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1. Firefox needs to stop with the UI changes. 2. Every time functionality works differently in Firefox, more companies drop Firefox support. At a prior job, we

1. Firefox needs to stop with the UI changes. 2. Every time functionality works differently in Firefox, more companies drop Firefox support. At a prior job, we used datalist and FF seemingly implemented it differently than Chrome. At that point, we told the user that FF was no longer supported. If FF wants to win, they need to at least keep pace and not be a burden on developers.

remirk 5y ago
> 1. Firefox needs to stop with the UI changes. For regular users, having software look great can be quite important. Especially when there is strong competition. Firefox doesn't even make that many changes that breaks the workflow of regular users. From memory, the last time seems when the hamburger dropdown 'Applications Menu' was introduced. Normally UI-changes in Firefox are more non-breaking.
- creshal 5y ago
  > For regular users, having software look great can be quite important. How many of Firefox's UI changes really impacted this, though? There was the big move away from menu bars and to a more minimalist UI, OK, great. But all the other changes since just reshuffled things that have no net impact, other than forcing users to re-train their workflows. Though the bigger problem is all the other crap that doesn't relate to either the UI or browsing experience. Pocket, Hello, VPN, intrusive and forced extension-based advertisements, "Studies", anti-LGBT marketing, a failed mobile OS (justified, it was just awful), some vague IoT experiments nobody knew what the point of was, … Mozilla has half a billion dollars in annual revenue, yet somehow most of it doesn't go to either Firefox nor Thunderbird. XULRunner could've been Electron 10 years before Electron, but Mozilla didn't even care.
  - arkitaip 5y ago
    Those additional services are important to diversify their revenue streams AND they offer people basic solutions from a reliable provider like Mozilla. If anything, they should expand to offering more digital services under the umbrella of Firefox.
    - creshal 5y ago
      The steadily dropping user count indicates otherwise. They might be useful if Mozilla wasn't cannibalizing itself and stretched so thin that neither these services nor Mozilla's actual products were competitive, but as it stands, Mozilla is just digging its hole deeper with every side project.
  - AshamedCaptain 5y ago
    > XULRunner could've been Electron 10 years before Electron, but Mozilla didn't even care. I dislike Mozilla a lot, but here I disagree. Electron is not necessarily a good thing.
- Grumbledour 5y ago
  Just a few months ago they renamed and moved around items in the context menu (view image and undo closed tab) and even crippled the functionality of the first one for no reason. I personally have not yet recovered from that change and search for these items every time I need them. Those are just the two I noticed because I use them regularly, I am sure there was more. And the non breaking changes seem just as annoying, when elements move around or change their appearance, need more/less space etc. The thing is, the browser has been looking nice for years. There is just no need for constant redesigns that change things just for the sake of change.
  - remirk 5y ago
    I see that as a minor UI change. The context menu is still there. Renaming and reordering stuff happens all the time in software.
    - crtasm 5y ago
      The replacement for View Image changes functionality, not just UI. The keyboard shortcut for Copy Link Location changed, something I use countless times each day (plus I can't forget the old shortcut while Firefox ESR still has the old menu).
- qwerty456127 5y ago
  Firefox always looked great and I never noticed any reason (or any significance) in any UI change they would make. IMHO the only good change was the most recent when they switched to more native-looking tab handles.
- shultays 5y ago
  They overhauled their mobile version quite recently, dropping support for most extension. And they did a similar thing a while ago for desktop version There are probably good reasons for such changes but users it is "hey, the thing I did yesterday is no longer working". But then we also have more questionable decisions like removal of "view image", which was doing everything and more of its replacement "open image in new tab"
- Gauge_Irrahphe 5y ago
  >For regular users, having software look great can be quite important. I don't think that many people care.
anotherhue 5y ago
Firefox doesn't know who it's building a browser for anymore. It's not regular folk, they can't outspend Google acquiring them. It's not technical folk, they've been so tone deaf, forceful and unengaging that those people have left for greener pastures. So who?
- Aeronwen 5y ago
  The market they're targeting is Chrome users. The market that actually uses Firefox is people who rejected Chrome.
  - JohnFen 5y ago
    This. The direction Mozilla decided to take Firefox truly baffles me because of this. Turning FF into Chrome seems like a losing proposition: you'll lose the users who actively don't want something Chrome-like, and it'll be pretty hard to get users who enjoy Chrome-like browsers to switch from whatever their current browser is. Why bother, when you already have that experience? Even the privacy angle isn't good leverage, as there are established Chrome-like browsers that do well on that count. It's never made sense to me.
QuibbleQuota 5y ago
I use Firefox daily and the only UI change I noticed in the last few months was the tab bar looking slightly different. I might not even have noticed if it weren’t for articles pointing it out. Just me?
12ian34 5y ago
I do feel like HN often needs to remember that HN readers are not even close to the average population. We are mostly engineers. The HN sentiment toward designers can sometimes be rather crass and I don't care for it. It feels like there's a general sentiment that the engineers on HN "know better" than designers. One of the main reason designers exist is to help design things that most people can use and historically and generally, engineers are NOT good at this. Divisional labour through expertise. Remember - most people don't care about stuff that we do. UI changes are generally based on research that we're generally NOT experts on. Just because HN readers and even redditors don't like Firefox's design doesn't mean it's bad design. These two segments make up a tiny proportion of the ~100m users. I'm also not saying it's good design, but be careful when approaching this topic since it's more nuanced than you think.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  On the other hand, I find that a lot of "engineers", if that's what we're calling ourselves, have a tendency to completely underestimate and denigrate the so-called "average user" [0]. They often construct some strawman that's dumb or oblivious or easily fooled when constructing an argument. Well, I don't think that's the case. Yes, there are users out there who meet those criteria, but there are also "engineers" who do. By and large, just because they aren't "engineers" doesn't mean they don't largely have the same concerns as everyone else who uses a PC: They want to get their work done, they don't like interruptions to their workflow, they don't like change for the sake of it, and they don't appreciate slow and unresponsive UI. "Engineers" are a subset of user who just happens to think a bit too highly of themselves because they use VSCode and JavaScript instead of Excel or Photoshop. We may not be experts on UI design, but you don't have to be a chef to know when the food you're served tastes lousy and you don't need to be a designer to know when bad UI is shoved down your throat. [0] I submit that the very concept of "average user" is a fictitious entity which only exists to be a strawman. See: https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-force-discovered-the-flaw-of-averages.html https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-...
  - 12ian34 5y ago
    Thanks for your considered reply. I agree that it's easy and relatively common to denigrate/underestimate/misunderstand users in other 'categories' to oneself. This is exactly why it's important to design for the common denominator (not intended to be derisory) when building a product that essentially needs to be the same (at its core) for all users, e.g. everyone downloads pretty much the same exact Firefox binary (excluding beta builds). My argument is that I'm giving Firefox designers the benefit of the doubt that they're doing that and that the UI changes made aren't "lousy" and "bad UI", but rather, a carefully considered approach to have a net benefit for all users. So, if you are suggesting that you consider Firefox to have "lousy" and "bad UI", that's fair but perhaps it's not what the average opinion is. I'm not claiming to know the average opinion on the Firefox UI changes but I'd guess that they're mostly indifferent if not positive.

remirk 5y ago

> 1. Firefox needs to stop with the UI changes. For regular users, having software look great can be quite important. Especially when there is strong competition. Firefox doesn't even make that many changes that breaks the workflow of regular users. From memory, the last time seems when the hamburger dropdown 'Applications Menu' was introduced. Normally UI-changes in Firefox are more non-breaking.

creshal 5y ago
> For regular users, having software look great can be quite important. How many of Firefox's UI changes really impacted this, though? There was the big move away from menu bars and to a more minimalist UI, OK, great. But all the other changes since just reshuffled things that have no net impact, other than forcing users to re-train their workflows. Though the bigger problem is all the other crap that doesn't relate to either the UI or browsing experience. Pocket, Hello, VPN, intrusive and forced extension-based advertisements, "Studies", anti-LGBT marketing, a failed mobile OS (justified, it was just awful), some vague IoT experiments nobody knew what the point of was, … Mozilla has half a billion dollars in annual revenue, yet somehow most of it doesn't go to either Firefox nor Thunderbird. XULRunner could've been Electron 10 years before Electron, but Mozilla didn't even care.
- arkitaip 5y ago
  Those additional services are important to diversify their revenue streams AND they offer people basic solutions from a reliable provider like Mozilla. If anything, they should expand to offering more digital services under the umbrella of Firefox.
  - creshal 5y ago
    The steadily dropping user count indicates otherwise. They might be useful if Mozilla wasn't cannibalizing itself and stretched so thin that neither these services nor Mozilla's actual products were competitive, but as it stands, Mozilla is just digging its hole deeper with every side project.
- AshamedCaptain 5y ago
  > XULRunner could've been Electron 10 years before Electron, but Mozilla didn't even care. I dislike Mozilla a lot, but here I disagree. Electron is not necessarily a good thing.
Grumbledour 5y ago
Just a few months ago they renamed and moved around items in the context menu (view image and undo closed tab) and even crippled the functionality of the first one for no reason. I personally have not yet recovered from that change and search for these items every time I need them. Those are just the two I noticed because I use them regularly, I am sure there was more. And the non breaking changes seem just as annoying, when elements move around or change their appearance, need more/less space etc. The thing is, the browser has been looking nice for years. There is just no need for constant redesigns that change things just for the sake of change.
- remirk 5y ago
  I see that as a minor UI change. The context menu is still there. Renaming and reordering stuff happens all the time in software.
  - crtasm 5y ago
    The replacement for View Image changes functionality, not just UI. The keyboard shortcut for Copy Link Location changed, something I use countless times each day (plus I can't forget the old shortcut while Firefox ESR still has the old menu).
qwerty456127 5y ago
Firefox always looked great and I never noticed any reason (or any significance) in any UI change they would make. IMHO the only good change was the most recent when they switched to more native-looking tab handles.
shultays 5y ago
They overhauled their mobile version quite recently, dropping support for most extension. And they did a similar thing a while ago for desktop version There are probably good reasons for such changes but users it is "hey, the thing I did yesterday is no longer working". But then we also have more questionable decisions like removal of "view image", which was doing everything and more of its replacement "open image in new tab"
Gauge_Irrahphe 5y ago
>For regular users, having software look great can be quite important. I don't think that many people care.

anotherhue 5y ago

Firefox doesn't know who it's building a browser for anymore. It's not regular folk, they can't outspend Google acquiring them. It's not technical folk, they've been so tone deaf, forceful and unengaging that those people have left for greener pastures. So who?

Aeronwen 5y ago
The market they're targeting is Chrome users. The market that actually uses Firefox is people who rejected Chrome.
- JohnFen 5y ago
  This. The direction Mozilla decided to take Firefox truly baffles me because of this. Turning FF into Chrome seems like a losing proposition: you'll lose the users who actively don't want something Chrome-like, and it'll be pretty hard to get users who enjoy Chrome-like browsers to switch from whatever their current browser is. Why bother, when you already have that experience? Even the privacy angle isn't good leverage, as there are established Chrome-like browsers that do well on that count. It's never made sense to me.

QuibbleQuota 5y ago

I use Firefox daily and the only UI change I noticed in the last few months was the tab bar looking slightly different. I might not even have noticed if it weren’t for articles pointing it out. Just me?

12ian34 5y ago

I do feel like HN often needs to remember that HN readers are not even close to the average population. We are mostly engineers. The HN sentiment toward designers can sometimes be rather crass and I don't care for it. It feels like there's a general sentiment that the engineers on HN "know better" than designers. One of the main reason designers exist is to help design things that most people can use and historically and generally, engineers are NOT good at this. Divisional labour through expertise. Remember - most people don't care about stuff that we do. UI changes are generally based on research that we're generally NOT experts on. Just because HN readers and even redditors don't like Firefox's design doesn't mean it's bad design. These two segments make up a tiny proportion of the ~100m users. I'm also not saying it's good design, but be careful when approaching this topic since it's more nuanced than you think.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
On the other hand, I find that a lot of "engineers", if that's what we're calling ourselves, have a tendency to completely underestimate and denigrate the so-called "average user" [0]. They often construct some strawman that's dumb or oblivious or easily fooled when constructing an argument. Well, I don't think that's the case. Yes, there are users out there who meet those criteria, but there are also "engineers" who do. By and large, just because they aren't "engineers" doesn't mean they don't largely have the same concerns as everyone else who uses a PC: They want to get their work done, they don't like interruptions to their workflow, they don't like change for the sake of it, and they don't appreciate slow and unresponsive UI. "Engineers" are a subset of user who just happens to think a bit too highly of themselves because they use VSCode and JavaScript instead of Excel or Photoshop. We may not be experts on UI design, but you don't have to be a chef to know when the food you're served tastes lousy and you don't need to be a designer to know when bad UI is shoved down your throat. [0] I submit that the very concept of "average user" is a fictitious entity which only exists to be a strawman. See: https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-force-discovered-the-flaw-of-averages.html https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-...
- 12ian34 5y ago
  Thanks for your considered reply. I agree that it's easy and relatively common to denigrate/underestimate/misunderstand users in other 'categories' to oneself. This is exactly why it's important to design for the common denominator (not intended to be derisory) when building a product that essentially needs to be the same (at its core) for all users, e.g. everyone downloads pretty much the same exact Firefox binary (excluding beta builds). My argument is that I'm giving Firefox designers the benefit of the doubt that they're doing that and that the UI changes made aren't "lousy" and "bad UI", but rather, a carefully considered approach to have a net benefit for all users. So, if you are suggesting that you consider Firefox to have "lousy" and "bad UI", that's fair but perhaps it's not what the average opinion is. I'm not claiming to know the average opinion on the Firefox UI changes but I'd guess that they're mostly indifferent if not positive.