Removal of FTP support

[Moonchild]

Since people have apparently asked this a few times on IRC already since the news broke in bug #1174462: Regardless of Mozilla's plans to remove FTP support from the Mozilla code base, we won't. It's considered to be an essential core feature of a browser to support this protocol for file transfers over the 'net. Despite the relatively wide-spread use of HTTP for the same (which it wasn't actually initially designed for) and potential restrictions over NAT connections if not set up properly, removing protocol support for it in the client is a really really bad decision to make.

Mozilla's reasoning seems to be nothing beyond "Chrome is removing FTP support, so we should too", and labeling it "code cleanup". No proper research has been done on Mozilla's side and they simply rely on some statistics mentioned by Google in their issue tracker. Even just looking at those numbers, it's significant use - compared to web browsing, how often do you download a file?

[SvenG]

So, some dude comes, drops a link without further comment into a ticket and that starts a discussion. I would really recommend they change the rules for opening tickets on their bugtracker.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

So, some dude comes, drops a link without further comment into a ticket and that starts a discussion. I would really recommend they change the rules for opening tickets on their bugtracker.

The dude is Doug Turner the Director of Engineering at Mozilla Corporation.

Also, please do not go to that bug and start spewing venom at Mozilla no matter how much it may be deserved. It has the potential of devolving into a tabs on bottom situation and take all the legitimacy out of opposing this.

[SvenG]

The dude is Doug Turner the Director of Engineering at Mozilla Corporation.

That doesn't make things better. This, actually, looks like he wanted to start a heated debate on purpose.

[Moonchild]

Heated debate? No, I think rather the opposite: to quietly slip this into the dev cycle.

I just don't think they understand what "0.2%" in this context even means. Put it in other words, this means that 1 in 500 users downloads one or more things over FTP each week. How is that not significant?

[SvenG]

Heated debate?

By heated (while being less of a debate) I mean the type of comments rather than the amount (in particular the hidden ones).

[Trippynet]

To be honest, this Doug Turner needs to be taken to one side and have the definition of "bug" carefully explained to him. A proposal to remove a useful feature should have no part on the "bug tracker" as it simply isn't a bug. It's just more silliness. Glad to see that this feature will be retained in Pale Moon.

I don't use FTP often, but I do use some sites from time to time where the download section consists of FTP links. Having to leave the browser and fire up a dedicated FTP client to download one of these would be a step backwards usability wise.

Ultimately, it's just another example of how utterly clueless and detached from reality Mozilla have become. How on earth can they think that implementing this will in any way "improve" the browser and make it better for people?

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Of note.. Everything Mozilla does in the codebase and almost everything else passes through BMO. It is a way of tracking what happens..

[squarefractal]

BTW, how do people come to know about these bugs on BMO? A lot of activity goes on there, I don't know how people are able to find needles in the haystack.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Connections is a good start.. Connections with those who work in the Mozilla world. Knowing where to look is another. Watching key components and sifting through bugspam that is emailed is another way..

You get a feel for this kinds of things when you are exposed to it for long enough. But sometimes it just comes down to someone popping into IRC and asking about something and linking to a bug.

[Tharn]

FTP? Sheesh, use it all the time. Lots of Linux distros make their stuff available via FTP. What're they thinking? This is above and beyond their usual level of ignorance.

[Moonchild]

What're they thinking?

I'm not sure if much thinking is going on anymore at the Mozilla offices. They let Google do the thinking for them, and just follow suit?

This is above and beyond their usual level of ignorance.

Possibly because it didn't even follow normal procedures for having a feature bug filed and handled...

[ron_1]

Off-topic:

squarefractal wrote:
BTW, how do people come to know about these bugs on BMO? A lot of activity goes on there, I don't know how people are able to find needles in the haystack.

Someone had an article on it, that's how I found out about this. I think it was ghacks.

[CharmCityCrab]

Glad to see Pale Moon is keeping FTP support. I can't remember the last time I used the protocol, but I like the idea of a webbrowser as a swiss-army knife that can handle that sort of thing when one *does* need it. Just the other day, I was reading that the file explorer app I use for Android has been updated to share files wirelessly with your PC via FTP. If I ever decide I want to use that feature, it'd be nice if my web browser could handle those requests. Good for Pale Moon for sticking to it's guns with full URLs and FTP support and so on and so forth. Mozilla, with all due respect, is too focused on cutting features and ways of doing things that people value in favor of trying to keep up with Google in terms of looking cool- with the definition of a cool look being whatever Google thinks it is on any given day. "Quick, fire that technician and hire a 'UI expert'". Personally, I think Pale Moon with a classic modern interface theme add-on is more beautiful than anything else these other browsers with their huge budgets devoted to making things look nice have pulled off. Sometimes when something looks nice and works, it's better not to mess with a good thing- sure, expand functionality and improve performance and security under the hood, but I like the classic look and the options and features and UI I get with Pale Moon as well. Best of both worlds.

Is restoring gophernet access a possibility? I understand deprecating it if there are no more gophernet sites, but I think there still are some, and they are being maintained. As long as they're out there, it'd be nice to have that in the browser, just as a way of offering more choice to the end user. Firefox used to support it and stopped, so it's possible Pale Moon could dig back into old Firefox code and port it into modern Pale Moon with some changes.

[Moonchild]

Gopher really is too low usage for numbers to reintroduce into the core. You can, however, use "Overbite", a Firefox extension that should work as-is on Pale Moon without edits, which will give you a gopher protocol interface in the browser.

[Venom3D]

Thank you for keeping FTP support in Pale Moon. It's not everyday I access an FTP server, but I occasionally browse a few sites that use it for their downloads. I don't understand this trend of removing uncommonly used, yet essential, features.

[dinosaur]

Thanks for keeping FTP support !

Mozilla folks are more and more acting like fools as time passes... So sad...

[tuxman]

FYI:

You can, however, use "Overbite", a Firefox extension that should work as-is on Pale Moon without edits, which will give you a gopher protocol interface in the browser.

I talked to the Overbite developer a couple of hours ago because I was wondering about its current state of development (not compatible with Firefox 53+ yet, not compatible with Pale Moon 27.1 anymore). He told me that Pale Moon should still work (with a version bump) but a new version (a WebExtension) is coming some time later. If anyone here wants to continue using Overbite for the foreseeable future, he might want to fork it before it's too late.

(Sorry - I'm currently quite involved in a number of other projects but I can assist if whoever wants me to.)

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Please don't bump 2 year old threads.

[tuxman]

My late reply was a late update to the latest postings in this thread, making them basically obsolete. I felt opening a new thread for that would confuse the situation concerning this, e.g. for users using a search engine. Sorry.