Comment by scrollaway | Hacker News Reader

Comment by scrollaway | Hacker News Reader

> Instead of seeing blank tiles when a new Firefox user opens a new tab, Mozilla thought it would be best that they see “content.”

I don't care much about this sponsored tab fuss but that is some serious BS logic.

Feels like UX goes in circles. The web of the 90s was "Show as much content as possible". Google came around and it became "show only the absolutely crucial stuff". Then facebook came around and we're back to shoving as much crap down the monitors as possible.

Feels like we jump from one extreme to another all the time. And yet, the Google.com homepage remains clean and uncluttered (yes, there's more stuff than there used to, but its still 90% whitespace).

Take it this way: When you create a new folder, a file manager won't show the contents of other folders you often access just because it's "best that you see content". Or when you empty your inbox, gmail won't show some random popular emails. So on.

Showing popular sites is a good idea at its core but if you're on a fresh profile, well you're on a fresh profile. Make money off firefox of course, you need it, but "it's best you see content" is bullshit justification.

How is that bullshit? You've got a page of your commonly-visited sites that would be empty if not pre-populated. Mozilla has offered up a balanced way to pre-populate it: put popular sites up for free and offer a handful of spots to other people who will pay for it.

I've got a Samsung SMART TV that comes with something called "Smart Hub". In the same way as Mozilla they've pre-populated a number of applications that could be useful. This means that Netflix and Youtube are now a single click away for me and usable as soon as the TV is powered on. If they hadn't pre-populated something in the Smart Hub, I'd have to dig through the catalog for to find the apps I want to use, and I'd be staring at an empty screen trying to figure out what I need to do on that page, which is probably the same sort of experience that new users might feel trying to navigate the web.

Defaults help you get started fast, and having "something" rather than "nothing" doesn't automatically mean "cluttered".

It is bullshit. There is nothing wrong, at all, with it being empty. It's a burden on those of independent mind to have to delete extraneous crap.

You might as well be Microsoft saying it's fine that IE is default and bundled with Windows, thus effectively pushing Netscape out of the market.

This is also the exact mentality that leads to bloatware on PCs and phones. The person that put it there thinks it's helpful, even if it took a bit of financial persuasion.

Microsoft baked IE into the OS, making it hard to temove IE and making it hard to install anything else.

It wasn't just that IE was the default browser that caused MS problems in Europe courts.

It was never hard to install anything else. The problem was that because it was default most people couldn't be persuaded of the point.

The fact it was low level welded into the OS merely made it possible for MS to argue it was necessary to be in by default for technical reasons as opposed to being a business decision.

I have a Samsung SMART TV too and I find Smart Hub to be extremely annoying in that there are prominent app spots that cannot be deleted. They're just there for Samsung to promote whatever partner it likes and it's the sort of thing that makes me regret buying Samsung.

In this case they can be deleted, and furthermore are eventually replaced by tiles containing thumbnails from your own browsing history, just as they are now.

You are confusing "emptiness" and "lack of defaults" from my post. Maybe I was not clear enough.

Firefox itself used to come with a somewhat large set of default bookmarks I believe. For Google, Amazon and some others. Those weren't sponsored but they also did not take most room on a UI element users are going to see reasonably regularly.

I'm arguing that the tiles being empty is completely fine. I don't even use firefox anymore, so this is of little importance to me personally - I just think that it's wrong to say "it's best for users to see content". Sometimes, it's good for users to see emptiness. It is something we game designers use quite a lot in video games actually: Introduce the user to a nearly non-existant interface and gradually introduce new elements as the player becomes more familiar with some mechanics. I recommend the first hour of Borderlands 2 as the prime example of this.

It's bullshit because there's a big step between 'Mozilla thought it would be best that they see “content.”' and them having default paid advertising in all new browser installs.

Wikipedia's got millions of pages of content but barring some self promotion it doesn't have adverts. Mozilla could have used any of those pages of content if they were just concerned about blank tiles. Indeed there are tons of options that aren't paid advertising from help pages on using FF to a list of the top [U rated] sites used by FF users to links to the most used add-ons/extensions/themes and such.

To recapitulate, it's bullshit because that line is is trying to sell us on them being stuck and having to place advertising in the browser. If they think it's the right thing to do then they should be convinced enough to say "we thought it best to put advertising in the browser", if they're not convinced and feel they need to make excuses then it's highly likely that it's the wrong thing to do.

I expect more from Mozilla, perhaps this is what the change in leadership is bringing us?

I find the tiles highly useful, and Mozilla metrics show that so does a large portion of their uses.

I recently had to deal with a completely fresh Firefox and the empty tiles were quite annoying.

A few years ago a Mozilla engineer talked about advertisement and how ads should not annoy users but benefit them. His example was high-end fashion magazines, which people happily buy - not despite most of the magazine consisting of ads - but because the magazine was mostly ads. The ads are beautiful and tells you what style is in vogue.

Advertisement can be mutual beneficial.

I see what you're saying, but in my experience advertising rarely gets this right. The fashion industry is a good example. I have absolutely no desire to read those magazines, let alone pay money to do so. It's blatantly reinforcing insecurities in the readers--the whole concept of what's "in style" is only meant to make people more judgmental, and fear that that same judgment might be turned against them, with constant purchases as the only way out. Quite an ingenious idea for the fashion industry, but a very toxic, manipulative piece of psychology for everyone else IMO.

Of course the tiles aren't so bad. My objection to them is mostly on principle, out of fear that it's another step in Mozilla becoming excessively beholden to advertising interests.

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