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Lots of people tell Mozilla that their recent UI changes are bad. Just read the comments of any blog post Mozilla makes about such changes. Mozilla never listen

by Pacabel 13y ago

Lots of people tell Mozilla that their recent UI changes are bad. Just read the comments of any blog post Mozilla makes about such changes. Mozilla never listens. Their current approach is always deemed the "correct" one, even if it's seen as totally wrong a mere 3 to 4 months later, and subsequently reworked in some significant way. These recent moves to imitate Chrome to an even greater extent are not welcomed, even if Mozilla forces them on its remaining Firefox users. Many people use Firefox these days precisely because its UI still retains a few of the vestiges of the more more usable UIs of its pre-4.0 releases. Getting rid of these makes Firefox even less appealing. Perhaps the only thing keeping people on Firefox is that the UIs of the other browsers have gotten far worse (like in the case of the new versions of Opera and IE), or were never very good to being with (like in the case of Chrome).

kevingadd 13y ago
I love that the same thread has people complaining that Firefox is simultaneously not enough like Chrome and too much like Chrome. Mozilla literally cannot win here; no matter what they do people will just get angrier. They should just strip out the whole Firefox UI and make you run it from a terminal.
- wlesieutre 13y ago
  "Ugh, the new newsfeed is terrible. I'm quitting facebook. For real this time, not like the last 4 times." I mostly like Australis. And I can see why Mozilla doesn't listen to most of the noise about it. As with everything else, nobody gets really loud about how much better it is.
  - Pacabel 13y ago
    People do "get loud" about stuff that's inherently an improvement. C++11 is a good example of this. It generally does improve C++ in significant ways, and there are a lot of people who are willing to express this. The fact that we overwhelmingly hear silence or anger toward Mozilla's UI changes is indicative of them not being very good at all.
- hackinthebochs 13y ago
  Don't get me wrong, I don't consider chrome's design to be the end-all of browser design. The difference is that chrome is pretty. Firefox (pre Australis, have yet to try that) was just down right hideous. Whether its usable or not is irrelevant if a user can't stand to look at it. The "chrome" on your application should not be off-putting, however functional you think it may be. It is a lot like furniture; functional is important, but none of that matters if its hideous to begin with.
- Pacabel 13y ago
  Why is it surprising or notable that there are people who have different needs? Sure, there are some people who make very minimal usage of a web browser. They can get by just fine with a dumbed down Chrome-style UI. They might even like that experience. Not everybody falls into that camp, however. There are a lot of users who push web browsers much harder, and expect a different experience. They need a UI that exposes the functionality they need to constantly use. Firefox used to be good at giving power users what they needed, while still being relatively lean, easy-to-use and useful for users who pushed it less intensively. We've seen this change over the past few years, however, as they've stripped out useful UI functionality in their quest to imitate Chrome. Firefox is now a weaker, less-practical browser for many people. These people are burdened with trying to install numerous addons, just to restore Firefox to something reasonably close to its previous state of usability. Firefox isn't alone, of course. Just look at the whole debacle that Opera has experienced with the new versions of their desktop browser. It's perhaps even worse in that case, given how they're building upon Blink and Chromium directly. The new versions of Opera are horrible compared to Opera 12 and earlier. It's just really unfortunate to see this happening to software products that were once pretty good.

by Pacabel 13y ago

kevingadd 13y ago

I love that the same thread has people complaining that Firefox is simultaneously not enough like Chrome and too much like Chrome. Mozilla literally cannot win here; no matter what they do people will just get angrier. They should just strip out the whole Firefox UI and make you run it from a terminal.

wlesieutre 13y ago
"Ugh, the new newsfeed is terrible. I'm quitting facebook. For real this time, not like the last 4 times." I mostly like Australis. And I can see why Mozilla doesn't listen to most of the noise about it. As with everything else, nobody gets really loud about how much better it is.
- Pacabel 13y ago
  People do "get loud" about stuff that's inherently an improvement. C++11 is a good example of this. It generally does improve C++ in significant ways, and there are a lot of people who are willing to express this. The fact that we overwhelmingly hear silence or anger toward Mozilla's UI changes is indicative of them not being very good at all.
hackinthebochs 13y ago
Don't get me wrong, I don't consider chrome's design to be the end-all of browser design. The difference is that chrome is pretty. Firefox (pre Australis, have yet to try that) was just down right hideous. Whether its usable or not is irrelevant if a user can't stand to look at it. The "chrome" on your application should not be off-putting, however functional you think it may be. It is a lot like furniture; functional is important, but none of that matters if its hideous to begin with.
Pacabel 13y ago
Why is it surprising or notable that there are people who have different needs? Sure, there are some people who make very minimal usage of a web browser. They can get by just fine with a dumbed down Chrome-style UI. They might even like that experience. Not everybody falls into that camp, however. There are a lot of users who push web browsers much harder, and expect a different experience. They need a UI that exposes the functionality they need to constantly use. Firefox used to be good at giving power users what they needed, while still being relatively lean, easy-to-use and useful for users who pushed it less intensively. We've seen this change over the past few years, however, as they've stripped out useful UI functionality in their quest to imitate Chrome. Firefox is now a weaker, less-practical browser for many people. These people are burdened with trying to install numerous addons, just to restore Firefox to something reasonably close to its previous state of usability. Firefox isn't alone, of course. Just look at the whole debacle that Opera has experienced with the new versions of their desktop browser. It's perhaps even worse in that case, given how they're building upon Blink and Chromium directly. The new versions of Opera are horrible compared to Opera 12 and earlier. It's just really unfortunate to see this happening to software products that were once pretty good.