Re: Tor and Firefox 3

[Arrakis <arrakistor@xxxxxxxxx>]

Howdy Roger,

I thought the original question was asking about an alternative
to torbutton.

No plans to include torbutton in future versions of xB Browser.
The reason we took it out is because it is counter-intuitive
to user behaviors.

Most users don't want a browser for both "anonymous" and "public"
sessions. As an analogy, you may find people prefer to feed their
dogs with different spoons than they themselves use, and it isn't
for lack of a sanitizing dishwasher. So the user seems to prefer
an entirely different disposable session, instead of
"states" as provided by TorButton. Because our focus is user-
oriented instead of design-oriented, elimination of TorButton was
obvious.

This conveys many benefits, not the least of which being one
less point of failure and zero learning curve for the user. A
greater benefit is that this promotes and enables concurrent
browser usage so the user does not have to give up the browser
they are used to. I feel this significantly increases the chance
that the user will keep on employing a "secure" browser, rather
than being faced with the choice between between having to integrate
and learn something new, or turning off the "warning lights"
and going back to insecure browsing habits. Wow, poor English.

However, a significant distinction has to be made so the users
do not confuse the "secure" browser with their normal browser,
so we introduced the XeroBank Modern firefox theme, based on
the defunct Netscape browser.

More good news, though. At 6.7m download requests, I think we are
now getting a strong idea of the user, and the appropriate threat
model, so it may be time to start writing some papers that
establish the evolutionary principles of xBB.

Steve