12 ms·

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

by 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!

by chungy 7y ago

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!