Top all-time · #2035
Alex Limi
Personal blog · limi.netdesignweb
Alex Limi's personal blog at limi.net covers design and web. Since 2009, 39 different Hacker News readers have linked it 43 times, most often “Checkboxes that kill your product”. The last post was in 2013, but the archive is still widely read.
Most-linked posts?
- Checkboxes that kill your product11 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2013-03-19
- Improving Download Behaviors in Web Browsers3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-03-26
- UX improvements in Firefox 43 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2011-03-16
- Mythbusting: Why Firefox 4 won't score 100 on Acid33 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2011-01-25
- Checkboxes that kill your product3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2013-03-18
- Checkboxes that kill your product (2013)2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-09-27
- /articles/firefox-preferences/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-03-22
- /articles/safari-downloads/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-09-07
- Mythbusting: Why Firefox 4 won’t score 100 on Acid32 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-01-25
What Hacker News says?
> As a 'Pro' user my first expectation is options, options in everything I do , which MacOS lacks severely. It's a bad idea to add an option entirely for the purpose of making the product not work anymore. https://limi.net/checkboxes > Window management sucks I'm always mystified reading these kinds of posts on HN because it literally always starts out as "macOS is an OS for babies" and turns out to mean "macOS does…
Comment linking /checkboxes
on “Apple M5 chip”Submitted Checkboxes that kill your product as a story · 370 points
HN discussionYou might want to try running in a fresh profile, to see if anything in your old profile is causing the problem: http://limi.net/articles/firefox-preferences/ Sorry about your unanswered bug - it's pretty hard for us to address general performance bugs that don't have specific steps to reproduce. We have to focus on fixing what we can see or measure, and hope that it fixes what users are seeing too.
Comment linking /articles/firefox-preferences/
on “Firefox 4 is here”Submitted Mythbusting: Why Firefox 4 won’t score 100 on Acid3 as a story · 269 points
HN discussionIf anything it's the other way around. Mozilla works out in the open and the designs of the new UI had been released long before Opera released its software, as Alex Limi points out: http://limi.net/articles/firefox-4/ . That said, what's wrong with taking the good ideas from other products? It's a net win for the users and the web.
Comment linking /articles/firefox-4/
on “Firefox 4 is here”Submitted Checkboxes that kill your product as a story · 58 points
HN discussionYou're probably thinking of "Checkboxes That Kill": http://limi.net/checkboxes-that-kill/ - and I believe it's what inspired Firefox to remove the option.
Comment linking /checkboxes-that-kill/
on “"Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23”Submitted Making browsers faster: Resource Packages as a story · 52 points
HN discussionHere's the bug where the option was removed: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=851702 Limi's blog post "Checkboxes that kill your product" is cited in the bug as a good explanation of the motivation behind this: http://limi.net/checkboxes-that-kill/ The option has been added to the DevTools for developers who find it useful: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=864249 And of course addons like NoS…
Comment linking /checkboxes-that-kill/
on “"Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23”Submitted Safari adopts proposed Firefox download manager design as a story · 6 points
HN discussionHere's a very relevant blog post by Alex Limi of Mozilla: http://limi.net/checkboxes-that-kill/ Most sites these days that aren’t just displaying content will fail in interesting & mysterious ways if you don’t have JavaScript enabled. For the general population, Firefox will appear broken. And yes, I know that some people have reasons (privacy, web development) to turn off JavaScript. There are many add-ons that can…
Comment linking /checkboxes-that-kill/
on “"Disable Javascript" option removed in Firefox 23”Submitted Improving Download Behaviors in Web Browsers as a story · 5 points
HN discussion> None of these uses requires the ability to play quake3 inside firefox, or are really applications inside a webpage. Maybe, for now. But WebRTC/WebSockets have a value proposal for real-time interaction in collaborative office suites. Canvas/WebGL have one for performance in authoring tools and for articles illustrations. Documents are readable in your default serif/sans-serif set, but WebFonts are a good designer/…
Comment linking /checkboxes-that-kill/
on “Firefox exploit found in the wild”Submitted Checkboxes that kill your product as a story · 4 points
HN discussionYou can't turn off random parts of a system someone else made. You don't know what they do. https://limi.net/checkboxes
Comment linking /checkboxes
on “Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 7.2”Submitted UX improvements in Firefox 4 as a story · 3 points
HN discussionWell, first step I'd recommend not looking. There is someone in the world whose job it is to look at this. You're doing their job for free! [0] As for turning things off, it's a bad idea to sell a product you haven't tested, and it's also a bad idea to add settings that randomly break stuff because users will forget they changed those settings. So it's difficult. https://limi.net/checkboxes [0] you can also become t…
Comment linking /checkboxes
on “Apple ML Research: Muse Spark Open with MLX on Mac Studio”Submitted Improving download behaviors in web browsers as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThey don't let users easily disable JS because that breaks so many webpages, and they didn't want to deal with supporting users who complained that Firefox wasn't working. http://limi.net/checkboxes-that-kill/
Comment linking /checkboxes-that-kill/
on “Firefox Bugzilla: Remove Pocket Integration”Submitted Resource Packages specification ready for prototyping as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> Firefox's declining market share over this period is very good evidence The only evidence we have is that Google's marketing team has been very effective at advertising Chrome. :-P > Many of us long-time Firefox users have actually found the past three years to be the worst so far, in terms of design. I'm not sure why you think you can speak for many Firefox users. > rush to copy Chrome in appearance and behavior…
Comment linking /articles/safari-downloads/
on “Rebuilding a simplified Firefox logo”Submitted Checkboxes that kill your product (2013) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAt which point, it essentially becomes a "break some of my apps in confusing and inexplicable ways" button. Related reading: http://limi.net/checkboxes-that-kill
Comment linking /checkboxes-that-kill
on “Apple Delays iOS SSL Requirement Indefinitely”Submitted Checkboxes that kill your product (2013) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionWith a changing of the guard, the honor system can handily disappear. We saw this transpire with the burying of the JavaScript toggle. A new guy showed up, and decided that disabling JavaScript was “an advanced feature” and just too dangerous for ordinary folk. [1, 2] Of course it begins with good intentions, and promises to leave explicit privacy options alone, but new devs show up with different opinion and the ol…
Comment linking /checkboxes-that-kill/
on “Firefox/Normandy/PreferenceRollout”Submitted Mythbusting: Why Firefox 4 won't score 100 on Acid3 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionFirefox's arguments for not really bothering with the remaining parts of Acid3 was that it seemed like it they weren't testing particularly relevant standards and that the implementations of the other browsers for those standards were mostly to pass Acid3 and not particularly useful either. See http://limi.net/articles/firefox-acid3/ for more info. That seems like valid reasoning to me. I've also seen Hixie make com…
Comment linking /articles/firefox-acid3/
on “Firefox Now Scores 100% on Acid3 Test”Submitted Improving download behaviors in web browsers as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI seem to remember an article awhile back where someone from Mozilla wrote that they didn't care to make up the last X% of the test because (if I recall correctly) they didn't agree with the interpretation of the standards that made up the tiny bit they were failing on. They felt they were keeping true to the actual spec and that the Acid was incorrect and thus it was silly to conform just to get that 100/100. I may…
Comment linking /articles/firefox-acid3/
on “Firefox Now Scores 100% on Acid3 Test”Submitted Paper Cuts & Firefox 4 as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
