14 ms·

Firefox and Flux: A New, Beautiful Browser is Coming

246 points by Boriss 12y ago

Ortsac 12y ago
I like it, but I'm seeing some serious similarities to chrome. If I had not seen this announcement and I quickly glanced at those screenshots, I would not think it was Firefox.
- lingben 12y ago
  yes but believe it or not, the new firefox UI/UX has been in the works for so long and chrome's development so quick that it seems like firefox was inspired by chrome when in fact that didn't happen
  - sigmar 12y ago
    has this new firefox UI been "in the works" since 2008? because several features of those images are even similar to the first version of chrome
  - mbrubeck 12y ago
    I'm a Firefox developer and I don't think this is true. As far as I know, most of the key elements of the Firefox 29 theme redesign emerged after the last major UI redesign (Firefox 4) was released in 2011.
    - blueskin_ 12y ago
      Can I ask you why Mozilla removed so many useful customisation options for australis?
- arcameron 12y ago
  Does it matter?
  - Ortsac 12y ago
    Not really. I do think it makes sense as a design. I'm just saying it looks like chrome to me and I think a lot of other users will think similarly.
    - zobzu 12y ago
      i like the big menu better than the chrome menu. less confusing. and tech users dont care about it since they use regular menus ;)
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
lnlyplnt 12y ago
looks good, I'll have to try it out. Chrome has been acting up for me lately.
Garbage 12y ago
Have been using most of these things in Nightly. It's a pleasant experience. :)
webwanderings 12y ago
As long as it is faster than Chrome (in every possible way), I'll switch back to it. Every second counts when people are on not-so-fast wires.
- Cameron_D 12y ago
  I find a clean install of Firefox to be almost as fast as Chrome, and in some places more responsive - particularly when opening the browser. Chrome will get the basic UI up on the screen very fast but take a moment before you can interact with it, Firefox is usable the moment it is on screen, even though that time is slightly longer). Chrome does have preloading of certain things which make loading some things faster although there are addons that can replicate that on Firefox.
yati 12y ago
These people behind Australis are brave, competent and passionate. It shows in the remarkable experience they've built. I am a nightly user and I got to see these changes land one at a time. Hugs and cheers:)
- IvyMike 12y ago
  > brave I am not trying to be snarky, but to me a lot of the new UI is "oh, they made it look more like Chrome". I am kind of surprised to hear the word "brave" to describe that.
  - seba_dos1 12y ago
    Work on this UI started long before Chrome. That's Chrome that looks like Firefox mockups, not the other way.
    - vanderZwan 12y ago
      Interesting, got a source for that?
    - zethraeus 12y ago
      Can you source this from public docs somewhere? It's interesting and I'd love to compare the early mockups with early chrome.
      - Excavator 12y ago
        Not OP but earliest concepts I know of are these¹ from 2011. 1: http://people.mozilla.org/~shorlander/ux-presentation/ux-presentation.html http://people.mozilla.org/~shorlander/ux-presentation/ux-pre...
      - IvyMike 12y ago
        Here's are some pre-release screenshots of Chrome from 2008. http://mikemacd.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/google-chrome-screenshots/ http://mikemacd.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/google-chrome-scree...
rectangletangle 12y ago
The new UI looks really solid to me. FF's current UI has felt dated for quite some time now, and this is the overhaul it needed.
damian2000 12y ago
Cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.donotlick.com/firefox-and-flux-a-new-beautiful-browser-is-coming/&client=firefox-a&hs=EDM&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&channel=sb&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
- nwh 12y ago
  http://archive.today/4ZGpR http://archive.today/4ZGpR Fully rendered cache with images.
- Boriss 12y ago
  Thanks, Damian! Posting to my own Wordpress and then going to sleep was, retrospectively, a poor choice.
grumblestumble 12y ago
Is the lack of a unified search/address bar a deliberate choice or the result of some weird IP/patent thing? Every time I switch back to Firefox, it trips me up. AFAIR, it's the only major browser that still does this, right?
- bitsoda 12y ago
  Some users are skittish of Chrome's autocomplete since it could potentially send anything you type into the address bar to Google's servers. Mozilla also makes money from selling 'search box real estate' to different providers. So it's more discoverable when the search is in its own designated box.
  - 1111123itsme 12y ago
    It's also what some of us frickin' want. I like having a separate search bar, because I can easily control which engine I'm using, and I from the URLbar I can search my history/bookmarks without irrelevant auto-complete results junking it up.
    - magicalist 12y ago
      It really doesn't take much effort to combine the two. e.g. https://blog.mozilla.org/theden/2013/04/17/combine-your-firefox-search-bar-and-address-bar/ https://blog.mozilla.org/theden/2013/04/17/combine-your-fire... I prefer it as well, but I think it's fine as an option via extensions.
- Osmose 12y ago
  There might be other reasons, but a big one is that having search and address bar in one box means that normal URLs you type into the address bar will get sent to the search engine for autocomplete by default. Since that's a major privacy violation, they're kept separate. I've removed the search box myself. If DNS doesn't return anything or if what you type looks like a search query, it does a search anyway, so the only thing I'm missing is search autocomplete (there's an addon if you really want that anyway: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/instantfox/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/instantfox/).
JasonFruit 12y ago
It's still a browser from the people who allowed a mob to push Brendan Eich out because he donated money to support a political cause that was and is not only legal but reflective of the views of a large minority of Americans. It's pretty, but I think I'll pass.
- RodericDay 12y ago
  I believe exactly the opposite of this. I use Firefox in no small part due to ideological reasons (ie: I would use it even if it wasn't the best, just because I like the values they allege to stand for), and if they had let the CEO get a pass I would have literally uninstalled it and looked for something else.
  - JasonFruit 12y ago
    I'm not surprised to find that there are people who disagree with me. I'm pleased, however, to hear that you would have acted on your convictions.
    - zobzu 12y ago
      im surprised people choose to use or not use firefox depending on the ceo. the ceo doesnt take many decisions, the whole community does. some of them paid, and many unpaid. by taking these - IMO - baseless decisions, you're only hurting the thousands of people putting their time, blood and tears without any commercial interest into firefox, not the ceo's you agree/disagree with. remember that mozilla has no shareholders, the ceos dont get stock options, just a salary. its wholly owned by the mozilla foundation.
- foxylad 12y ago
  Wow, this storm in a teacup would be amusing if it wasn't so sad for a generally well-regarded outfit (Mozilla). They can't win - people with either your concerns or the opposite will dump Firefox. Meanwhile both sides will continue to use Microsoft products, despite their history of extremely un-ethical business practises; and stand by while their country (pardon my assumption that they are USians) murders people in other countries with drones every day. It would be nice to see outrage at outrageous things.
kondro 12y ago
Just restarted FireFox and it seems to be here now. I don't think I like the UI of inactive tabs, but the rest is fine.
- tkmcc 12y ago
  I agree, the inactive tabs are not very distinguishable or readable and starkly contrast the active tab's light grey when using a darker color theme on Windows 8.1. Everything else seems great so far, though.
cpeterso 12y ago
Regarding incremental UI changes, I recall reading that Google staged Chrome's tab style and color redesigns over multiple releases, presumably to avoid upset users. I'm not sure whether to admire their concern for user confusion or to feel like the dupe of some magician's sleight of hand. :) Unfortunately, I can find that page now.
Silhouette 12y ago
Edit: Remove unnecessary snark. It is still frustrating that a bunch of plug-ins appear to have been disrupted because of removing the add-on/status bar, though. Not everything has moved to the new location automatically, and it's not immediately obvious how to get some of them back.
- simonster 12y ago
  I develop a Firefox add-on. In our experience, the transition to Australis was pretty smooth. Our add-on bar icon was automatically moved to the toolbar without any changes on our part, although we ended up changing the icon to better match the Australis UI. The transition might not be perfect for all methods of overlaying the add-on bar, but I think the folks at Mozilla are doing the best they can. I don't think Mozilla should be holding back functionality to avoid breaking extensions. If an add-on is actively maintained, then the developer will update it, and if the add-on is not actively maintained, then it's going to have to break someday.
  - Silhouette 12y ago
    I don't think Mozilla should be holding back functionality to avoid breaking extensions. I respectfully disagree. Extensions are the USP for Firefox, and IMHO breaking compatibility should be considered a serious issue and not something to be done lightly. (See also: all the hate when they switched to doing six-weekly updates and it kept disabling extensions every time for months afterwards.) In any case, there was no pressing need to remove the add-on/status bar. Arbitrary rearrangement of UIs is generally bad for usability. Ditto for major things like moving tabs (for anyone who isn't using an enhanced tab plug-in anyway) and the burger menu (which is now a tiny area right underneath the close window button, and appears to be completely inaccessible by keyboard).
    - djur 12y ago
      USP: "Unique Selling Proposition" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unique_selling_proposition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unique_selling_proposition (for those who were as at sea as I was)
frozenport 12y ago
Looks like Opera!
tambourine_man 12y ago
Why have reverse tabs won? Has anyone done any usability test on them? On OS X, with a space left for the hit area of only 10px tall, it's really hard to drag a window that uses them. For context, 10px is about half the cursor's height. I can see a reason for them on Win/Linux, but I find them completely unfit for the Mac. I guess people just maximize the window and leave it at that. On the other hand, I'm glad there's still a distinction between the search box and the address bar. The annoyance of omnibar mistaking a url for a search query and vice-versa, even admitting it's a rare event, is not worth the trouble to me. Besides, educating the user on such difference seems important to me.
- ggchappell 12y ago
  > Why have reverse tabs won? What are "reverse tabs"?
  - hayksaakian 12y ago
    The parent is implying that safari style tabs are the proper version, and that chrome, Firefox, and IE are using 'reverse tabs'
    - djur 12y ago
      For people who haven't used Safari, like me: http://screenshots.en.sftcdn.net/en/scrn/107000/107752/safari-tab-reloader-9.png http://screenshots.en.sftcdn.net/en/scrn/107000/107752/safar... It appears that "Safari-style tabs" are tabs that extend down from the address bar, not up from it.
    - tambourine_man 12y ago
      Actually, Chrome invented them and everyone followed. Safari is just the only one that didn't.
      - crazysim 12y ago
        It followed for a little bit during a few betas and then didn't from what I recall.
yason 12y ago
The killer feature in Chrome was and is the multiprocess implementation. I use Firefox for intranet browsing at work and Chrome for personal browsing: the former is a sloth compared to the latter, and hangs even for seconds when loading a big page whereas Chrome will happily use as many of my 12 cores as it likes and it just doesn't even slow down. Firefox has had their comparable hack (Electrolysis?) in some prototype stage for a long time but the thing is Chrome actually delivered it... years ago. This turned the roles into a catch-up game where Firefox tries to match Chrome instead of other browsers trying to match Firefox, and the setting has remained as such since then. The difference is still astronomical and I'm not at all convinced that a new user interface could have much effect there. The browser UI has pretty much standardized 15 years ago.
- batiudrami 12y ago
  I tried using Chrome (from a decade+ of using Firefox) and while it is definitely faster in some instances, it is also laggier in others. Tab switching is noticably slower for me, for instance. I also found it frustrating that it would draw an unusable interface before it was done loading, which 'felt' faster, right up until I wanted to actually use it. Chrome has some good points though - its scrolling feels much better, one tab (flash) crashing doesn't take out the entire browser and I can just switch to another tab until it recovers and (obviously) Google products have much better performance. Ultimately though, its slowness in other areas, plus its inherrently broken mouse gestures, meant that I switched back to Firefox. I do wish Firefox was a bit faster moving. I know there are difficulties in dealing with a huge, old codebase, but I just wish features that Chrome has had for years, like chromeless app windows and multiprocess would just hurry up. Features like window-based private browsing took years to migrate from Chrome, and it's frustrating as you said to be perpetually caught in a game of catch up.
  - epsylon 12y ago
    > one tab (flash) crashing doesn't take out the entire browser It hasn't been the case for years. Plugins are sandboxed. (plugin-container.exe) The broken mouse gestures on Chrome are the single most important dealbreaker for me. I will never go back to a browser without good mouse support (which Chrome isn't).
johnpowell 12y ago
Has anyone figured out how to get the tabs below the address bar again? This is horrible. I'm not really sure how to describe my hatred of this but it is there. I love FF but if the tab bar can't be moved I think I might have to switch to Safari.
- acomjean 12y ago
  FWIW I use a plug in called "tree style tabs". It puts the tabs in a hierarchy on the left side of the screen. One of the main reasons I like firebox better than other browsers is this feature. It also allows you to move the tabs to top/bottom/right of the window, although I think top is just the default.
- interpol_p 12y ago
  I think I'm in the minority, but I really like Safari. It doesn't use reverse tabs, I find it to be easily as fast as Chrome (and it tends to use a lot less resources: battery, cpu on Mac OS X), and I almost always use the "Reader" and Reading List features.
- Sir_Cmpwn 12y ago
  It's probably not exactly what you're looking for, but I can do this: https://mediacru.sh/9q7nBA92chf8 https://mediacru.sh/9q7nBA92chf8
  - johnpowell 12y ago
    Thanks for the try. But that doesn't seem to work on OS X. For now I will go back to 28.0 and hope someone comes out with a work-around in the next few weeks.
- johnpowell 12y ago
  To reply to my own comment. I thought about it for a bit and bounced back between tabs on top and tabs below. I think my gripe is that the tabs feel detached from the page they represent.
- id 12y ago
  Is there a browser.tabs.onTop preference in your about:config? Should be set to false.
nikbackm 12y ago
Are there any functional changes other than moving some buttons and menus around a little? I like Firefox and will continue to use it, but I just don't see what good this update is supposed to accomplish.
- batiudrami 12y ago
  Almost no new features, other than some flexilibility with the new Firefox menu (you can add extension buttons to it, for instance). Lots of customisation options have been removed (with the justification that it prevents inexperienced users from 'breaking' the browser), like the navigation buttons being locked to the address bar, the inability ability to move the refresh button (urgh) and the addon bar. Most can be restored though the Classic Theme Restorer addon, though it broke another of my addons last time I tried it.
  - nikbackm 12y ago
    True, the new Firefox menu is much improved, but there still seems to be no way to access it via the keyboard so it will probably remained largely unused by me. I like the new placement of the real menu bar (when enabled), much better than in the previous versions.
    - batiudrami 12y ago
      I actually think that the orange 'Firefox' button was an important part of the browser's branding. Sure, it was blatantly stolen from Opera, but it meant you instantly could tell which browser someone was using. I think moving that functionality to the new menu button was a mistake, and it makes the browser look a lot more generic/Chrome-like (and is also against all existing windows conventions which says administrative functions should be in the top left). But, in terms of day-to-day usage, its location doesn't really matter much.
      - zobzu 12y ago
        actually that one button appeared in firefox designs much before opera - there was a big drama about it back then. opera had the same design but released much faster than mozilla did. back in the days they didnt have 6 week releases.
dingaling 12y ago
There seems to be quite a lot of wasted space in this new design. For example: http://www.donotlick.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/tab-shape-alt-01.png http://www.donotlick.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/tab-shap... 1. The curves of the 'aerodynamic' tabs sacrifice pixels in the horizontal ramp-off / -on whereas old 'ugly' rectangular tabs can abutt. 2. A vertical void above the tabs, too shallow into which to put icons. I'll have no choice but to become accustomed to it but I fear my little 12" screen will become even less efficient.
- batiudrami 12y ago
  I believe that for (1), the tabs overlap so that they take the same amount of space as the old tabs. It's an illusion that they're larger (which I initially fell for also, until I was corrected). (2) is the same as Chrome and older Firefox versions - to ensure that there is still some draggable area in the window when it is filled with tabs, and it disappears when the window is maximised.
  - PetitPrince 12y ago
    You're right about (1), I took a before/after screenshot (top: FF28; bottom: FF29): http://i.imgur.com/AJlgeBZ.png http://i.imgur.com/AJlgeBZ.png Please note that I normally use tree style tabs (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...) to put the tabs in a sidebar. It may have messed up the layout a bit. (also, the non-standard colour comes from ColourfulTabs)
    - 51Cards 12y ago
      I noticed that you used to use the URL bar on top layout as I did. Sadly that is gone now but the Classic Theme add-on will give you the option back. To me it's just more visually intuitive to have the tab right above the content window, not over all the toolbars. I really can't fathom why the reverse has become the default.
      - 12y ago
rasz_pl 12y ago
Its hilariously sad how new UI skin is touted as reimagining the whole browser. Opera had fully customizable UI 12 years ago? And look at us now, somehow we moved back in functionality, even Opera nowadays is nothing more than a bad non-customizable Chrome skin :( I dread the day most of the web stops working on Opera 12.16. I wont be even able to tune Chromium to my specific needs, after all it requires 16GB of ram to compile now (and that number will probably grow).
z3phyr 12y ago
I thought that they are switching to servo, but it turns out that they have redesigned the interface?
- robin_reala 12y ago
  Servo’s progressing well (it can render Acid2 now without problems) but it’s missing a bunch of features that are pretty essential for a modern browser. It’s absolutely still at ‘research project’ stage.
rcthompson 12y ago
So, is Flux the new name for what they've been calling Australis?
- myrdev 12y ago
  Either or that, or just meaning 'firefox and change'. I read that as F.lux being incorporated somehow, and was very confused :P
- reubenmorais 12y ago
  http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/flux http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/flux The capital F is just the style for titles in English text.
- Boriss 12y ago
  Nah, just Firefox 29. I was channeling Heraclitus.
childoftv 12y ago
Cached version here: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3QAbOyVw9BsJ:www.donotlick.com/firefox-and-flux-a-new-beautiful-browser-is-coming/+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3QAbOyV...
- Boriss 12y ago
  Thank you!
lonelycrypto 12y ago
Already used these features in Nightly build
wwweston 12y ago
"The Firefox UI is a moving target. It is under constant 'improvement', which means 'change' which means every few months I'm forced to upgrade it and shit has moved around and I need to re-learn how to do a task that I was happily doing before. This does not often happen with Safari. Their UI has been remarkably stable for many, many years." http://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/04/why-i-use-safari-instead-of-firefox/ http://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/04/why-i-use-safari-instead-of-...
- batiudrami 12y ago
  That's not entirely fair - the last major Firefox design change was with Firefox 4.0 - back in March 2011.
xyos 12y ago
does anyone know how to hide the navigation bar? (for vimperator users) apparently they removed the option to hide it.
- scriptdevil 12y ago
  https://code.google.com/p/vimperator-labs/issues/detail?id=943 https://code.google.com/p/vimperator-labs/issues/detail?id=9... Further, I have removed the tab-bar and use "b" exclusively for switching tabs.
- q_revert 12y ago
  http://i.imgur.com/Ueqq29i.png http://i.imgur.com/Ueqq29i.png is what my current vimperator browsing window looks like (ff27), the new changes make this very difficult to replicate via changes to userChrome.css, but hopefully, as it gets more exposure, these things will get ironed out
wila 12y ago
Well if you don't like the beautiful browser there's a way to get the old layout back. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemer... Actually more precisely it lets you completely customize the look. Want to have square tabs? Can do, can even have the round tabs. Want to have the url bar at the top? no problem
- snorrah 12y ago
  Thanks - this let me reset the look to exactly how I wanted - I still prefer the square tabs personally in particular. While I appreciate the effort spent making a new UI, it's always good to have a way back to a more familiar feel if required.
- pidg 12y ago
  I don't want a beautiful browser, I want a functional browser - I generally want to focus on the site I'm visiting, not the gorgeous UI. The fun part now is wondering how long Classic Theme Restorer will be maintained. I give it 2 versions before it falls by the wayside.
spingsprong 12y ago
Please don't take this the wrong way, but what are you doing with your browser? Up until a few years ago, I used an oldish single core processor and I never had any problems with the performance of a browser. For the past few years I've had a dual core processor, and I still have never had any performance problems, despite being on the internet for hours each day. The only times it's even remotely a problem, is when I try out some HTML5 demo that runs the Unreal Engine through my browser, or something like that.
- Semaphor 12y ago
  Rapidly (manually) opening, switching between sometimes 20 tabs always brought FF to a crawl for me and is the reason why I always switched back to Chrome after giving a new FF version a try for a week.
gilgoomesh 12y ago
Claims to be detail obsessed but the Mac version has the close/shrink/zoom buttons floating at the wrong height (like iTunes 10 briefly had until it recanted) and a title bar gradient with non-standard color and height (too short for integrated toolbar height and too tall for basic window title bar and too light in color for either) above a toolbar with the same weird gradient used again. Windows and Ubuntu versions look much better; the Mac version should be fixed.
- rectangletangle 12y ago
  I think they lowered the close/shrink/zoom buttons so that they'd be roughly centered relative to the height of the tab container. If they didn't do this, it'd look weird and unpolished. As for the other things IDK. I still think it looks really good.
pjzedalis 12y ago
The only reason I use Safari is the beautiful smooth as butter pinch to zoom.
apunic 12y ago
> Gone are the bulky angles and edges of tabs and menus. In Firefox 29, you’ll see streamlined, almost aerodynamic, curves giving emphasis to your current tab and subtly understating the rest. 5 years after Google Chrome introduced them [rounded tabs]
- subsection1h 12y ago
  Horizontal tabs are so 2007. ;-) I'm still waiting for Chrome to have a vertical tabs solution that's as good as Tree Style Tab for Firefox. Tabs Outliner and other Chrome extensions are inadequate.
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  Again, firefox shows the state of its decay. 1. Aping chrome 2. Not having any option to restore sensible tab styles without an addon 3. The general 'fuck the users' mentality they have developer recently 4. Hostility to undoing the damage via removing as many customisable elements as they can.
ggreer 12y ago
I really don't want to be negative, but every browser update in the past year feels like a step back. This is true for Chrome and Firefox. Each update contains more "Sign in to your browser" stuff plastered everywhere. Eye candy is added. Useful configuration options are removed.[1] Many of these changes seem to be made with the goal of increasing revenue, not improving user experience. Rule #0 of business is: Listen to your users. For browsers, one straightforward way to do this is to look at what extensions and addons users install. By far, the winner is adblock. Almost everyone who knows how to block ads does so. Therefore, if you are making a browser and you care about user experience above everything else, you will have ad blocking by default. That no major browser does tells us what their priorities really are. Again, apologies for the negativity. This has frustrated me for some time. Edit: I realize that if everyone suddenly started blocking ads, there would be darkness and chaos. But the current situation is only tenable because a small fraction of users have the know-how to get what they want. You can avoid ads if you are technically proficient or know someone who is. Everyone else has to put up with ads. Advertisers annoy millions if not billions of people, effectively subsidizing the usage of those with ad blockers. That doesn't seem fair to me. 1. Such as the old new tab page in Chrome: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=326788 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=326788
- DCKing 12y ago
  Maybe it's exactly rule #0 they're upholding, but maybe most users want something different than you?
- andreasklinger 12y ago
  With all love to focus on what users want… Currently online ads are one of the few standard business models that finance the internet ecosystem. It would be a step back to remove them without a replacement.
- VMG 12y ago
  I vividly remember the anger over omnicomplete and people vowing to switch to Opera, which didn't have that feature. I gave it a shot and found omnicomplete quite comfortable after a while. Status quo bias is a powerful thing.
calpaterson 12y ago
Have they tested this design on users? Did they make the records public?
- kijin 12y ago
  Thunderbird has been using a variant of the Australis theme (rounded tabs, menu button in the right) for over a year. Firefox for Android also has been shipping with a similar theme for quite some time. So I suppose they've had ample opportunity to see how people react to it.
blueskin_ 12y ago
...and here's a contrasting opinion: http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/p/30903/355158.aspx http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/p/30903/355158.aspx Australis is removing configurations options for absolutely no reason. If people want chrome, they'll use it. I don't care if mozilla want to ruin the default as long as they give people who want a normal browser a way out, but instead they are removing everything they can get their hands on. Firefox is dumbing down. That's fine if it's IE, Chrome or Safari where the majority of users think said browser is 'the internet', but Firefox is for power users. People who like their privacy, who want to customise their software to their own use case, and who are rapidly running out of options in a world filled with shitty software that assumes the user has a room temperature IQ, removes options and metro-ifies everything while primarily existing to make money off your private information. Even Mozilla are not only dumbing down, but switching to privacy invasion mode with in-browser ads, and replacing their secure sync with one that drops it all on their servers presumably unencrypted as it works with a basic username/password. Classic theme restorer: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemer... What we really need is a fork of Firefox.
- veeti 12y ago
  > What we really need is a fork of Firefox. Step up to the task yourself, then? > and replacing their secure sync with one that drops it all on their servers presumably unencrypted as it works with a basic username/password. Firefox Sync is every bit as end-to-end encrypted as it was before. The only difference is that it now comes with a login scheme that is actually usable.
  - blueskin_ 12y ago
    >Step up to the task yourself, then? Because everyone here is an uberprogrammer, right? >Firefox Sync is every bit as end-to-end encrypted as it was before. The only difference is that it now comes with a login scheme that is actually usable. I might have believed that before PRISM. I wouldn't even care about it sitting on Mozilla servers if I could still encrypt it with my own key instead of trusting them. Even if it is encrypted, presumably it is then derived from the user's password. For the average user, that might be 20-30 bits of entropy. Not good. I don't use sync, but if I did, now I essentially need a 2048-bit password to get good encryption on it.
abus 12y ago
It looks absolutely terrible having addon icons crammed into the same bar as everything else. What's the problem with the addon bar? There's even less view pane area now because the top area is so large. The active tab curve is feminine, not in a good way, but I can live with it. It does feel faster though, maybe they broke some addons that were slowing it down. Time will tell.
- Boriss 12y ago
  You can add another bar in the customize menu and put add-ons on that bar, if you prefer!
  - abus 12y ago
    How do you add a bar or spacing or separators?
    - Boriss 12y ago
      I believe you can't using the Customize UI, but for a hacky solution you could add spaces in bookmark titles, like this: http://cl.ly/image/2Q2b3L3c061a http://cl.ly/image/2Q2b3L3c061a
kawa 12y ago
I really ask myself why they insist to put the tabs on top. With todays widescreen-displays, putting them left or right makes more sense for most use cases (at least with FF its possible to get this via add-on). OTOH they try to get rid of every pixel to get a bit more space while there are lots of at the left and at the right. Do all developers only work on 13" laptops today?
- m_mueller 12y ago
  Absolutely. Having the tab placement customizable is something I miss from the Opera.
  - nicolasp 12y ago
    You should check out Tree Style Tab [1]. I always have a lot of tabs open and I can't live without it. It lets you choose where to put the tab bar, among other settings. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/
    - roryokane 12y ago
      It would be better to choose a simpler add-on, such as the ones recommended by the Tree Style Tab developer at http://piro.sakura.ne.jp/xul/_treestyletab.html.en http://piro.sakura.ne.jp/xul/_treestyletab.html.en, in the section “Similar or Related Extensions”. > I want a simple vertical tab, without tree features. > Vertical Tabs (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/108862/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/108862/), VertTabbar (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/8045 https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/8045) or Vertigo (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/1343 https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/1343) can do it. Tree Style Tab has lots of bugs for me, like permanently hiding the navigation bar after I exit full-screen, and scrolling all the way to the bottom of the tab list whenever I restore a closed tab. I still use it because I love being able to organize my tabs hierarchically, but if someone only wants vertical tabs, they should choose a simpler add-on that is less likely to have bugs.
rectangletangle 12y ago
What's with the purple cupcake at the top left?
- spyder 12y ago
  A pinned tab: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/pinned-tabs-keep-favorite-websites-open https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/pinned-tabs-keep-favori...
  - rectangletangle 12y ago
    Oh nice! That's one of my favorite features in Chrome.
anandpdoshi 12y ago
I am finding the new version to be snappier than usual. I like it. Now please make the developer tools as good as chrome's.
abus 12y ago
Firefox really hates the users who like it because it's customisable and only caters to minimalist-preferring Chrome users who will use Chrome anyway.
rossng 12y ago
I've been surprised by the amount of hate for Australis. Are the people who criticise it actually using it? I've moved back from Chrome to Firefox and I'm a big fan of the changes that they've made. A lot of clunky interface elements have been eliminated. I really like the customisable menu - it's a much better place to put semi-frequently-used add-ons than has been available in the past. The same paradigm works nicely on mobile, too. The next things to tackle are probably the bookmarks and options dialogs, both of which are a bit of a pain. Chrome's searchable options were a game changer, and Firefox needs something equally easy-to-navigate.
- ihaveqvestion 12y ago
  I agree. I actually began using Firefox again because I heard this UI change was landing in Nightly, and I've been using Nightly since then. I get Chrome's UI minimalism and Firefox's customizability/flexibility - it's the best of both worlds.
beaker52 12y ago
"Mozilla releases update featuring curved tabs with brand new radius"
ASneakyFox 12y ago
Opera's recent ui change atleast had a purpose.. they were trying to innovate and bring forth the browser features that their stars determined people use most. Firefox here. As far as I can tell is just saying "ok we decided to shuffle the buttons around again" Haven't been using firefox since they switched their patch number schema. But I still feel a little sad seeing them seal their own fate.
Grue3 12y ago
If they are so obsessed with details, how did they miss that some people need bookmarks star, but not the bookmarks menu button. For some (I'm sure completely arbitrary) reason, it is impossible to decouple these two buttons in Firefox, so instead of a little star in URL bar you get a honking huge two button combo that takes like 6 times as much space (which is even more limited in Australis since no addon bar).
mseri 12y ago
You can already download it using the official link https://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-29.0&os=osx&lang=en-US https://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-29.0&os=osx&la... (change osx with wath you ned) I assume they will update the website very soon
gsam 12y ago
I've been using it for a couple months now. Maybe it's just me, but I really don't care too much about how Firefox looks. I actually quite dislike curved tabs, but I can live with it. What frustrates me the most is that I don't want to wait for the fancy animations to finish before doing something. If I want a menu to come up, I want it to come up. Most of the menu reorganizations have very little affect on me since I usually use shortcuts. But waiting for some of these animations just hurts my productiveness and I've seen other people share my dismay. When changes like this hurt the people who know how to use their browser and want to simply get things done, it's saddening.
- Excavator 12y ago
  Mind sharing what these animations are? I haven't noticed any that I have to wait on. You may find some relevant prefs at: about:config?filter=animate
  - gsam 12y ago
    A number of the menus. When I switched, I found the RSS feed dropdown mind-numbingly slow. I've since made a userChrome.css edit which I saw on Mozillazine. Even then, there's still other animations left over. I find it really distracting. Another more minor change was, prior to this version, Firefox still allowed fixed back and forward buttons. At some point, I should probably find a fix for that as well. Animations are supposed to make the experience feel smoother, but from my point of view, it's simply more clunky.
clarry 12y ago
The post goes to great lengths to say they're doing a big, meaningful overhaul instead of a UI tweak. However, the examples given are nothing more than a bunch of tweaks (and not necessarily ones I like). It sounds like someone is trying to build up hype over nothing.
joaomsa 12y ago
While Australis is neat, doesn't bother my experience much since I use pentadactyl heavily and most things seem to just work. My pet bug still lays untouched though. https://bugzil.la/444284 https://bugzil.la/444284
DavideNL 12y ago
So many changes nowadays.. isn't there anything that remains the same, something we can rely on in this chaotic world lol :'( Anyways, I was hoping the 'zooming' and 'back/forward page swiping animation (on a trackpad)' would be improved, to be more smooth/sexy like it is in Safari on OS X. Unfortunately this hasn't been changed however..
philamonster 12y ago
Bookmarks sidebar button and Add-on toolbar...nope, no one uses those AT ALL. Now I have all that shit in the upper right-hand corner instead of lower left, near Start Menu in Windows and have to use keyboard shortcuts to get to bookmark sidebar, again in Windows. OS X I'm more adept with keyboard shortcuts but monkey trained to use what he's been using last fucking decade in Windows.
wingerlang 12y ago
A bit of topic here. But does anyone know of any browser that has the URL-field and bookmarks 50/50 on the same row? I don't really need to see the full URL at all times, and I only have small amount of bookmarks. On top of that I use a fairly small screen, so it would be great to combine them.
- Boriss 12y ago
  Actually, you can do this in Firefox 29! Click the Customize hamburger-button on the right and then click "Customize." Drag the search bar from the menu bar down to the tools page. Then drag "Bookmarks Toolbar" up next to the URL bar. It should display as your bookmarks, listed next to the URL bar. Here's how it looks on my machine: http://cl.ly/image/1M3N3L0h3v1s http://cl.ly/image/1M3N3L0h3v1s
  - wingerlang 12y ago
    Neat. I might just go ahead and try it then and hope for it to come to Chrome at some point.

246 points by Boriss 12y ago

I like it, but I'm seeing some serious similarities to chrome. If I had not seen this announcement and I quickly glanced at those screenshots, I would not think it was Firefox.

lingben 12y ago
yes but believe it or not, the new firefox UI/UX has been in the works for so long and chrome's development so quick that it seems like firefox was inspired by chrome when in fact that didn't happen
- sigmar 12y ago
  has this new firefox UI been "in the works" since 2008? because several features of those images are even similar to the first version of chrome
- mbrubeck 12y ago
  I'm a Firefox developer and I don't think this is true. As far as I know, most of the key elements of the Firefox 29 theme redesign emerged after the last major UI redesign (Firefox 4) was released in 2011.
  - blueskin_ 12y ago
    Can I ask you why Mozilla removed so many useful customisation options for australis?
arcameron 12y ago
Does it matter?
- Ortsac 12y ago
  Not really. I do think it makes sense as a design. I'm just saying it looks like chrome to me and I think a lot of other users will think similarly.
  - zobzu 12y ago
    i like the big menu better than the chrome menu. less confusing. and tech users dont care about it since they use regular menus ;)
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

lnlyplnt 12y ago

looks good, I'll have to try it out. Chrome has been acting up for me lately.

Garbage 12y ago

Have been using most of these things in Nightly. It's a pleasant experience. :)

webwanderings 12y ago

As long as it is faster than Chrome (in every possible way), I'll switch back to it. Every second counts when people are on not-so-fast wires.

Cameron_D 12y ago
I find a clean install of Firefox to be almost as fast as Chrome, and in some places more responsive - particularly when opening the browser. Chrome will get the basic UI up on the screen very fast but take a moment before you can interact with it, Firefox is usable the moment it is on screen, even though that time is slightly longer). Chrome does have preloading of certain things which make loading some things faster although there are addons that can replicate that on Firefox.

yati 12y ago

These people behind Australis are brave, competent and passionate. It shows in the remarkable experience they've built. I am a nightly user and I got to see these changes land one at a time. Hugs and cheers:)

IvyMike 12y ago
> brave I am not trying to be snarky, but to me a lot of the new UI is "oh, they made it look more like Chrome". I am kind of surprised to hear the word "brave" to describe that.
- seba_dos1 12y ago
  Work on this UI started long before Chrome. That's Chrome that looks like Firefox mockups, not the other way.
  - vanderZwan 12y ago
    Interesting, got a source for that?
  - zethraeus 12y ago
    Can you source this from public docs somewhere? It's interesting and I'd love to compare the early mockups with early chrome.
    - Excavator 12y ago
      Not OP but earliest concepts I know of are these¹ from 2011. 1: http://people.mozilla.org/~shorlander/ux-presentation/ux-presentation.html http://people.mozilla.org/~shorlander/ux-presentation/ux-pre...
    - IvyMike 12y ago
      Here's are some pre-release screenshots of Chrome from 2008. http://mikemacd.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/google-chrome-screenshots/ http://mikemacd.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/google-chrome-scree...

rectangletangle 12y ago

The new UI looks really solid to me. FF's current UI has felt dated for quite some time now, and this is the overhaul it needed.

damian2000 12y ago

Cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.donotlick.com/firefox-and-flux-a-new-beautiful-browser-is-coming/&client=firefox-a&hs=EDM&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&channel=sb&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

nwh 12y ago
http://archive.today/4ZGpR http://archive.today/4ZGpR Fully rendered cache with images.
Boriss 12y ago
Thanks, Damian! Posting to my own Wordpress and then going to sleep was, retrospectively, a poor choice.

grumblestumble 12y ago

Is the lack of a unified search/address bar a deliberate choice or the result of some weird IP/patent thing? Every time I switch back to Firefox, it trips me up. AFAIR, it's the only major browser that still does this, right?

bitsoda 12y ago
Some users are skittish of Chrome's autocomplete since it could potentially send anything you type into the address bar to Google's servers. Mozilla also makes money from selling 'search box real estate' to different providers. So it's more discoverable when the search is in its own designated box.
- 1111123itsme 12y ago
  It's also what some of us frickin' want. I like having a separate search bar, because I can easily control which engine I'm using, and I from the URLbar I can search my history/bookmarks without irrelevant auto-complete results junking it up.
  - magicalist 12y ago
    It really doesn't take much effort to combine the two. e.g. https://blog.mozilla.org/theden/2013/04/17/combine-your-firefox-search-bar-and-address-bar/ https://blog.mozilla.org/theden/2013/04/17/combine-your-fire... I prefer it as well, but I think it's fine as an option via extensions.
Osmose 12y ago
There might be other reasons, but a big one is that having search and address bar in one box means that normal URLs you type into the address bar will get sent to the search engine for autocomplete by default. Since that's a major privacy violation, they're kept separate. I've removed the search box myself. If DNS doesn't return anything or if what you type looks like a search query, it does a search anyway, so the only thing I'm missing is search autocomplete (there's an addon if you really want that anyway: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/instantfox/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/instantfox/).

JasonFruit 12y ago

It's still a browser from the people who allowed a mob to push Brendan Eich out because he donated money to support a political cause that was and is not only legal but reflective of the views of a large minority of Americans. It's pretty, but I think I'll pass.

RodericDay 12y ago
I believe exactly the opposite of this. I use Firefox in no small part due to ideological reasons (ie: I would use it even if it wasn't the best, just because I like the values they allege to stand for), and if they had let the CEO get a pass I would have literally uninstalled it and looked for something else.
- JasonFruit 12y ago
  I'm not surprised to find that there are people who disagree with me. I'm pleased, however, to hear that you would have acted on your convictions.
  - zobzu 12y ago
    im surprised people choose to use or not use firefox depending on the ceo. the ceo doesnt take many decisions, the whole community does. some of them paid, and many unpaid. by taking these - IMO - baseless decisions, you're only hurting the thousands of people putting their time, blood and tears without any commercial interest into firefox, not the ceo's you agree/disagree with. remember that mozilla has no shareholders, the ceos dont get stock options, just a salary. its wholly owned by the mozilla foundation.
foxylad 12y ago
Wow, this storm in a teacup would be amusing if it wasn't so sad for a generally well-regarded outfit (Mozilla). They can't win - people with either your concerns or the opposite will dump Firefox. Meanwhile both sides will continue to use Microsoft products, despite their history of extremely un-ethical business practises; and stand by while their country (pardon my assumption that they are USians) murders people in other countries with drones every day. It would be nice to see outrage at outrageous things.

kondro 12y ago

Just restarted FireFox and it seems to be here now. I don't think I like the UI of inactive tabs, but the rest is fine.

tkmcc 12y ago
I agree, the inactive tabs are not very distinguishable or readable and starkly contrast the active tab's light grey when using a darker color theme on Windows 8.1. Everything else seems great so far, though.

cpeterso 12y ago

Regarding incremental UI changes, I recall reading that Google staged Chrome's tab style and color redesigns over multiple releases, presumably to avoid upset users. I'm not sure whether to admire their concern for user confusion or to feel like the dupe of some magician's sleight of hand. :) Unfortunately, I can find that page now.

Silhouette 12y ago

Edit: Remove unnecessary snark. It is still frustrating that a bunch of plug-ins appear to have been disrupted because of removing the add-on/status bar, though. Not everything has moved to the new location automatically, and it's not immediately obvious how to get some of them back.

simonster 12y ago
I develop a Firefox add-on. In our experience, the transition to Australis was pretty smooth. Our add-on bar icon was automatically moved to the toolbar without any changes on our part, although we ended up changing the icon to better match the Australis UI. The transition might not be perfect for all methods of overlaying the add-on bar, but I think the folks at Mozilla are doing the best they can. I don't think Mozilla should be holding back functionality to avoid breaking extensions. If an add-on is actively maintained, then the developer will update it, and if the add-on is not actively maintained, then it's going to have to break someday.
- Silhouette 12y ago
  I don't think Mozilla should be holding back functionality to avoid breaking extensions. I respectfully disagree. Extensions are the USP for Firefox, and IMHO breaking compatibility should be considered a serious issue and not something to be done lightly. (See also: all the hate when they switched to doing six-weekly updates and it kept disabling extensions every time for months afterwards.) In any case, there was no pressing need to remove the add-on/status bar. Arbitrary rearrangement of UIs is generally bad for usability. Ditto for major things like moving tabs (for anyone who isn't using an enhanced tab plug-in anyway) and the burger menu (which is now a tiny area right underneath the close window button, and appears to be completely inaccessible by keyboard).
  - djur 12y ago
    USP: "Unique Selling Proposition" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unique_selling_proposition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unique_selling_proposition (for those who were as at sea as I was)

frozenport 12y ago

Looks like Opera!

tambourine_man 12y ago

Why have reverse tabs won? Has anyone done any usability test on them? On OS X, with a space left for the hit area of only 10px tall, it's really hard to drag a window that uses them. For context, 10px is about half the cursor's height. I can see a reason for them on Win/Linux, but I find them completely unfit for the Mac. I guess people just maximize the window and leave it at that. On the other hand, I'm glad there's still a distinction between the search box and the address bar. The annoyance of omnibar mistaking a url for a search query and vice-versa, even admitting it's a rare event, is not worth the trouble to me. Besides, educating the user on such difference seems important to me.

ggchappell 12y ago
> Why have reverse tabs won? What are "reverse tabs"?
- hayksaakian 12y ago
  The parent is implying that safari style tabs are the proper version, and that chrome, Firefox, and IE are using 'reverse tabs'
  - djur 12y ago
    For people who haven't used Safari, like me: http://screenshots.en.sftcdn.net/en/scrn/107000/107752/safari-tab-reloader-9.png http://screenshots.en.sftcdn.net/en/scrn/107000/107752/safar... It appears that "Safari-style tabs" are tabs that extend down from the address bar, not up from it.
  - tambourine_man 12y ago
    Actually, Chrome invented them and everyone followed. Safari is just the only one that didn't.
    - crazysim 12y ago
      It followed for a little bit during a few betas and then didn't from what I recall.

yason 12y ago

The killer feature in Chrome was and is the multiprocess implementation. I use Firefox for intranet browsing at work and Chrome for personal browsing: the former is a sloth compared to the latter, and hangs even for seconds when loading a big page whereas Chrome will happily use as many of my 12 cores as it likes and it just doesn't even slow down. Firefox has had their comparable hack (Electrolysis?) in some prototype stage for a long time but the thing is Chrome actually delivered it... years ago. This turned the roles into a catch-up game where Firefox tries to match Chrome instead of other browsers trying to match Firefox, and the setting has remained as such since then. The difference is still astronomical and I'm not at all convinced that a new user interface could have much effect there. The browser UI has pretty much standardized 15 years ago.

batiudrami 12y ago
I tried using Chrome (from a decade+ of using Firefox) and while it is definitely faster in some instances, it is also laggier in others. Tab switching is noticably slower for me, for instance. I also found it frustrating that it would draw an unusable interface before it was done loading, which 'felt' faster, right up until I wanted to actually use it. Chrome has some good points though - its scrolling feels much better, one tab (flash) crashing doesn't take out the entire browser and I can just switch to another tab until it recovers and (obviously) Google products have much better performance. Ultimately though, its slowness in other areas, plus its inherrently broken mouse gestures, meant that I switched back to Firefox. I do wish Firefox was a bit faster moving. I know there are difficulties in dealing with a huge, old codebase, but I just wish features that Chrome has had for years, like chromeless app windows and multiprocess would just hurry up. Features like window-based private browsing took years to migrate from Chrome, and it's frustrating as you said to be perpetually caught in a game of catch up.
- epsylon 12y ago
  > one tab (flash) crashing doesn't take out the entire browser It hasn't been the case for years. Plugins are sandboxed. (plugin-container.exe) The broken mouse gestures on Chrome are the single most important dealbreaker for me. I will never go back to a browser without good mouse support (which Chrome isn't).

johnpowell 12y ago

Has anyone figured out how to get the tabs below the address bar again? This is horrible. I'm not really sure how to describe my hatred of this but it is there. I love FF but if the tab bar can't be moved I think I might have to switch to Safari.

acomjean 12y ago
FWIW I use a plug in called "tree style tabs". It puts the tabs in a hierarchy on the left side of the screen. One of the main reasons I like firebox better than other browsers is this feature. It also allows you to move the tabs to top/bottom/right of the window, although I think top is just the default.
interpol_p 12y ago
I think I'm in the minority, but I really like Safari. It doesn't use reverse tabs, I find it to be easily as fast as Chrome (and it tends to use a lot less resources: battery, cpu on Mac OS X), and I almost always use the "Reader" and Reading List features.
Sir_Cmpwn 12y ago
It's probably not exactly what you're looking for, but I can do this: https://mediacru.sh/9q7nBA92chf8 https://mediacru.sh/9q7nBA92chf8
- johnpowell 12y ago
  Thanks for the try. But that doesn't seem to work on OS X. For now I will go back to 28.0 and hope someone comes out with a work-around in the next few weeks.
johnpowell 12y ago
To reply to my own comment. I thought about it for a bit and bounced back between tabs on top and tabs below. I think my gripe is that the tabs feel detached from the page they represent.
id 12y ago
Is there a browser.tabs.onTop preference in your about:config? Should be set to false.

nikbackm 12y ago

Are there any functional changes other than moving some buttons and menus around a little? I like Firefox and will continue to use it, but I just don't see what good this update is supposed to accomplish.

batiudrami 12y ago
Almost no new features, other than some flexilibility with the new Firefox menu (you can add extension buttons to it, for instance). Lots of customisation options have been removed (with the justification that it prevents inexperienced users from 'breaking' the browser), like the navigation buttons being locked to the address bar, the inability ability to move the refresh button (urgh) and the addon bar. Most can be restored though the Classic Theme Restorer addon, though it broke another of my addons last time I tried it.
- nikbackm 12y ago
  True, the new Firefox menu is much improved, but there still seems to be no way to access it via the keyboard so it will probably remained largely unused by me. I like the new placement of the real menu bar (when enabled), much better than in the previous versions.
  - batiudrami 12y ago
    I actually think that the orange 'Firefox' button was an important part of the browser's branding. Sure, it was blatantly stolen from Opera, but it meant you instantly could tell which browser someone was using. I think moving that functionality to the new menu button was a mistake, and it makes the browser look a lot more generic/Chrome-like (and is also against all existing windows conventions which says administrative functions should be in the top left). But, in terms of day-to-day usage, its location doesn't really matter much.
    - zobzu 12y ago
      actually that one button appeared in firefox designs much before opera - there was a big drama about it back then. opera had the same design but released much faster than mozilla did. back in the days they didnt have 6 week releases.

dingaling 12y ago

There seems to be quite a lot of wasted space in this new design. For example: http://www.donotlick.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/tab-shape-alt-01.png http://www.donotlick.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/tab-shap... 1. The curves of the 'aerodynamic' tabs sacrifice pixels in the horizontal ramp-off / -on whereas old 'ugly' rectangular tabs can abutt. 2. A vertical void above the tabs, too shallow into which to put icons. I'll have no choice but to become accustomed to it but I fear my little 12" screen will become even less efficient.

batiudrami 12y ago
I believe that for (1), the tabs overlap so that they take the same amount of space as the old tabs. It's an illusion that they're larger (which I initially fell for also, until I was corrected). (2) is the same as Chrome and older Firefox versions - to ensure that there is still some draggable area in the window when it is filled with tabs, and it disappears when the window is maximised.
- PetitPrince 12y ago
  You're right about (1), I took a before/after screenshot (top: FF28; bottom: FF29): http://i.imgur.com/AJlgeBZ.png http://i.imgur.com/AJlgeBZ.png Please note that I normally use tree style tabs (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...) to put the tabs in a sidebar. It may have messed up the layout a bit. (also, the non-standard colour comes from ColourfulTabs)
  - 51Cards 12y ago
    I noticed that you used to use the URL bar on top layout as I did. Sadly that is gone now but the Classic Theme add-on will give you the option back. To me it's just more visually intuitive to have the tab right above the content window, not over all the toolbars. I really can't fathom why the reverse has become the default.
    - 12y ago

rasz_pl 12y ago

Its hilariously sad how new UI skin is touted as reimagining the whole browser. Opera had fully customizable UI 12 years ago? And look at us now, somehow we moved back in functionality, even Opera nowadays is nothing more than a bad non-customizable Chrome skin :( I dread the day most of the web stops working on Opera 12.16. I wont be even able to tune Chromium to my specific needs, after all it requires 16GB of ram to compile now (and that number will probably grow).

z3phyr 12y ago

I thought that they are switching to servo, but it turns out that they have redesigned the interface?

robin_reala 12y ago
Servo’s progressing well (it can render Acid2 now without problems) but it’s missing a bunch of features that are pretty essential for a modern browser. It’s absolutely still at ‘research project’ stage.

rcthompson 12y ago

So, is Flux the new name for what they've been calling Australis?

myrdev 12y ago
Either or that, or just meaning 'firefox and change'. I read that as F.lux being incorporated somehow, and was very confused :P
reubenmorais 12y ago
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/flux http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/flux The capital F is just the style for titles in English text.
Boriss 12y ago
Nah, just Firefox 29. I was channeling Heraclitus.

childoftv 12y ago

Cached version here: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3QAbOyVw9BsJ:www.donotlick.com/firefox-and-flux-a-new-beautiful-browser-is-coming/+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3QAbOyV...

Boriss 12y ago
Thank you!

lonelycrypto 12y ago

Already used these features in Nightly build

wwweston 12y ago

"The Firefox UI is a moving target. It is under constant 'improvement', which means 'change' which means every few months I'm forced to upgrade it and shit has moved around and I need to re-learn how to do a task that I was happily doing before. This does not often happen with Safari. Their UI has been remarkably stable for many, many years." http://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/04/why-i-use-safari-instead-of-firefox/ http://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/04/why-i-use-safari-instead-of-...

batiudrami 12y ago
That's not entirely fair - the last major Firefox design change was with Firefox 4.0 - back in March 2011.

xyos 12y ago

does anyone know how to hide the navigation bar? (for vimperator users) apparently they removed the option to hide it.

scriptdevil 12y ago
https://code.google.com/p/vimperator-labs/issues/detail?id=943 https://code.google.com/p/vimperator-labs/issues/detail?id=9... Further, I have removed the tab-bar and use "b" exclusively for switching tabs.
q_revert 12y ago
http://i.imgur.com/Ueqq29i.png http://i.imgur.com/Ueqq29i.png is what my current vimperator browsing window looks like (ff27), the new changes make this very difficult to replicate via changes to userChrome.css, but hopefully, as it gets more exposure, these things will get ironed out

wila 12y ago

Well if you don't like the beautiful browser there's a way to get the old layout back. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemer... Actually more precisely it lets you completely customize the look. Want to have square tabs? Can do, can even have the round tabs. Want to have the url bar at the top? no problem

snorrah 12y ago
Thanks - this let me reset the look to exactly how I wanted - I still prefer the square tabs personally in particular. While I appreciate the effort spent making a new UI, it's always good to have a way back to a more familiar feel if required.
pidg 12y ago
I don't want a beautiful browser, I want a functional browser - I generally want to focus on the site I'm visiting, not the gorgeous UI. The fun part now is wondering how long Classic Theme Restorer will be maintained. I give it 2 versions before it falls by the wayside.

spingsprong 12y ago

Please don't take this the wrong way, but what are you doing with your browser? Up until a few years ago, I used an oldish single core processor and I never had any problems with the performance of a browser. For the past few years I've had a dual core processor, and I still have never had any performance problems, despite being on the internet for hours each day. The only times it's even remotely a problem, is when I try out some HTML5 demo that runs the Unreal Engine through my browser, or something like that.

Semaphor 12y ago
Rapidly (manually) opening, switching between sometimes 20 tabs always brought FF to a crawl for me and is the reason why I always switched back to Chrome after giving a new FF version a try for a week.

gilgoomesh 12y ago

Claims to be detail obsessed but the Mac version has the close/shrink/zoom buttons floating at the wrong height (like iTunes 10 briefly had until it recanted) and a title bar gradient with non-standard color and height (too short for integrated toolbar height and too tall for basic window title bar and too light in color for either) above a toolbar with the same weird gradient used again. Windows and Ubuntu versions look much better; the Mac version should be fixed.

rectangletangle 12y ago
I think they lowered the close/shrink/zoom buttons so that they'd be roughly centered relative to the height of the tab container. If they didn't do this, it'd look weird and unpolished. As for the other things IDK. I still think it looks really good.

pjzedalis 12y ago

The only reason I use Safari is the beautiful smooth as butter pinch to zoom.

apunic 12y ago

> Gone are the bulky angles and edges of tabs and menus. In Firefox 29, you’ll see streamlined, almost aerodynamic, curves giving emphasis to your current tab and subtly understating the rest. 5 years after Google Chrome introduced them [rounded tabs]

subsection1h 12y ago
Horizontal tabs are so 2007. ;-) I'm still waiting for Chrome to have a vertical tabs solution that's as good as Tree Style Tab for Firefox. Tabs Outliner and other Chrome extensions are inadequate.
blueskin_ 12y ago
Again, firefox shows the state of its decay. 1. Aping chrome 2. Not having any option to restore sensible tab styles without an addon 3. The general 'fuck the users' mentality they have developer recently 4. Hostility to undoing the damage via removing as many customisable elements as they can.

ggreer 12y ago

I really don't want to be negative, but every browser update in the past year feels like a step back. This is true for Chrome and Firefox. Each update contains more "Sign in to your browser" stuff plastered everywhere. Eye candy is added. Useful configuration options are removed.[1] Many of these changes seem to be made with the goal of increasing revenue, not improving user experience. Rule #0 of business is: Listen to your users. For browsers, one straightforward way to do this is to look at what extensions and addons users install. By far, the winner is adblock. Almost everyone who knows how to block ads does so. Therefore, if you are making a browser and you care about user experience above everything else, you will have ad blocking by default. That no major browser does tells us what their priorities really are. Again, apologies for the negativity. This has frustrated me for some time. Edit: I realize that if everyone suddenly started blocking ads, there would be darkness and chaos. But the current situation is only tenable because a small fraction of users have the know-how to get what they want. You can avoid ads if you are technically proficient or know someone who is. Everyone else has to put up with ads. Advertisers annoy millions if not billions of people, effectively subsidizing the usage of those with ad blockers. That doesn't seem fair to me. 1. Such as the old new tab page in Chrome: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=326788 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=326788

DCKing 12y ago
Maybe it's exactly rule #0 they're upholding, but maybe most users want something different than you?
andreasklinger 12y ago
With all love to focus on what users want… Currently online ads are one of the few standard business models that finance the internet ecosystem. It would be a step back to remove them without a replacement.
VMG 12y ago
I vividly remember the anger over omnicomplete and people vowing to switch to Opera, which didn't have that feature. I gave it a shot and found omnicomplete quite comfortable after a while. Status quo bias is a powerful thing.

calpaterson 12y ago

Have they tested this design on users? Did they make the records public?

kijin 12y ago
Thunderbird has been using a variant of the Australis theme (rounded tabs, menu button in the right) for over a year. Firefox for Android also has been shipping with a similar theme for quite some time. So I suppose they've had ample opportunity to see how people react to it.

blueskin_ 12y ago

...and here's a contrasting opinion: http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/p/30903/355158.aspx http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/p/30903/355158.aspx Australis is removing configurations options for absolutely no reason. If people want chrome, they'll use it. I don't care if mozilla want to ruin the default as long as they give people who want a normal browser a way out, but instead they are removing everything they can get their hands on. Firefox is dumbing down. That's fine if it's IE, Chrome or Safari where the majority of users think said browser is 'the internet', but Firefox is for power users. People who like their privacy, who want to customise their software to their own use case, and who are rapidly running out of options in a world filled with shitty software that assumes the user has a room temperature IQ, removes options and metro-ifies everything while primarily existing to make money off your private information. Even Mozilla are not only dumbing down, but switching to privacy invasion mode with in-browser ads, and replacing their secure sync with one that drops it all on their servers presumably unencrypted as it works with a basic username/password. Classic theme restorer: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemer... What we really need is a fork of Firefox.

veeti 12y ago
> What we really need is a fork of Firefox. Step up to the task yourself, then? > and replacing their secure sync with one that drops it all on their servers presumably unencrypted as it works with a basic username/password. Firefox Sync is every bit as end-to-end encrypted as it was before. The only difference is that it now comes with a login scheme that is actually usable.
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  >Step up to the task yourself, then? Because everyone here is an uberprogrammer, right? >Firefox Sync is every bit as end-to-end encrypted as it was before. The only difference is that it now comes with a login scheme that is actually usable. I might have believed that before PRISM. I wouldn't even care about it sitting on Mozilla servers if I could still encrypt it with my own key instead of trusting them. Even if it is encrypted, presumably it is then derived from the user's password. For the average user, that might be 20-30 bits of entropy. Not good. I don't use sync, but if I did, now I essentially need a 2048-bit password to get good encryption on it.

abus 12y ago

It looks absolutely terrible having addon icons crammed into the same bar as everything else. What's the problem with the addon bar? There's even less view pane area now because the top area is so large. The active tab curve is feminine, not in a good way, but I can live with it. It does feel faster though, maybe they broke some addons that were slowing it down. Time will tell.

Boriss 12y ago
You can add another bar in the customize menu and put add-ons on that bar, if you prefer!
- abus 12y ago
  How do you add a bar or spacing or separators?
  - Boriss 12y ago
    I believe you can't using the Customize UI, but for a hacky solution you could add spaces in bookmark titles, like this: http://cl.ly/image/2Q2b3L3c061a http://cl.ly/image/2Q2b3L3c061a

kawa 12y ago

I really ask myself why they insist to put the tabs on top. With todays widescreen-displays, putting them left or right makes more sense for most use cases (at least with FF its possible to get this via add-on). OTOH they try to get rid of every pixel to get a bit more space while there are lots of at the left and at the right. Do all developers only work on 13" laptops today?

m_mueller 12y ago
Absolutely. Having the tab placement customizable is something I miss from the Opera.
- nicolasp 12y ago
  You should check out Tree Style Tab [1]. I always have a lot of tabs open and I can't live without it. It lets you choose where to put the tab bar, among other settings. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/
  - roryokane 12y ago
    It would be better to choose a simpler add-on, such as the ones recommended by the Tree Style Tab developer at http://piro.sakura.ne.jp/xul/_treestyletab.html.en http://piro.sakura.ne.jp/xul/_treestyletab.html.en, in the section “Similar or Related Extensions”. > I want a simple vertical tab, without tree features. > Vertical Tabs (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/108862/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/108862/), VertTabbar (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/8045 https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/8045) or Vertigo (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/1343 https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/1343) can do it. Tree Style Tab has lots of bugs for me, like permanently hiding the navigation bar after I exit full-screen, and scrolling all the way to the bottom of the tab list whenever I restore a closed tab. I still use it because I love being able to organize my tabs hierarchically, but if someone only wants vertical tabs, they should choose a simpler add-on that is less likely to have bugs.

rectangletangle 12y ago

What's with the purple cupcake at the top left?

spyder 12y ago
A pinned tab: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/pinned-tabs-keep-favorite-websites-open https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/pinned-tabs-keep-favori...
- rectangletangle 12y ago
  Oh nice! That's one of my favorite features in Chrome.

anandpdoshi 12y ago

I am finding the new version to be snappier than usual. I like it. Now please make the developer tools as good as chrome's.

abus 12y ago

Firefox really hates the users who like it because it's customisable and only caters to minimalist-preferring Chrome users who will use Chrome anyway.

rossng 12y ago

I've been surprised by the amount of hate for Australis. Are the people who criticise it actually using it? I've moved back from Chrome to Firefox and I'm a big fan of the changes that they've made. A lot of clunky interface elements have been eliminated. I really like the customisable menu - it's a much better place to put semi-frequently-used add-ons than has been available in the past. The same paradigm works nicely on mobile, too. The next things to tackle are probably the bookmarks and options dialogs, both of which are a bit of a pain. Chrome's searchable options were a game changer, and Firefox needs something equally easy-to-navigate.

ihaveqvestion 12y ago
I agree. I actually began using Firefox again because I heard this UI change was landing in Nightly, and I've been using Nightly since then. I get Chrome's UI minimalism and Firefox's customizability/flexibility - it's the best of both worlds.

beaker52 12y ago

"Mozilla releases update featuring curved tabs with brand new radius"

ASneakyFox 12y ago

Opera's recent ui change atleast had a purpose.. they were trying to innovate and bring forth the browser features that their stars determined people use most. Firefox here. As far as I can tell is just saying "ok we decided to shuffle the buttons around again" Haven't been using firefox since they switched their patch number schema. But I still feel a little sad seeing them seal their own fate.

Grue3 12y ago

If they are so obsessed with details, how did they miss that some people need bookmarks star, but not the bookmarks menu button. For some (I'm sure completely arbitrary) reason, it is impossible to decouple these two buttons in Firefox, so instead of a little star in URL bar you get a honking huge two button combo that takes like 6 times as much space (which is even more limited in Australis since no addon bar).

mseri 12y ago

You can already download it using the official link https://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-29.0&os=osx&lang=en-US https://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-29.0&os=osx&la... (change osx with wath you ned) I assume they will update the website very soon

gsam 12y ago

I've been using it for a couple months now. Maybe it's just me, but I really don't care too much about how Firefox looks. I actually quite dislike curved tabs, but I can live with it. What frustrates me the most is that I don't want to wait for the fancy animations to finish before doing something. If I want a menu to come up, I want it to come up. Most of the menu reorganizations have very little affect on me since I usually use shortcuts. But waiting for some of these animations just hurts my productiveness and I've seen other people share my dismay. When changes like this hurt the people who know how to use their browser and want to simply get things done, it's saddening.

Excavator 12y ago
Mind sharing what these animations are? I haven't noticed any that I have to wait on. You may find some relevant prefs at: about:config?filter=animate
- gsam 12y ago
  A number of the menus. When I switched, I found the RSS feed dropdown mind-numbingly slow. I've since made a userChrome.css edit which I saw on Mozillazine. Even then, there's still other animations left over. I find it really distracting. Another more minor change was, prior to this version, Firefox still allowed fixed back and forward buttons. At some point, I should probably find a fix for that as well. Animations are supposed to make the experience feel smoother, but from my point of view, it's simply more clunky.

clarry 12y ago

The post goes to great lengths to say they're doing a big, meaningful overhaul instead of a UI tweak. However, the examples given are nothing more than a bunch of tweaks (and not necessarily ones I like). It sounds like someone is trying to build up hype over nothing.

joaomsa 12y ago

While Australis is neat, doesn't bother my experience much since I use pentadactyl heavily and most things seem to just work. My pet bug still lays untouched though. https://bugzil.la/444284 https://bugzil.la/444284

DavideNL 12y ago

So many changes nowadays.. isn't there anything that remains the same, something we can rely on in this chaotic world lol :'( Anyways, I was hoping the 'zooming' and 'back/forward page swiping animation (on a trackpad)' would be improved, to be more smooth/sexy like it is in Safari on OS X. Unfortunately this hasn't been changed however..

philamonster 12y ago

Bookmarks sidebar button and Add-on toolbar...nope, no one uses those AT ALL. Now I have all that shit in the upper right-hand corner instead of lower left, near Start Menu in Windows and have to use keyboard shortcuts to get to bookmark sidebar, again in Windows. OS X I'm more adept with keyboard shortcuts but monkey trained to use what he's been using last fucking decade in Windows.

wingerlang 12y ago

A bit of topic here. But does anyone know of any browser that has the URL-field and bookmarks 50/50 on the same row? I don't really need to see the full URL at all times, and I only have small amount of bookmarks. On top of that I use a fairly small screen, so it would be great to combine them.

Boriss 12y ago
Actually, you can do this in Firefox 29! Click the Customize hamburger-button on the right and then click "Customize." Drag the search bar from the menu bar down to the tools page. Then drag "Bookmarks Toolbar" up next to the URL bar. It should display as your bookmarks, listed next to the URL bar. Here's how it looks on my machine: http://cl.ly/image/1M3N3L0h3v1s http://cl.ly/image/1M3N3L0h3v1s
- wingerlang 12y ago
  Neat. I might just go ahead and try it then and hope for it to come to Chrome at some point.