In order to measure the user experience, Firefox collects a wide range of anonymized timing metrics related to page load, responsiveness, startup and other aspects of browser performance. Collecting data while holding ourselves to the highest standards of privacy can be challenging. For example, because we rely on aggregated metrics, we lack the ability to pinpoint data from any particular website. But perhaps even more challenging is analyzing the data once collected and drawing actionable conclusions. In the future we’ll talk more about these challenges and how we’re addressing them, but in this post we’d like to share how some of the metrics that are fundamental to how our users experience the browser have improved throughout the year.
I won’t disagree that uMatrix wasn’t a clearer UI for what it was doing but, a) it’s (IIRC) not as granular just blocking per domain & b) it’s mare difficult to share your settings with others. If you go thru the more obnoxious process of uBlock Origin of looking thru its request log window, you’ll have a plaintext file that easy to host for others to share or to contribute to a larger filter list project.
Because of this, I now maintain a public filter list I know some folks subscribe to, github-less-social. Now others can use or pitch in to a project where others don’t want to see Microsoft GitHub’s social features or product upsells when interacting with code projects that don’t respect the freedom of their users/contributors by forcing them into a Microsoft ecosystem.