4 ms·

My initial reaction to the beta version was that the UI was much worse, but I decided to give it a chance and spend a few weeks trying to get used to it. Now t

My initial reaction to the beta version was that the UI was much worse, but I decided to give it a chance and spend a few weeks trying to get used to it. Now that I've had time to play with it, I'm even more convinced my initial reaction was correct. But I've also had time to reflect on why, and in my view there are two problems with this new design. Removing visual separators from the tabs makes them much harder to distinguish - the only difference between one tab and the next is a larger horizontal space. In prose, when we want to separate sentences, we don't just use longer spaces; we use other visual indicators like capital letters and full stops (periods). Paragraphs are separated by vertical space, which is visually distinct from a horizontal one. The second problem is that the tab you're not supposed to click on (the active tab) looks like a button, while the tabs you are meant to click on (the inactive tabs) are presented as text. This is opposite to normal UX conventions. There are some subjective improvements to the look and feel of this UX change, but overall I'm confused as to why the Firefox UX team would go against established conventions to produce something that's visually more difficult to use and less intuitive than they had before. Fortunately userChrome.css is still usable if you set an about:config option (toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets), so I can see about fixing the problem myself, but I'm concerned that Firefox's march toward reduced configurability will eventually remove this option. Overall, my concerns on Firefox are the same as most; in the pursuit of market share, they're moving further and further away from their roots by removing customisation options. Remember when you could change Firefox's theme without using hidden configuration options?

tpxl 5y ago
Oh god, you were not joking. I'm honestly wondering what graphics designers are thinking to come up with a design that _literally will not distinguish neighboring elements from each other_.
BuckRogers 5y ago
Pretty good observations. I'm someone who knows very little about UX/UI and what you said makes a lot of sense. Having the active tab "depressed" is more typical. While I think the redesign looks good, I don't really have strong feelings on it. I mostly just want a supported interface, so I finally gave up on compact mode. It's just ok. I guess they wanted to differentiate themselves from Chromium browsers in a more significant way? While most complaints, including from my spouse, are that the tabs are no longer delineated, that part hasn't bothered me much. I consider the delineation the icon on the left, and x on the right. Part of me likes the freshening up. I won't quit using Firefox over these changes, I've been using it for 20 years now and won't be changing until I'm forced. There's still no other browser with a built-in search bar that also works correctly with a keyboard shortcut other than Firefox and Vivaldi. Vivaldi has everything I need in a desktop browser, it just isn't supported at all on iOS which is equally important for me these days. And honestly, Firefox is probably the only browser that isn't from Apple or Microsoft that I'd use. Otherwise I prefer something as important as a browser backed by a truly large organization. Microsoft Edge is really hard to beat in my view once you consider all the intrinsic qualities to it like support. I'll put it this way, no one is making a mistake using Safari or Edge. I like most everything about Firefox, the browser hasn't ever been ruined, but you got to wonder if there's truly even a place for 3rd party browsers in this era. If I weren't a legacy user, I'd just use Edge and be happy not knowing what I'm missing out on with alternatives.

tpxl 5y ago

Oh god, you were not joking. I'm honestly wondering what graphics designers are thinking to come up with a design that _literally will not distinguish neighboring elements from each other_.

BuckRogers 5y ago

Pretty good observations. I'm someone who knows very little about UX/UI and what you said makes a lot of sense. Having the active tab "depressed" is more typical. While I think the redesign looks good, I don't really have strong feelings on it. I mostly just want a supported interface, so I finally gave up on compact mode. It's just ok. I guess they wanted to differentiate themselves from Chromium browsers in a more significant way? While most complaints, including from my spouse, are that the tabs are no longer delineated, that part hasn't bothered me much. I consider the delineation the icon on the left, and x on the right. Part of me likes the freshening up. I won't quit using Firefox over these changes, I've been using it for 20 years now and won't be changing until I'm forced. There's still no other browser with a built-in search bar that also works correctly with a keyboard shortcut other than Firefox and Vivaldi. Vivaldi has everything I need in a desktop browser, it just isn't supported at all on iOS which is equally important for me these days. And honestly, Firefox is probably the only browser that isn't from Apple or Microsoft that I'd use. Otherwise I prefer something as important as a browser backed by a truly large organization. Microsoft Edge is really hard to beat in my view once you consider all the intrinsic qualities to it like support. I'll put it this way, no one is making a mistake using Safari or Edge. I like most everything about Firefox, the browser hasn't ever been ruined, but you got to wonder if there's truly even a place for 3rd party browsers in this era. If I weren't a legacy user, I'd just use Edge and be happy not knowing what I'm missing out on with alternatives.