15 ms·

Kinda astounding how the firefox v1 was not great but ok, and it got overall worse in literally every redesign since then. v1 remains the best UI firefox has ev

Kinda astounding how the firefox v1 was not great but ok, and it got overall worse in literally every redesign since then. v1 remains the best UI firefox has ever had to this day. No wonder they peaked user share early on and have rapidly hemorrhaged since then.

agumonkey 5y ago
The v1-v4 have a feeling of immense simplicity. Now Firefox is a fighter jet, but I miss driving a mini.
- masswerk 5y ago
  The "Classic" theme was still very much reminiscent of Netscape 4 (just reworked icons and toolbar and location bar were merged), while the "Modern" theme was much the same in layout but introduced round buttons of varying size. (Firefox came with both themes.)
yoavm 5y ago
I feel like it became somewhat popular to bash Firefox (and Mozilla) on HN, which is sad. What exactly did you like about v1? It takes huge space and literally most buttons are completely useless. Are you using "refresh" very often? Do you need a huge "loading" indicator that takes space even when you're not loading? a button to show all-"history"-of-the-forward-button-in-the-current-tab? What makes v1 "the best ever"?
- metadat 5y ago
  Only popular to bash because Mozilla has been husked and is now a money siphon for the executives while they slowly destroy everything good about Firefox, one bit at a time.
- destructionator 5y ago
  > Are you using "refresh" very often? Ummm yes? Funny, I just wrote another comment complaining how hitting refresh on a major airline's flight status page is liable to give one of those terrible "something went wrong" messages (apparently the search results are liable to expire, but until they do, refreshing will actually update the info, so it is useful to periodically press to see if the flight got delayed). Combining stop and refresh is also dangerous since that's a race condition. Suppose the page is taking forever, I decide I've had enough of that and want to press stop. But in the second it takes me to actually click on it, the page decided to finally load! Now my click, instead of stopping the annoying spinner animation, clears out the information that FINALLY arrived and brought the annoying spinner back. (I actually think there is a pretty good case to just remove the stop button though, it isn't vital and just hitting back or close does the same thing anyway. But combining it with the refresh button is about the worst possible thing you could do to either button. It takes one useful button and one meh button and combines them into one awful button.) Speaking of clicks, that's actually the last straw that made me abandon firefox entirely: in version 75, they broke clicking on the url bar. Instead of doing the sane thing - putting the cursor where I clicked - it instead selects all. Before, double click would select all, meaning if you wanted that, it was still easily available. Now double click instead selects... a word. So they completely removed the very useful single click functionality and turned double click into a completely useless behavior. Absolutely unbearable. I could tolerate or undo most the other UI changes they did, but this click thing couldn't be user style'd away, couldn't be configured away. They just shoved this massive breakage down. So I uninstalled it . > takes space even when you're not loading I'd rather have a predictable UI of marginal utility that doesn't change out from under me than a UI that randomly changes from bad to worse in its own time. At least you can get used to consistency, even if it is consistently mediocre. > What makes v1 "the best ever"? Don't put things in quotes that weren't actually said. I actually said "v1 was not great but ok, and it got overall worse". There's actually specific changes I think were good, coupled with other changes that were bad.
  - yoavm 5y ago
    I'm sorry I rephrased your text, but you did write "v1 remains the best UI firefox has ever". How is that so different from "the best ever" is beyond me. What browser did you move to after you uninstalled Firefox because of the click in the URL thing? Seems like Chrome does the same. To me it actually makes sense - I think most of the times when a user reaches the URL they want to put a new one, not to edit the existing one. This behavior makes that easier.
    - destructionator 5y ago
      > How is that so different from "the best ever" is beyond me. "the best ever" implies it is the best.... ever. Inclusive of all competition. "the best firefox has ever had" limits the comparison to just firefox. > What browser did you move to after you uninstalled Firefox because of the click in the URL thing? I made my own ui skin for chromium. I'm not terribly happy about using chromium but I couldn't figure out how to use the firefox engine for it - another strategic mistake by the incompetent buffoons at Mozilla not making this easy, and of course doing the whole browser myself is a big job (heck, even the UI skin is a big job, there's a LOT of things still on my todo list, but it minimally works without driving me absolutely nuts which is more than I can say about Firefox's recent versions). > To me it actually makes sense - I think most of the times when a user reaches the URL they want to put a new one, not to edit the existing one. This behavior makes that easier. Most the time I want a new one, I'll open a new tab and thus have a blank url. If I'm clicking on an existing url, it is because I want to edit it. But if I do want to replace it, the old double click behavior to select all made this utterly trivial too: single click to edit, double click to replace. Hell, they even used to have an about:config thing to make single click select all, but in their infinite wisdom, they removed even that hidden config option to turn it back off. With the new behavior, editing a url becomes quite frustrating. The work around is to click, wait until the double click time period elapses, then click again. Don't do it too soon though, or it will do the completely useless "select word" thing instead. If you click a third time, it will now select all again! Fourth click? Back to select word. You must wait for a while before you can just click to edit. Oh, and do you use middle click on X? That single click select all... does NOT assert the PRIMARY selection. But double and triple click do! So if you single click it, it looks selected... but it isn't. Double click out of old habit? Now it is wiped out. Ridiculous. So this change marginally benefits some users (who probably don't really care) while being devastatingly crippling to the people who do. Maybe some utilitarian function can say +1 usability point times 10 million users outweighs -1000 usability points to 1000 users. But I'm gonna go ahead and disagree. Mozilla is a niche product at this point, maybe they should start caring about the 1000 users they have left.
SECProto 5y ago
> Kinda astounding how the firefox v1 was not great but ok, and it got overall worse in literally every redesign since then. v1 remains the best UI firefox has ever had to this day. As someone who's been using it since the phoenix/firebird days, I disagree strongly. There have been hiccups along the way (particularly the tabs appearance in proton), but in general the UI has gotten significantly better with each redesign. Looking back at the v1-3 UI all I can see is how much vertical screen real estate is wasted on things I would very rarely click.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- pessimizer 5y ago
  But in those versions you could disable things you didn't use without knowing the arcane ways of userChrome.css. v1 was a perfect baseline. Then you could reconfigure to your hearts content, or reskin with a few clicks. That being said, I never did that. I like v1, and the only thing I would change about it is to take out the tabs and move them to the side.
  - SECProto 5y ago
    I don't believe there was any way to move the tabs into the title bar and to combine all the file/edit/etc into a single button in the same vertical space as the URL bar. Those are the two changes that make the modern interface so much more compact. Maybe it could've been done with extensions. The argument is similar to that with any major UI change - I have one coworker who still complains about the Microsoft Office Ribbon UI. For casual and newer users, the old office UI was tedious and cumbersome hunt down whatever you want from the dozens of icons and buttons. The newer layout may require several clicks for power users to do something they used to do in one. I found it mildly annoying when it first changed, but I committed to it and now I find it much more usable. Same situation with Firefox.
    - pasc1878 5y ago
      I hate the tabs in the title bar. The bar is for the title. How do you drag the window on the screen now in standard OS you grab the title bat with the mouse and drag. But then again I must have vertical tabs so ideally just kill the tab bar.

agumonkey 5y ago

The v1-v4 have a feeling of immense simplicity. Now Firefox is a fighter jet, but I miss driving a mini.

masswerk 5y ago
The "Classic" theme was still very much reminiscent of Netscape 4 (just reworked icons and toolbar and location bar were merged), while the "Modern" theme was much the same in layout but introduced round buttons of varying size. (Firefox came with both themes.)

yoavm 5y ago

I feel like it became somewhat popular to bash Firefox (and Mozilla) on HN, which is sad. What exactly did you like about v1? It takes huge space and literally most buttons are completely useless. Are you using "refresh" very often? Do you need a huge "loading" indicator that takes space even when you're not loading? a button to show all-"history"-of-the-forward-button-in-the-current-tab? What makes v1 "the best ever"?

metadat 5y ago
Only popular to bash because Mozilla has been husked and is now a money siphon for the executives while they slowly destroy everything good about Firefox, one bit at a time.
destructionator 5y ago
> Are you using "refresh" very often? Ummm yes? Funny, I just wrote another comment complaining how hitting refresh on a major airline's flight status page is liable to give one of those terrible "something went wrong" messages (apparently the search results are liable to expire, but until they do, refreshing will actually update the info, so it is useful to periodically press to see if the flight got delayed). Combining stop and refresh is also dangerous since that's a race condition. Suppose the page is taking forever, I decide I've had enough of that and want to press stop. But in the second it takes me to actually click on it, the page decided to finally load! Now my click, instead of stopping the annoying spinner animation, clears out the information that FINALLY arrived and brought the annoying spinner back. (I actually think there is a pretty good case to just remove the stop button though, it isn't vital and just hitting back or close does the same thing anyway. But combining it with the refresh button is about the worst possible thing you could do to either button. It takes one useful button and one meh button and combines them into one awful button.) Speaking of clicks, that's actually the last straw that made me abandon firefox entirely: in version 75, they broke clicking on the url bar. Instead of doing the sane thing - putting the cursor where I clicked - it instead selects all. Before, double click would select all, meaning if you wanted that, it was still easily available. Now double click instead selects... a word. So they completely removed the very useful single click functionality and turned double click into a completely useless behavior. Absolutely unbearable. I could tolerate or undo most the other UI changes they did, but this click thing couldn't be user style'd away, couldn't be configured away. They just shoved this massive breakage down. So I uninstalled it . > takes space even when you're not loading I'd rather have a predictable UI of marginal utility that doesn't change out from under me than a UI that randomly changes from bad to worse in its own time. At least you can get used to consistency, even if it is consistently mediocre. > What makes v1 "the best ever"? Don't put things in quotes that weren't actually said. I actually said "v1 was not great but ok, and it got overall worse". There's actually specific changes I think were good, coupled with other changes that were bad.
- yoavm 5y ago
  I'm sorry I rephrased your text, but you did write "v1 remains the best UI firefox has ever". How is that so different from "the best ever" is beyond me. What browser did you move to after you uninstalled Firefox because of the click in the URL thing? Seems like Chrome does the same. To me it actually makes sense - I think most of the times when a user reaches the URL they want to put a new one, not to edit the existing one. This behavior makes that easier.
  - destructionator 5y ago
    > How is that so different from "the best ever" is beyond me. "the best ever" implies it is the best.... ever. Inclusive of all competition. "the best firefox has ever had" limits the comparison to just firefox. > What browser did you move to after you uninstalled Firefox because of the click in the URL thing? I made my own ui skin for chromium. I'm not terribly happy about using chromium but I couldn't figure out how to use the firefox engine for it - another strategic mistake by the incompetent buffoons at Mozilla not making this easy, and of course doing the whole browser myself is a big job (heck, even the UI skin is a big job, there's a LOT of things still on my todo list, but it minimally works without driving me absolutely nuts which is more than I can say about Firefox's recent versions). > To me it actually makes sense - I think most of the times when a user reaches the URL they want to put a new one, not to edit the existing one. This behavior makes that easier. Most the time I want a new one, I'll open a new tab and thus have a blank url. If I'm clicking on an existing url, it is because I want to edit it. But if I do want to replace it, the old double click behavior to select all made this utterly trivial too: single click to edit, double click to replace. Hell, they even used to have an about:config thing to make single click select all, but in their infinite wisdom, they removed even that hidden config option to turn it back off. With the new behavior, editing a url becomes quite frustrating. The work around is to click, wait until the double click time period elapses, then click again. Don't do it too soon though, or it will do the completely useless "select word" thing instead. If you click a third time, it will now select all again! Fourth click? Back to select word. You must wait for a while before you can just click to edit. Oh, and do you use middle click on X? That single click select all... does NOT assert the PRIMARY selection. But double and triple click do! So if you single click it, it looks selected... but it isn't. Double click out of old habit? Now it is wiped out. Ridiculous. So this change marginally benefits some users (who probably don't really care) while being devastatingly crippling to the people who do. Maybe some utilitarian function can say +1 usability point times 10 million users outweighs -1000 usability points to 1000 users. But I'm gonna go ahead and disagree. Mozilla is a niche product at this point, maybe they should start caring about the 1000 users they have left.

SECProto 5y ago

> Kinda astounding how the firefox v1 was not great but ok, and it got overall worse in literally every redesign since then. v1 remains the best UI firefox has ever had to this day. As someone who's been using it since the phoenix/firebird days, I disagree strongly. There have been hiccups along the way (particularly the tabs appearance in proton), but in general the UI has gotten significantly better with each redesign. Looking back at the v1-3 UI all I can see is how much vertical screen real estate is wasted on things I would very rarely click.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
pessimizer 5y ago
But in those versions you could disable things you didn't use without knowing the arcane ways of userChrome.css. v1 was a perfect baseline. Then you could reconfigure to your hearts content, or reskin with a few clicks. That being said, I never did that. I like v1, and the only thing I would change about it is to take out the tabs and move them to the side.
- SECProto 5y ago
  I don't believe there was any way to move the tabs into the title bar and to combine all the file/edit/etc into a single button in the same vertical space as the URL bar. Those are the two changes that make the modern interface so much more compact. Maybe it could've been done with extensions. The argument is similar to that with any major UI change - I have one coworker who still complains about the Microsoft Office Ribbon UI. For casual and newer users, the old office UI was tedious and cumbersome hunt down whatever you want from the dozens of icons and buttons. The newer layout may require several clicks for power users to do something they used to do in one. I found it mildly annoying when it first changed, but I committed to it and now I find it much more usable. Same situation with Firefox.
  - pasc1878 5y ago
    I hate the tabs in the title bar. The bar is for the title. How do you drag the window on the screen now in standard OS you grab the title bat with the mouse and drag. But then again I must have vertical tabs so ideally just kill the tab bar.