrated, for example I'm very happy with Opera who uses QT but strangely enough it looks less integrated than Firefox. Also, we need to remember that this is an Encyclopedia and some facts mentioned here are hardly encyclopedic. I think that encyclopedic might be only IE criticism because that can show why other browsers gained market share although IE comes preinstalled on 95% of the computers, criticism of other browsers is irrelevant and especially doesn't require separate articles in Wikipedia.  -- AdrianTM 15:00, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

text: I don't think the article is defensive. Articles are supposed to have a neutral point of view, which really means that all points of view that can be cited are mentioned. If the article lists just criticisms, and nothing to counter those criticisms, it's not neutral. -- Schapel 18:08, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  What constitutes a valid criticism? 

message: I'm wondering if we should change the wording of the criticisms to make specific note of who's doing the criticizing. WP:NPOV lists that as one of two ways to avoid being non-NPOV, the other being substantiation which we're doing. Right now, the only attributed criticism is the political one. For example, change it to something like this
"Firefox only launches when a user specifically requests it, and does not, generally, share code with the host system (eg. on Microsoft Windows it doesn't use Windows Explorer).[1] Softpedia notes[2] that this causes Firefox users to experience a delay when launching Firefox compared to built-in browsers such Internet Explorer under Windows or Safari under Mac OS X.[23][24]"
--Nonpareility 15:29, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that we should change the wording the way you describe. -- Schapel 16:02, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ditto. This is something that I encourage most strongly over at animal rights related articles (due to their controversial subject matter) and it does seem to help prevent POV pushing additons.-Localzuk(talk) 16:37, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Attribution

message: I've removed the shared libraries section. While it appears to be true, it's  original research. To be included, we would need to find a review or something complaining about it.--Nonpareility 18:47, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Shared libraries

message: Sorry about my first addition to this article. I agree it wasn't well written or backed up. However I wish to change that. I want to write a section about the aesthetic criticisms heard by GNOME and Mac OS X users. This article seems to have some high standards (a good thing) so I was wondering what is required of an addition. I will write a draft in the discussion and see what others think before I post it to the page again. Jdufresne 22:35, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: We're trying to avoid original research, so you need to point out a major publication that's doing the criticizing. Other than that, use your best judgment and it should be fine.--Nonpareility 22:51, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

text: First of all sorry that I removed your contribution, I just want to assure you it's not bad intention, I just don't want to have minor gripes of users listed in what's supposed to be an encyclopedia, as long as the criticism is done by somebody notable or it's in a major publication I won't have anything against adding it. -- AdrianTM 01:26, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aesthetic criticisms 

message: What Spiegelmock said at ToorCon it's actually a joke, as reported in this news: News.
Spiegelmock doesn't have any undisclosed Firefox vulnerability.
:I've removed it.--Nonpareility 17:01, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  About Security section.