23 ms·

Firefox 75.0

• webjockey 7y ago
  What is this?
• chungy 7y ago
  The new style of the address bar is extremely jarring, and (imo) ugly. It breaks all kinds of UI conventions, drawing itself over other UI elements like the tab bar and the toolbar to the left and right of it. For this reason alone, at least I've found that setting `browser.urlbar.update1` to false in about:config reverts to the old code--mostly. Firefox 75 still seems to have changed the click behavior of the bar to be totally unlike any other program too; it highlights the entire text by default, without putting it in the selection buffer, and in general makes handling it with the mouse a lot more tedious than it used to be. I'm ragging on this a lot, but seriously, it's a major regression in UX.
  • jhasse 7y ago
    > Firefox 75 still seems to have changed the click behavior of the bar to be totally unlike any other program too It never acted like any other program. Double-click selected everything while normally it would select a word. They changed it to behave like one other program: Chrome.
    • chungy 7y ago
      > It never acted like any other program. Double-click selected everything while normally it would select a word. Maybe, but at least a single click (in Firefox 74) brought a text caret to type at a location, just like any other GTK text box on my system. > They changed it to behave like one other program: Chrome. If I wanted Chrome's bizarro NIH-induced UI fantasies, I'd use Chrome. I like that Firefox had a semblance of sanity and consistency with the rest of the world (even if not perfect).
    • jtmarl1n 7y ago
      Do you have the URL and search bar separated or the same input box like Chrome? I've got them as separate input boxes and text selection still works with a single click for the whole URL string.
    • nullc 7y ago
      > They changed it to behave like one other program: Chrome. Oh man, I recently had the displeasure of using Chrome on someone else's computer and was driven absolutely insane by that behavior-- it made it extremely hard to edit a url. Do you have any idea what the justification for this behavior is? (surely it's not just "be like chrome")
      • coldpie 7y ago
        > Do you have any idea what the justification for this behavior is? I don't know, but I would hazard a guess that the most common action in the URL bar is to copy the URL to paste elsewhere. Highlighting the text automatically gives the user the opportunity to immediately hit Ctrl-C. I think it's an improvement.
      • deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      • Epskampie 7y ago
        The justification that the most common task when clicking the address bar is typing a new one. Now it's just one click -> type new url. I love it, there was a about tweak you could do to get this before that I had to do over and over on every new new FF install. They made the right choice making this a default. As for editing a url: just double click the part you want to change, then type to change it.
        • nullc 7y ago
          Interesting. I think I edit urls many times more often then I type one.
    • catalogia 7y ago
      > Double-click selected everything while normally it would select a word. In Firefox 75 on MacOS, double-clicking in the address bar selects a word.
      • jhasse 7y ago
        I think it was Linux-only.
  • T-zex 7y ago
    I was confused at first and did not like it. But a few hours later got used to it. Perhaps the reason being I'm mostly interacting with a keyboard instead of mouse. The thing I like about this change is when you press Cmd+L it immediately expands most visited list and you can quickly select with the keyboard.
    • illuminated 7y ago
      Same here. Confusion at first, then I started liking the whole thing. I consider it an improvement. Would be nice to have a setting for enabling/disabling it so everyone could make it work the way they like; I feel lucky to like it the way it is now.
  • mikro2nd 7y ago
    Fully agree that this change is needless, gratuitous and downright ugly. But it gets worse... The pref that disables the ugly behaviour is going away. Indeed, in some sense it's already gone: ["Remove the megabar pref"](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1627969 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1627969) is already marked as `closed`. I think the UI change is not merely ugly, but actively harmful. When the user's attention is elsewhere, but the focus of the urlbar changes there's a nasty UI animation that occurs in the user's peripheral vision. As any real UI designer should know, human peripheral vision is primarily for motion detection, directly tied to fight-or-flight stress reactions and triggers an adrenal stress reaction which in this case is not merely "undesirable" but downright harmfully misleading. The last thing the world needs is more stress just because some delusional UI designers thought an animation upon receiving/losing focus was a good thing to implement. This abomination has to die, and today would not be soon enough.
    • 1_player 7y ago
      > This abomination has to die, and today would not be soon enough. These are some harsh words for a user interface change. One would think reading from this thread that Mozilla has committed a crime against humanity.
      • mikro2nd 7y ago
        (Quite a few people think my language was overly harsh. I'll reply to this one, but take it as read that it's much the same reply to all similar comments. Nothing personal, just this one seems to best sum up the (perfectly valid) criticism.) Yes, indeed, it is a (very small) crime against humanity. (Not a BIG Crime Against Humanity, which sounds almost like a game of some sort.) To be human is to have a hardwired hormonal stress response to this changed UI. It's something that evolved when we still lived up in trees. It's not something we can learn our way out of or train ourselves to not experience. And it is unnecessary, nay, inappropriate in a world already over-filled with stressors and noise. And I would expect UI professionals to know about this and to avoid it except in places where a stress-response would be appropriate (time critical warnings, for example). So I'll stick with the harsh language, thanks. As pointed out by some, it was not (and never intended to be) personal. At the very least they could retain an option to disable to it, but no...
  • sp332 7y ago
    There's a more complete set of flags to disable more stuff: browser.urlbar.openViewOnFocus = false browser.urlbar.update1 = false browser.urlbar.update1.interventions = false browser.urlbar.update1.searchTips = false Does any of that help the click behavior?
    • chungy 7y ago
      The bad click behavior persists.
      • mikro2nd 7y ago
        1. You have to restart the browser for changes of those prefs to take effect. 2. `browser.urlbar.update1` is going away (is already gone in nightly builds -- see my other comment elsewhere for details.)
        • chungy 7y ago
          I already assumed a restart was required (the plain update1 one requires a restart, too). Still makes no difference to click behavior.
      • drewzero1 7y ago
        I haven't updated yet, still on 74.0 -- but does browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll = false still work?
        • etiam 7y ago
          I regret to be on 75.0 and I can not find that parameter. Removed?
    • endlos 7y ago
      There's also browser.urlbar.maxRichResults which limits the number of sites shown in the dropdown, and which can be set to 0. This fixes my biggest complaint about the new URL bar.
    • 7y ago
  • Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
    I, for one, am absolutely fine with this. I have updated FF recently and didn't even notice any changes, had to look up what had changed after stumbling on this comment. I interact with address bar a lot, copy-pasting parts of URL all the time. As long as they don't by default hide https:// https:// and parts of URL from the address bar itself in Safari/Chrome style , I'm ok with it not shown in suggestions. (I have a big 24" screen though, maybe that affects somehow).
    • jsjddbbwj 7y ago
      I don't believe for a single second you haven't noticed the new url bar animation.
      • Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
        What animation???
        • maest 7y ago
          I assume the GP is talking about the search bar becoming slightly bigger on focus.
          • Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
            Oh, the horror!
      • lawnchair_larry 7y ago
        I’ve been using Nightly for a long time and I have no idea what this is about.
        • a_wild_dandan 7y ago
          I still legitimately don't see what people are describing about the address bar. I haven't noticed a change the entire time I've used Firefox (about year). Could someone post a before-and-after screenshot or something? (I've been using Firefox Developer Edition too if that makes a difference?)
  • Hamuko 7y ago
    >It breaks all kinds of UI conventions Firefox devs don't really care about UI conventions.
  • Silhouette 7y ago
    It's not just the tab bar. I use Tree Style Tab and so have tabs down the left side of my window and the horizontal tab bar hidden. However, my bookmarks toolbar is right under the URL and search boxes, and that toolbar is probably my most frequently used interface to the browser, with the search bar not far off. The URL bar is a distant third, but now a slight misclick opens the ohmygoditshuge URL bar area and then the bookmark toolbar I was probably aiming for is mostly obscured. Not only that, but clicking in the area above the URL bar then has different results depending on exactly where you click, but they range from not closing anything to closing the drop-down but still leaving the oversize URL bar partially hiding the bookmarks. None of them just closes the whole thing again, the way you would expect an expandable control to do when you move the focus elsewhere. "Infuriating" is not an adequate description for this change in something I use hundreds if not thousands of times per day. It really is as annoying as when MS Office switched to the ribbon UI.
  • mkl 7y ago
    > it highlights the entire text by default, without putting it in the selection buffer That selection buffer inaction is desired behaviour IMHO. Changing the selection buffer should only happen with explicit user selecting. GTK screws this up and constantly clobbers my selection buffer, which is a real pain. That's one reason I stick with KDE and Qt applications whenever possible.
    • coldpie 7y ago
      Automatically putting highlighted text into the clipboard is an old, old Unix convention. I personally hate it, along with the middle-click to paste action. AFAIK neither of those behaviors can be disabled, and I find them both extremely surprising, unintuitive and harmful. I guess some people like it, but if I could turn all that off, I'd be thrilled.
      • mkl 7y ago
        Manually highlighted text going into the selection buffer for quick middle-click pasting is great, and makes me much more efficient at manipulating text on Linux than Windows. If you don't like it, you can just ignore it: don't click the middle mouse button on text areas. The selection buffer is independent of the explicit cut-copy-paste clipboard (if you have some program running that's trying to synchronise them, you can turn that off).
        • coldpie 7y ago
          Yeah yeah, it's totally a preference thing. I can't ignore it, because I use the scroll wheel a _ton_ (have you ever used the middle-click autoscroll thing in Firefox? it rules). So sometimes the scroll wheel gets accidentally clicked and I paste some junk into the middle of the document I happen to be scrolling through. I'd much rather have a strong, confirmative action like pressing Ctrl-C and V to interact with the clipboard, rather than overloaded functions like highlighting text or interacting with the scroll wheel. It sucks, but after 10+ years on X11, I've mostly gotten used to it.
          • 7y ago
  • johnchristopher 7y ago
    It's the first thing I did after ff updated itself again in the background and I saw that: google for a fix (https://www.ghacks.net/2020/04/08/how-to-restore-the-old-firefox-address-bar/ https://www.ghacks.net/2020/04/08/how-to-restore-the-old-fir...).
  • mastazi 7y ago
    One of my most common action sequences in Firefox is: Open new tab -> Click on one of the links in the Bookmarks Bar [1] But now, when I open a new tab, the address bar is expanded and partially hides the Bookmarks Bar. So it's hard to click on my favourites. Needless to say, I disabled the new address bar straight away. [1] I'm pretty sure that I do this more often compared to typing something in the address bar.
    • coldpie 7y ago
      That's interesting, it doesn't auto-expand for me. When I make a new tab, the URL bar is active, but it doesn't expand the dropdown thingy. If I start typing, or click on the URL bar, then it shows the dropdown. Maybe it's a platform difference (I'm on Linux), or some configuration tweak (I use the "compact" layout option), or buggy for one of us :)
      • wtallis 7y ago
        The dropdown list of suggestions/search results is not the expanding thing that people are complaining about. The URL box itself expands. Maybe you wouldn't have been so dismissive of people's complaints if you had fully understood what this change does.
        • coldpie 7y ago
          I don't think I've been dismissive of anyone's complaints?
          • wtallis 7y ago
            You've called people rude for feeling strongly about their objections to this change, you've denied that Mozilla would have shipped a negative change, you've accused the detractors of this change of not understanding that it could pose a maintenance burden to keep it optional, and you've asserted that said maintenance burden outweighs the usability benefit of letting existing users keep the existing behavior. You've done everything except provide an actual argument in favor of why Mozilla should introduce this new UI behavior that breaks existing conventions and interferes with other features in ways that are as-yet unresolved. And you're doing similar stuff elsewhere in the thread about other questionable Mozilla UI decisions.
  • sterwill 7y ago
    I agree the new experience is poor, and "select all" part is the worst. I haven't needed or wanted that feature since 1993 and I don't know why someone thought it was the thing for me in 2020. Every desktop environment I've used provides an easy way to select lots of text (double- or triple-click). That's still how every other application works, so what's the point here? Who really needs to select-all-and-copy the URL bar all the time?
    • g_b 7y ago
      Here's why selecting the entire URL is good. The most common action performed with the URL bar is to search for something or to navigate. Selecting everything helps you type your search query without having to double click or triple click. Can you describe your use-case? Why do you need to place the caret inside the address bar and not have it all selected? In the few cases where I want to copy/delete a part of the URL I can do a 2nd click after I clicked once. Ever since I saw this behavior in Chrome I wanted it in all my browsers. I'm very glad Firefox copied this feature.
      • sorenjan 7y ago
        I agree. The vast majority of all cases were I click on the URL bar is because I want to replace or copy what's there. In the few cases when I want to modify the address I can just click an extra time. Select all optimizes for the common case for me and probably most users. I also like that the list of previous visited sites are shown wherever I click now, the down arrow wasn't really necessary. But I don't have anything under the URL bar, I have all my bookmarks next to it.
      • ubercow13 7y ago
        This is just my opinion :) but, clicking in the address bar in order to type a URL seems pretty inefficient. Why not activate the address bar with the keyboard, which you will need to use to type the URL anyway? It's similar to typing a URL in the address bar and instead of typing Enter to navigate, you grab the mouse and click the little 'go' arrow on the right.
  • red_admiral 7y ago
    I think there's a great market niche for Mozilla - they could be the browser for people who want more control and configurability than the competition. People who don't want an "intelligent" URL bar. I have a feeling they could capture a lot of the developer market that way. Unfortunately, that's not the direction they seem to be taking. They might still get a bunch of Manifest V3 refugees in the near future though.
    • hombre_fatal 7y ago
      Aren't there already multiple forks that move slower than Firefox and resist change? Presumably the people who call minor feature changes "abominations that need to die" (seen in these HN comments) don't actually care enough to use those forks, so I'm not very convinced that there's any market in being a niche. All the HNers who pile on modern browsers couldn't even agree on the features their ideal browser should have, yet these same users are quite hostile in comments sections. Talk about a thankless niche. The top comment thread so far are people seemingly emotional because the new URL bar expands a few pixels when selected and selects all its text upon focus like Chrome's and Safari's UX teams have already decided is most useful to most people (including myself).
      • Wowfunhappy 7y ago
        > Aren't there already multiple forks that move slower than Firefox and resist change? Not really. Pale Moon is much, much more than just a UI change at this point—their goal is to maintain compatibility with the old extension system, which is a much bigger deal. And it's increasingly incompatible with the modern web as a result.
  • Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    And I can't for the life of me even understand what the purpose is! The URL bar already had a very noticeable focus state outline. Are there users who couldn't tell it was in focus? People on reddit have been complaining about how the bookmarks bar is harder to access now. The developer response has been something to the effect of "it's only covering the bar by a few pixels, it's really not a substantial difference." I'd be inclined to agree with the evelopers, except, what is the advantage of that trade-off? Sure, you're only making the bookmarks bar very marginally harder to use, but, it's still something, and if users aren't getting anything out of it in return... why do it?
    • pmontra 7y ago
      I should google the design process but maybe they're doing it to make the input box match the padding of the drop down menu. I don't remember how it worked in FF74 (it's one of those things that I don't notice if they just work) but disabling the new behavior with browser.urlbar.update1 false makes the drop down menu expand to the full width of the window, so no problems with padding. The new menu is as narrow as the URL box and padded, so they had a problem. I don't like moving interfaces (I disabled all the movable parts in Gnome Shell, extensions authors be blessed) so I'm sticking with browser.urlbar.update1 false until it goes away in FF 77.
  • DavideNL 7y ago
    Agreed, the address bar popup is very annoying. It should be possible to disable, permanently.
  • creativecupcak3 7y ago
    Would have to agree. The new style of the address bar is unsettling and invasive to say the least.
  • soulofmischief 7y ago
    Hardcore Firefox fanboy since its humble beginnings. Since 60/Quantum, I can't think of a single UX change which hasn't been detrimental. Someone up top is souring the entire product in a misguided attempt to recapture market share. But all they're doing is continuing to bleed out remaining users, the majority of whom are likely somewhere between the casual and power user.
    • pmachinery 7y ago
      > Hardcore Firefox fanboy since its humble beginnings. Same here. And although I may stick with it due to my loathing of the alternatives, I'm increasingly sick of it. The complaints about the new URL bar/bookmarks toolbar were exactly my experience, but what's worse is Mozilla just doesn't care[0]. They also have a mobile browser called Firefox Lite which after a recent update displayed sponsored ads as top sites on the home screen. Not a problem though, just remove them and put your own chosen sites, right? Wrong. It's not possible. Repeat: Mozilla forces unremovable advertising as top sites on the home screen of one of their mobile browsers, used by millions of people. On the download page for this product[1] Mozilla modestly promotes itself as: "dedicated to keeping the power of the internet in people's hands" [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22832729 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22832729 [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.rocket https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.ro...
      • soulofmischief 7y ago
        The splintering of their mobile platform into several overlapping apps is its own hot pile of garbage, if you ask me. I haven't even tried Firefox Lite but if they do that with Focus then I'll be pretty incensed.
  • MikusR 7y ago
    Best part of this laptop first address bar is that it shows less (half of) information than the old one (lengthwise)
  • gpchelkin 7y ago
    >changed the click behavior of the bar to be totally unlike any other program too I am using Firefox Developer Edition, and I was also stunned at first a while ago. But now as I'm getting used to it, I tend to like it more and more. It was really hard to select just one part of the path (word) before this change, and now I can just double-click those parts to delete them then (useful when you want to cleanup the URL from some mess). Also here is the description and justification for this change from OP link: On Linux, the behavior when clicking on the Address Bar and the Search Bar now matches other desktop platforms: a single click selects all without primary selection, a double click selects a word, and a triple click selects all with primary selection
  • bhauer 7y ago
    Completely agreed. When this first landed in Firefox Developer Edition, I thought something was broken with the layout. It looks especially broken to me when using the "compact" layout mode. It took me some time to find the "browser.urlbar.update1" setting that disabled it, and it was a relief to finally see the address bar return to normal size. I've historically found the address bar in Firefox superior to all other browsers precisely because it is not biased toward being a gateway to search engines. It has always done a superb job of finding what I am looking for from my history and bookmarks. I worry that the new algorithm will reduce the utility of the address bar for me, making it similar to other browsers'.
  • SubiculumCode 7y ago
    I restarted Firefox because I thought it was crashing...then I noted the new version and came here. Yeah this address bar UI change is both jarring and disorienting.
  • NullPrefix 7y ago
    Bend over and embrace the change. This setting is going away in ff77, AFAIK. Or you could just file a bug report upstream, that would produce more long term results.
  • maest 7y ago
    Since people are posting their opinions (although presenting them as facts), I would like to share mine: I actually like the new address bar. It makes it clear it's selected, it makes it larger, which improves readabilty and I find the dropshadow aesthetic.
    • ravar 7y ago
      The new address bar is a disaster for me since I use i3wm and give Firefox half of my screen. Given half the screen the new address bar drop-down menu is very small and struggles to efficiently display the possible completions when it is selected.
  • jeanvalmarc 7y ago
    The number one rule of UX changes, people shit on everything no matter what you do. Counter-anecdote: it's a fine-to-good change.
  • thereare5lights 7y ago
    I'm on the developer edition so I've had it for a month now. I didn't like it at first, but now I don't even remember any differences.
  • ckcheng 7y ago
    Extremely jarring, ugly to me, and what's more: the escape key still doesn't escape the address bar to focus back on the page!
• Lio 7y ago
  For me possibly the most interesting feature of this release is the possibility Of good GPU support on Gnu/Linux/Wayland. https://mastransky.wordpress.com/2020/03/03/webgl-and-fgx-acceleration-on-wayland/ https://mastransky.wordpress.com/2020/03/03/webgl-and-fgx-ac...
  • miohtama 7y ago
    How do Chromebooks fare on this? I would naively assume Google forces some quality and conformance testing for Chromebook vendors, so they should at least have a basic GPU stack working.
    • chronogram 7y ago
      Of course (not meaning to be snarky to you) Chromebooks can do hardware acceleration. Off the shelf hardware that supports Linux can also do it with no issue if you compile ChromiumOS yourself. You can see it for yourself if you have a reasonably modern non-Nvidia device. You can find a build here [1], and 7z x it to a device or use Rufus, and when you boot it you can check a guest session and see how watching a YouTube video does not light your laptop on fire. I am very glad that Firefox is getting there too. Judging by this Reddit comment [2] it's still got a long way to go, but that's quite fair when it's just the one Red Hatter working on it I believe. [1] https://chromium.arnoldthebat.co.uk/?dir=daily&order=modified&sort=desc https://chromium.arnoldthebat.co.uk/?dir=daily&order=modifie... [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/fwk3yt/firefox_750_released/fmrkb35/ https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/fwk3yt/firefox_750_r...
  • andrewnicolalde 7y ago
    I'm really struggling for reasons to care about what happens on Wayland... because I have yet to find any decent desktop environments or window managers for Wayland. Sway is a close contender, but the one major problem I have with it is the fact that on high-DPI displays XWayland applications appear blurry. Do you have any recommendations for Wayland desktop environments or window managers?
    • 7y ago
• vijaybritto 7y ago
  Good that its available in flatpack. But the new address bar is so unnecessarily space consuming. If I move it to a smaller window in my desktop its taking up so much space!
  • uallo 7y ago
    You can customize its density to "compact" in the toolbar customization. Does that help?
    • s9w 7y ago
      How? Searching for this in google results in this comment
      • uallo 7y ago
        https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customize-firefox-controls-buttons-and-toolbars https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customize-firefox-contr...
      • isp 7y ago
        Right-click in empty space next to the URL bar Then "Customise..." Then at the bottom of the screen will be a "Density" drop down, with an option for "Compact"
    • vijaybritto 7y ago
      oh yes that makes it okay to use
    • cerberusss 6y ago
      Very useful setting, thanks for pointing it out!
• Tomte 7y ago
  I'm a bit peeved that they removed browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll and browser.urlbar.doubleClickSelectsAll. I thought it was a bug, but in the bug tracker they told me it was intentional. When I suggested they notify users when they have set a setting set to something other than the default and then this setting is removed, I was told it's documented in the Release Notes. Well, no, it isn't.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• s9w 7y ago
  > We’ve enlarged the address bar anytime you want to do a search and simplified it in a single view with larger font, shorter URLs, adjusts to multiple sizes and a shortcut to the most popular sites to search. Almost every single point in that sentence is a negative change. Which is +1 for my personal pet theory: all software gets worse over time
  • nullc 7y ago
    Many pieces of large software are like a Shepard tone. It's constantly getting improvements yet doesn't get better (or even gets worse) in the long run.
    • jonny_eh 7y ago
      > A Shepard tone, named after Roger Shepard, is a sound consisting of a superposition of sine waves separated by octaves. When played with the bass pitch of the tone moving upward or downward, it is referred to as the Shepard scale. This creates the auditory illusion of a tone that continually ascends or descends in pitch, yet which ultimately seems to get no higher or lower.[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_tone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_tone
  • 51Cards 7y ago
    Agreed, really disliking all of these new behaviours. I too subscribe to that theory, in that developers keep looking for ways to "make it better" and end up layering so many useless UI items on top of each other software becomes messy over time.
  • hn2017 7y ago
    For what it's worth, my parents like the new address bar.
    • hombre_fatal 7y ago
      So do I. So do the vast majority of people, I bet.
  • 7y ago
• ubercow13 7y ago
  The select-all Chrome-like behaviour is so horrible. It makes the two most useful interactions with the address bar much more difficult - putting the address into the primary buffer (on X11) so you can paste it somewhere else (this now requires a triple click), and putting the caret inside the address to edit the URL (which now requires clicking twice, but not double clicking because that is different, so you have to click with exactly the right pause inbetween, which is a horrible interaction). What's extra annoying is that a single click will select the whole address but not put it in the primary buffer! Another UI convention broken. All of this is to optimise for the most useless address bar interaction - clicking into it with the mouse and then changing to the keyboard to type a new URL, instead of just using ctrl+L. This is a feature made to optimise for people using the software (IMO) incorrectly.
  • throwanem 7y ago
    This behavior long predates Chrome and has been this way on other platforms IIRC since the browser was still called Phoenix, and probably inherited from Netscape at that; the change here brings Firefox's behavior on Linux in line with its behavior elsewhere. I can understand how the people who develop Firefox think that's a good idea, but not how they imagine anyone wanting it other than themselves...
    • shrimp_emoji 7y ago
      Edge just overtook Firefox in market share, so the people who develop Firefox are practially a majority of the userbase at this point anyway. xDDDD ;w;
      • dang 7y ago
        Could you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to Hacker News? You've been doing it repeatedly, and we ban that sort of account. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful. The idea is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.
• f055 7y ago
  I find it interesting that the fact so many comments mention config flags mean not many here are actually using the same Firefox, and not even close to the default one used by the 99% of its users.
  • Silhouette 7y ago
    Being highly user-configurable used to be the best reason to use Firefox, but Mozilla seem to be have become openly hostile towards that flexibility in recent times, even when it made the experience far worse for lots of users. These days, being probably more trustworthy when it comes to privacy and phoning home is more-or-less the only benefit Firefox has compared to just using Chrome/Safari/Edge that comes out of the box with your device.
    • robbyt 7y ago
      Supporting all that flexibility is challenging for development, and could cause issues for the end user. I can imagine that people over-customize Firefox, forget about their changes, then have bugs, finally abandon Firefox thinking it's unstable.
      • Silhouette 7y ago
        No doubt some people do. On the other hand, that flexibility was Firefox's main selling point. Even today, there are several things I used to use on a frequent basis that are missing or limited because the Quantum changes broke so many add-ons. The equivalent functionality hasn't been or in some cases can't be implemented by add-ons using the new APIs instead. I'm a programmer. I understand the technical arguments for why they wanted to make the internal changes. But when you are dumping your #1 competitive advantage because of technical details, it's probably time to start asking some tough questions.
        • throwanem 7y ago
          Being fair, they dumped their #1 competitive advantage in order to relieve their #1 competitive disadvantage - keeping XUL made desperately needed performance improvements impossible to implement. Calling that "technical details" rather understates the case.
• MikusR 7y ago
  This relese installs a system telemetry service that constantly sends to Mozilla your default browser.
  • danieldk 7y ago
    Source? What platforms?
    • tinus_hn 7y ago
      https://blog.mozilla.org/data/2020/03/16/understanding-default-browser-trends/ https://blog.mozilla.org/data/2020/03/16/understanding-defau... Sleazy, this is disappointing.
      • endemic 7y ago
        From the linked article: > We’ll respect user configured telemetry opt-out settings by looking at the most recently used Firefox profile. What am I missing?
        • detaro 7y ago
          Quite a few people consider > telemetry opt-out to be sleazy.
          • contravariant 7y ago
            While that's true, that part hasn't changed with this version.
            • tinus_hn 7y ago
              What has changed is that now the telemetry is collecting data that has nothing to do with them. It is a leap from collecting how many people have Firefox as their default browser to what other browser they have set as the default. Also this is way beyond the usual ‘we need it for debugging’ excuse. It’s just collecting data that is worth money. And of course, the first time you launch Firefox on a new install they aren’t going to wait and see if you perhaps opt out. They’re going to get what they can before you opt out.
• barrowclift 7y ago
  And still no movement on finally getting Bug 1178764 out the door, despite every other major browser supporting it. Nope, instead they'd rather faff about with the address bar to resounding universal disgust. [Bug 1178764]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1178765 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1178765
  • tinus_hn 7y ago
    Not sure what this has to do with ui changes. What do you think you are going to accomplish by whining about how a project providing free software is not prioritizing your pet feature request?
  • Hamuko 7y ago
    That ticket is only five years old. Try again when it's old enough to drink.
  • morsch 7y ago
    Well, evidently they implemented backdrop-filter about 8 months ago, but only for the new WebRender stack. And apparently they don't intend to implement it in legacy stacks. So I guess your feature is tied to the support for WebRender. And that is pretty much limited to some Windows environments, if this article[1] is up-to-date. Both of the Firefox installs I checked don't seem to use it, Linux/X11/Ubuntu and Android (where it's apparently tied to e10s aka Electrolysis, which I could not tell if they even intend to implement for Android any time soon). Kind of a mess... [1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/WebRender_Where https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/WebRender_Where
    • barrowclift 7y ago
      If nothing else, I really appreciate the summary, with all the comments and various threads on this it's a bit hard to follow exactly what the hold up is.
      • negativegate 7y ago
        It looks like you currently need to go to about:config and enable layout.css.backdrop-filter.enabled. It worked for me without enabling web render. Not that this does much good until it's on by default.
• pornel 7y ago
  I've been using nightlies for a while, and the address bar seems fine to me. I haven't even noticed when it changed. It's a central piece of user interface, so it makes sense to make it more prominent than what a '90s design of a bog-standard dropdown menu allows. It even logically makes sense to make it like a little popover window, because when you edit the address, you're navigating to a new page, not editing a property of the existing page. Anyway, overall it's a small issue.
  • epidemian 7y ago
    Agreed. I like the change. I think it's a rather small change too (I've had it on nightly for a while and barely noticed it), so I don't understand why the top voted comments are complaints about this :S
    • pera 7y ago
      One of the complains is that the select-all on single-click is anti-idiomatic for Linux and *BSD users, and when text is selected in X11 it is automatically copied. The standard way to select the whole content in a text box is to triple-click it.
      • epidemian 7y ago
        I see. I'm also on Linux, but i guess i've mostly been doing ctrl+L to go to the address bar, and that's been selecting the whole text since before the change? Because i didn't notice that change... But i understand it's frustrating to have the behavior of clicking on it change all of a sudden. I see the point of the change too (if i click on the address bar, i'd assume it's because i want to go to another site, or copy the URL, so selecting all text is convenient), but UI changes will always bother people who are used to the existing behavior. I just don't think it's so black and white bad as some people paint it to be. And at some point i feel that harsh criticism is not constructive at all.
        • pera 7y ago
          I also use ^L, but many times I just want to modify part of the URL (sometimes even with text from the clipboard buffer). As a web developer this change is going to be pretty irritating.
• elmalto 7y ago
  Interestingly (maybe not), a lot of people seem to be upset about the new address bar. To me, this is the biggest improvement. I don’t have a lot of custom config in Firefox, mainly use it and DuckDuckGo to no be using Google, and find it refreshingly easy to see my search engines and have more information available in a spot that I use all the time rather than having to know where to look or have it hidden in the first place
  • midnightmonster 7y ago
    I love the new address bar. I'm on the developer builds, so I've been seeing it for a while. I use both Safari and Firefox, and the new Firefox address bar makes me want to use it more. I haven't analyzed what I like about it--I just really like it.
    • iamricks 7y ago
      No wonder, i was trying to look for changes but i was already on them too, i haven't felt any cons to using the new address bar
• simion314 7y ago
  Does anyone know what is the keyboard shortcut in dEbugger to "Go to line" , I am unable to find the action in the UI or by a google. I think all actions should be put there in the context menu.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• dantondwa 7y ago
  The address bar is awful but, most importantly, it breaks my keyboard workflow. When I press Cmd+L, I'd expect the focus to go to the address bar and the whole url to be selected (like it is with any other software). Now, Firefox doesn't do this any more. The focus goes to the address bar, but the text is not selected. I have to select it myself. It's really badly designed, ugly and not useful. Unfortunately, as a longtime Firefox user, I have to admit that Chrome is the best browser. Cleanly designed and fast, it's just a better experience. Too bad it's run by an advertisement company. This is really the only reason I'll stick to Firefox: because I believe in the importance of a free web and I dislike Google. But really, it's not because of any merit of Firefox.
  • tlamponi 7y ago
    This works just still fine here..
    • stronglikedan 7y ago
      Here too.
  • jsjddbbwj 7y ago
    Try Brave. Once you disable the crypto bullshit, which is like a couple clicks, it is a good browser.
    • The_Colonel 7y ago
      It's just chrome skin so not really advancing the free web thing ...
  • nanna 7y ago
    At least on my Linux build, Ctrl-L still highlights the entire URL. Considered whether you've just come into a bug?
  • thekingshorses 7y ago
    CTRL + L works as expected on Windows 10. It still selects and highlights the entire URL.
• ilmiont 7y ago
  Firefox succumbs to needless change for the sake of it, ruining the address bar with this horrible giant thing. Not really sure what alternatives there are though. I hate that Firefox seems to be falling victim to the “hah we haven’t updated that in a while” intern mentality yet nothing else stands out to replace it.
• acrophobic 7y ago
  Besides the address bar, another issue for me is now all image is lazy-loaded even in websites that don't use Javascript. While I realize there are advantages to lazy-loading image, I've never liked it because often it makes the content moved a bit, which a bit annoying. However, in pages that uses JS to lazy-load image at least they usually put placeholder image so I know that there will be image there. Unfortunately, since Firefox do it even for ordinary websites, now I often scrolling away without realizing there are images, only to find out later the paragraph that I read suddenly jumped to bottom. I'm worried it will be permanent, especially since right now it's a bit hard to revert this feature.
  • AtroxDev 7y ago
    It still defaults to eager loading. You have to explicitly add the loading="lazy" attribute for it to load lazily.
    • antpls 7y ago
      Is there a flag to force it on most images, even the ones without the loading attribute?
  • thekingshorses 7y ago
    As a developer, I just started using loading="lazy" attribute. It has nothing to do with Javascript. It depends on the developer not the browser.
• zawaideh 7y ago
  I am excited by the address bar changes. It makes common tasks much faster, makes my top sites easy to visit and overall makes the experience of using Firefox more enjoyable to me. I realize this is not everyone.
  • korm 7y ago
    This thread reminds me of a CTO that forced us to restructure our frontend to allow user friendly navigation from the address bar. The UX guy protested this but the CTO got his way. We ran user test after user test and no matter how he tried to structure the test, no user touched the address bar. It was a total waste of time. The only good that came from this was doing user tests earlier in the process.
• ianwalter 7y ago
  I would like Firefox to be my main browser again but a couple of times I've run into the situation where an uncaught JavaScript error logged in Firefox's console doesn't give me any useful information as compared to Chromium. I wish I had a reproduction instead of just ragequitting but I'm sure it's a known issue that exists in their bug tracker somewhere.
  • soulofmischief 7y ago
    Funnily enough, I find it to go both ways and while working on bugs sometimes changing browsers gives me a more useful error given the context. It would be nice if that aspect of browser functionality could be carved out and made into a plugin so that we could pick and choose. A more modular browser experience a la foobar2000 sounds just amazing.
• aganame 7y ago
  I let Firefox upgrade itself when .75 was and after a restart, I didn't notice a single ux change. What on earth are you people talking about?
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • neilsimp1 7y ago
    Look at the address bar. now click inside of it and notice how it gets bigger. I kinda hate it, but at the same time I barely notice it so whatever.
• jakearmitage 7y ago
  That's it. I'm forking it.
  • kyleee 7y ago
    Keep us updated on how that goes. Serious
• woranl 7y ago
  Still can’t use some very basic function. https://caniuse.com/#feat=filesystem https://caniuse.com/#feat=filesystem Just gimmicky update. Pretty useless.
• jonnytran 7y ago
  The biggest change in this release that I'm _so_ happy about is that they finally fixed session restore to preserve which macOS Spaces your windows were originally on! I believe the Linux equivalent with virtual desktops was also fixed. It was an outstanding issue for years that made me loath restarting. I typically have 50 or more windows spread across several spaces, each with a different context, and it was a huge pain to have to move them back to their original place.
  • clairity 7y ago
    i noticed this too! it was probably my most common pain point of firefox. i actually questioned whether it really happened and would happen again on the next restart.
  • pitaj 7y ago
    I wish they would do the same for Windows 10 multiple desktops
    • schammy 7y ago
      It would be hard to imagine if they didn't? Seems like stuff like this always comes to Windows first. I use Win10's built in virtual desktops but I keep all my browser windows on one desktop so I've never tested it, I would just be shocked if it didn't work on Win10 also!
  • _chinaski_ 7y ago
    Looking forward to try it on macos! The original bug report seems to be 12 (!) years old: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=440895 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=440895
• KozmoNau7 7y ago
  I read this discussion before updating, and I was prepared for the worst. And... It's fine, it's perfectly usable, it's not some gigantic world-ending change, it works. As someone who uses multiple browsers on multiple platforms both at work and privately, unifying the address bar behavior across all platforms is logical, especially considering it lets the developers clean up some crufty old legacy code in the process. I've been using Firefox since it was Phoenix 0.1 and not once have I felt the user interface and experience was made worse. Some people may use an obscure feature or a combination of plugins that doesn't quite work anymore, for which the UI changes would be negative. These people have to realize that they are a tiny niche of a niche of people, who wildly modify their software far beyond the general user experience. They just have to realize that sometimes this means breakage. Sometimes you just aren't the target audience, and that's fine. The world of general use software doesn't revolve around power user needs, and sometimes power users have to work a bit harder to get things exactly how they want them. Mozilla would rather the vast majority have a significantly improved experience, and let the power user minority have to adapt a bit.
• hi41 7y ago
  The new features page says that the address bar has been enhanced to support better search. However, after installing the new version, I still see the search bar on the right hand side of the address bar. Why is that? I am expecting to see just the address bar.
  • coldpie 7y ago
    The search box on the right is a separate widget. You can remove it if you like. Right-click on the panel, click "Customize," and drag the search box out of the panel to remove it.
    • hi41 7y ago
      Thank you so much. That worked! I have been having this question for many years now and kept wondering why the search bar showed for me but not for others.
• nanna 7y ago
  I've been using FFX 75.0 for a few hours and I very much like the new address bar. When I ctrl-L my eyes fix on the address bar, where they should, because of the blue outline and the chunky left/right margins. I like this and I wish others here would stop calling this an objective UX fail. To the contrary, I think the FFX devs have done a splendid job once again.
• thekyle 7y ago
  I've been using the new Flatpak in beta for a month or so. I really like it on Fedora since it means I don't have to enable any 3rd party repos to get DRM working.
  • josteink 7y ago
    > I really like it on Fedora since it means I don't have to enable any 3rd party repos to get DRM working. I run Linux and Firefox because I like to be in control of my machine. And one of the things I will never allow to run on it is DRM. I’m still annoyed Firefox has no way to permanently disable all DRM functionality and stop nagging me when sites request it.
    • thekyle 7y ago
      Each to their own. I don't have a problem with it since it's all sandboxed and can't touch any other part of the system.
• djhaskin987 7y ago
  Mozilla, every release: hey how do you like the new cosmetics/bells and whistles Me: hey how's that html5 compatibility coming Mozilla: ... Mozilla: hey how do you like the new cosmetics/bells and whistles Me, after years: (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
• seumars 7y ago
  They actually managed to make context menus even _less_ native with this release. All of a sudden context menus have straight corners and higher contrast. In a few months it will actually be legal for this bug to buy booze and do jelly shots: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34572 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34572
  • saagarjha 7y ago
    Wow, that bug is almost as old as I am! I'm surprised it's still an issue; I wonder if they'd take patches for it.
• dzonga 7y ago
  biggest thing for me, this release was hardware acceleration support on Linux. and with that I won't need to use mpv and smplayer to play youtube videos anymore
• dang 7y ago
  Related from a couple days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22804149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22804149
• vvpan 7y ago
  I can't relate to much of the criticism but can say that the inspector has gotten awesome. I switched all of my development to it. There are a couple of things that _require_ chrome, like Slack calls, otherwise I'm Firefox only and would recommend it.
• Grue3 7y ago
  Anyone else got logged out of every single website after updating to this version? Annoying as hell.
• TACIXAT 7y ago
  I switched to Firefox for tab containers but they are seriously broken. Ctrl shift t just opens a random tab. With this most recent update, opening something in the current container rather than the preferred container still opens it in the preferred container.
• aledalgrande 7y ago
  Side note of Firefox 74 or 75, not sure when it started: close a tab where you had clicked on at least a link so you have some tab history and reopen it with cmd + shift + t: the last page you visited is lost! Is it only me or others too? It's so annoying.
• electrotype 7y ago
  Mozilla, the only reason I'm using Firefox is because it is highly cutomizable... Not as YOU want, but as I want.
• arexxbifs 7y ago
  Am I the only one bothered by the steadily declining performance? I bought a cheapish laptop this summer and FF worked just fine then, but every five versions or so it seems the performance drops just a little bit. Even old reddit feels like glue now, especially compared to Chromium.
• brutal_chaos_ 7y ago
  I saw this change in nightly a while back. The change honestly shocked me; "woh," I said aloud. I wish Mozilla would STOP forcing changes like these. They could have a deprecation period allowing for an easier transition. I'm still a loyal fan, though it does seem to get harder day by day.
• WCityMike 6y ago
  I fail to understand why Firefox takes as its lead Chrome's behavior. Let it be different, let it distinguish itself. We constantly hear how less configurability is easier to maintain. Unfortunately, that was Firefox's main distinction from Chrome. This path where it simply copies Chrome's UX and removes more and more features in the interests of something easier to maintain ... taking that to its logical conclusion, Firefox might as well become a Chromium fork now.
• zzo38computer 6y ago
  I use an older version of Firefox with many customizations (including the relative location bar, removal of all toolbar icons, and others), and still I don't like what they are doing with any version of any browser. I also tried to get rid of arrow scrollbars and implement the Xaw like scrollbars instead, although it doesn't work as well as real Xaw scrollbars do. I just hate a lot of the design principles of web browsers in general. So, rather, the better way to design a web browser would be using principles such as: - The user is assumed to understand the computer and to know what they are doing, and if not, to read the documentation in order to understand it. - Stuff coming from the server is assumed to be possibly hostile and not necessarily a code that the user wants to execute, or having the styles that the user wants to be displayed; this is independent of whether or not the connection is secure, which should not control access to any features (except those which are part of the protocol, such as certificates). The user must be able to have complete control over it. - You have enough ropes to hang yourself, and also a few more just in case. That is the better way to design anything. - Disable CSS transitions, and otherwise the user can customize how the CSS is interpreted (in addition to defining their own, of any priority level, low or high or anything in between). - Use keyboard controls for many things, and do not override the browser's commands of keyboard or mouse or otherwise except if the user specifically activates the command to do that ("application mode"). - Support use of ARIA even for ordinary screen view and not only for speech. - Allow stuff to be controlled directly by the user rather than APIs used by scripts in web pages. - Add a command for the user to save and recall form data using local files. - Allow individual scripts and other files to be overridden with the user's own version. - etc. Those who set up the services should also be encouraged to use other protocols, such as IRC, NNTP, SMTP, Telnet, etc. Such thing can be more suitable than web browser, less complicated and less stupid than a web browser, and can even be usable (to some degree) without specialized software (although having software to use specifically with these protocols certainly improves it, it isn't entirely necessary; I think IRC was actually designed for that purpose anyways). And I really would like them to stop using such huge fonts (they should respect the user's font setting).