Firefox Test Pilot
medium.com/firefox-test-pilot · Company blog · on HN since 2017
Mozilla's team posting about experimental Firefox features, user research, and the Test Pilot program, which ended in January 2019.
What HN saysHN commenters cite it for Firefox Containers, which they recommend for limiting data leaks, and for the Wayback Machine 'no more 404s' experiment.
17HN people shared it
5linked it in comments
13stories submitted
55story points
7 years agolast shared
2017people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Firefox Test Pilot is flying off into the sunset on January 22nd, 20195 people · 11 points · first shared 2019 · 1 comments on HN
- 2Firefox Containers are Go5 people · 8 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 3Test pilot no more 404s graduation report 22e65f62b2b12 people · first shared 2020
- 4Screenshots is Shipping in Firefox 561 people · 20 points · first shared 2017 · 4 comments on HN
- 5Introducing Firefox Color and Side View1 people · 7 points · first shared 2018 · 2 comments on HN
- 6Firefox Test Pilot: Conducting User Interviews to Understand Multiple Notes1 people · 3 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 7Firefox User Research: Toward Making User Research More Open1 people · 3 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 8Gaining Insights Early: Concept Evaluation for Firefox Send1 people · 2 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 9Send, with passwords1 people · 1 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
bad_user · 2020-02-26
Firefox introduced similar functionality in its former Test Pilot program, in 2018.
It now lives on as an extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/wayback-machine_new/
And here's the report: https://medium.com/firefox-test-pilot/test-pilot-no-more-404s-graduati…
Basically if you look at the results, they aren't so encouraging, because the archive has results for only ~20% of URLs that aren't found and when it does have results, a majority of the time users tend to dismiss or ignore the notification.
Still, it's a useful extension that I keep installed in my Firefox.
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Adding something natively to the browser isn't a virtue, because the browser maker can have perverse incentives due to the nature of the business. I personally don't understand how some people can trust Brave for ad-blocking (given they are a company whose business model is still the serving of ads) instead of just installing uBlock Origin in their favorite browser, whatever that browser is.
Speaking of uBlock Origin, even if you can install it on Brave right now, given Google is deprecating the underlying API in manifest v3, I don't think Brave will be able to support uBlock Origin for long, in spite of what they've claimed, simply because I don't think they have the capacity to diverge too much from Chromium's code base.
And if you want Tor and such, might as well go for the real thing.
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> One thing I'd really like to see for Brave's mobile browser in the…
jvehent · 2020-02-25
Mozilla did this a couple years ago. https://medium.com/firefox-test-pilot/test-pilot-no-more-404s-graduati…
chalst · 2018-12-04
Firefox Containers really do allow you to limit the amount that data leaks.
https://medium.com/firefox-test-pilot/firefox-containers-are-go-ed2e35…
jedahan · 2017-11-20
You might be interested in Firefox Multi-Account Containers[1], an addon by Mozilla, announced in https://medium.com/firefox-test-pilot/firefox-containers-are-go-ed2e35…
[1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-container…
gh02t · 2017-10-18
That's basically what Firefox Containers does.
https://medium.com/firefox-test-pilot/firefox-containers-are-go-ed2e35…