7 ms·

New Firefox

67 points by Ashoka_rkt 5y ago

ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago
Wish things didn't take up so much more whitespace on desktops. I miss the original Chrome UI. https://img.informer.com/p0/google-chrome-v1-built-in-download-manager.png https://img.informer.com/p0/google-chrome-v1-built-in-downlo... Things were much tighter and most of the space was kept empty for web content. The new Firefox redesign is really nice and clean to look at though.
- livre 5y ago
  This seems like the same problem with have with RAM requirements, we have more resolution and RAM than we used to have in the past so developers and designers waste more of it because they don't need to be as careful as they used to.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    But using much ram is still bad. Using much whitespace is viewed as a staple of modern design. I don't like it either, I have enough empty space on my wall. I buy my screen to display information.
- citrusui 5y ago
  Aside from various coats of paint, the Chrome tab UI is still the same. Which I'm thankful for. Firefox has gone through a few redesigns lately; Australis, Photon, and Proton (latest)
  - ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago
    isn't there more vertical whitespace now?
  - ergot_vacation 5y ago
    Gotta re-arrange those deck chairs!
- omega3 5y ago
  I'm using Vivaldi for this specific reason.
  - tomjuggler 5y ago
    Yeah, no white space at all, in dark mode..
- bruce343434 5y ago
  I still miss those slanted tabs. It just looks so much better.
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  I wonder if this can be changed via user CSS?
- Tokelin 5y ago
  You can set some flags in about:config to make the UI more compact: browser.proton.enabled to false browser.uidensity to 1
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    Thank you!
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    The proton enable thing will go away in the next version. The compact mode will probably keep working a while longer but as they recovered the UI option for it, the writing is on the wall...
xrstf 5y ago
Is it coincidence that comments are turned off on _all_ videos on YouTube[1] related to the redesigns? What options do I as a "normie" have to give feedback? Is there really only one way, to use the ancient Bugzilla and hopefully finding a ticket somewhere? [1] https://www.youtube.com/c/firefox/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/firefox/videos
- ehutch79 5y ago
  1) goto firefox.com 2) scroll to bottom, where most companies put contact info 3) click 'contact' or! 'file a bug' OR! There's a bunch of social media links.
- wearywanderer 5y ago
  Projects like Mozilla and GNOME have naked contempt for user feedback and go out of their way to avoid and disregard it. They say we're all idiots who "want faster horses instead of cars". But really it's about power. If user feedback were valued, the personal whims of the "UX experts" would be accordingly devalued. And they simply cannot stand giving up that power.
  - medstrom 5y ago
    Let's not forget that when users can give feedback, many of them are harsh and entitled about it. See why some projects turn off the GitHub issue tracker.
    - wearywanderer 5y ago
      The last time I bothered to use Mozillas bugtracker, it was to report errors in the way Firefox was interacting with my screen reader. I had an utterly dispassionate tone, despite this matter being very important to me, because I had heard stories about Mozilla devs being very touchy and quick to take offense. For my trouble, I was told that accessibility features on MacOS were a low priority (?!?) and nothing ever came of it.
      - 5y ago
tuatoru 5y ago
"Modern, clean, new". Is this self-mockery? It's hard to tell. But those adjectives often crop up with low budget knock-off* products whose makers don't have substantive things to say. (Disclosure: I've used Firefox since 2008-ish, when it got me half an hour more battery life on my laptop than Chrome. Still using it.) * knock-off: poorly executed clone.
- sfink 5y ago
  Those adjectives crop up everywhere, as far as I can tell. Low budget, high budget, MBA-driven companies, engineer-driven companies, ... They don't actually mean anything, from what I see. They're just what you say. "Clean" is the only one that might mean something, but it reminds me of the old marketing question: "Which sounds better: 'Contains noropyronethrin!' or 'Contains less noropyronethrin than other leading brands!'?"
gregoriol 5y ago
I'm really not sure about "Streamlined clutter-free menus": the screenshot with the menu shows way too many things in there, and what is "more tools"?
- noahtallen 5y ago
  I mean, this is relatively speaking. It’s a lot better than the old version, which was a lot harder to understand and navigate at a glance.
fwn 5y ago
Unfortunately the dark mode now seems to be more like a dark blue mode. It looks very cheap, almost as if it's caused by a badly adjusted screen. I tried fixing it with the css grayscale attribute in userchrome.css but ran into performance problems. ... open for any ideas on how to make the blue go away.
- medstrom 5y ago
  For me, plain black looks very cheap: it shows me that my monitor's "black" actually is grey (hardware dependent of course). By opting for color, the off-blackness is intentional and thus forgivable.
  - WorldMaker 5y ago
    Very hardware dependent. On a lot of modern OLEDs black pixels can be entirely unlit (versus even just the slightest dark gray shade away from black needs to be lit). A lot of the people usually asking for dark modes that use true black like how those pixels look when unlit (on OLEDs). Depending on lighting conditions, things in true black really do disappear from the screen, and it directly cuts down on the overall amount of light emitted from the screen.
    - medstrom 5y ago
      And it saves a ton of battery life!
- JackGreyhat 5y ago
  Have you tried something like ShadowFox? https://overdodactyl.github.io/ShadowFox/ https://overdodactyl.github.io/ShadowFox/
- systoll 5y ago
  Firefox color lets you easily customise those colours: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-color/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-color...
vegasje 5y ago
There is something deeply depressing about "all you need online" being videos, pictures, and memes of dogs. What a bunch of dopes we are.
- ergot_vacation 5y ago
  We're only dopes in the version of reality they're trying to create.
jdlyga 5y ago
This removes one of the annoyances that kept me from switching back to Firefox. They've actually been doing a decent job lately. I'm back using Firefox for the time being. Recent Annoyances Fixed: 1) too slow 1) no default global zoom 2) can't type a site and tab to search 3) cluttered ui, with features too many clicks deep 4) pocket is too in your face and takes too many steps to turn off Remaining Annoyances: 1) no chrome-like tab groups 2) "save file" is greyed out when you download a file, requires an extra click 3) middle clicking on bookmark toolbar items opens them in the foreground, not background 4) still feels like it's playing catchup to chrome
- Amezarak 5y ago
  OTOH, this is taking away one of the few features still keeping me on Firefox - a separate search bar. At this point, I increasingly can't differentiate Firefox from Chrome or Edge, which are better supported anyway. Decisions based on "user data" have been a disaster for Firefox. The only reason any normal person ever used Firefox is because power users evangelized it - they don't get to be the default, pre-installed browser anywhere, and they don't have the world's biggest web properties constantly pushing for them. Power users are it. Obviously, the data will always reflect that any set of power user features is used only by a tiny amount of people. But everything Mozilla has done in the past few years has been done to alienate power users and appeal to the non-existent normal user who goes out and downloads another browser. At this point with this redesign I'm basically done. If Firefox wants to be Chrome or Edge, I'm just going to use Chrome or Edge.
  - toper-centage 5y ago
    If a little redesign makes you move to Chrome, what exactly was stopping you?
    - Amezarak 5y ago
      Mostly inertia. I’ve been using it since 1.0. There’s been a trickle of changes over the years going in this direction. This was just the last straw. It’s becoming increasingly Less useful to me. I don’t like Chrome but it’s better supported and it and Edge are more widely available by default. There’s simply no advantage anymore to using Firefox. I’m the kind of guy that installs Firefox on everyone’s computer when they ask me to “fix” it and that recommends it to them. But their whole strategy has turned me off. And it won’t gain them any other market share either.
mastrsushi 5y ago
You can paint the outside of your house any color you want, but there's still cracks in the foundation.
Saris 5y ago
My main complaint about this redesign is everything is about 25% bigger. The buttons, white space between things, tab bar, etc.. I can only see about 2/3 of the bookmarks in my menu that I could before. I don't understand why modern design focuses on so much useless space.
- axiosgunnar 5y ago
  I understand your point, but > Fitts’ law states that the amount of time required for a person to move a pointer (e.g., mouse cursor) to a target area is a function of the distance to the target divided by the size of the target. Thus, the longer the distance and the smaller the target’s size, the longer it takes. Tabs are clicked on a lot, therefore they should be bigger.
  - gentleman11 5y ago
    Unless you have a lot of tabs. The larger font size makes it harder to read what the tab is without clicking on it. Makes you scroll more to see which tabs are open
- vb6sp6 5y ago
  Touch input. Bigger things are easier to touch with your finger
  - Saris 5y ago
    But I'm not on a touch device, surely they would have it switch based on using a touch screen or not just like windows enters tablet mode if needed.
montroser 5y ago
I've been using this in nightly builds for the last many weeks, and I have to say, I am impressed. The new UI feels great. Dark mode is well done. Speed is finally on par with Chrome. And compatibility is as good as it's ever been. Only very occasionally do I run into a bug caused by Firefox's shortcomings. Still on my wish list, though: better echo cancellation in WebRTC; don't hijack ctrl-b and ctrl-i; support backdrop-filter; support <dialog> element...
ergot_vacation 5y ago
I don't want things modern and clean. Please stop making things modern and clean. I want things that are human and have some kind of soul left in them instead of being antiseptically scoured of anything resembling personality. I also want programs made for adults who know how computers work, and are capable of leveraging complex but functional UI to actually do stuff with some degree of sophistication. Making programs more and more like a Playskool toy with every update is, by definition, regression, not progress. There's not much use in complaining though. Firefox has been a lost cause for years now.
- Mandelmus 5y ago
  >I don't want things modern and clean. Please stop making things modern and clean. I want things that are human and have some kind of soul left in them instead of being antiseptically scoured of anything resembling personality. It seems to me like you're complaining about a trend you associate with the wording rather than the specific changes to Firefox here. Or which of the changes to Firefox do you associate with having "less soul" or "less personality"?
aitchnyu 5y ago
I wanted to try one new theme, but I reverted. I use TST and now Sidebery and had hidden top tab bar with user chrome. The themes no longer enforce the rule. Wish there was native support for hiding top tab bar.
axiosgunnar 5y ago
HN's disdain for redesigns in very short-sighted. Nobody will be using your cool backend algos if they are not exposed to the user in some meaningful, user-centric, consistent way. We should be thankful so much effort is put in UX development, otherwise all the cool backend algos would be pointless. Especially since Firefox did not just say "hey let's make this button bigger and this button green“. They did empirical research, heatmaps etc., to analyse how the UX could be made objectively, measurably better. I invite everyone to read this article about how Wikipedia took several years to implement the "show preview when hovering a link" feature. This is how much thought needs to be given to UX to not make it half-assed https://diff.wikimedia.org/2018/04/20/why-it-took-a-long-time-to-build-that-tiny-link-preview-on-wikipedia/ https://diff.wikimedia.org/2018/04/20/why-it-took-a-long-tim...
- avianes 5y ago
  > I invite everyone to read this article about how Wikipedia took several years to implement the "show preview when hovering a link" feature. But we are talking about Firefox not Wikipedia. I would be happy to read a full article about mozilla's choices. Overall the design seems better, but there are some points of this new design that are widely questioned such as the new tab design. Moreover we don't use Firefox as we use a web page like Wikipedia. A browser in my opinion must be as discreet and customizable as possible in the user experience, whereas this is not the case for a website that offers a fixed user experience for all users. The removal of the compact mode for example goes against my vision of what a browser should be.

67 points by Ashoka_rkt 5y ago

Wish things didn't take up so much more whitespace on desktops. I miss the original Chrome UI. https://img.informer.com/p0/google-chrome-v1-built-in-download-manager.png https://img.informer.com/p0/google-chrome-v1-built-in-downlo... Things were much tighter and most of the space was kept empty for web content. The new Firefox redesign is really nice and clean to look at though.

livre 5y ago
This seems like the same problem with have with RAM requirements, we have more resolution and RAM than we used to have in the past so developers and designers waste more of it because they don't need to be as careful as they used to.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  But using much ram is still bad. Using much whitespace is viewed as a staple of modern design. I don't like it either, I have enough empty space on my wall. I buy my screen to display information.
citrusui 5y ago
Aside from various coats of paint, the Chrome tab UI is still the same. Which I'm thankful for. Firefox has gone through a few redesigns lately; Australis, Photon, and Proton (latest)
- ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago
  isn't there more vertical whitespace now?
- ergot_vacation 5y ago
  Gotta re-arrange those deck chairs!
omega3 5y ago
I'm using Vivaldi for this specific reason.
- tomjuggler 5y ago
  Yeah, no white space at all, in dark mode..
bruce343434 5y ago
I still miss those slanted tabs. It just looks so much better.
Wowfunhappy 5y ago
I wonder if this can be changed via user CSS?
Tokelin 5y ago
You can set some flags in about:config to make the UI more compact: browser.proton.enabled to false browser.uidensity to 1
- CRConrad 5y ago
  Thank you!
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  The proton enable thing will go away in the next version. The compact mode will probably keep working a while longer but as they recovered the UI option for it, the writing is on the wall...

xrstf 5y ago

Is it coincidence that comments are turned off on _all_ videos on YouTube[1] related to the redesigns? What options do I as a "normie" have to give feedback? Is there really only one way, to use the ancient Bugzilla and hopefully finding a ticket somewhere? [1] https://www.youtube.com/c/firefox/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/firefox/videos

ehutch79 5y ago
1) goto firefox.com 2) scroll to bottom, where most companies put contact info 3) click 'contact' or! 'file a bug' OR! There's a bunch of social media links.
wearywanderer 5y ago
Projects like Mozilla and GNOME have naked contempt for user feedback and go out of their way to avoid and disregard it. They say we're all idiots who "want faster horses instead of cars". But really it's about power. If user feedback were valued, the personal whims of the "UX experts" would be accordingly devalued. And they simply cannot stand giving up that power.
- medstrom 5y ago
  Let's not forget that when users can give feedback, many of them are harsh and entitled about it. See why some projects turn off the GitHub issue tracker.
  - wearywanderer 5y ago
    The last time I bothered to use Mozillas bugtracker, it was to report errors in the way Firefox was interacting with my screen reader. I had an utterly dispassionate tone, despite this matter being very important to me, because I had heard stories about Mozilla devs being very touchy and quick to take offense. For my trouble, I was told that accessibility features on MacOS were a low priority (?!?) and nothing ever came of it.
    - 5y ago

tuatoru 5y ago

"Modern, clean, new". Is this self-mockery? It's hard to tell. But those adjectives often crop up with low budget knock-off* products whose makers don't have substantive things to say. (Disclosure: I've used Firefox since 2008-ish, when it got me half an hour more battery life on my laptop than Chrome. Still using it.) * knock-off: poorly executed clone.

sfink 5y ago
Those adjectives crop up everywhere, as far as I can tell. Low budget, high budget, MBA-driven companies, engineer-driven companies, ... They don't actually mean anything, from what I see. They're just what you say. "Clean" is the only one that might mean something, but it reminds me of the old marketing question: "Which sounds better: 'Contains noropyronethrin!' or 'Contains less noropyronethrin than other leading brands!'?"

gregoriol 5y ago

I'm really not sure about "Streamlined clutter-free menus": the screenshot with the menu shows way too many things in there, and what is "more tools"?

noahtallen 5y ago
I mean, this is relatively speaking. It’s a lot better than the old version, which was a lot harder to understand and navigate at a glance.

fwn 5y ago

Unfortunately the dark mode now seems to be more like a dark blue mode. It looks very cheap, almost as if it's caused by a badly adjusted screen. I tried fixing it with the css grayscale attribute in userchrome.css but ran into performance problems. ... open for any ideas on how to make the blue go away.

medstrom 5y ago
For me, plain black looks very cheap: it shows me that my monitor's "black" actually is grey (hardware dependent of course). By opting for color, the off-blackness is intentional and thus forgivable.
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  Very hardware dependent. On a lot of modern OLEDs black pixels can be entirely unlit (versus even just the slightest dark gray shade away from black needs to be lit). A lot of the people usually asking for dark modes that use true black like how those pixels look when unlit (on OLEDs). Depending on lighting conditions, things in true black really do disappear from the screen, and it directly cuts down on the overall amount of light emitted from the screen.
  - medstrom 5y ago
    And it saves a ton of battery life!
JackGreyhat 5y ago
Have you tried something like ShadowFox? https://overdodactyl.github.io/ShadowFox/ https://overdodactyl.github.io/ShadowFox/
systoll 5y ago
Firefox color lets you easily customise those colours: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-color/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-color...

vegasje 5y ago

There is something deeply depressing about "all you need online" being videos, pictures, and memes of dogs. What a bunch of dopes we are.

ergot_vacation 5y ago
We're only dopes in the version of reality they're trying to create.

jdlyga 5y ago

This removes one of the annoyances that kept me from switching back to Firefox. They've actually been doing a decent job lately. I'm back using Firefox for the time being. Recent Annoyances Fixed: 1) too slow 1) no default global zoom 2) can't type a site and tab to search 3) cluttered ui, with features too many clicks deep 4) pocket is too in your face and takes too many steps to turn off Remaining Annoyances: 1) no chrome-like tab groups 2) "save file" is greyed out when you download a file, requires an extra click 3) middle clicking on bookmark toolbar items opens them in the foreground, not background 4) still feels like it's playing catchup to chrome

Amezarak 5y ago
OTOH, this is taking away one of the few features still keeping me on Firefox - a separate search bar. At this point, I increasingly can't differentiate Firefox from Chrome or Edge, which are better supported anyway. Decisions based on "user data" have been a disaster for Firefox. The only reason any normal person ever used Firefox is because power users evangelized it - they don't get to be the default, pre-installed browser anywhere, and they don't have the world's biggest web properties constantly pushing for them. Power users are it. Obviously, the data will always reflect that any set of power user features is used only by a tiny amount of people. But everything Mozilla has done in the past few years has been done to alienate power users and appeal to the non-existent normal user who goes out and downloads another browser. At this point with this redesign I'm basically done. If Firefox wants to be Chrome or Edge, I'm just going to use Chrome or Edge.
- toper-centage 5y ago
  If a little redesign makes you move to Chrome, what exactly was stopping you?
  - Amezarak 5y ago
    Mostly inertia. I’ve been using it since 1.0. There’s been a trickle of changes over the years going in this direction. This was just the last straw. It’s becoming increasingly Less useful to me. I don’t like Chrome but it’s better supported and it and Edge are more widely available by default. There’s simply no advantage anymore to using Firefox. I’m the kind of guy that installs Firefox on everyone’s computer when they ask me to “fix” it and that recommends it to them. But their whole strategy has turned me off. And it won’t gain them any other market share either.

mastrsushi 5y ago

You can paint the outside of your house any color you want, but there's still cracks in the foundation.

Saris 5y ago

My main complaint about this redesign is everything is about 25% bigger. The buttons, white space between things, tab bar, etc.. I can only see about 2/3 of the bookmarks in my menu that I could before. I don't understand why modern design focuses on so much useless space.

axiosgunnar 5y ago
I understand your point, but > Fitts’ law states that the amount of time required for a person to move a pointer (e.g., mouse cursor) to a target area is a function of the distance to the target divided by the size of the target. Thus, the longer the distance and the smaller the target’s size, the longer it takes. Tabs are clicked on a lot, therefore they should be bigger.
- gentleman11 5y ago
  Unless you have a lot of tabs. The larger font size makes it harder to read what the tab is without clicking on it. Makes you scroll more to see which tabs are open
vb6sp6 5y ago
Touch input. Bigger things are easier to touch with your finger
- Saris 5y ago
  But I'm not on a touch device, surely they would have it switch based on using a touch screen or not just like windows enters tablet mode if needed.

montroser 5y ago

I've been using this in nightly builds for the last many weeks, and I have to say, I am impressed. The new UI feels great. Dark mode is well done. Speed is finally on par with Chrome. And compatibility is as good as it's ever been. Only very occasionally do I run into a bug caused by Firefox's shortcomings. Still on my wish list, though: better echo cancellation in WebRTC; don't hijack ctrl-b and ctrl-i; support backdrop-filter; support <dialog> element...

ergot_vacation 5y ago

I don't want things modern and clean. Please stop making things modern and clean. I want things that are human and have some kind of soul left in them instead of being antiseptically scoured of anything resembling personality. I also want programs made for adults who know how computers work, and are capable of leveraging complex but functional UI to actually do stuff with some degree of sophistication. Making programs more and more like a Playskool toy with every update is, by definition, regression, not progress. There's not much use in complaining though. Firefox has been a lost cause for years now.

Mandelmus 5y ago
>I don't want things modern and clean. Please stop making things modern and clean. I want things that are human and have some kind of soul left in them instead of being antiseptically scoured of anything resembling personality. It seems to me like you're complaining about a trend you associate with the wording rather than the specific changes to Firefox here. Or which of the changes to Firefox do you associate with having "less soul" or "less personality"?

aitchnyu 5y ago

I wanted to try one new theme, but I reverted. I use TST and now Sidebery and had hidden top tab bar with user chrome. The themes no longer enforce the rule. Wish there was native support for hiding top tab bar.

axiosgunnar 5y ago

HN's disdain for redesigns in very short-sighted. Nobody will be using your cool backend algos if they are not exposed to the user in some meaningful, user-centric, consistent way. We should be thankful so much effort is put in UX development, otherwise all the cool backend algos would be pointless. Especially since Firefox did not just say "hey let's make this button bigger and this button green“. They did empirical research, heatmaps etc., to analyse how the UX could be made objectively, measurably better. I invite everyone to read this article about how Wikipedia took several years to implement the "show preview when hovering a link" feature. This is how much thought needs to be given to UX to not make it half-assed https://diff.wikimedia.org/2018/04/20/why-it-took-a-long-time-to-build-that-tiny-link-preview-on-wikipedia/ https://diff.wikimedia.org/2018/04/20/why-it-took-a-long-tim...

avianes 5y ago
> I invite everyone to read this article about how Wikipedia took several years to implement the "show preview when hovering a link" feature. But we are talking about Firefox not Wikipedia. I would be happy to read a full article about mozilla's choices. Overall the design seems better, but there are some points of this new design that are widely questioned such as the new tab design. Moreover we don't use Firefox as we use a web page like Wikipedia. A browser in my opinion must be as discreet and customizable as possible in the user experience, whereas this is not the case for a website that offers a fixed user experience for all users. The removal of the compact mode for example goes against my vision of what a browser should be.