Memo:

To: Mozilla

Subject: The Popularity of Firefox

Dear Mozilla:

Just saw the headline,

"Mozilla Foundation places two-page
advocacy ad in The New York Times (2004)"

Okay, I will respond with some feedback
intended to be helpful. I'm a long time
Firefox user. Until recently Firefox was
my "default" Web browser.

I'm trying to remain a good and happy
Firefox user, trying REALLY hard, but
Mozilla is trying even harder to have me
quit using Firefox. Mozilla has already
in the last few weeks finally gotten me to
tell Windows that my default browser is
Chrome and no longer Firefox. I WANT
Firefox back as my default Web browser,
but for that Mozilla has to stop working
so incredibly hard to have me quit using
Firefox.

"Mozilla, NO, greater than 99 44/100% of
the time I do NOT want a proctology exam,
an unanesthetized root canal procedure, a
piercing for a nose ring, a tattoo, a
Firefox update, a popup window, a
popup window announcing another Firefox
update, or the Firefox update that
enabled those 10s of thousands of popup
windows I have gotten in the last few
months.

A Firefox popup window is where Mozilla
believes that it has some information for
my eyes, attention, and work more
important to me than the Web page the
popup window is covering and that I was
trying to read, and that belief is nearly
always badly WRONG.

A popup window is where Firefox stops
and refuses to continue until I stop what
I'm doing, pay attention to why my
computer has stopped, move my hand, and
click on NO once more of the tens of
thousands of times recently. I can be
patient, but somewhere on the way to >
20,000 times, I can become infuriated.

I HATE, to be more clear, deeply,
profoundly, bitterly HATE and despise, am
outraged and infuriated by, unwanted
updates and popups.

In the last few months I have declined
Firefox updates announced in popup windows
literally, conservatively > 20,000 times.

To be fully clear, did I mention, I HATE
nearly all updates and popups."

Here is some feedback on some of the
current disaster:

From some Firefox update, that I did not,
NOT,

N.O.T.

approve, my current version of Firefox is
badly broken. Why: When I try to have
Firefox display a Web page, from a URL on
the Internet, a tree name on Windows, or
the Web site that has my email, I get a
popup that says that Firefox is not my
default Web browser, which was false, or a
popup saying that Firefox is starting in
"safe mode", which from all I could tell
was inappropriate. Then I get another
popup window announcing that a Firefox
update is available.

My suggestions:

(1) Cut WAY back on the popup windows. If
there is a really serious computer
security problem, then announce that via a
popup window. Announce it no more than
three times. On average, there should be
less than one such serious problem a year.

(2) Restore the option that permits a user
to decline updates and also decline
announcements of updates.

(3) Document your work. There is a lot to
usage of Firefox -- DOCUMENT that work in
TEXT in high quality technical writing.

(4) For options, be willing to write the
option values to a text file with a simple
syntax, a file that a user can edit with a
standard text editor and then specify to
Firefox as the options to be used.

(5) Instead of icons, use text.