18 ms·

Behind the design of the fresh new Firefox coming June 1

109 points by abdullahdiaa 5y ago

purplecats 5y ago
not sure i like the complete separation of the tabs from the rest of the browser. makes it seem disconnected and thus uncorrelated which tab corresponds to what is being rendered.
- skavi 5y ago
  To me it still seems fairly clear which tab is being focused since it's the only one outlined. I think separating the tab into its own bubble may pave the way for more interesting UI in the future. These bubbles could be stacked or displayed vertically while remaining aesthetically consistent. These tabs also seem to more clearly communicate that they can be dragged around.
  - purplecats 5y ago
    great points, thanks for sharing
BallCramp 5y ago
All I heard was "We're going to break your plugins again, because reasons".
- readflaggedcomm 5y ago
  Neither plugins nor extensions are mentioned.
  - BallCramp 5y ago
    Perhaps it didn't quite fit in with the finger-clicking, hand-clapping soundtrack.
- bartvk 5y ago
  I've tried the new design (using flags in about:config) and none of my plugins broke. I'm running Facebook Container, Midnight Lizard, No Thanks, a Medium extension and uBlock Origin. Have you actually tried it yourself? If not, why post a rather shallow dismissal?
  - BallCramp 5y ago
    > why post a rather shallow dismissal? Because it amused me to do so. But your single piece of anecdotal evidence is good too. Powerful stuff.
  - jzzskijj 5y ago
    I was almost going to say something similar, because on Android there are still just 16 add-ons available and it has been a long while. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/search/?type=extension https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/search/?type=extens...
    - kaba0 5y ago
      How is it relevant to parent being wrong?
jchw 5y ago
I wasn't a huge fan of most of the UI refreshes lately in both Chrome and Firefox, but this is definitely the least welcome so far. I do not really expect these tabs to grow on me. (Also, it obviously looks fine, but I really dislike the new trend of adding a bunch of empty space for no real reason other than aesthetics. The first thing I do in Firefox right now is remove the spacers next to the address bar...)
- roca 5y ago
  I disliked the new tabs at first but after a few weeks I'm totally used to them.
  - Hamuko 5y ago
    I still hate the new tabs after having used the Developer Edition for a while. There's absolutely no separators between tabs, making it hard to see tab boundaries. Having the tabs on a separate background colour also helps to quickly see which part of the chrome is the tab bar and which is the address bar. Now they're the same colour. FWIW, Chrome has separators between tabs as well as better contrast between the address bar section and the tab section (1.31:1 for Chrome, 1.08:1 for Firefox).
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - masklinn 5y ago
    From FDE, I disliked the new tabs at first, and I still do. They have no redeeming qualities. They’re not denser, they’re not more readable, and they’re definitely not more usable as they’re floating in the tab bar unmoored from the rest of the browser. They don’t make any sense and they’re visually unappealing.
- kijin 5y ago
  Those spacers on both sides of the address bar made absolutely no sense, I agree. But there's some logic to the growth of empty space everywhere. Even laptops have touchscreens these days. Click targets need to be bigger because fingers are fatter than mouse pointers. I just wish they'd keep around a compact option for non-touch devices, but unfortunately another recent trend is to get rid of user-configurable options.
wumpus 5y ago
Needs a "video" label, there's no content without the video.
dual_dingo 5y ago
Ah yes, we have no money so let's invest a ton of work into something that will do nothing to bring in new or lost users, but, given our track record, has the potential to alienate even more of our ever fewer remaining users.
- tasogare 5y ago
  > we have no money Daddy Google need to keep them alive to avoid a lawsuit, so free money is guaranteed to keep coming.
- skavi 5y ago
  Back in the early days of Chrome, I definitely feel that a lot of people switched and continued using it because it looked and felt better.
  - DistressedDrone 5y ago
    Maybe it looked better, but I think it felt better because it was much faster. This is a marketing push disguised as an aesthetic change. Mozilla, please stop trying to make Pocket happen, it's not going to happen.
  - thrdbndndn 5y ago
    Chrome was way faster than Firefox before Fx dropped its old addon system. It was so bad that my main profile (with shittons of addons) at the time took about whooping ~10 seconds to cold-start.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    When I use Edge Chrome, ironically gmail tells me to switch to Chrome, that is how people switched to Chrome.
    - jansan 5y ago
      Many people who I know switched to Chrome because I told them to.
Minor49er 5y ago
Every announcement makes me happier that I disabled auto updates several versions ago
- initplus 5y ago
  I have been hearing people saying this for over a decade now...
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  From a UI/UX perspective, yes. From a security perspective: hell fucking no. You need those updates. Even if you're just doing plain-jane browsing, with no finance, commerce, professional, government, or personal interaction, you're putting your entire system at risk. (TailsOS users possibly excepted.)
  - corty 5y ago
    Security fixes should be totally separate from UI and functionality chhanges. We need more software with long-term-supported stable releases. Functionality and UI changes breed fear of updates which lessens security.
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      In an ideal world, absolutely, I agree. We're not there though. And there are an number of bug categories (phishing, social engineering, etc.) which intersect on UI/UX.
  - elcapitan 5y ago
    Then why can't I have separate security updates? I'm fed up with some fashion people breaking my software usability all the time, just because some hot new way to arrange tabs has to be tried out.
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      You sometimes can, though you've got to know what to ask for, and what you're trading off. FWIW, this is what platforms such as Debian attempt to provide. It's a challenge, and something of a losing battle, especially with complex and fast-moving tools, notably Web browsers, but also development toolkits (scripting languages, Web development environments, etc.). Debian stable attempts to provide a stable feature set + bugfixes for all packages. Increasingly, even on Stable, there is the option to install packages which continue to offer feature updates, including for web browsers. Though there is also the option of an LTS or ESR package install. These are specified versions with extended bugfix / security support, typically called Long Term Support (LTS) or Extended Service Release (ESR) version of a package. You'll find these with the Linux Kernel, for example. And yes, Mozilla has an ESR programme which "receives major updates on average every 42 weeks with minor updates such as crash fixes, security fixes and policy updates as needed, but at least every four weeks." https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/enterprise/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/enterprise/ Firefox ESR is currently at release 78.10.1: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/78.10.1/releasenotes/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/78.10.1/releasenotes/ I believe that's based on 78.0.1, first released in June, 2020: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/78.0.1/releasenotes/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/78.0.1/releasenotes/ Firefox Desktop is at release 88.0.1, release May 5, 2021. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/88.0.1/releasenotes/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/88.0.1/releasenotes/
nik736 5y ago
Been using it for quite a while with the Developer Edition and I have to say while the tabs looked weird at first I absolutely love the new look now!
inamiyar 5y ago
I'm pretty excited about this. In general it looks fine, but I really gotta ask - why do browsers always redesign tabs? They don't change in functionality for the most part and yet they always get refreshed. Regardless, excited to try the new design, hopefully they really have streamlined it. I personally find the firefox menu navigation a bit weird and hard to...well navigate through so that's what I'm hoping has been cleaned up.
- catchmeifyoucan 5y ago
  Because it makes it real obvious that something has changed. Kind of like car headlights. They’re a really prominent part of the entire design that make you want to explore more
  - toast0 5y ago
    Back in GNOME 2, epiphany was the best browser ever because the UI simply followed the GNOME UI guidelines.
- gforge 5y ago
  I love the new tabs, I found the old ones clumsy and ugly. Design is unfortunately something that is constantly a moving target. If Mozilla stops updating they will surely die - for most users the technical details don't matter, what matters is that their friends go, wow what is the browser you're using? And thus, redesign is just a way of staying alive...
- dvcrn 5y ago
  Installed the dev edition that has the new design, and I like it as well. Especially the Alpenglow theme that ships with it looks fresh and colorful. Will it make me consider trying it again? Who knows, right now I do like that the feel of it a lot. Might use it as my secondary browser for my while to see how it feels
  - throwaway67114 5y ago
    Try it with Ublock Origin. It works best with FF. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
savolai 5y ago
I was sceptical but this actually looks fresh and makes my visual system relax into the simplicity. Yay for going forwars bravely.
gcommer 5y ago
Their video on the front page contradicts itself. They highlight the UI coded by "user interaction" and no surprise, the Pocket button in the URL bar has tiny usage. And yet, in the new design? It's bigger and more prominent. And they try to say this is data-driven in the voice-over. Now, yet again, I'll have to just pin Firefox and stop updating it everywhere for a few months until the inevitable "undo all these changes" plugins are ready. Update: Just tried the new design. As expected, the new tabs take up substantial vertical space and even compact mode (now hidden behind about:config) barely helps. Time for more userChrome.css...
- 0xy 5y ago
  Consider yourself lucky there isn't a giant banner ad for Mr Robot in the title bar. Mozilla's CEO really needs another pay rise for overseeing plummeting product market share.
- alanbernstein 5y ago
  Also "remove clicks" and "remove clutter" are directly contradictory... I want to be able to configure my browser to minimize clicks FOR ME, and I'm ok with having a lot of "clutter" i.e. functionality.
- mrweasel 5y ago
  The new tabs also look nothing like tabs. It’s now a button bar. It looks great, but it’s not really an inprovement and is clearly designed on a large monitor.
  - jansan 5y ago
    They will go back to the conventional tab design, I am pretty sure about this. Tabs should look like they look in Chrome, not like in Firefox or VSCode. Tab design has pretty much been settled in the 90s, no need for experiments.
    - ComputerGuru 5y ago
      It takes a lot to convince UI designers to admit they made a mistake. Just look at any redesign ever.
m1keil 5y ago
Wasn't there a big redesign just recently?
- KirillPanov 5y ago
  No, that was days ago. Definitely not "fresh" enough.
JamesDeepDown 5y ago
The UI heatmap shows that nobody clicks Pocket, but the video highlights that pocket is "refreshed" and is part of the new design. Dear Firefox, that's not how things work.
- bovine3dom 5y ago
  No, that's exactly how UX research works: - Users are using X feature a lot. 1) the researcher likes the feature: let's invest time into improving it. Or 2) the researcher dislikes the feature: we need to remove it because it's adding too much friction - Users are not using feature X a lot. 1) the researcher likes the feature: users aren't discovering this feature, we need to make it more prominent. 2) the researcher dislikes the feature: no-one is using this old, outdated feature, we need to remove it. (I'm still upset that they removed FTP and RSS support.)
  - Farow 5y ago
    Hopefully they'll copy Chrome as usual and bring back RSS support.
  - michaelanckaert 5y ago
    So basically you're saying the researcher decides the product direction and not the users? feign shocked face In this case I believe a heat map is a bad way to decide product direction. The amount of clicks don't tell anything about the ease of use, only which UI element receives user attention. If the Pocket feature receives no clicks, it can mean that either users don't find it or they don't want to use it. Of course, product wise I understand FF might want to push Pocket and increase usage. But the decision about whether or not the UI is suitable shouldn't be gotten from a heat map.
    - bovine3dom 5y ago
      I think a heatmap is a reasonable thing to measure. I just wish UX research was a little more scientific (by for example, coming up with multiple hypotheses and then conducting more experiments to eliminate them).
deanclatworthy 5y ago
This was bizarre. Neither the announcement or the video really said what has changed. I’d rather they focus on performance. It’s third in the list behind Chrome and Safari on my MacBook. I use it only for Jira and Gitlab at work with about 10 tabs and it regularly consumes more CPU than Chrome with about 50 tabs open.
- ComputerGuru 5y ago
  To be fair, Jira and Gitlab are just about the two most bloated web apps in existence.
badhabit 5y ago
i hope there is a toggle button in front menu to disable javascript just a click away. not buried levels deep in settings.
- pseudalopex 5y ago
  You know there isn't.
- pmontra 5y ago
  You could install uBlock Origin, then click on its icon in the top bar, then click on the JavaScript icon to disable JavaScript on the current website. If you want to disable it globally and forever, spending some time in the settings once doesn't seem too annoying.
osigurdson 5y ago
This looks good to me. It would be nice if they could modernize and simplify their logo a bit.
yosito 5y ago
Firefox doesn't need another UI refresh. It needs performance enhancements and bug fixes. I've been using Firefox as my primary browser for years, and I'm tired of feeling like I'm using second class software.
- foepys 5y ago
  The people who are making the designs are not the same people who are fixing bugs and improve performance. If you replaced all UX designers with SWE you will gain development speed in the short term and end up with an outdated looking app after a few years.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    The funny thing is that I don't use any of the buttons in the browser. I use the URL bar to tell the browser what to show me. Cmd-T for new tap, then Cmd-opt-arrows to view the various things I've asked the browser to show me. Cmd-R for a refresh. Don't need a button for that. Multi-finger swipes for back/forward. My home is set to a blank page, so it's a useless button for me. Seems to me like a simple UI could be had. Got no opions on mobile. Don't use it enough to know what that experience is like. No get off my lawn!!
  - enriquto 5y ago
    > an outdated looking app yes, please! That is exactly what I want. An outdated-looking app which is fast, has no new bugs, does not break randomly upon updates.
  - yosito 5y ago
    > outdated looking app I honestly don't care. The "outdated look" from 10 years ago looked just fine. My browser is not my outfit. I don't need a new style all the time. I need a reliable, performant, secure, open source browser. The UI can look exactly the same for 50 years, and I would be happy.
- clumsysmurf 5y ago
  I think it needs Vertical tabs at least
gui77aume 5y ago
I'm fine with Firefox developer edition, but I find it's hard to see which tab is selected in this new design especially when using dark theme.
j-pb 5y ago
This is what they killed the rust and mdn teams for? Oooff...
- kaba0 5y ago
  No? Like there is enough surface area to work on multiple unrelated parts of Firefox at the same time. Also, Rust team is most definitely not killed, Servo is, which frankly, made perfect sense. Developing one browser engine is hard enough as is, let alone two.
  - j-pb 5y ago
    You contradict yourself. If there's enough surface area, then there's enough for alternative and better engines. Rust & Wasmtime: https://mobile.twitter.com/tschneidereit/status/1293868141953667074 https://mobile.twitter.com/tschneidereit/status/129386814195... Dev Tools & All of MDN: https://mobile.twitter.com/SteveALee/status/1293487542382333952 https://mobile.twitter.com/SteveALee/status/1293487542382333...
    - kaba0 5y ago
      There is an increasing amount of Rust being incorporated into Firefox, it is just not Servo. And while it is possible to develop two browser engines at the same time (though it is not surface area, it is a different module competing for the same spot, so no, I’m not contradicting myself), it is still a dumb decision to split the already few people with the necessary technical knowhow around such an advanced domain. Otherwise you would see thousands of browsers out there, yet all we have (ones that implement a reasonable amount of the web standards) is chrome+edge, safari and firefox.
- tqkxzugoaupvwqr 5y ago
  They dismantled the team who maintained the mdn docs? That’s shortsighted. mdn is a magnet for web devs and helps Firefox to stay in developers’ minds.
  - 5y ago
guerrilla 5y ago
So they came up with an excuse for why all my extensions are going to stop workinh again... Great.
simfoo 5y ago
Please just bring back pre-Fenix Android Firefox together with performance improvements. There are still only a hand few of addons supported, lot's of bugs that remain unfixed. This is not the time for another redesign
edoceo 5y ago
Users: we hate it. Metrics: few people click this Managers: MAKE IT BIGGER Dear Firefox Mangers: you make it hard to want to use your product. I used to love it. I only like it now. Really the only thing you've got going right now is that you're NOT Chrome. Get good!!
- handrous 5y ago
  For me "love" was last felt for Firefox in maybe the 2.x days, at the latest. After that it was back to "why am I still not using Opera? Oh yeah, the banner ads. Back to FF I guess, even though it's slow now". Then it was "Chrome is like FF but crashes less and the dev tools are better, also Google's only probably evil and not yet definitely evil so it's fine, now I'm a Chrome user". Then it was "Chrome and FF both make my system beachball a lot and eat a couple hours of battery life for, apparently, no good reason, guess I'm a Safari user now, sure didn't see that coming". I'm not thrilled that that's where I'm still at, but, it is. Firefox needs to Phoenix itself to get me to like it again. It's the Netscape Navigator / Mozilla Browser it replaced, now. Or go nuts and incorporate some other Internet protocols. Maybe become the open social network browser? Anything to give me a reason to care about it again. I want to.
voldacar 5y ago
time to post the graph again https://itdm.com/wp-content/uploads/Mozilla.png https://itdm.com/wp-content/uploads/Mozilla.png
YossarianFrPrez 5y ago
Maybe I'm missing something, but the core aspect of browser functionality that everyone uses -- like loading websites, using tabs and windows, press the back/refresh button, saving bookmarks, and maaaybe toggling ad-blockers -- don't seem to require constant design changes.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Darmody 5y ago
Bring back Brendan Eich before it's too late. Firefox needs someone with vision, not a bunch of SJW who want to push pocket down my throat.
iamtedd 5y ago
Let me guess, comments turned off on the video? checks Yep.
crossroadsguy 5y ago
I think the new Firefox design philosophy is marketing and buzzword. Because that's what that useless video and that blog post, which was devoid of easily accessible information, suggests. Besides, Pocket in Firefox is personal now! I am going to ignore this browser until they totally remove it (like completely; not bundled in any shape or form) and only allow it as a normal third party extension. Besides, it fares awful on Macs and besides many OS level integrations that even Chrome and Brave do. I am done using second grade softwares whether it's FOSS or whatever. It's 2021 ffs, and they literally had decades to get their shit together.
- cassianoleal 5y ago
  > Besides, it fares awful on Macs and besides many OS level integrations that even Chrome and Brave do. Been using Firefox on macOS for at least a couple years now. It has been making massive advances, fixing bugs and getting much better integration. Smart zoom and "elastic scrolling" (or however that's called) are implemented now and work great to add usability and make it feel more at home. Battery life seems great, performance in general is at least on par with Chrome (except for Google apps, but even for those I still find it good enough). Care to say which things still bother you with current Firefox beta (the one mentioned in the article)?
inDigiNeous 5y ago
I dont understand what all the dissing about Firefox here is. To me it still has world class javascript performance, it's open source, crossplatform and fast. Chrome feels sluggish in some cases compared to Firefox. Safari definitely feels lighter, but it's feature set in the rendering and javascript department is lacking compared to FF.
handrous 5y ago
Anyone else see the heat map of the Back button being one of the most-used elements, and far more used than the Forward-button, and flash back to much, much earlier FF designs where the back button was, in fact, larger than the forward button and more prominent than most other UI elements? Just Googled, actually, and it looks like 3.0 did that. 2008. Sigh. Also, as a dedicated UI-depth proponent, I find myself in the awkward position of being the "no, not like that" guy re: the new tabs. They're jarring and don't seem like a coherent part of the design. More depth, yes, please yes, but with more purpose & thought behind it.
- ComputerGuru 5y ago
  I believe internet explorer introduced the asymmetric navigation buttons with Windows Vista, if I’m not mistaken.
- glandium 5y ago
  The back button is still larger than the other buttons right now. Not anymore in the new UI, though.
dredmorbius 5y ago
Ugh. Tell us what's been added. Tell us what's been removed. Tell us how interactions have changed. I've been using the Web since the mid-1990s, Mosaic and Netscape initially. I've seen a lot come and go. Much of it has been bad. Major revisions strike dread in my heart. As jwz has noted, UI is different, in that changes to it provide relatively little payback: [I]n the case of all other software, I believe strongly in "release early, release often". Hell, I damned near invented it. But I think history has proven that UI is different than software. https://web.archive.org/web/20120511115213/https://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/04/why-i-use-safari-instead-of-firefox/ https://web.archive.org/web/20120511115213/https://www.jwz.o... (HN-safe Archive link) Firefox is still somewhat relucantly my preferred GUI browser. My first love remains w3m (fast, light, keyboard, terminal), though the hostility of increasingly large portions of the Web, including unexpected quarters (Internet Archive, hullo!?) to plain non-JS HTML is discouraging. The Nyxt browser looks increasingly appealing: https://nyxt.atlas.engineer/article/release-2.0.0.org https://nyxt.atlas.engineer/article/release-2.0.0.org (HN discussions: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=nyxt https://hn.algolia.com/?q=nyxt) I use and lean heavily on Pocket. If I'm lucky it merely falls over, more usually it explodes in native villages killing thousands of innocents. Pocket still gets worse the more you use it: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5x2sfx/pocket_it_gets_worse_the_more_you_use_it/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5x2sfx/pocket_... (HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19763106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19763106) Of the list of issues given, only find-in-page (Android app) has been notably added, in over four years. If the new desktop browser borrows from Fennec, I've got issues there as well, as Fennec: - Abandons keyboard shortcuts such at ctrl-L (navigation), tab switching, tab close. - Abandons print-to-PDF. - Doesn't support reorganising / reordering bookmarks. - Abandons view-source. - Bastardises error codes. (A set of 403 errors simply resulted in a blank page, I had to try other browsers to resolve a recent site issue.) - Abandons the navbar "reader:url=?" hack. (Often sites only intermittently support reader mode.) - Supports only a small subset (though, yes, a useful one) of Firefox extensions. As a long-time power user, I want power-user tools and capabilities. I strongly suspect Mozilla will be deprecating these. As the supporter of users with little technical knowledge, limited vision, mobility challenges, and cognitive impairments, I can assure you that any change is a net negative. (For one, a recent website refresh to their principle site of interest has been a months-long set of frustrations.) UI should not change. That means getting it right if you possibly can, and where you cannot, owning those mistakes until doomsday. Again, as jwz notes, Apple sticks to its metaphors, no matter how screwed up those might be (the platform drives me nuts, frankly). Apple has seen two UI refreshes in the lifetime of Macintosh, and OSX is now older than Mac Classic was when OSX was introduced. (Hell, I suspect half the people reading this have no first-hand knowledge of the original.)
drw85 5y ago
Quick, we need to make a video with some up to date memes in it. Seriously, the video didn't even show anything. I have no idea what'll change based on that jump cut fest.
djhworld 5y ago
One thing I don't understand is why they felt the need to make the UI bigger, I can't be the only one who mostly uses a 13" screen
- Cipater 5y ago
  Everyone's doing product design on giant screens these days.
sfRattan 5y ago
I remember reading about the end of "compact" mode some weeks/months ago. With this update, it seems that change is finally here... Almost. Downloading the nightly build, some investigation reveals the ability to reduce the space stolen by the user interface for pointless margins is hidden in about:config and can be found by searching there for "density." Nonsensically, the browser.uidensity field allows values 0, 1, and 2, but: * 0 has some useless UI margin space * 1 has less useless UI margin space * 2 has more useless UI margin space What?? I guess incremental values were always supposed to go middle, low, high and I am just a crank. All three options waste more vertical space with useless UI margins than the current version of Firefox. Designers have decided that their user interface is more important than the content it enables, and therefore we all must have more useless UI margin space. Edit: Upon further investigation, browser.compactmode.show can be set to true and restore the feature on the customize toolbar page. For now. With the scary parenthetical warning "not supported."
dredmorbius 5y ago
For the Pocket haters: 1. Why? 2. How would you implement a replacement functionality, whether in or outside the browser itself? 3. If you're using an alternative now, what is it?
- handrous 5y ago
  FF user (off and on) since Phoenix chiming in. I'm going to level with you: I've looked at that Pocket button and all the Pocket ads FF throws at me on new tabs and on their obnoxious new-version announcement tabs, for years, but I do not actually know what Pocket does. I think it's some kind of cloud bookmarking or something. Maybe also something like the Reader view? I'm not sure. Whatever it is, I don't miss it on Safari (my daily driver these days, mostly for iOS integration and performance reasons, god knows not for feature-related reasons) and I've never cared enough to figure out what it does on FF when I use it. I guess my alternative is bookmarks, which are 99.99% just a feature to let me feel safe closing all my tabs (and then never, ever looking at all those "important" bookmarked tabs again, ever—like, I've got many-years-old bookmarked sessions that were so important I couldn't close them without the security of bookmarks to make it feel OK to do so, but I've never looked at those bookmark-folders and very likely I'll die having never looked at them). I diligently export them every time I retire a system disk, so I've got a bunch of bookmark export files sitting on disks that I've also never imported or otherwise looked at. Probably I'd find all kinds of cool shit that past-me was looking at, but who's got the time.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    So summarizing: its intent isn't clear? FWIW: Pocket is similar in general design to a number of "read it later" services (the Android app is still identified as "com.ideashower.readitlater.pro"), such as the now-defunct Readability, still-extant Instapaper, Maciej Czeglowski's Pinboard, and the FS/OSS Wallabag. There's a ... (very?) loose kinship with tools like Zotero, Calibre, and Elsevier-owned Mandelay, also knowledge-management / article management tools. Pocket lets you: - Save articles for later reading. - Display many (though not all) of them in a simplified and standardised "reader" view. - Apply tags. (I abuse this feature horribly.) - Add highlights. (3 per article for the free version, unlimited for pro.) - There is of course a social feature allowing shares and recommendations. I avoid this like the plauge. - There is, inexplicably, no way to share, export, or otherwise save a bibliographic reading list, say, of articles on some topic. - Exporting the article listing is possible (JSON format). You'll have to re-fetch items individually if you do this. - Articles are not saved and you're still subject to linkrot, edits, or substitutions at the origin source. - Saved content is accessible from any device by account, either from a Web client, from Firefox itself, or through Mobile apps (iOS, Android). The functionality exceeds that of bookmarks, sacrifices local control and storage.
pjmlp 5y ago
And this kids is how Web ===> ChromeOS.
pizza 5y ago
A lot of mean-spiritedness in the comments section today it seems..
- eppsilon 5y ago
  You must be new here…
ilmiont 5y ago
They say they want us to worry less. This is now making me worry about what I do next. Will it be possible to revert this madness or is it really time to abandon Firefox? I know that in the big picture it’s small, but a good part of why the Firefox is the UI. In compact mode, with dark theme, on Linux, Firefox is - for me - the ultimate browser UI that just gets out of my way. This new “modern” look is oversized, distracting and wastes space. Nobody’s asked for it and the blog post wording really sounds like trying to justify change for the sake of it. Sad times. What has happened to Mozilla? Am I making too much of it? Maybe, but it’s certainly not making me “worry less”. It’s filling me with dread. And from the other responses here and on Reddit, it’s clear Mozilla is out-of-touch with it’s biggest users.
- saila 5y ago
  Overall, I think the new version looks better. The only thing I don't get is why they made the tabs into floating buttons with empty vertical space on both sides. On the one hand, I think it looks nicer than the current tab bar, but I don't see what UI/UX purpose it serves to change such a fundamental affordance. (Maybe someone knows?) I feel like they could modernize the tab bar while still keeping it a tab bar.
juusto 5y ago
Looks great, can't wait to try it. Kudos for those who worked hard on it. It is a shame so many comments are putting down the effort. Firefox is still the best browser out there where privacy is a concern.
morninglight 5y ago
I don't use add-ons or plugins. I just want a secure browser that - 1. doesn't have a memory footprint the size of Texas. 2. doesn't have memory leaks that eat all my remaining RAM. And it would be nice to have it within 20 years.
dunco 5y ago
I hope this is a step forward for Firefox. I hope this is not yet another redesign for a desktop app that tries to make it look like a mobile app by removing features and adding gratuitous amounts of whitespace. Desktop is not Mobile and they should not have the same interface. Windows 8 showed us what a disaster that was, but every company since seems to have to learn this lesson themselves. (Looking at you spotify and others)
- NackerHughes 5y ago
  > I hope this is not yet another redesign for a desktop app that tries to make it look like a mobile app by removing features and adding gratuitous amounts of whitespace. I've got some bad news for you.
dunco 5y ago
I hope this is a step forward for Firefox and I expect that there will be some genuine wins in here, but I really hope this is not yet another redesign for a desktop app that tries to make it look like a mobile app by removing features and adding gratuitous amounts of whitespace. The word "streamlined" is usually the harbinger of such regressions. Desktop is not Mobile and their interfaces should not be the same. Windows 8 showed us what a disaster that was, but every company since seems to have to learn this lesson themselves. (Looking at you spotify)
waterglassFull 5y ago
Putting the Pocket stuff aside I've been using this on the Dev edition for a few weeks now. I quite like it. It feels snappy and looks clean. Good work FF team.
reid 5y ago
I’m excited for native context menus on macOS! This 21 year old bug is fixed in the next version of Firefox! https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34572 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34572
- eppsilon 5y ago
  That’s great. Finally they’ll match the dark mode setting. Hopefully that applies to the window decorations too?
  - reid 5y ago
    Yes, the menus match the dark mode setting. And they look great!
DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
One of my FF UI/UE headaches is consistent use of a dark theme. If you do not want to feel like a deer between the headlight whenever you open a new tab or click on a new URL at night there is still no way around userChrome.css hacks. And even then it doesn't work 100% of the time. Hope it will finally be fixed in this release since it has been years that people are complaining.
agumonkey 5y ago
I use nightly regularly and was not excited by the new aesthetics, so I would join most of the other commenters here .. but to avoid weighing on the same side of the boat, I'd rather ask what would be a top 10 priority list of features to add / fix in firefox for the HN crowd ?
- handrous 5y ago
  1 - Battery life. Their last big win was "now only as bad as Chrome, which is still pretty bad!" and that was a while ago. 2 - Resource use more generally. One shitty tab shouldn't make my whole system slow, even outside the browser. Safari (as with the battery life thing) manages this better than the rest. Do that. Those two are basically table-stakes to get me back to thinking about using it regularly. 3 - I gather from this thread that they collect "telemetry", including mouse movements, on an opt-out basis. We used to call that, unequivocally, spyware. No. Stop. I don't care that a bunch of ad salesmen made this normal, it's still gross. 4 - Better in-browser performance (separate from not junking up my whole system, performance-wise, as in #2) 5 - I think to be compelling, they either need to slim way down, or bulk way up, feature-wise. Either laser-focus on being the light, slim, simple browser that FF hasn't been since like the mid '00s, or integrate more Internet protocols to try to break us out of this crappy local maximum. New social protocols (Mastadon?), maybe pick one of the old-school-web protocols and run with that. Maybe IPFS. Something. Probably several somethings, ideally supporting and enhancing one another. Give me reasons to want to use FF again, either because it does things nothing else does, or because it's lightning fast, has a postage-stamp memory footprint, and is easy on my battery. Notably, I think, the fat-FF route is also a pretty damn clear route to monetization, which they seem to want. I fear they've missed their chance for that, though, and the time to start was at least 5 years ago when they had a huge headcount and lots of money.
  - agumonkey 5y ago
    i liked firefox focus for the slim way down side of things, it was obviously borderline crippled but so simple, fast and burden-free ..
  - pbronez 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
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pera 5y ago
I really don't get why Mozilla keep making disruptive UI changes while a very significant amount of users take the time to ask them to please not do it. At this point it feels almost as an act of aggression, it's honestly incomprehensible to me.
initplus 5y ago
I was an old school die-hard Firefox user back in the day, have since switched to chrome... I want Mozilla to succeed and fight the browser monoculture. I'm just not really sure what the "killer feature" to bring users back is? Chrome has kept their core UI relatively stable since forever. Meanwhile we are onto another big Firefox redesign where we make the tabs look different? Why follow UI trends (big spacing) that your core userbase dislikes? I could understand it if Firefox was a different kind of product, with a different set of users. I don't really know what Mozilla should be doing here, but I don't think these annoying UI tweaks are it.
- menotyou 5y ago
  One killer feature which made me switch from FF to Vivaldi (but AFAIK available in Chrome as well) is the fast changing of profiles.
kaba0 5y ago
Wth happens under every Firefox post? It almost seems like a bunch of paid accounts writing incoherent bullshit. If there would not be the same whiny reaction to a few linux technologies (dare someone mention systemd, pulseaudio, wayland), I would definitely believe so.
pmontra 5y ago
I hope the June version fixes the new tab behavior in the mobile app. Old Firefox (older than about one year ago): I tap the URL (a large target), the keyboard appears and I also get the screen with Top Sites, Bookmarks, History and Highlight (the most recent pages I visited.) This is what I use to go to the sites I visit most (eg: HN.) If I tap the tab button (a small target) I get the list of the currently open tabs. New Firefox: I tap the URL, only the keyboard appears. To go to Hacker News or any other sites in my bookmarks or recently visited list I have to either start writing its URL or tap the tab button (top right), then the new tab button (bottom right) and eventually get to the screen where I used to be in the old Firefox with only one tap. I fail to understand how this was an improvement over the old UI. At least today's video shows two of the people in the design department. If any of you is reading this: thanks for this UI disaster /s
0x_rs 5y ago
It takes quite the effort to consistently worsen user experience ignoring any user feedback and defending dubious telemetry as if it were a godsend. I am aware this does not contribute to discussion, but after more than half a decade I'm just too tired to keep up with whatever foolish design choices are taken, I don't want to be an hostage of software I use anymore. Floating tabs that occupy precious vertical space in nowadays wide monitors, and can only be shrunk with usercss because compact style is out of the way? Empty spaces and padding all over the place? Everything feels dumbed down to the lowest common denominator for no purpose but look trendy—and useless. Truth is that this browser simply is not fitting for the "power usage" it was famed for, now actively going against its users and keeping all actual user feedback away from bugzilla, where they are promptly deleted or labeled as off-topic. Swallow the ungoogled-chromium pill for now, I suppose, with another set of anti-user chromium design choices and lack of first-class features such as the most basic ever "MMB to open a new tab", ignoring the glaring engine monopoly issue. What this browser is today deserves its <4% usershare, this I say as an user since 2.0.
butz 5y ago
Not looking forward for this particular update. But as long as userChrome.css will be supported, I'll be using Firefox.

109 points by abdullahdiaa 5y ago

not sure i like the complete separation of the tabs from the rest of the browser. makes it seem disconnected and thus uncorrelated which tab corresponds to what is being rendered.

skavi 5y ago
To me it still seems fairly clear which tab is being focused since it's the only one outlined. I think separating the tab into its own bubble may pave the way for more interesting UI in the future. These bubbles could be stacked or displayed vertically while remaining aesthetically consistent. These tabs also seem to more clearly communicate that they can be dragged around.
- purplecats 5y ago
  great points, thanks for sharing

BallCramp 5y ago

All I heard was "We're going to break your plugins again, because reasons".

readflaggedcomm 5y ago
Neither plugins nor extensions are mentioned.
- BallCramp 5y ago
  Perhaps it didn't quite fit in with the finger-clicking, hand-clapping soundtrack.
bartvk 5y ago
I've tried the new design (using flags in about:config) and none of my plugins broke. I'm running Facebook Container, Midnight Lizard, No Thanks, a Medium extension and uBlock Origin. Have you actually tried it yourself? If not, why post a rather shallow dismissal?
- BallCramp 5y ago
  > why post a rather shallow dismissal? Because it amused me to do so. But your single piece of anecdotal evidence is good too. Powerful stuff.
- jzzskijj 5y ago
  I was almost going to say something similar, because on Android there are still just 16 add-ons available and it has been a long while. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/search/?type=extension https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/search/?type=extens...
  - kaba0 5y ago
    How is it relevant to parent being wrong?

jchw 5y ago

I wasn't a huge fan of most of the UI refreshes lately in both Chrome and Firefox, but this is definitely the least welcome so far. I do not really expect these tabs to grow on me. (Also, it obviously looks fine, but I really dislike the new trend of adding a bunch of empty space for no real reason other than aesthetics. The first thing I do in Firefox right now is remove the spacers next to the address bar...)

roca 5y ago
I disliked the new tabs at first but after a few weeks I'm totally used to them.
- Hamuko 5y ago
  I still hate the new tabs after having used the Developer Edition for a while. There's absolutely no separators between tabs, making it hard to see tab boundaries. Having the tabs on a separate background colour also helps to quickly see which part of the chrome is the tab bar and which is the address bar. Now they're the same colour. FWIW, Chrome has separators between tabs as well as better contrast between the address bar section and the tab section (1.31:1 for Chrome, 1.08:1 for Firefox).
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- masklinn 5y ago
  From FDE, I disliked the new tabs at first, and I still do. They have no redeeming qualities. They’re not denser, they’re not more readable, and they’re definitely not more usable as they’re floating in the tab bar unmoored from the rest of the browser. They don’t make any sense and they’re visually unappealing.
kijin 5y ago
Those spacers on both sides of the address bar made absolutely no sense, I agree. But there's some logic to the growth of empty space everywhere. Even laptops have touchscreens these days. Click targets need to be bigger because fingers are fatter than mouse pointers. I just wish they'd keep around a compact option for non-touch devices, but unfortunately another recent trend is to get rid of user-configurable options.

wumpus 5y ago

Needs a "video" label, there's no content without the video.

dual_dingo 5y ago

Ah yes, we have no money so let's invest a ton of work into something that will do nothing to bring in new or lost users, but, given our track record, has the potential to alienate even more of our ever fewer remaining users.

tasogare 5y ago
> we have no money Daddy Google need to keep them alive to avoid a lawsuit, so free money is guaranteed to keep coming.
skavi 5y ago
Back in the early days of Chrome, I definitely feel that a lot of people switched and continued using it because it looked and felt better.
- DistressedDrone 5y ago
  Maybe it looked better, but I think it felt better because it was much faster. This is a marketing push disguised as an aesthetic change. Mozilla, please stop trying to make Pocket happen, it's not going to happen.
- thrdbndndn 5y ago
  Chrome was way faster than Firefox before Fx dropped its old addon system. It was so bad that my main profile (with shittons of addons) at the time took about whooping ~10 seconds to cold-start.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  When I use Edge Chrome, ironically gmail tells me to switch to Chrome, that is how people switched to Chrome.
  - jansan 5y ago
    Many people who I know switched to Chrome because I told them to.

Minor49er 5y ago

Every announcement makes me happier that I disabled auto updates several versions ago

initplus 5y ago
I have been hearing people saying this for over a decade now...
dredmorbius 5y ago
From a UI/UX perspective, yes. From a security perspective: hell fucking no. You need those updates. Even if you're just doing plain-jane browsing, with no finance, commerce, professional, government, or personal interaction, you're putting your entire system at risk. (TailsOS users possibly excepted.)
- corty 5y ago
  Security fixes should be totally separate from UI and functionality chhanges. We need more software with long-term-supported stable releases. Functionality and UI changes breed fear of updates which lessens security.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    In an ideal world, absolutely, I agree. We're not there though. And there are an number of bug categories (phishing, social engineering, etc.) which intersect on UI/UX.
- elcapitan 5y ago
  Then why can't I have separate security updates? I'm fed up with some fashion people breaking my software usability all the time, just because some hot new way to arrange tabs has to be tried out.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    You sometimes can, though you've got to know what to ask for, and what you're trading off. FWIW, this is what platforms such as Debian attempt to provide. It's a challenge, and something of a losing battle, especially with complex and fast-moving tools, notably Web browsers, but also development toolkits (scripting languages, Web development environments, etc.). Debian stable attempts to provide a stable feature set + bugfixes for all packages. Increasingly, even on Stable, there is the option to install packages which continue to offer feature updates, including for web browsers. Though there is also the option of an LTS or ESR package install. These are specified versions with extended bugfix / security support, typically called Long Term Support (LTS) or Extended Service Release (ESR) version of a package. You'll find these with the Linux Kernel, for example. And yes, Mozilla has an ESR programme which "receives major updates on average every 42 weeks with minor updates such as crash fixes, security fixes and policy updates as needed, but at least every four weeks." https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/enterprise/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/enterprise/ Firefox ESR is currently at release 78.10.1: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/78.10.1/releasenotes/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/78.10.1/releasenotes/ I believe that's based on 78.0.1, first released in June, 2020: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/78.0.1/releasenotes/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/78.0.1/releasenotes/ Firefox Desktop is at release 88.0.1, release May 5, 2021. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/88.0.1/releasenotes/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/88.0.1/releasenotes/

nik736 5y ago

Been using it for quite a while with the Developer Edition and I have to say while the tabs looked weird at first I absolutely love the new look now!

inamiyar 5y ago

I'm pretty excited about this. In general it looks fine, but I really gotta ask - why do browsers always redesign tabs? They don't change in functionality for the most part and yet they always get refreshed. Regardless, excited to try the new design, hopefully they really have streamlined it. I personally find the firefox menu navigation a bit weird and hard to...well navigate through so that's what I'm hoping has been cleaned up.

catchmeifyoucan 5y ago
Because it makes it real obvious that something has changed. Kind of like car headlights. They’re a really prominent part of the entire design that make you want to explore more
- toast0 5y ago
  Back in GNOME 2, epiphany was the best browser ever because the UI simply followed the GNOME UI guidelines.
gforge 5y ago
I love the new tabs, I found the old ones clumsy and ugly. Design is unfortunately something that is constantly a moving target. If Mozilla stops updating they will surely die - for most users the technical details don't matter, what matters is that their friends go, wow what is the browser you're using? And thus, redesign is just a way of staying alive...
dvcrn 5y ago
Installed the dev edition that has the new design, and I like it as well. Especially the Alpenglow theme that ships with it looks fresh and colorful. Will it make me consider trying it again? Who knows, right now I do like that the feel of it a lot. Might use it as my secondary browser for my while to see how it feels
- throwaway67114 5y ago
  Try it with Ublock Origin. It works best with FF. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...

savolai 5y ago

I was sceptical but this actually looks fresh and makes my visual system relax into the simplicity. Yay for going forwars bravely.

gcommer 5y ago

Their video on the front page contradicts itself. They highlight the UI coded by "user interaction" and no surprise, the Pocket button in the URL bar has tiny usage. And yet, in the new design? It's bigger and more prominent. And they try to say this is data-driven in the voice-over. Now, yet again, I'll have to just pin Firefox and stop updating it everywhere for a few months until the inevitable "undo all these changes" plugins are ready. Update: Just tried the new design. As expected, the new tabs take up substantial vertical space and even compact mode (now hidden behind about:config) barely helps. Time for more userChrome.css...

0xy 5y ago
Consider yourself lucky there isn't a giant banner ad for Mr Robot in the title bar. Mozilla's CEO really needs another pay rise for overseeing plummeting product market share.
alanbernstein 5y ago
Also "remove clicks" and "remove clutter" are directly contradictory... I want to be able to configure my browser to minimize clicks FOR ME, and I'm ok with having a lot of "clutter" i.e. functionality.
mrweasel 5y ago
The new tabs also look nothing like tabs. It’s now a button bar. It looks great, but it’s not really an inprovement and is clearly designed on a large monitor.
- jansan 5y ago
  They will go back to the conventional tab design, I am pretty sure about this. Tabs should look like they look in Chrome, not like in Firefox or VSCode. Tab design has pretty much been settled in the 90s, no need for experiments.
  - ComputerGuru 5y ago
    It takes a lot to convince UI designers to admit they made a mistake. Just look at any redesign ever.

m1keil 5y ago

Wasn't there a big redesign just recently?

KirillPanov 5y ago
No, that was days ago. Definitely not "fresh" enough.

JamesDeepDown 5y ago

The UI heatmap shows that nobody clicks Pocket, but the video highlights that pocket is "refreshed" and is part of the new design. Dear Firefox, that's not how things work.

bovine3dom 5y ago
No, that's exactly how UX research works: - Users are using X feature a lot. 1) the researcher likes the feature: let's invest time into improving it. Or 2) the researcher dislikes the feature: we need to remove it because it's adding too much friction - Users are not using feature X a lot. 1) the researcher likes the feature: users aren't discovering this feature, we need to make it more prominent. 2) the researcher dislikes the feature: no-one is using this old, outdated feature, we need to remove it. (I'm still upset that they removed FTP and RSS support.)
- Farow 5y ago
  Hopefully they'll copy Chrome as usual and bring back RSS support.
- michaelanckaert 5y ago
  So basically you're saying the researcher decides the product direction and not the users? feign shocked face In this case I believe a heat map is a bad way to decide product direction. The amount of clicks don't tell anything about the ease of use, only which UI element receives user attention. If the Pocket feature receives no clicks, it can mean that either users don't find it or they don't want to use it. Of course, product wise I understand FF might want to push Pocket and increase usage. But the decision about whether or not the UI is suitable shouldn't be gotten from a heat map.
  - bovine3dom 5y ago
    I think a heatmap is a reasonable thing to measure. I just wish UX research was a little more scientific (by for example, coming up with multiple hypotheses and then conducting more experiments to eliminate them).

deanclatworthy 5y ago

This was bizarre. Neither the announcement or the video really said what has changed. I’d rather they focus on performance. It’s third in the list behind Chrome and Safari on my MacBook. I use it only for Jira and Gitlab at work with about 10 tabs and it regularly consumes more CPU than Chrome with about 50 tabs open.

ComputerGuru 5y ago
To be fair, Jira and Gitlab are just about the two most bloated web apps in existence.

badhabit 5y ago

i hope there is a toggle button in front menu to disable javascript just a click away. not buried levels deep in settings.

pseudalopex 5y ago
You know there isn't.
pmontra 5y ago
You could install uBlock Origin, then click on its icon in the top bar, then click on the JavaScript icon to disable JavaScript on the current website. If you want to disable it globally and forever, spending some time in the settings once doesn't seem too annoying.

osigurdson 5y ago

This looks good to me. It would be nice if they could modernize and simplify their logo a bit.

yosito 5y ago

Firefox doesn't need another UI refresh. It needs performance enhancements and bug fixes. I've been using Firefox as my primary browser for years, and I'm tired of feeling like I'm using second class software.

foepys 5y ago
The people who are making the designs are not the same people who are fixing bugs and improve performance. If you replaced all UX designers with SWE you will gain development speed in the short term and end up with an outdated looking app after a few years.
- dylan604 5y ago
  The funny thing is that I don't use any of the buttons in the browser. I use the URL bar to tell the browser what to show me. Cmd-T for new tap, then Cmd-opt-arrows to view the various things I've asked the browser to show me. Cmd-R for a refresh. Don't need a button for that. Multi-finger swipes for back/forward. My home is set to a blank page, so it's a useless button for me. Seems to me like a simple UI could be had. Got no opions on mobile. Don't use it enough to know what that experience is like. No get off my lawn!!
- enriquto 5y ago
  > an outdated looking app yes, please! That is exactly what I want. An outdated-looking app which is fast, has no new bugs, does not break randomly upon updates.
- yosito 5y ago
  > outdated looking app I honestly don't care. The "outdated look" from 10 years ago looked just fine. My browser is not my outfit. I don't need a new style all the time. I need a reliable, performant, secure, open source browser. The UI can look exactly the same for 50 years, and I would be happy.
clumsysmurf 5y ago
I think it needs Vertical tabs at least

gui77aume 5y ago

I'm fine with Firefox developer edition, but I find it's hard to see which tab is selected in this new design especially when using dark theme.

j-pb 5y ago

This is what they killed the rust and mdn teams for? Oooff...

kaba0 5y ago
No? Like there is enough surface area to work on multiple unrelated parts of Firefox at the same time. Also, Rust team is most definitely not killed, Servo is, which frankly, made perfect sense. Developing one browser engine is hard enough as is, let alone two.
- j-pb 5y ago
  You contradict yourself. If there's enough surface area, then there's enough for alternative and better engines. Rust & Wasmtime: https://mobile.twitter.com/tschneidereit/status/1293868141953667074 https://mobile.twitter.com/tschneidereit/status/129386814195... Dev Tools & All of MDN: https://mobile.twitter.com/SteveALee/status/1293487542382333952 https://mobile.twitter.com/SteveALee/status/1293487542382333...
  - kaba0 5y ago
    There is an increasing amount of Rust being incorporated into Firefox, it is just not Servo. And while it is possible to develop two browser engines at the same time (though it is not surface area, it is a different module competing for the same spot, so no, I’m not contradicting myself), it is still a dumb decision to split the already few people with the necessary technical knowhow around such an advanced domain. Otherwise you would see thousands of browsers out there, yet all we have (ones that implement a reasonable amount of the web standards) is chrome+edge, safari and firefox.
tqkxzugoaupvwqr 5y ago
They dismantled the team who maintained the mdn docs? That’s shortsighted. mdn is a magnet for web devs and helps Firefox to stay in developers’ minds.
- 5y ago

guerrilla 5y ago

So they came up with an excuse for why all my extensions are going to stop workinh again... Great.

simfoo 5y ago

Please just bring back pre-Fenix Android Firefox together with performance improvements. There are still only a hand few of addons supported, lot's of bugs that remain unfixed. This is not the time for another redesign

edoceo 5y ago

Users: we hate it. Metrics: few people click this Managers: MAKE IT BIGGER Dear Firefox Mangers: you make it hard to want to use your product. I used to love it. I only like it now. Really the only thing you've got going right now is that you're NOT Chrome. Get good!!

handrous 5y ago
For me "love" was last felt for Firefox in maybe the 2.x days, at the latest. After that it was back to "why am I still not using Opera? Oh yeah, the banner ads. Back to FF I guess, even though it's slow now". Then it was "Chrome is like FF but crashes less and the dev tools are better, also Google's only probably evil and not yet definitely evil so it's fine, now I'm a Chrome user". Then it was "Chrome and FF both make my system beachball a lot and eat a couple hours of battery life for, apparently, no good reason, guess I'm a Safari user now, sure didn't see that coming". I'm not thrilled that that's where I'm still at, but, it is. Firefox needs to Phoenix itself to get me to like it again. It's the Netscape Navigator / Mozilla Browser it replaced, now. Or go nuts and incorporate some other Internet protocols. Maybe become the open social network browser? Anything to give me a reason to care about it again. I want to.

voldacar 5y ago

time to post the graph again https://itdm.com/wp-content/uploads/Mozilla.png https://itdm.com/wp-content/uploads/Mozilla.png

YossarianFrPrez 5y ago

Maybe I'm missing something, but the core aspect of browser functionality that everyone uses -- like loading websites, using tabs and windows, press the back/refresh button, saving bookmarks, and maaaybe toggling ad-blockers -- don't seem to require constant design changes.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Darmody 5y ago

Bring back Brendan Eich before it's too late. Firefox needs someone with vision, not a bunch of SJW who want to push pocket down my throat.

iamtedd 5y ago

Let me guess, comments turned off on the video? checks Yep.

crossroadsguy 5y ago

I think the new Firefox design philosophy is marketing and buzzword. Because that's what that useless video and that blog post, which was devoid of easily accessible information, suggests. Besides, Pocket in Firefox is personal now! I am going to ignore this browser until they totally remove it (like completely; not bundled in any shape or form) and only allow it as a normal third party extension. Besides, it fares awful on Macs and besides many OS level integrations that even Chrome and Brave do. I am done using second grade softwares whether it's FOSS or whatever. It's 2021 ffs, and they literally had decades to get their shit together.

cassianoleal 5y ago
> Besides, it fares awful on Macs and besides many OS level integrations that even Chrome and Brave do. Been using Firefox on macOS for at least a couple years now. It has been making massive advances, fixing bugs and getting much better integration. Smart zoom and "elastic scrolling" (or however that's called) are implemented now and work great to add usability and make it feel more at home. Battery life seems great, performance in general is at least on par with Chrome (except for Google apps, but even for those I still find it good enough). Care to say which things still bother you with current Firefox beta (the one mentioned in the article)?

inDigiNeous 5y ago

I dont understand what all the dissing about Firefox here is. To me it still has world class javascript performance, it's open source, crossplatform and fast. Chrome feels sluggish in some cases compared to Firefox. Safari definitely feels lighter, but it's feature set in the rendering and javascript department is lacking compared to FF.

handrous 5y ago

Anyone else see the heat map of the Back button being one of the most-used elements, and far more used than the Forward-button, and flash back to much, much earlier FF designs where the back button was, in fact, larger than the forward button and more prominent than most other UI elements? Just Googled, actually, and it looks like 3.0 did that. 2008. Sigh. Also, as a dedicated UI-depth proponent, I find myself in the awkward position of being the "no, not like that" guy re: the new tabs. They're jarring and don't seem like a coherent part of the design. More depth, yes, please yes, but with more purpose & thought behind it.

ComputerGuru 5y ago
I believe internet explorer introduced the asymmetric navigation buttons with Windows Vista, if I’m not mistaken.
glandium 5y ago
The back button is still larger than the other buttons right now. Not anymore in the new UI, though.

dredmorbius 5y ago

Ugh. Tell us what's been added. Tell us what's been removed. Tell us how interactions have changed. I've been using the Web since the mid-1990s, Mosaic and Netscape initially. I've seen a lot come and go. Much of it has been bad. Major revisions strike dread in my heart. As jwz has noted, UI is different, in that changes to it provide relatively little payback: [I]n the case of all other software, I believe strongly in "release early, release often". Hell, I damned near invented it. But I think history has proven that UI is different than software. https://web.archive.org/web/20120511115213/https://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/04/why-i-use-safari-instead-of-firefox/ https://web.archive.org/web/20120511115213/https://www.jwz.o... (HN-safe Archive link) Firefox is still somewhat relucantly my preferred GUI browser. My first love remains w3m (fast, light, keyboard, terminal), though the hostility of increasingly large portions of the Web, including unexpected quarters (Internet Archive, hullo!?) to plain non-JS HTML is discouraging. The Nyxt browser looks increasingly appealing: https://nyxt.atlas.engineer/article/release-2.0.0.org https://nyxt.atlas.engineer/article/release-2.0.0.org (HN discussions: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=nyxt https://hn.algolia.com/?q=nyxt) I use and lean heavily on Pocket. If I'm lucky it merely falls over, more usually it explodes in native villages killing thousands of innocents. Pocket still gets worse the more you use it: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5x2sfx/pocket_it_gets_worse_the_more_you_use_it/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5x2sfx/pocket_... (HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19763106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19763106) Of the list of issues given, only find-in-page (Android app) has been notably added, in over four years. If the new desktop browser borrows from Fennec, I've got issues there as well, as Fennec: - Abandons keyboard shortcuts such at ctrl-L (navigation), tab switching, tab close. - Abandons print-to-PDF. - Doesn't support reorganising / reordering bookmarks. - Abandons view-source. - Bastardises error codes. (A set of 403 errors simply resulted in a blank page, I had to try other browsers to resolve a recent site issue.) - Abandons the navbar "reader:url=?" hack. (Often sites only intermittently support reader mode.) - Supports only a small subset (though, yes, a useful one) of Firefox extensions. As a long-time power user, I want power-user tools and capabilities. I strongly suspect Mozilla will be deprecating these. As the supporter of users with little technical knowledge, limited vision, mobility challenges, and cognitive impairments, I can assure you that any change is a net negative. (For one, a recent website refresh to their principle site of interest has been a months-long set of frustrations.) UI should not change. That means getting it right if you possibly can, and where you cannot, owning those mistakes until doomsday. Again, as jwz notes, Apple sticks to its metaphors, no matter how screwed up those might be (the platform drives me nuts, frankly). Apple has seen two UI refreshes in the lifetime of Macintosh, and OSX is now older than Mac Classic was when OSX was introduced. (Hell, I suspect half the people reading this have no first-hand knowledge of the original.)

drw85 5y ago

Quick, we need to make a video with some up to date memes in it. Seriously, the video didn't even show anything. I have no idea what'll change based on that jump cut fest.

djhworld 5y ago

One thing I don't understand is why they felt the need to make the UI bigger, I can't be the only one who mostly uses a 13" screen

Cipater 5y ago
Everyone's doing product design on giant screens these days.

sfRattan 5y ago

I remember reading about the end of "compact" mode some weeks/months ago. With this update, it seems that change is finally here... Almost. Downloading the nightly build, some investigation reveals the ability to reduce the space stolen by the user interface for pointless margins is hidden in about:config and can be found by searching there for "density." Nonsensically, the browser.uidensity field allows values 0, 1, and 2, but: * 0 has some useless UI margin space * 1 has less useless UI margin space * 2 has more useless UI margin space What?? I guess incremental values were always supposed to go middle, low, high and I am just a crank. All three options waste more vertical space with useless UI margins than the current version of Firefox. Designers have decided that their user interface is more important than the content it enables, and therefore we all must have more useless UI margin space. Edit: Upon further investigation, browser.compactmode.show can be set to true and restore the feature on the customize toolbar page. For now. With the scary parenthetical warning "not supported."

dredmorbius 5y ago

For the Pocket haters: 1. Why? 2. How would you implement a replacement functionality, whether in or outside the browser itself? 3. If you're using an alternative now, what is it?

handrous 5y ago
FF user (off and on) since Phoenix chiming in. I'm going to level with you: I've looked at that Pocket button and all the Pocket ads FF throws at me on new tabs and on their obnoxious new-version announcement tabs, for years, but I do not actually know what Pocket does. I think it's some kind of cloud bookmarking or something. Maybe also something like the Reader view? I'm not sure. Whatever it is, I don't miss it on Safari (my daily driver these days, mostly for iOS integration and performance reasons, god knows not for feature-related reasons) and I've never cared enough to figure out what it does on FF when I use it. I guess my alternative is bookmarks, which are 99.99% just a feature to let me feel safe closing all my tabs (and then never, ever looking at all those "important" bookmarked tabs again, ever—like, I've got many-years-old bookmarked sessions that were so important I couldn't close them without the security of bookmarks to make it feel OK to do so, but I've never looked at those bookmark-folders and very likely I'll die having never looked at them). I diligently export them every time I retire a system disk, so I've got a bunch of bookmark export files sitting on disks that I've also never imported or otherwise looked at. Probably I'd find all kinds of cool shit that past-me was looking at, but who's got the time.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  So summarizing: its intent isn't clear? FWIW: Pocket is similar in general design to a number of "read it later" services (the Android app is still identified as "com.ideashower.readitlater.pro"), such as the now-defunct Readability, still-extant Instapaper, Maciej Czeglowski's Pinboard, and the FS/OSS Wallabag. There's a ... (very?) loose kinship with tools like Zotero, Calibre, and Elsevier-owned Mandelay, also knowledge-management / article management tools. Pocket lets you: - Save articles for later reading. - Display many (though not all) of them in a simplified and standardised "reader" view. - Apply tags. (I abuse this feature horribly.) - Add highlights. (3 per article for the free version, unlimited for pro.) - There is of course a social feature allowing shares and recommendations. I avoid this like the plauge. - There is, inexplicably, no way to share, export, or otherwise save a bibliographic reading list, say, of articles on some topic. - Exporting the article listing is possible (JSON format). You'll have to re-fetch items individually if you do this. - Articles are not saved and you're still subject to linkrot, edits, or substitutions at the origin source. - Saved content is accessible from any device by account, either from a Web client, from Firefox itself, or through Mobile apps (iOS, Android). The functionality exceeds that of bookmarks, sacrifices local control and storage.

pjmlp 5y ago

And this kids is how Web ===> ChromeOS.

pizza 5y ago

A lot of mean-spiritedness in the comments section today it seems..

eppsilon 5y ago
You must be new here…

ilmiont 5y ago

They say they want us to worry less. This is now making me worry about what I do next. Will it be possible to revert this madness or is it really time to abandon Firefox? I know that in the big picture it’s small, but a good part of why the Firefox is the UI. In compact mode, with dark theme, on Linux, Firefox is - for me - the ultimate browser UI that just gets out of my way. This new “modern” look is oversized, distracting and wastes space. Nobody’s asked for it and the blog post wording really sounds like trying to justify change for the sake of it. Sad times. What has happened to Mozilla? Am I making too much of it? Maybe, but it’s certainly not making me “worry less”. It’s filling me with dread. And from the other responses here and on Reddit, it’s clear Mozilla is out-of-touch with it’s biggest users.

saila 5y ago
Overall, I think the new version looks better. The only thing I don't get is why they made the tabs into floating buttons with empty vertical space on both sides. On the one hand, I think it looks nicer than the current tab bar, but I don't see what UI/UX purpose it serves to change such a fundamental affordance. (Maybe someone knows?) I feel like they could modernize the tab bar while still keeping it a tab bar.

juusto 5y ago

Looks great, can't wait to try it. Kudos for those who worked hard on it. It is a shame so many comments are putting down the effort. Firefox is still the best browser out there where privacy is a concern.

morninglight 5y ago

I don't use add-ons or plugins. I just want a secure browser that - 1. doesn't have a memory footprint the size of Texas. 2. doesn't have memory leaks that eat all my remaining RAM. And it would be nice to have it within 20 years.

dunco 5y ago

I hope this is a step forward for Firefox. I hope this is not yet another redesign for a desktop app that tries to make it look like a mobile app by removing features and adding gratuitous amounts of whitespace. Desktop is not Mobile and they should not have the same interface. Windows 8 showed us what a disaster that was, but every company since seems to have to learn this lesson themselves. (Looking at you spotify and others)

NackerHughes 5y ago
> I hope this is not yet another redesign for a desktop app that tries to make it look like a mobile app by removing features and adding gratuitous amounts of whitespace. I've got some bad news for you.

dunco 5y ago

I hope this is a step forward for Firefox and I expect that there will be some genuine wins in here, but I really hope this is not yet another redesign for a desktop app that tries to make it look like a mobile app by removing features and adding gratuitous amounts of whitespace. The word "streamlined" is usually the harbinger of such regressions. Desktop is not Mobile and their interfaces should not be the same. Windows 8 showed us what a disaster that was, but every company since seems to have to learn this lesson themselves. (Looking at you spotify)

waterglassFull 5y ago

Putting the Pocket stuff aside I've been using this on the Dev edition for a few weeks now. I quite like it. It feels snappy and looks clean. Good work FF team.

reid 5y ago

I’m excited for native context menus on macOS! This 21 year old bug is fixed in the next version of Firefox! https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34572 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34572

eppsilon 5y ago
That’s great. Finally they’ll match the dark mode setting. Hopefully that applies to the window decorations too?
- reid 5y ago
  Yes, the menus match the dark mode setting. And they look great!

DyslexicAtheist 5y ago

One of my FF UI/UE headaches is consistent use of a dark theme. If you do not want to feel like a deer between the headlight whenever you open a new tab or click on a new URL at night there is still no way around userChrome.css hacks. And even then it doesn't work 100% of the time. Hope it will finally be fixed in this release since it has been years that people are complaining.

agumonkey 5y ago

I use nightly regularly and was not excited by the new aesthetics, so I would join most of the other commenters here .. but to avoid weighing on the same side of the boat, I'd rather ask what would be a top 10 priority list of features to add / fix in firefox for the HN crowd ?

handrous 5y ago
1 - Battery life. Their last big win was "now only as bad as Chrome, which is still pretty bad!" and that was a while ago. 2 - Resource use more generally. One shitty tab shouldn't make my whole system slow, even outside the browser. Safari (as with the battery life thing) manages this better than the rest. Do that. Those two are basically table-stakes to get me back to thinking about using it regularly. 3 - I gather from this thread that they collect "telemetry", including mouse movements, on an opt-out basis. We used to call that, unequivocally, spyware. No. Stop. I don't care that a bunch of ad salesmen made this normal, it's still gross. 4 - Better in-browser performance (separate from not junking up my whole system, performance-wise, as in #2) 5 - I think to be compelling, they either need to slim way down, or bulk way up, feature-wise. Either laser-focus on being the light, slim, simple browser that FF hasn't been since like the mid '00s, or integrate more Internet protocols to try to break us out of this crappy local maximum. New social protocols (Mastadon?), maybe pick one of the old-school-web protocols and run with that. Maybe IPFS. Something. Probably several somethings, ideally supporting and enhancing one another. Give me reasons to want to use FF again, either because it does things nothing else does, or because it's lightning fast, has a postage-stamp memory footprint, and is easy on my battery. Notably, I think, the fat-FF route is also a pretty damn clear route to monetization, which they seem to want. I fear they've missed their chance for that, though, and the time to start was at least 5 years ago when they had a huge headcount and lots of money.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  i liked firefox focus for the slim way down side of things, it was obviously borderline crippled but so simple, fast and burden-free ..
- pbronez 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

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pera 5y ago

I really don't get why Mozilla keep making disruptive UI changes while a very significant amount of users take the time to ask them to please not do it. At this point it feels almost as an act of aggression, it's honestly incomprehensible to me.

initplus 5y ago

I was an old school die-hard Firefox user back in the day, have since switched to chrome... I want Mozilla to succeed and fight the browser monoculture. I'm just not really sure what the "killer feature" to bring users back is? Chrome has kept their core UI relatively stable since forever. Meanwhile we are onto another big Firefox redesign where we make the tabs look different? Why follow UI trends (big spacing) that your core userbase dislikes? I could understand it if Firefox was a different kind of product, with a different set of users. I don't really know what Mozilla should be doing here, but I don't think these annoying UI tweaks are it.

menotyou 5y ago
One killer feature which made me switch from FF to Vivaldi (but AFAIK available in Chrome as well) is the fast changing of profiles.

kaba0 5y ago

Wth happens under every Firefox post? It almost seems like a bunch of paid accounts writing incoherent bullshit. If there would not be the same whiny reaction to a few linux technologies (dare someone mention systemd, pulseaudio, wayland), I would definitely believe so.

pmontra 5y ago

I hope the June version fixes the new tab behavior in the mobile app. Old Firefox (older than about one year ago): I tap the URL (a large target), the keyboard appears and I also get the screen with Top Sites, Bookmarks, History and Highlight (the most recent pages I visited.) This is what I use to go to the sites I visit most (eg: HN.) If I tap the tab button (a small target) I get the list of the currently open tabs. New Firefox: I tap the URL, only the keyboard appears. To go to Hacker News or any other sites in my bookmarks or recently visited list I have to either start writing its URL or tap the tab button (top right), then the new tab button (bottom right) and eventually get to the screen where I used to be in the old Firefox with only one tap. I fail to understand how this was an improvement over the old UI. At least today's video shows two of the people in the design department. If any of you is reading this: thanks for this UI disaster /s

0x_rs 5y ago

It takes quite the effort to consistently worsen user experience ignoring any user feedback and defending dubious telemetry as if it were a godsend. I am aware this does not contribute to discussion, but after more than half a decade I'm just too tired to keep up with whatever foolish design choices are taken, I don't want to be an hostage of software I use anymore. Floating tabs that occupy precious vertical space in nowadays wide monitors, and can only be shrunk with usercss because compact style is out of the way? Empty spaces and padding all over the place? Everything feels dumbed down to the lowest common denominator for no purpose but look trendy—and useless. Truth is that this browser simply is not fitting for the "power usage" it was famed for, now actively going against its users and keeping all actual user feedback away from bugzilla, where they are promptly deleted or labeled as off-topic. Swallow the ungoogled-chromium pill for now, I suppose, with another set of anti-user chromium design choices and lack of first-class features such as the most basic ever "MMB to open a new tab", ignoring the glaring engine monopoly issue. What this browser is today deserves its <4% usershare, this I say as an user since 2.0.

butz 5y ago

Not looking forward for this particular update. But as long as userChrome.css will be supported, I'll be using Firefox.