Firefox extensions helped Mozilla Firefox avoid negative publicity from absence of the parental control feature.
The developers of the Firefox web browsing software application provided the Firefox extension feature to take care of problems like the one involving the parental control feature. Now, the first problem related to the parental control feature is that not many end users of the web browsing software application want this feature to be present in the web browser.
Of course, while there is no doubt that a large number of children are accessing the World Wide Web today and that the World Wide Web today can be very beneficial for the growth and development of the internet of the child, there are an equally large number of individuals who do not have any children to be protected from unsuitable content.
As far as these end users of the Firefox web browsing software application are concerned, the presence of the parental control feature is nothing but an unnecessary feature in the web browsing software application that has absolutely no utility for them.
Of course, while it is impossible to incorporate only those features that have utility for all the end users of the web browsing software application, the developers of the Firefox web browser seek to incorporate those features that have utility for the maximum number of end users.
As far as the parental control feature is concerned, the number of end users who want the feature and the number of end users who do not to seek its presence in web browsing software application are almost equal. In such a scenario, the decision to incorporate or omit the feature from the web browsing software application depends on other factors.
Now, considering the fact that the presence of the feature does not result in the achievement of the basic purpose of the feature, the developers of the Firefox web browsing software application decided not to incorporate the same. Past experiences have shown that the developers of web browsing software application are not the best persons to incorporate the parental control feature.
The developers of the web browsing software application adopt a one size fits all approach while the problem of children surfing unsuitable content on the World Wide Web differs from person to person, place to place and time to time.
In such a scenario, a specific a solution that is customized to suit the requirements of certain classes of end users is required. Now, the Firefox extension feature is the perfect medium to incorporate the extension feature into the web browsing software application.
That is the reason why the developers of the Firefox web browsing software application have simply avoided incorporating the parental control feature and have were left it for the developers of the Firefox extensions to create suitable extensions that cater to the expectations of the end users.
There are many advantages in this approach adopted by the developers of the Firefox web browsing software application. For starters, resources are not wasted in incorporating a feature that will not be used by a significant percentage of the end users. Secondly, the problem of lack of success of parental control feature is best solved by leaving the problem in the hands of the Firefox extension makers.
Just as the Tab Mix Plus Firefox extension modifies the behavior of the tabbed browsing feature in the web browsing software application to suit the requirements of all those end users who seek to extract more from the feature, the parental control feature is bested treated in the same manner.
On the whole, I am of the opinion that the decision of the developers of the Firefox web browser and the approach taken by the developers of the Firefox web browser to solve this problem is the best one that they could have taken under the circumstances.
Technorati Tags: Mozilla, Firefox, Firefox web browser, Firefox tabbed browsing, Firefox extensions, Firefox parental control, Firefox Tab Mix Plus extension
Tags: Extensions & Plugins
