I despair at some of the comments on posts like this.
"Mozilla needs to attract new users!!"
Mozilla proceeds to add new features which new users might like
"No! Not like that"
Like, what do you actually want? A browser with a UI that hasn't changed since Stallman was in nappies? Things have to change in order to grow. Not everything is going to be right for you and that's OK.
> Not everything is going to be right for you and that's OK.
Yes, this is exactly right, some things won't be for everyone. The best part of Firefox (for me, besides being able to have vertical tree-style tabs) is that more times than not, you can disable and/or hide the change you don't like, as demonstrated by the blog post.
Sure, I might not agree with every change they make to default choices but they at least let us power users configure the browser so it ends up just like how we want it to be, and for that I'm very grateful, as it tends to be uncommon in this day and age.
I don't understand what you're upset about here. Firefox added this feature and, like all features, it gets in the way for some people. This article is explaining how to disable it if you're one of those people.
Nobody is saying the feature should be removed or scolding Mozilla for adding it, they're just explaining how to get rid of it if it annoys you.
The post is fine. People can disable whatever they want - I certainly do. But (at the time of writing) half a dozen comments were complaining about "useless cruft" being added.
Same as the AI integrations. There's obviously a market for them so FF has done some fairly sensible work to add them. And then people here explode like Mozilla has kicked their puppy.
Isn't the point that browsers should, ideally, be for web-browsing and nothing more? Even embedding a PDF reader is controversial, but it seems entirely unnecessary that a browser should come with its own emoji-picker—what's wrong with the system's own?
I'm old enough to remember people grumbling when audio and video elements were added. Useless crap in a browser! Just compile your own MP3 player if you want to listen to music on a website!
Same as WebUSB - heaven forbid that a website can become more useful by flashing firmware to a device!!
The web is a platform. It will grow and mature into something we can't possibly imagine. It's OK for browsers to try new things to see what sticks.
I assume that Mozilla have done some research showing people like typing emoji but don't know how to use their system emoji picker. Even in an ultra-purist world where a browser does nothing other than render HTML (death to JS!!!) surely people will want to type into boxen and POST text somewhere?
They can start by supporting more standards. It's getting harder and harder to view any modern site on this engine and the page load times are insane when compared to a Chromium stepchild like Vivaldi
> It's getting harder and harder to view any modern site on this engine
Is it? What website can you not view in Firefox today? I almost exclusively use Firefox on my computer (Safari on mobile), and can't remember the last time I encountered a website that wasn't viewable in Firefox. Even my bank, which tends to be whiny about what browser you use, works 100% in Firefox too, even with all the warnings.
I'm sorry, but that's bollocks. I browse exclusively in FF and I can't remember a single page in the last couple of years that refuses to work on it (unless it's a weird web experiment).
While there might be a use case for emoji picker in the browser, I don’t see how hiding one behind such an obscure shortcut brings an emoji picker to anyone who doesn’t already know how to use the one built in to their os.
Heh fair :) For the lack of a better icon to use, I did copy paste a emoji to be used as the favicon, I hope my readers can eventually forgive me for this transgression.
> On GNOME we already have a global shortcut for some emoji picker, I think it's Super + , or something
Actually, on most distros, the default keyboard shortcut for the emoji picker on GNOME/GTK is ctrl-. (same as the Firefox shortcut). This only works on apps that support it. Older Firefox versions did not support GNOME's emoji picker at all, but Firefox 150 supports GNOME's emoji picker using the expected keyboard shortcut.
> the default keyboard shortcut for the emoji picker on GNOME/GTK is ctrl-. (same as the Firefox shortcut).
Hmm, I wonder how new that is? Could be possible that my GNOME installation is old enough to predate that, and they didn't overwrite the config like Firefox did? Because I've been using Firefox + 1Password + GNOME for years, and for as long as I can remember, `ctrl + .` has opened 1Password dialogue in Firefox, and I'm not sure I've ever seen an Emoji picker in GNOME, although I know it exists somewhere.
What I really want is an emoji explainer feature to help me read other people's emoji. I currently copy+paste a lot of them into a search engine to find out what they're supposed to be.
For me there are 4 emojis: :), :(, :/, and :D. Anything that uses fancier characters is needlessly complicated and looks like clutter to me. For me this means that whenever I use one of those in Google Chat I need to type Esc before i can send my message lest what I typed be replaced by a goofy yellow face.
Does any OS get keyboard shortcuts even slightly right? I only really have experience with macOS right now, but it's terrible—just trying to find out which shortcuts are in use is non-trivial.
Is there some kind of Linux standard for this? Something that stores shortcuts in a single plain text file, so they're all visible and easily manageable?
An Emoji picker should be an OS-level feature. If the OS doesn’t provide the feature, then that is the OS’s decision to make, and the browser should respect it.
Why would I want text input in one app to have a feature that text input in other apps lacks?
It is an OS-level feature, or at least desktop environment level. Far as I know, it's always been Ctrl-. or Ctrl-; for any GTK app, but Firefox had apparently bound Ctrl-. to something else. So basically, this "added" feature is Firefox getting out of the way of the built-in picker that was already there.
On macOS, it still opens the multi-account container panel, and the emoji picker is still brought up by tapping Fn.
Okay, in that case, I completely misunderstood the issue. If the change is that Firefox now allows the system-level picker to get through instead of blocking the keyboard shortcut, that’s a win.
I thought Firefox was adding its own Emoji-picker UI.
> but Firefox had apparently bound Ctrl-. to something else.
I think up until version 150 it was nothing, as 1Password had `ctrl + .` as the default shortcut for opening up their autocomplete thing, and feels like they wouldn't have chosen that shortcut years ago if Firefox was already using it for something, but maybe I misremember.
> then you end up with a different interface everywhere.
This whole post is about someone being upset that Firefox finally did support the system level interface and shortcut. And you're upset about that while asking for consistent interfaces. Some people can just never be happy I guess.
Just to put the record straight, I'm (author of the post) not upset, mad or sad about anything, it is what it is, I'm sure some like it, others don't. I'm glad I have the option to turn it off, like most stuff I don't like in Firefox, it tends to be easy to get rid of it.
I shared it as a blog post as I've already had two people asking me privately if I know how to get rid of it, as I'm the reason they use 1Password in the first place, not because "I got so upset I couldn't contain it" or something like that. Surely there are more wondering it then.
I also don't think parent seem upset either, but I won't attempt to speak for them. But arguing for/against a position doesn't mean they aren't happy or that they are upset, conflicting views and perspectives is normal, even within the same person sometimes :)
I understand that, but as someone who was an engineer at both Microsoft and Apple, I see absolutely no problem with 3rd-parties adding useful features.
As I said, as long as 3rd parties aren't overriding the built-in functionality by default (e.g., using the same keyboard shortcuts), there's no problem. 99% of FF users will probably never even know it has its own picker.
Hmmm. Let me preface here that I think Mozilla invests its energy in a strange way.
On the other hand, I am not sure I can agree with "OS-level feature".
An emoji is essentially something simple, right? I am thinking of an "Unicode symbol" here. So to me, I would like to use any emoji or unicode as-is, anywhere, when it comes to user input - copy/paste, perhaps even converting it to a real image. You mentioned that "browsers should respect if emojis are forbidden by the OS", in essence, and I am not sure I agree with that. If an OS does not allow me to use an emoji, then I would not want to use that OS (well, I use Linux, so that does not matter anyway; and I avoid GNOME since it is too opinionated - I want to decide what I can do, I don't want remote developers decide what to do; this is also why I stopped using KDE, after the donation-daemon was added by Nate not so long ago).
> Why would I want text input in one app to have a feature that text input in other apps lacks?
That is a valid question but would I want to give up on emojis because "the OS does not support it"? I'd much rather use emojis, even IF an OS does not support it. I really don't want to be limited like that by an OS.
Perhaps this simply refers to different assumptions. I think we can agree that Mozilla invests their resources in a strange way though.
This is an "OS"-feature, where OS means the GUI-Framework that Firefox is using to integrate with the DE.
> If the OS doesn’t provide the feature, then that is the OS’s decision to make, and the browser should respect it.
That's a very strange claim. Nearly everything in any app is something the OS is not providing; that's why apps exist in the first place, to enhance the environment.
> Why would I want text input in one app to have a feature that text input in other apps lacks?
Why should they cripple themselves willingly; just to align with others? Especially as this is a web browser, which has become the main way of interaction with a big part of the world.
I'm on Firefox 150.0.1 on Windows, and Ctrl+. consistently opens up the Firefox Multi-Account Containers panel, regardless of hitting that shortcut while focusing this same text box I'm writing on right now, or not.
So this sounds like not working as expected I guess.
So it makes sense that they do not get the emoji picker, as they are in windows. I use macos and I also get the multiacccount container. On macos the emoji system-wide shortcut is ctrl+cmd+space.
Oh, totally yes, missed that they wrote that, thanks! This change from Firefox only applies to Linux, so Windows and macOS users shouldn't notice any difference compared to before in regards to `ctrl + .` as far as I understand.
It is not uncommon at all? A lot of programs have slightly (or majorly) different shortcuts in windows vs linux vs macos. There are usually differences in the keyboard layouts themselves (command key in macos, super key in linux, windows(?) key in windows), as well as in system shortcuts generally.
If in most linux distributions ctrl+. opens the emoji pickers, it is not weird that they implemented it there, and not in other OSes where it would not make sense.
I think it's more that no one tried to align shortcuts across OSes, and it'd also be a huge endeavor and to be honest, sounds like it wouldn't be worth it. Takes a couple of seconds to adjust and orient yourself even if you switch between Linux, Windows and macOS multiple times per day.
Strange...clicking Ctrl+. in my Firefox (which I just updated to 150.0.1) did not bring up the Emoji Picker, but instead brought up Firefox Multi-Account Containers.
On my case, It opnes the KDE emoji picker ... But this emoji picker walys show with that key combination in any program. I think that Firefoxs nevers gets the Ctrl+. key shortcut
The Firefox UI is getting worse and worse with every version, because they are constantly adding more useless features. Any time you accidentally hit the wrong button, it launches something, because everything is a shortcut now. The latest being their split tabs, which I also had to disable. Maybe they should stop trying to turn their browser into an OS.
I despair at some of the comments on posts like this.
"Mozilla needs to attract new users!!"
Mozilla proceeds to add new features which new users might like
"No! Not like that"
Like, what do you actually want? A browser with a UI that hasn't changed since Stallman was in nappies? Things have to change in order to grow. Not everything is going to be right for you and that's OK.
> Not everything is going to be right for you and that's OK.
Yes, this is exactly right, some things won't be for everyone. The best part of Firefox (for me, besides being able to have vertical tree-style tabs) is that more times than not, you can disable and/or hide the change you don't like, as demonstrated by the blog post.
Sure, I might not agree with every change they make to default choices but they at least let us power users configure the browser so it ends up just like how we want it to be, and for that I'm very grateful, as it tends to be uncommon in this day and age.
I don't understand what you're upset about here. Firefox added this feature and, like all features, it gets in the way for some people. This article is explaining how to disable it if you're one of those people.
Nobody is saying the feature should be removed or scolding Mozilla for adding it, they're just explaining how to get rid of it if it annoys you.
The post is fine. People can disable whatever they want - I certainly do. But (at the time of writing) half a dozen comments were complaining about "useless cruft" being added.
Same as the AI integrations. There's obviously a market for them so FF has done some fairly sensible work to add them. And then people here explode like Mozilla has kicked their puppy.
Isn't the point that browsers should, ideally, be for web-browsing and nothing more? Even embedding a PDF reader is controversial, but it seems entirely unnecessary that a browser should come with its own emoji-picker—what's wrong with the system's own?
I'm old enough to remember people grumbling when audio and video elements were added. Useless crap in a browser! Just compile your own MP3 player if you want to listen to music on a website!
Same as WebUSB - heaven forbid that a website can become more useful by flashing firmware to a device!!
The web is a platform. It will grow and mature into something we can't possibly imagine. It's OK for browsers to try new things to see what sticks.
I assume that Mozilla have done some research showing people like typing emoji but don't know how to use their system emoji picker. Even in an ultra-purist world where a browser does nothing other than render HTML (death to JS!!!) surely people will want to type into boxen and POST text somewhere?
They can start by supporting more standards. It's getting harder and harder to view any modern site on this engine and the page load times are insane when compared to a Chromium stepchild like Vivaldi
> It's getting harder and harder to view any modern site on this engine
Is it? What website can you not view in Firefox today? I almost exclusively use Firefox on my computer (Safari on mobile), and can't remember the last time I encountered a website that wasn't viewable in Firefox. Even my bank, which tends to be whiny about what browser you use, works 100% in Firefox too, even with all the warnings.
I'm sorry, but that's bollocks. I browse exclusively in FF and I can't remember a single page in the last couple of years that refuses to work on it (unless it's a weird web experiment).
> ... harder to view any modern site ...
Seriously? Have a few concrete examples to back that up?
While there might be a use case for emoji picker in the browser, I don’t see how hiding one behind such an obscure shortcut brings an emoji picker to anyone who doesn’t already know how to use the one built in to their os.
> I don't really write any emojis in anything I use a browser for anyways
Proceeds to use an emoji as favicon :D
Heh fair :) For the lack of a better icon to use, I did copy paste a emoji to be used as the favicon, I hope my readers can eventually forgive me for this transgression.
> On GNOME we already have a global shortcut for some emoji picker, I think it's Super + , or something
Actually, on most distros, the default keyboard shortcut for the emoji picker on GNOME/GTK is ctrl-. (same as the Firefox shortcut). This only works on apps that support it. Older Firefox versions did not support GNOME's emoji picker at all, but Firefox 150 supports GNOME's emoji picker using the expected keyboard shortcut.
> the default keyboard shortcut for the emoji picker on GNOME/GTK is ctrl-. (same as the Firefox shortcut).
Hmm, I wonder how new that is? Could be possible that my GNOME installation is old enough to predate that, and they didn't overwrite the config like Firefox did? Because I've been using Firefox + 1Password + GNOME for years, and for as long as I can remember, `ctrl + .` has opened 1Password dialogue in Firefox, and I'm not sure I've ever seen an Emoji picker in GNOME, although I know it exists somewhere.
What I really want is an emoji explainer feature to help me read other people's emoji. I currently copy+paste a lot of them into a search engine to find out what they're supposed to be.
For me there are 4 emojis: :), :(, :/, and :D. Anything that uses fancier characters is needlessly complicated and looks like clutter to me. For me this means that whenever I use one of those in Google Chat I need to type Esc before i can send my message lest what I typed be replaced by a goofy yellow face.
https://emojipedia.org/
Does any OS get keyboard shortcuts even slightly right? I only really have experience with macOS right now, but it's terrible—just trying to find out which shortcuts are in use is non-trivial.
Is there some kind of Linux standard for this? Something that stores shortcuts in a single plain text file, so they're all visible and easily manageable?
An Emoji picker should be an OS-level feature. If the OS doesn’t provide the feature, then that is the OS’s decision to make, and the browser should respect it.
Why would I want text input in one app to have a feature that text input in other apps lacks?
It is an OS-level feature, or at least desktop environment level. Far as I know, it's always been Ctrl-. or Ctrl-; for any GTK app, but Firefox had apparently bound Ctrl-. to something else. So basically, this "added" feature is Firefox getting out of the way of the built-in picker that was already there.
On macOS, it still opens the multi-account container panel, and the emoji picker is still brought up by tapping Fn.
Okay, in that case, I completely misunderstood the issue. If the change is that Firefox now allows the system-level picker to get through instead of blocking the keyboard shortcut, that’s a win.
I thought Firefox was adding its own Emoji-picker UI.
> but Firefox had apparently bound Ctrl-. to something else.
I think up until version 150 it was nothing, as 1Password had `ctrl + .` as the default shortcut for opening up their autocomplete thing, and feels like they wouldn't have chosen that shortcut years ago if Firefox was already using it for something, but maybe I misremember.
Allow me to rephrase: If the OS doesn’t provide X, the end user should have no alternative for X.
I use both macOS and Pop!OS. The latter doesn't include an emoji picker by default, so I'm precluded from using a 3rd-party picker?
There is no issue as long as a 3rd-party app doesn't override built-in functionality. If you don't want it, it is easy to disable.
Especially on a Linux distro, you could install a 3rd-party package that adds an emoji picker system-wide, as opposed to in one app.
If every app brings its own emoji picker, then you end up with a different interface everywhere.
> then you end up with a different interface everywhere.
This whole post is about someone being upset that Firefox finally did support the system level interface and shortcut. And you're upset about that while asking for consistent interfaces. Some people can just never be happy I guess.
Just to put the record straight, I'm (author of the post) not upset, mad or sad about anything, it is what it is, I'm sure some like it, others don't. I'm glad I have the option to turn it off, like most stuff I don't like in Firefox, it tends to be easy to get rid of it.
I shared it as a blog post as I've already had two people asking me privately if I know how to get rid of it, as I'm the reason they use 1Password in the first place, not because "I got so upset I couldn't contain it" or something like that. Surely there are more wondering it then.
I also don't think parent seem upset either, but I won't attempt to speak for them. But arguing for/against a position doesn't mean they aren't happy or that they are upset, conflicting views and perspectives is normal, even within the same person sometimes :)
I understand that, but as someone who was an engineer at both Microsoft and Apple, I see absolutely no problem with 3rd-parties adding useful features.
As I said, as long as 3rd parties aren't overriding the built-in functionality by default (e.g., using the same keyboard shortcuts), there's no problem. 99% of FF users will probably never even know it has its own picker.
I mean, Firefox is 3rd party, so.
Hmmm. Let me preface here that I think Mozilla invests its energy in a strange way.
On the other hand, I am not sure I can agree with "OS-level feature".
An emoji is essentially something simple, right? I am thinking of an "Unicode symbol" here. So to me, I would like to use any emoji or unicode as-is, anywhere, when it comes to user input - copy/paste, perhaps even converting it to a real image. You mentioned that "browsers should respect if emojis are forbidden by the OS", in essence, and I am not sure I agree with that. If an OS does not allow me to use an emoji, then I would not want to use that OS (well, I use Linux, so that does not matter anyway; and I avoid GNOME since it is too opinionated - I want to decide what I can do, I don't want remote developers decide what to do; this is also why I stopped using KDE, after the donation-daemon was added by Nate not so long ago).
> Why would I want text input in one app to have a feature that text input in other apps lacks?
That is a valid question but would I want to give up on emojis because "the OS does not support it"? I'd much rather use emojis, even IF an OS does not support it. I really don't want to be limited like that by an OS.
Perhaps this simply refers to different assumptions. I think we can agree that Mozilla invests their resources in a strange way though.
> An Emoji picker should be an OS-level feature.
This is an "OS"-feature, where OS means the GUI-Framework that Firefox is using to integrate with the DE.
> If the OS doesn’t provide the feature, then that is the OS’s decision to make, and the browser should respect it.
That's a very strange claim. Nearly everything in any app is something the OS is not providing; that's why apps exist in the first place, to enhance the environment.
> Why would I want text input in one app to have a feature that text input in other apps lacks?
Why should they cripple themselves willingly; just to align with others? Especially as this is a web browser, which has become the main way of interaction with a big part of the world.
I'm on Firefox 150.0.1 on Windows, and Ctrl+. consistently opens up the Firefox Multi-Account Containers panel, regardless of hitting that shortcut while focusing this same text box I'm writing on right now, or not.
So this sounds like not working as expected I guess.
Might depend on when you first launched Firefox, so it tries to "grandfather" some settings across the versions?
That `ctrl + .` now opens the emoji picker on Linux seems to very much be intended, judging by this release post: https://www.firefox.com/en-US/firefox/150.0/releasenotes/
> Added support for the GTK emoji picker on Linux, allowing users to insert emoji using the system shortcut (typically Ctrl+.).
>> Windows
> Linux [...] system shortcut
So it makes sense that they do not get the emoji picker, as they are in windows. I use macos and I also get the multiacccount container. On macos the emoji system-wide shortcut is ctrl+cmd+space.
Oh, totally yes, missed that they wrote that, thanks! This change from Firefox only applies to Linux, so Windows and macOS users shouldn't notice any difference compared to before in regards to `ctrl + .` as far as I understand.
...whose idea it was to have shortcuts differ by OS??
It is not uncommon at all? A lot of programs have slightly (or majorly) different shortcuts in windows vs linux vs macos. There are usually differences in the keyboard layouts themselves (command key in macos, super key in linux, windows(?) key in windows), as well as in system shortcuts generally.
If in most linux distributions ctrl+. opens the emoji pickers, it is not weird that they implemented it there, and not in other OSes where it would not make sense.
I think it's more that no one tried to align shortcuts across OSes, and it'd also be a huge endeavor and to be honest, sounds like it wouldn't be worth it. Takes a couple of seconds to adjust and orient yourself even if you switch between Linux, Windows and macOS multiple times per day.
Strange...clicking Ctrl+. in my Firefox (which I just updated to 150.0.1) did not bring up the Emoji Picker, but instead brought up Firefox Multi-Account Containers.
Sounds like you might be on macOS? (or Windows, given you write Ctrl rather than Cmd?) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47961337
In hindsight, I probably should have made it clear that this change is for Firefox 150 on Linux specifically.
Odd, I am on firefox 150, and Ctrl + . doesn't seem to do anything.
What OS? Might just be while focused in text inputs as well, in case you've been trying it without an input.
On my case, It opnes the KDE emoji picker ... But this emoji picker walys show with that key combination in any program. I think that Firefoxs nevers gets the Ctrl+. key shortcut
My input method's emoji picker is bound to Super+. and works fine in Firefox... ESR 140.10. WTF did they even need to change?
> Annoyingly enough, Mozilla decided to add a emoji picker to Firefox 150, which fair enough, probably some people like
Mozilla is really focusing on how to break the Google monopoly.
With the POWER of the Emoji, Mozilla will succeed here. I ... suppose?
They break the Google monopoly by being funded by Google so that Google can say there is an alternative
Yep. Blatant controlled opposition.
Ladybird browser can't come soon enough.
Is Firefox turning into Edge?
The list of things I don't want in a browser is growing.
Perhaps they need to consider a "basic" version
The Firefox UI is getting worse and worse with every version, because they are constantly adding more useless features. Any time you accidentally hit the wrong button, it launches something, because everything is a shortcut now. The latest being their split tabs, which I also had to disable. Maybe they should stop trying to turn their browser into an OS.
just use seamonkey oor palemoon