Mozilla Launches Test Pilot, A Firefox Add-On For Trying Experimental Features

An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla today launched Test Pilot, a program for trying out experimental Firefox features. To try the new functionality Mozilla is offering for its browser, you have to download a Firefox add-on from testpilot.firefox.com and enable an experiment. The main caveat is that experiments are currently only available in English (though Mozilla promises to add more languages "later this year"). Test Pilot was first introduced for Firefox 3.5, but the new program has been revamped since then, featuring three main components: Activity Stream, Tab Center and Universal Search. Activity Stream is designed to help you navigate your browsing history faster, surfacing your top sites along with highlights from your browsing history and bookmarks. Tab Center displays open tabs vertically along the side of your screen. Mozilla says Universal Search "combines the Awesome Bar history with the Firefox Search drop down menu to give you the best recommendations so you can spend less time sifting through search results and more time enjoying the web."

Re:firefox haiku

[serviscope_minor]

Simplify or die.

a) It's an addon, so it won't be there unless you install it.

b) Every time they remove a feature from the main firefox people whine horrendously here too. So which is it? should they listen to the slashdotters who whine horribly when features are removed or should they listen to the slashdotters who whine horribly when features aren't removed?

Re:

[Kkloe]

yes

Re:

[Ol Olsoc]

Every time they remove a feature from the main firefox people whine horrendously here too. So which is it?

Sounds like different people with different opinions. And its hard to deny that FireFox isn't suffering from some manner of bloat.

I belong to some Yahoo groups - I have no choice in the matter. With all of the battening down of my system, as soon as I go to Yahoo groups, the window goes dark, and a popup shows up telling me about the wonderful new FireFox/Yahoo experience I can have is I install something. It then scrolls up to hide the close window button, and won't let me move it back down for some nu

Re:

[HideyoshiJP]

I don't think anybody would cry about losing "hello." I feel like the number of whiners about "pocket" would also be pretty low.

Re:

[Hentes]

Firefox isn't going to be succesful if they try to compete with Chrome on their turf. People who want a browser that "just shows webpages" will use Chrome anyway. On the other hand, after Opera's suicide and Microsoft's identity crisis FF could try to win back some popularity by attracting the power users. And while there might not be that many users of advanced features, it's vital for every browser to attract web developers. Especially when we seem to be heading towards a post-standards web, being the dev

Re:Too late Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

No thank you. Firefox is losing far more functionality than many are comfortable with. We don't need another fucking Chrome/Chromium clone. There are too many already. I use firefox not because it is the fastest browser, but because it is the most powerful and most flexible. And people like you are driving it into the shit-heap of history.

If we focus on speed and ordinary consumers, then Firefox will never win. After all, it's competition for that market is a pair of massive corporations who control the default experience of a huge chunk of users. If you compared what Google can get for free in advertising to Mozilla's budget, I bet you that what Google would charge for equivalent pushing (Featuring it on the google homepage, suggesting it on most search results, and on every translation) exceeds the amount of money Mozilla has available to it for the entire operations of Mozilla. Edge is much the same. Pre-installed on most new computers. The default browser.

You need to have a feature set which justifies switching. Half a percent more speed isn't that feature. Things like being the most extensible browser, being the only one which doesn't track users for the benefit of massive corporations. Things like being customizable beyond just what color your icons are, and what BG image you use. Those might not get most people, but it will bring in the people who want those things. Most of whom are the techies who will install it on computers for themselves, their family, their company. Who will support open source and the Mozilla foundation. Not people who say "The internet is broken" when IE gets deleted from the desktop.

Re:

[Chas]

I pretty much agree with all of this.

I'm sick of functionality being stripped from Firefox to be replaced with stupid, non-browser-like GIMMICKS.

Re:

[Blaskowicz]

Firefox became much faster at around version 17 or so. New versions brought less crashes, less memory leaking, faster javascript etc.
Remember when opening a huge image such as 12 megapixels and higher was a sure crash?

But now new versions are more of a wash. Needs e10s as default, at the cost of breaking some extensions.
Now, if we could just have stayed on html4 with an actually working open source Flash plugin and sites meant to work on dial up it would still be plenty fast on a single core and 512MB RAM d

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

If they could *just* concentrate on the multi threading performance issues first, I'd gladly jump back to Firefox, but now it's just unbearably slow, freezing the whole browser when a tab freaks out in 2016, please.

People say these things all the time, but as a daily user of Firefox, I haven't actually seen that happen, even when using it at work with ridiculous numbers of tabs open.
My experience with Chrome / Chromium is that it doesn't really improve anything, but does have a crappier interface.

Re:

[jbmartin6]

I see it several times a week when starting a Youtube video (HTML5, not Flash). I have to kill all FF windows and restart it. Luckily it can restore my session from the crash so not too awful. I still prefer FF to Chrome by a mile.

Re:

[sunderland56]

Until now you'd often need to be following an issue in bugzilla to even know that an experimental feature exists

Until now new features like Pocket have been forcefully installed on your computer with no permission at all, and no obvious way of disabling them, forcing you to spend time googling what the heck they are, and how to get rid of them.

Unfortunately this new-features-on-demand-only idea only seems to apply to beta things; once they go gold they will still be forcefully rammed down our throats.

Re:

[NotInHere]

Sandboxes won't help against leaks.

Firefox versions

[rossdee]

So whats the rule with FF version?

Id it 'odd numbers are good' (like Windows)
or
'even numbers are good' (like Star Trek movies)

Re:

[Zocalo]

For many (e.g. the >30% of market share Firefox has lost since it's peak) it seems to be that versions below {number} are good, those above {number} suck donkey balls, with the value of {number} being determined by the individual's opions on Mozilla's decisions to dumb down or remove useful feature/options and/or add some unwanted bits of bloat like Pocket to the main codebase to replace them.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[Merk42]

All versions of Firefox are bad since they became like Chrome
Firefox should be pared down and just do the web well, and fast, like Chrome.

Re:

[sanosuke001]

Don't tell me that you think the Chrome settings page is easier to use than the Firefox one; because if you do I'll have to call you a liar.

Re:

[jenningsthecat]

Nope, not a liar - at least not this time... I've never actually installed Chrome, and it's been a long time since I last used it. But my memory of its setup is 'what setup?', because it seemed that there wasn't much at all in the way of configurability.

I was using Debian when Firefox's Australis interface came out, so I got a reprieve because in whichever release I was on, Iceweasel was a step or two behind the main Firefox releases. When I did get a taste of Australis, I reverted and held back on upgradin

good riddance, mindfulness

[epine]

Mozilla says Universal Search "combines the Awesome Bar history with the Firefox Search drop down menu to give you the best recommendations so you can spend less time sifting through search results and more time enjoying the web."

Ah, more time swallowing and less time smelling and chewing. That never goes badly, does it?

Re:

[transami]

More like 21, but close enough.

Memory Lain

[hjames]

So when do they fix the memory loss problem?
Firefox hangs onto memory and doesn't release it until you close ALL instances of the browser

Re:

[Blaskowicz]

It's one multi-window instance, if you allow me to nitpick.

Re:

[LordLestat]

Could it be that Mozilla is thinking about adding customization features again? Finally a bit worried about the negative publicity and user loss? Good, they should be!