More options and parameters to fine-tune

Firefox has hidden options, which can be unveiled and altered by entering about:config in the address bar. For example, the browser can be configured to better exploit pipieling or put an end to the most stubborn pop-ups. What is this good for? Avoidance of arbitrary choices of values which are otherwide hard-coded and this immutable. Hidden options are allowing these to be changed, using some loose UI or commands syntax, shall that ever become a necessity.

Hidden options are an excellent idea in principle. Thunderbird enables you to enter a variety of statements into JavaScript files, thereby customising the mail client quite endlessly (introduction phrase, symbols, etc.). Whether these hidden option are implication of an advanced option that is not yet implemented, I can’t tell. Either way, it is a selling point to anyone who feels passionate about hacking or even requires certain customisations.

For example, I know I would be deterred by a client that does not handle exectutable/dynamic signatures and I also feel uncomfortable having no control over the X-headers. I currently use 3 mail clients in tandem (KMail, Thunderbird, Horde) because none offers all the required features. Thunderbird with its hidden options and plug-ins is yet the most powerful/flexible.

As regards hidden options in general, the only issue I can think of is increased complexity in the code. Many conditional statements and more parameters/values which are not hardcoded make code flow harder to keep abreast of. Support for multiple languages has a similar effect. Having said that, since broadly speaking, those to ever look at the code know what they are doing, I think it is balanced by the positive points, if not overwhelmed by them. Many would disagree nonetheless.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 1st, 2005 at 2:23 pm and is filed under Opinion, Programming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.