The feature was not really used, would have broken websites

Feb 6, 2016 14:21 GMT  ·  By

Mozilla released Firefox 44 at the end of January 2016, and the development team removed one of the browser's settings without telling anyone.

The "Ask me every time" cookie management option was accessible in Firefox 43 via the browser's menu -> Tools -> Options -> Privacy -> History section. Here, users had to select "Use custom settings for history" in the "Firefox will" section, which then showed more options.

One of these options read "Accept cookies from sites"... and keep until "ask me every time."

This option means that every time you accessed a site, a popup would appear, asking users if they wanted to allow cookies and for how much time.

This option is now gone, and users can only choose "Until I close Firefox" or "when they expire."

Firefox community overreacted, again

As soon as the news broke out, users started complaining about Mozilla's authoritarian methods of managing Firefox, and the Foundation's crusade against useful customization settings.

Mozilla engineers, on the other hand, said that the feature was unmaintained and that the number of users using it was pretty low.

Taking into account that it took well over a week for Firefox fanboys to find out that it was removed, Mozilla's engineers were probably right when they said few people used it.

"Sticking to a dialog that pops up every other second and can easily break website functionality, is just not being realistic," said Marco Bonardo, Mozilla engineer. "Mozilla is still fighting for users privacy (tracking protection is a clear sign of that), but the tools used to do that should be on par with the current Web and should have the due quality."

As an alternative, Mozilla's staff recommends that users visit Firefox's Add-ons portal and choose from the many privacy boosting extensions that are currently available and can replace the defunct feature.

Cookie management settings in Firefox 44
Cookie management settings in Firefox 44

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Cookie management settings in Firefox 43
Cookie management settings in Firefox 44
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