from Hacker News

17 year old Firefox feature request fixed

by abridgett on 2/24/21, 9:45 PM with 274 comments

  • by dragosmocrii on 2/24/21, 10:44 PM

    If you're like me, and read the comments first, this change is about giving feedback on the scrollbar for a search. In other words, when you search for something, the scrollbar will give an idea how many results there are, and where on the page rhey are located.

    On another note, the comment uses IntelliJ as an example. Wow, that was 17 years ago! Happy to see my favorite editor be around for so long.

  • by clankyclanker on 2/24/21, 10:43 PM

    Good on them for actually tracking this feature request for over a decade and not just closing it after three weeks for “lack of interest.”

    Looking at you, every random GitHub project ever.

  • by layer8 on 2/25/21, 12:00 AM

    I hope they also finally allow black on yellow highlighting again (like pretty much every other browser), which hasn’t been possible since Firefox 3.5 in 2009.

    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=505089 http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=7018785

  • by w-m on 2/24/21, 10:28 PM

    Not to get too greedy, but maybe do the 21 year old “Use native context menus on Mac OS” next?

    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34572

  • by zecg on 2/25/21, 10:18 AM

    Now Mozilla, bloody Firefox for Android cannot save the page anymore - not as MHTML, not as PDF. How can such a basic function just disappear?

  • by clarifier123 on 2/24/21, 10:02 PM

    Wow, that's a feature that I've been really missing since I switched to Firefox from Opera.

  • by zippercreatemy on 2/25/21, 2:29 AM

    Poor Keith, reported it 17 years ago and then vanished in 2005 missing out on the long journey of his feature request.

    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=259640

  • by gdrift on 2/24/21, 11:35 PM

    One of the most voted for issues is closed WONTFIX: single click selects all in address bar and search box.

    I use Firefox exclusively and this is the single most annoying change they made for no apparent reason. So annoying.

    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1621570 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?votes=133

  • by raymondgh on 2/24/21, 11:00 PM

    It’s also interesting that the context of this bug has changed over the years. I’d be surprised to learn if we had gigantic single-page api reference docs 17 years ago

  • by abridgett on 2/25/21, 12:26 AM

    I'm immensely grateful to the developers involved. I'm sure it wasn't easy but it's one of those features that I've always missed ever since chrome added it. It also shows the value of a decent bug tracking system.

  • by ufo on 2/25/21, 12:09 AM

    Does anyone know were we can find a screenshot of this new feature in action?

  • by firexcy on 2/26/21, 1:26 AM

    Glad they finally add this. Used to be a painful lack compared to chromium-based browsers. During the long wait I've found this amazing addon called HighlightAll [1], which allows you to search multiple keywords and highlight them with different colors; the position will also be labelled on the scroll bar. Super helpful for researching/consuming long articles.

    [1]: http://jgoudey.free.fr/highlightall/

  • by nashashmi on 2/25/21, 1:15 PM

    This was a feature that appeared in chrome way back when and was what made me switch. Always felt Firefox search was inferior because this was missing.

  • by mschaef on 2/25/21, 1:44 PM

    Nit-picking here, but language is important.

    Not sure I like the idea that a "feature request" can be "fixed". It's a feature, not a bug. It's a request, not some sort of obligation of the development team.

    Still though, it's good to see a process work over a 17 year long period, in an industry where things oftentimes seem to be thrown out in a matter of a few years.

  • by cassepipe on 2/24/21, 10:37 PM

    Fantastic. There's hope. (Greed incoming beware). What about WebMIDI support for music web apps like Pianojacq?

  • by nonbirithm on 2/24/21, 10:40 PM

    Obligatory dogpile, but I'm hoping for the day you can disable Ctrl-Q to prevent accidentally closing the browser with a single keystroke. It's impossible to do on Linux.

  • by notorandit on 2/25/21, 6:32 AM

  • by ggm on 2/25/21, 5:33 AM

    17 years is pretty good. I had BSD gnats bugs 10+, which I would have loved to be fixed, but the BIOS in question (it was ACPI stuff) is long dead. However, similar bugs persist in modern hardware/software "layer 2" systems under the OS. They're just hard to fix, without NDA.

    The entire 802.11 blobs story, is about persisting "if we knew how the magic FPGA works we'd fix this" stories.

  • by bilekas on 2/25/21, 12:11 AM

    Comment 6 • 15 years ago :

    > I'm going to take this bug so maybe someday I can do it. Way too hard for now, but it would be very nice to have.

    Now that's persistence!

  • by batisteo on 2/24/21, 10:51 PM

    I'd look for a ticket about the poor contrast of matches, either green or magenta.

  • by __michaelg on 2/25/21, 10:07 AM

    Still sad that https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14328 was closed 2 years ago after being open for 20 years.

  • by gamesbrainiac on 2/25/21, 12:28 AM

    I just love how the first comment is about how IDEA has this feature.

  • by iggldiggl on 2/25/21, 11:44 AM

    Of course, there used to be an add-on that added this functionality, but was subsequently killed by the 57 update.

  • by Railsify on 2/25/21, 11:08 PM

    I wonder what Keith Lea is up to these days. Someone should let him know this is implemented!

  • by dsjoerg on 2/25/21, 12:13 AM

    See! You just had to be patient!

  • by pjmlp on 2/25/21, 7:49 AM

    Great, now maybe they can fix the size of adding bookmarks window.

    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=219972

    My favorite bug, 18 years old, closed without replacement.

  • by brundolf on 2/24/21, 10:23 PM

    Wow, finally

  • by jacquesm on 2/25/21, 8:35 AM

    Good. Can we have webmidi next?

  • by coldtea on 2/25/21, 9:02 AM

    That's what I love about FOSS!

    If a program doesn't have the feature you like, it can always be added -- 17 years later.

  • by efwfwef on 2/25/21, 3:26 AM

    so still not the fix for tree style tabs...

  • by wtf77 on 2/24/21, 11:47 PM

    there is always hope

  • by Trufa on 2/24/21, 11:11 PM

    I am never really sure how this feature is helpful, I don't know if I'm being obtuse about the functionality that people give it.

    In the JetBrains software I use it all the time but only cause it's clickable.

  • by dbg31415 on 2/24/21, 11:44 PM

    Cool, at that rate only another 16 years or so until they'll fix the fact that running a Zoom or Hangout call on Firefox turns your MBP into a toaster.

    Wish they'd focus on battery use! It's so crazy un-optimized. Run your next Zoom call on Firefox and put your laptop on your lap to test... Or just watch the battery meter plummet vs. other browsers.