3 ms·

For me Firefox’s UI design started going off the rails with Australis and Photon, where its UI began to be a major component of Firefox as a brand. I much prefe

For me Firefox’s UI design started going off the rails with Australis and Photon, where its UI began to be a major component of Firefox as a brand. I much preferred v1-v4 where Firefox felt more focused on being a tool that fit well into your desktop instead of trying to stand out. I’m sometimes tempted to try to start a Firefox fork that returns its UI to a “smaller part of a larger desktop” look and feel, but then I remember how impossible it would be to maintain that over time. Wish Gecko was still embeddable so one could just write a new UI and not have to keep patches maintained.

rhn_mk1 5y ago
This is a scourge of all applications these days. The user's need for consistency is demoted to favor the developer's need for brand awareness.
- dsQTbR7Y5mRHnZv 5y ago
  As people engage with many more devices on a day to day basis, applications have moved away from "matching the rest of the OS" and towards "consistency of the look an feel across all platforms". It's still "consistent", just on a different dimension (app-wise instead of OS-wise). I know HN favors the former, but I don't mind the latter too much. Especially when products are able to strike a nice balance like Outlook on Windows & Mac.
  - rhn_mk1 5y ago
    > people engage with many more devices on a day to day basis Do they actually? I'm guessing most people in the world have one smartphone, followed by those who have a laptop to match it. I would be careful to say that most people have more than one device though, which means a vast number see no consistency at all.
bscphil 5y ago
Very well said. People often claim that everyone complains about every Firefox UI change, but this is a perfectly consistent thing to do if you think Firefox has been getting slowly worse since v3.5 or so. The one thing I will say in its favor is that Firefox still maintains a decent amount of customizability, at least for the seriously dedicated. I still have a separate search bar, a menu bar, and have removed the "hamburger" menu button entirely. For me, the UI has changed very little over the years, but the pile of hacks in my usercss file has grown over time...
djbusby 5y ago
Or finished Servo enough to embed that. Either would be awesome, then it could be "easy" to make a new browser. Used to be able to do this on Windows (c2000) and reuse the IE renderer all over.
Sophira 5y ago
Even v4 was too much for me. I liked the UI pre-v4, and for the longest time after v4 released I would use the FF2 theme (back when themes meant more than just putting an image on your chrome - but that's a whole post by itself) and various extensions (Classic Theme Restorer, Status-4-Evar, and a few self-made Stylish userstyles) to preserve the look of pre-v4 as much as possible. It was comfortable for me.

rhn_mk1 5y ago

This is a scourge of all applications these days. The user's need for consistency is demoted to favor the developer's need for brand awareness.

dsQTbR7Y5mRHnZv 5y ago
As people engage with many more devices on a day to day basis, applications have moved away from "matching the rest of the OS" and towards "consistency of the look an feel across all platforms". It's still "consistent", just on a different dimension (app-wise instead of OS-wise). I know HN favors the former, but I don't mind the latter too much. Especially when products are able to strike a nice balance like Outlook on Windows & Mac.
- rhn_mk1 5y ago
  > people engage with many more devices on a day to day basis Do they actually? I'm guessing most people in the world have one smartphone, followed by those who have a laptop to match it. I would be careful to say that most people have more than one device though, which means a vast number see no consistency at all.

bscphil 5y ago

Very well said. People often claim that everyone complains about every Firefox UI change, but this is a perfectly consistent thing to do if you think Firefox has been getting slowly worse since v3.5 or so. The one thing I will say in its favor is that Firefox still maintains a decent amount of customizability, at least for the seriously dedicated. I still have a separate search bar, a menu bar, and have removed the "hamburger" menu button entirely. For me, the UI has changed very little over the years, but the pile of hacks in my usercss file has grown over time...

djbusby 5y ago

Or finished Servo enough to embed that. Either would be awesome, then it could be "easy" to make a new browser. Used to be able to do this on Windows (c2000) and reuse the IE renderer all over.

Sophira 5y ago

Even v4 was too much for me. I liked the UI pre-v4, and for the longest time after v4 released I would use the FF2 theme (back when themes meant more than just putting an image on your chrome - but that's a whole post by itself) and various extensions (Classic Theme Restorer, Status-4-Evar, and a few self-made Stylish userstyles) to preserve the look of pre-v4 as much as possible. It was comfortable for me.