Firefox has excellent features, popup blocking to avoid annoying advertising, tabbed browsing to manage browsing sessions, an integrated, customizable search field, all features that empower the end user. However, in those areas where Firefox excels as an application, it fails in another basic UNIX principle of applications ease of interoperability. Using a MUA, at all, under Firefox, is an excercise in frustration. Simply specifying a preference for a MUA results in locating and installing the correct extension or locating and editing a hidden preference file.
This problem extends to newsreaders and download managers as well. Should a user desire to implement tin or slrn for news he would similarly have to use the above extension. There is also another extension for those users who would prefer a different download manager, such as downloader for X or Kget, over the one bundled with Firefox.
The usability obstacles mentioned above are a barrier to adoption. Hopefully, they will be addressed by the time Firefox reaches a 1.0 release. At best, until these features can be built into the browser, the correct extensions should be installed by default to allow users the choice of external applications and the default home page should point out documentation to get these applications working with the browser.
Updated with pictures—March 7, 2006
I've had a couple of people link to this article, if you can even call it an article, it's pretty short. Of those people, most have mentioned that my complaint is petty and doesn't seem to be an issue. Basically, they're saying I'm a whiner and need to shut the hell up.
Okay, well let me further explain my situation and see if I can illustrate why this is a problem for me.
I run Window Maker for my desktop and that's it. No GNUStep, no desktop environment, no desktop icons, nothing, zip, zlich, nada and that's the way I friggin like it. As a consquence to my decision, there's not a whole lot of desktop widgets to manipulate system settings like say, the default email client, or which application opens up iso files. Most of this functionality is provided by me from a command line, just the way I like it.
Following this line of thinking, KDE and GNOME both have Windows-like control panels that allow the user to set user default programs, like which email client the user prefers, for example. Window Maker, in and of itself, doesn't provide this functionality, and it shouldn't. The window manager's responsibility is to manage the windows — that's it.
My contention, and I guess I didn't make this clear enough before, is that I don't want to have to install a complete desktop environment—which I will never use and will only take up disk space and system resources—just to specify which email client I want to use by default with my web browser.
Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Firefox supposed to be faster than the entire Mozilla suite by stripping the browser out as a stand-alone program? Great, so instead of just installing the entire Mozilla suite and get stuck using an email client I don't like, I have a smaller browser but I have to install an entire desktop environment to configure the damn thing. Tell me how that makes sense.
So, to illustrate, literally, how other browsers actually allow the user to specify other email clients in-program, here are a few screenshots.
As you can see here, even the much hated Internet Explorer (boo,hiss) allows the user a list of differing applications in-program to choose from. Of course it's set to Outlook Express (4 out of 5 viruses prefer Outlook Express), but it can be set to any other email client installed on the system. Try it, it works.
Now, here's Opera, the other browser (no more ads, yea!). Honestly, Opera is better in so many ways than Firefox and Internet Explorer it's not even funny. Opera is smaller, uses less memory, it's faster and it includes everything but the kitchen sink (although I hear that the sink is in beta). You'll notice that I've written a script to launch mutt, my email client of choice, to handle all of the mailto links. Try doing that with Internet Explorer or Firefox.
There are two reasons why I don't go with Opera instead of Firefox, one is the Adblock extension and the other is a few bookmarklets I use all the time that I haven't found equivalent replacements for Opera. Pay attention Opera, you're an Adblock option away from being top dog.
Now look at the Firefox preference pane. Tell me which little, pretty tab or button I'm supposed to check to specify which email client I want to use. Oh yeah, I can copy and paste a mailto link onto the command line. That's not a hassle AT ALL.
Before one of you lamers email me to let me know I should just post it to bugtraq, why don't you go and search it for yourself. This article has been up for nearly two years, this topic has been covered by the developers on a few different forums/mailing lists/whatever and it's no closer to getting added than when I started bitching about it two years ago. It's such an obvious setting that several sites popped up with how to modify the about:config page so you could specify your own settings and a friggin extension was written. It's an awful lot of work for something that should be there in the first place.
Posted by Philip McClure in Rants on April 24, 2004