Mozilla Kills Its Experimental Firefox Test Pilot Program 3 Years After Launch

Mozilla has announced that it is closing Firefox Test Pilot, an experimental program it launched three years ago. Firefox Test Pilot allowed users to try out potential new built-in Firefox features and offer feedback to the browser maker. The company says the program was used by an average of 100,000 daily users. A report adds: It's worth noting here that Test Pilot is separate from the various beta versions of Firefox, which are early iterations designed to fine-tune features intended for the prime-time Firefox. Test Pilot, on the other hand, is more about Mozilla dipping its toes in the water to see whether a new feature is worth pursuing at all in the main version of the app, or even as a standalone product. Ultimately, it allows Firefox developers to take bigger risks with their ideas.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps they cared when feedback data showed that most users hated the new "features".

Re:

[arglebargle_xiv]

The company says the program was used by an average of 100,000 daily users.

So the entire remaining Firefox user base was using it? That's a pretty impressive participation rate.

Mozilla kills everything it touches.

[xack]

Eventually it will use Blink. It's only a matter of time. They said they wouldn't change the interface, they said they wouldn't drop XUL, they said they wouldn't add telemetry, they said they wouldn't do anymore "experiments" and they will sell out to their Google masters. And if you're going to say it, Pale Moon already sold out blocking noscript and other blocking tools. The Googlization is an open source wide problem, getting Blinked is the same trend as getting Electroned or SystemD'ed

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[Merk42]

Well surely all the super-smart people here would be able to develop with their own browser that wouldn't have those issues and also be widely adopted because it'd be the best, right?

Re:Mozilla kills everything it touches.

[Bradmont]

The problem is that software doesn't get adopted for being the best, it gets adopted by being well marketed, which is pretty much antithetical to FLOSS software, unless it's sponsored by a massive company, like Google's rendering engine.

Re:Mozilla kills everything it touches.

[cascadingstylesheet]

And if you're going to say it, Pale Moon already sold out blocking noscript and other blocking tools.

Huh?

I'm reading /. with current PaleMoon, with NoScript, right now.

So, what are you talking about?

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[Anonymous Coward]

He probably meant the drama around Pale Moon's behavior when installing NoScript.

Since NoScript "broke too many things", the developers pushed a patch in one of the versions which disabled the extension. Along with that, any attempts to install produced a warning whose message wasn't really helpful. You could re-enable and ignore the warning, but it was a pretty shitty move for the devs to disable an extension.

They patched it out later due to user feedback (and backlash).

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[BlackOverflow]

That's wierd, because I'm using Palemoon with noscript running right as I type this. I agree with you on everything else, though.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion