Firefox needs a must-have feature

Posted by Johnny K on Sun, 01/28/2007 - 23:49Recycle Bin

Firefox needs a must-have feature to help it gain more market share. Something that is completely original, completely unique, and very exciting. Throw some ideas out there!


Submitted by Johnny K on Fri, 02/02/2007 - 01:40.

I think speech recognition could be a must-have feature. It seems like the kind of thing that would get a decent amount of buzz, much like the tabs did before IE7.

Maybe it seems kind of gimmicky, but I really think that it could have some practical uses. It would be cool if you could assign a command to each bookmark, so that you could just say "Open Google" or something like that.

Other possible commands:
-"New tab"
-"Close tab"
-"Close other tabs"
-"Undo close tab"
-"Refresh"
-"Use proxy"

Submitted by Johnny K on Sat, 02/03/2007 - 06:38.

I just realized, I think IE7 Vista already has this ability. There goes that idea.

Submitted by accelaexp on Wed, 01/31/2007 - 19:29.

imo, the developers should first optimize what firefox can already do. For example, on my 1ghz cpu, managing search engines is <u>ultra</u> slow, switching from a search engine to another also consumes cpu since version 2.

Then, adding more tab options and middle click behaviour would be great because installing an extension just for being able to do such simple settings is not good. For example, the user could decide that a middle clicked link would open in a tab right next to the tab where it is clicked.

At last, to answer to the real subject about a killer feature: i think mozilla could offer some services associated with its browser. We all know mozilla has made a lot million$$ lastly and they should invest them. Maybe an email account (to the form of user @ firefox.com) for all users, or some hdd space somewhere on a server where one could upload some files from his firefox with the help of an inbuilt ftp client.

We know that google would like to provide their own browser sometimes in the future. mozilla, with the help of firefox popularity, could try offer what google already offers, some services.

Submitted by aggro on Mon, 01/29/2007 - 22:21.

Fix high memory usage. I don't personally have such problems, but I've seen a lot of complaining about it. Usually it is the extensions or the settings. For extensions, there should be a place where one could monitor the mem usage of each extension. The settings should also be set to use less memory by default.

Memory usage monitor which would show the used memory by each extension and perhaps even used memory by different parts of the Firefox would be a nice start. That would at least give more info about where are the biggest problems and if it is some of the extensions, the developers would get the message.

Submitted by Kelson on Mon, 01/29/2007 - 17:14.

One thing that helped early adoption of Firefox was tabs.  IE6 didn't have them, and Opera was still ad-supported at the time.  Combined with the IE security scare, tabs encouraged a lot of IE users to switch to Firefox.

(It's worth noting that tabs weren't unique or original, but they were new to IE users.  As other browsers gain traction, uniqueness will become more important, but for now, being new to IE users will be enough.)

The question is, what can be added to Firefox that will be a must-have feature for many users and will properly belong in the core browser?  I suspect that it won't be a new Firefox feature that does it, but an extremely useful extension.

--

Can Firefox users and Opera fans agree on anything?
The Alternative Browser Alliance

Submitted by Johnny K on Tue, 01/30/2007 - 02:00.

"(It's worth noting that tabs weren't unique or original, but they were new to IE users. As other browsers gain traction, uniqueness will become more important, but for now, being new to IE users will be enough.)"

That's a very good point. And I agree that tabs were a must-have feature until IE7 came along. Firefox needs a new feature that is as exciting and "must-have" as tabs were.

Submitted by saratdear on Mon, 01/29/2007 - 16:40.

What about something like related to phishing protection, something which automatically blocks porn sites and things like that. Flexible, of course, can be disabled or enabled with a password and all.

Submitted by firecad2006 on Tue, 01/30/2007 - 01:31.

i like saratdear  idea theres a lot of kids on the internet now. 

 

 

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