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Firefox, despite its questionable UI design choices, is heavily customizable with the userChrome.css file. The author mentions having to figure out the correct

by Ayesh 5y ago

Firefox, despite its questionable UI design choices, is heavily customizable with the userChrome.css file. The author mentions having to figure out the correct ID/class names, but you can do it yourself just by inspecting the whole browser chrome as if it was part of an HTML DOM. Browser Tool Box (open fly out menu -> More Tools, or Ctrl+Alt+Shift+I). This opens a remote debugging session, and you can freely select and customize any part of the chrome.

jehlakj 5y ago
That’s pretty neat, but it doesn’t justify their UX decisions. Why change something that seemed to work well? Do they have constant feedback on their previous design? I’m still confused why the tabs look like this. The active tab is so different than the inactive that it’s hard to make a connection between them. Most people already have an association with typical tab UIs. Why change this fundamental perception into something more generic and ambiguous?
- capableweb 5y ago
  > but it doesn’t justify their UX decisions It doesn't justify shitty UX decisions, no. But it does alleviate the pain you experience when companies (inevitably) do fuck up something you depend on. If the same happened in Chrome or Safari you would have the same chance of adjusting the browser UI as you have adjusting the UX of your toaster (none [or with a lot of work]). Instead, Firefox lets power users be power users, installing extensions that completely changes the UI or adding your own stylesheets for customizations like the ones mentioned in this submission. So booo to the team doing the UX change, yay to Firefox for letting me fix their own mistakes without having to wait for it to be deployed. > Most people already have an association with typical tab UIs. Why change this fundamental perception into something more generic and ambiguous? This was probably said about tabs vs windows when tabs first appeared in browsers as well. Why introduce a different concept when you can already have many windows?! People seem to prefer tabs today, so sometimes going against the wind is a good thing. Problem is that you don't know what will be good until you throw that thing at people and they tell/show you their reaction.
  - birksherty 5y ago
    > This was probably said about tabs vs windows when tabs first appeared in browsers as well. Why introduce a different concept when you can already have many windows?! You can justify any bad changes this way and "probably" means you don't know but you just made it up to justify. Tabs made things better we all new when that happend. What good thing the designers thought to introduce this change like in the tabs? These designers have nothing to do at office if they don't. Basically we all are lab rats with every new shiny device or app version that hits now a days. Anyone having fun re-learning new gestures on mobile devices every 2 years?
    - stkdump 5y ago
      I like the new tabs. They don't confuse me. And they look less noisy/calmer/less crowded. The Windows task bar also works nicely without a tab design.
  - jehlakj 5y ago
    I applaud the Firefox team to make it possible to customize the UI at such level and I hope that it spawns a lot of beautiful plugins. My biggest gripe is that the default UI doesn’t look like a typical default UI. It looks like a third party plugin that’ll most likely confuse more people than with a plain boring UI.
  - ivanche 5y ago
    You can still have many windows, nobody stops you from doing that.
  - citrin_ru 5y ago
    > This was probably said about tabs vs windows when tabs first appeared in browsers as well Tabs is a way to group related so windows which useful if you have many of them. And AFIR tabs in browsers was very welcomed by users, unlike today’s nonstop UI churn.
- swiley 5y ago
  > Do they have constant feedback on their previous design? Why listen to feedback when you have telemetry. (edit: /s for clarity. My point is that telemetry is probably a net negative for many projects.) There's probably a telemetry -> spreadsheet -> powerpoint -> jira workflow that people are doing full time at most companies.
  - mixedCase 5y ago
    Taking your comment at face value: because telemetry can lie even more easily than users, pointing the finger at entirely the wrong thing in the worst possible way: with cold, hard numbers to convince most people who don't want to deal with the issue. Telemetry complements feedback, it should never replace it entirely.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  A reasoning given for the change in tabs was a lot of user feedback that people didn't know you could drag and drop to rearrange tabs, but also kept requesting that ability (despite it already being supported). I can almost see the reasoning behind "the attached tab looks far too attached and 'fixed' to the rest of the window so floatable buttons would appear less so and 'easier' to move" and I don't entirely fault it for bad logic, though I also think they could have found a better alternative that didn't feel so drastic a departure from decades of tab UIs (in Firefox previously and elsewhere).
  - drw85 5y ago
    Says a lot about the users, when they request an existing feature without trying to do it. I mean it's a simple drag and drop. How do you not try that before? :D
    - kyleee 5y ago
      Partly because due to a decade (or maybe decades?) of constant UI/UX churn in software, operating systems, etc. people are scared to try things for fear of breakage and inability and/or ignorance of how to undo unwanted changes. Speaks to the overall terrible and continuously worsening state of software UI/UX
chrismorgan 5y ago
You’ve got to enable that first: dev tools → Settings → Enable browser chrome and add-on debugging toolboxes.
- skywal_l 5y ago
  And Enable remote debugging.
weaksauce 5y ago
one caveat is that you need to both enable remote debugging and enable browser chrome debugging toolboxes in the settings. fairly easy to do cmd-option-i then f1 or click the three dots and settings. then under advanced settings there are two checkboxes to check one for remote debugging and the other for browser chrome
wvenable 5y ago
I have a pretty customized userChrome.css as the main feature I use in Firefox is multi-row tabs. This used to be provided by a XUL extension but now it possible in a somewhat less fantastic way with userChrome.css. The problem is that every major UI change breaks the userChrome.css and I have to spend a while tweaking it or waiting for someone else to design it up. It's frustrating. Since I knew this update was coming I disabled automatic updates for the first time ever. It might be a while before I decide to upgrade.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  It sounds like you should be using the ESR releases?
  - Zancarius 5y ago
    Especially since there are some potential RCEs in Firefox 88 as far as I can remember. ESR is definitely a safer option.
- Zardoz84 5y ago
  You know "Simple Tab Groups"? It's far better that having multiple rows of tabs.
  - wvenable 5y ago
    It doesn't fit my workflow. I open almost every link in a new tab and if I'm doing research that can be a lot of tabs. I don't want to spend any time organizing these temporary tabs; I just want a way to quickly see and move between them. If you use a lot of tabs in most browsers, the tabs end up being just tiny icon-sized. That's no good. I also don't want to go through another layer to find them.
    - vasac 5y ago
      Before switching to Tree Style Tab extension I was quite happy with customizations from https://github.com/Izheil/Quantum-Nox-Firefox-Dark-Full-Theme https://github.com/Izheil/Quantum-Nox-Firefox-Dark-Full-Them... - they use Firefox beta to adjust css so once new Firefox version is released everything is ready from the get-go.
kitsunesoba 5y ago
Didn't they say that userChrome.css customization is going away soonish?
- NoGravitas 5y ago
  If it does, they'd better provide another way to hide the tab bar.
- noisem4ker 5y ago
  I don't remember Mozilla saying that. There were voices of suspicion, though, following the decision to disable loading of userChrome.css by default, allegedly for performance reasons. https://www.ghacks.net/2019/05/24/firefox-69-userchrome-css-and-usercontent-css-disabled-by-default/ https://www.ghacks.net/2019/05/24/firefox-69-userchrome-css-...

by Ayesh 5y ago

jehlakj 5y ago

That’s pretty neat, but it doesn’t justify their UX decisions. Why change something that seemed to work well? Do they have constant feedback on their previous design? I’m still confused why the tabs look like this. The active tab is so different than the inactive that it’s hard to make a connection between them. Most people already have an association with typical tab UIs. Why change this fundamental perception into something more generic and ambiguous?

capableweb 5y ago
> but it doesn’t justify their UX decisions It doesn't justify shitty UX decisions, no. But it does alleviate the pain you experience when companies (inevitably) do fuck up something you depend on. If the same happened in Chrome or Safari you would have the same chance of adjusting the browser UI as you have adjusting the UX of your toaster (none [or with a lot of work]). Instead, Firefox lets power users be power users, installing extensions that completely changes the UI or adding your own stylesheets for customizations like the ones mentioned in this submission. So booo to the team doing the UX change, yay to Firefox for letting me fix their own mistakes without having to wait for it to be deployed. > Most people already have an association with typical tab UIs. Why change this fundamental perception into something more generic and ambiguous? This was probably said about tabs vs windows when tabs first appeared in browsers as well. Why introduce a different concept when you can already have many windows?! People seem to prefer tabs today, so sometimes going against the wind is a good thing. Problem is that you don't know what will be good until you throw that thing at people and they tell/show you their reaction.
- birksherty 5y ago
  > This was probably said about tabs vs windows when tabs first appeared in browsers as well. Why introduce a different concept when you can already have many windows?! You can justify any bad changes this way and "probably" means you don't know but you just made it up to justify. Tabs made things better we all new when that happend. What good thing the designers thought to introduce this change like in the tabs? These designers have nothing to do at office if they don't. Basically we all are lab rats with every new shiny device or app version that hits now a days. Anyone having fun re-learning new gestures on mobile devices every 2 years?
  - stkdump 5y ago
    I like the new tabs. They don't confuse me. And they look less noisy/calmer/less crowded. The Windows task bar also works nicely without a tab design.
- jehlakj 5y ago
  I applaud the Firefox team to make it possible to customize the UI at such level and I hope that it spawns a lot of beautiful plugins. My biggest gripe is that the default UI doesn’t look like a typical default UI. It looks like a third party plugin that’ll most likely confuse more people than with a plain boring UI.
- ivanche 5y ago
  You can still have many windows, nobody stops you from doing that.
- citrin_ru 5y ago
  > This was probably said about tabs vs windows when tabs first appeared in browsers as well Tabs is a way to group related so windows which useful if you have many of them. And AFIR tabs in browsers was very welcomed by users, unlike today’s nonstop UI churn.
swiley 5y ago
> Do they have constant feedback on their previous design? Why listen to feedback when you have telemetry. (edit: /s for clarity. My point is that telemetry is probably a net negative for many projects.) There's probably a telemetry -> spreadsheet -> powerpoint -> jira workflow that people are doing full time at most companies.
- mixedCase 5y ago
  Taking your comment at face value: because telemetry can lie even more easily than users, pointing the finger at entirely the wrong thing in the worst possible way: with cold, hard numbers to convince most people who don't want to deal with the issue. Telemetry complements feedback, it should never replace it entirely.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
WorldMaker 5y ago
A reasoning given for the change in tabs was a lot of user feedback that people didn't know you could drag and drop to rearrange tabs, but also kept requesting that ability (despite it already being supported). I can almost see the reasoning behind "the attached tab looks far too attached and 'fixed' to the rest of the window so floatable buttons would appear less so and 'easier' to move" and I don't entirely fault it for bad logic, though I also think they could have found a better alternative that didn't feel so drastic a departure from decades of tab UIs (in Firefox previously and elsewhere).
- drw85 5y ago
  Says a lot about the users, when they request an existing feature without trying to do it. I mean it's a simple drag and drop. How do you not try that before? :D
  - kyleee 5y ago
    Partly because due to a decade (or maybe decades?) of constant UI/UX churn in software, operating systems, etc. people are scared to try things for fear of breakage and inability and/or ignorance of how to undo unwanted changes. Speaks to the overall terrible and continuously worsening state of software UI/UX

chrismorgan 5y ago

You’ve got to enable that first: dev tools → Settings → Enable browser chrome and add-on debugging toolboxes.

skywal_l 5y ago
And Enable remote debugging.

weaksauce 5y ago

one caveat is that you need to both enable remote debugging and enable browser chrome debugging toolboxes in the settings. fairly easy to do cmd-option-i then f1 or click the three dots and settings. then under advanced settings there are two checkboxes to check one for remote debugging and the other for browser chrome

wvenable 5y ago

I have a pretty customized userChrome.css as the main feature I use in Firefox is multi-row tabs. This used to be provided by a XUL extension but now it possible in a somewhat less fantastic way with userChrome.css. The problem is that every major UI change breaks the userChrome.css and I have to spend a while tweaking it or waiting for someone else to design it up. It's frustrating. Since I knew this update was coming I disabled automatic updates for the first time ever. It might be a while before I decide to upgrade.

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
It sounds like you should be using the ESR releases?
- Zancarius 5y ago
  Especially since there are some potential RCEs in Firefox 88 as far as I can remember. ESR is definitely a safer option.
Zardoz84 5y ago
You know "Simple Tab Groups"? It's far better that having multiple rows of tabs.
- wvenable 5y ago
  It doesn't fit my workflow. I open almost every link in a new tab and if I'm doing research that can be a lot of tabs. I don't want to spend any time organizing these temporary tabs; I just want a way to quickly see and move between them. If you use a lot of tabs in most browsers, the tabs end up being just tiny icon-sized. That's no good. I also don't want to go through another layer to find them.
  - vasac 5y ago
    Before switching to Tree Style Tab extension I was quite happy with customizations from https://github.com/Izheil/Quantum-Nox-Firefox-Dark-Full-Theme https://github.com/Izheil/Quantum-Nox-Firefox-Dark-Full-Them... - they use Firefox beta to adjust css so once new Firefox version is released everything is ready from the get-go.

kitsunesoba 5y ago

Didn't they say that userChrome.css customization is going away soonish?

NoGravitas 5y ago
If it does, they'd better provide another way to hide the tab bar.
noisem4ker 5y ago
I don't remember Mozilla saying that. There were voices of suspicion, though, following the decision to disable loading of userChrome.css by default, allegedly for performance reasons. https://www.ghacks.net/2019/05/24/firefox-69-userchrome-css-and-usercontent-css-disabled-by-default/ https://www.ghacks.net/2019/05/24/firefox-69-userchrome-css-...