I hope it’s just a joke
I’m thoroughly convinced UI designers are under the impression we cut ourselves on sharp corners.
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No thank you. I like Firefox the way it is. I hate big changes for the sake of designers keeping their jobs changing my tools and workflow and making things ugly.
Right. My sentiments exactly. Hopefully this won’t trickle its way into LibreWolf …
I don’t like gaps, included rounded corners. Let me use all my screen space dammit
literally just fix bugs
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I really hate the trend of people just randomly changing UI in apps for no apparent reason. It’s just a pervasive problem at this point.
I’m far from an expert, but Ui design as a job seems to have a huge flaw were if you eventually make the “perfect Ui” you’re suddenly out of a job.
So you’re straight up punished for doing your job well and the only way to maintain a career is to just re-invent the wheel every so often and chase the trends of others doing the same thing so your Ui designs don’t look “outdated”
You are correct. Unlike other teams design teams can be actually “done” at some point. But just like other teams design teams need to constantly produce something.
That could be an aspect too.
Definitely, after the redesign i now have to read all the labels because just about everything has changed its layout
Exactly, and I get why companies do it. They generally prioritize bringing new customers on, so they tweak things because they think it’s more trendy or appealing. But for an open source project to do these things just makes no sense at all. I get the impression people running things at Mozilla are completely disconnected from what Firefox users actually want at this point.
Well, their main problem is attention. And we are looking at a news article right now.
If they just want attention maybe buying some add would be a better way to put them forward honestly. Or even trying to go on B2B custom deal for larger companies thar want a corporate experience…
You’re right. It’s too few AI chatbots!
I really like it, I feel like it fixes some of the issues with groups and tabs looking a bit weird currently. Lol, I always like Firefox redesigns and really cannot understand how people go apeshit when that happens. I swear some people would use NetScape GUI if they could.
I swear some people would use NetScape GUI if they could.
So much wasted space 🤮
firefox’s photon theme uses the same amount of space and that’s without the menubar enabled ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But the space isn’t wasted. Its used for greater legibility and generally improved accessibility and UX. But also, I dont think you’re right 🤔
People have different tastes of course. Mine are dictated by a reading disability amongst other things.
But also, I dont think you’re right
i respect the need for accessibility, but i don’t like not having options. if your vertical resolution is lower than 1080 going into about:config and re-enabling the deprecated compact mode is almost a necessity, and who knows how long that’s going to last.
the netscape theme does use a lot of space by default, but importantly, it doesn’t have to. text below icons can be turned off, icon size can be reduced, toolbars can be merged, etc. and if it’s still too much, this browser a complete theme library, which was something firefox killed off years ago.
Hey. You’ve cut a whole extra bar off the top of the Netscape theme! 😆 Still it is interesting to me that they’re pretty equivalent. Personal I’d find the tabs particularly annoying, but like I said, people have different tastes.
I wonder why compact mode was deprecated. Are there still many devices out there with a significantly less than 1080 screens? Steam Decks I guess?
i cut off the titlebar from both screenshots tbf
Are there still many devices out there with a significantly less than 1080 screens? Steam Decks I guess?
lots of pre-2020s devices mainly
i often use a thinkpad X230 where the resolution is a whopping 1366x768 lol
But the space isn’t wasted. Its used for greater legibility and generally improved accessibility and UX.
Just looking at the photo you provided, OC’s words fall flat.
I know people are expected to understand the one and only design language currently in use (with its bajillion little dialects).
Even this is the same inherent lanuguage. “Home”, “Back”, “Forward”, “Address bar”, etc.
It’s the same exact stuff, just displayed differently.
But the space isn’t wasted. Its used for greater legibility and generally improved accessibility and UX.
But whatexactly makes the Netscape UI “inaccessible”?
The fact that it has large buttons? The fact that the buttons are realistic drawings, and not abstract lines? The fact that the buttons are labeled?
If anything, the older UI is more accessible.
Someone who doesn’t know how to use either UI is bound to prefer the second one. Because it is more accessible.
There are two types of accessibility I can think of when dealing with UI: accessibility to stuff like screen readers, and accesibility to new (as in never used a computer before) users.
The Netscape UI is better in both regards: it doesn’t have dropdowns (which are quite comolex to model for screen readers, and are usually full of jank). The old UI also has helpful captions for the actions. You know, the things the screen reader reads to the user. In the new Firefox, they may become “Left Arrow” if accessibility is an afterthought and generic alt text is used. Modern UI designers heading the project surely won’t bother with screen readers too much anyway.
So let me ask again: Which of these is more accessible, and to whom?
Don’t threaten me with a good time
I’d use it if it provided blazing fast performance. For me, usability and performance beats any nice looks
do you actually use it? lol is that even possible without everything breaking?
yes and yes
it’s a custom build of seamonkey (the continuation of the mozilla suite/classic netscape) using pale moon’s goanna engine.
works well enough for most sites, the browser itself is super modular and useful (it has a really strong addon ecosystem courtesy of seamonkey and pale moon’s addon libraries respectively), and honestly i just enjoy utilitarian retro UX
do you have a link? I’d like to try it out.
not yet (it’s still a bit of a work in progress) but in the future it’ll be posted here
is this palemoon?
no, but it almost is
it’s a custom build of seamonkey using pale moon’s UXP engine
is this iceape-uxp or something? would appreciate if you share some links or info :) seamonkey seems to have a lot of compatibility issues lately, i have to use firefox for most stuff these days :(
the tab bar on the top also looks pretty interesting, i don’t think i can do that on seamonkey…
it’s an updated fork i’m working on. i don’t have much to share yet because it’s still a WIP but it’ll be available here in the future
Mostly we want them to make the browser itself not suck before worrying about cosmetics.
GUI and UX are totally related so it can improve the not suck part.
While I agree overall it looks nice, I hate gaps and rounded corners. I’m sick of wasted space. And I’m sick of rounded corners.
I swear some people would use NetScape GUI if they could.
Now that would actually be nice!!
i think the space is the same but its just camouflaged to look like it’s wasted, maybe we should count the pixels tho
I don’t think pixel count would be a fair comparison for a 30 year old browser. You used to actually be able to count all the pixels back then.
I meant between Proton and Nova.
All 10 years or so is fine. General design (what people are used to) does change. But all 3 years, is annoying.
There is way too much white-space in this design. I’m tired of getting higher resolution displays only to lose that resolution to applications that get chunkier.
This seems so out of place on every OS and DE I can think of.
bring back native styling!
I’m seeing this trend towards rounded corners in quite a few places, though. Certainly feels like early days of a larger design trend…
Yes, my first thought went to JetBrains IDEs recent “Islands” redesign, but it somehow looks better in dark mode than it does in these mockups.
Ultimately I just need Firefox to always support about:config, manifest v2 compatibility, and userChrome.css and userContent.css.
That said, usually changes like these break my extremely minimal redesign and configs I have on my desktop. So… boo, Mozilla, boo…
userContent.css is absolutely essential for me. I use that to limit the size of images on Thunderbird.
Ultimately I just need Firefox to always support about:config, manifest v2 compatibility, and userChrome.css and userContent.css.
Isn’t userchrome.cc already deprecated for quite some time?
It’d be news to me, I’ve used the same userChrome.css and userContent.css for years now and I keep my Gentoo Linux desktop up to date with weekly updates, so the Firefox I’m using is confirmed to be the latest version.
Additionally, a quick search on ddg reveals no recent mentions nor plans for deprecation of the feature as far as I can tell.
I found this Reddit discussion
The timeline fits (pre-covid), but I got the word wrong. I thought userchrome would’ve been killed of by now.
Wow look at those default screenshots. They look horrible, what a mess.
A useless sidebar, a lot of mess in the homepage, stupid shit being pushed to you.
Everytime i install Firefox i need to do a huge config setup to remove all that useless crap
Guarantee you can turn off the sidebar. They already have this and it can be disabled. Why not use it for three seconds? I despise the Mozilla NGO stuff ruining Firefox but this is utterly benign. Dynamic colors are cute and fun.
Guarantee you can turn off the sidebar.
You can. For now.
They already have this and it can be disabled. Why not use it for three seconds?
Because every now and again, it’s a new three seconds. First it was the password manager. Then Sync. Then Monitor. Then AI chatbot.Before all of that it was a bunch of other things. Then it was the side tabs. _You gotta check them out!* Now it’s this.
For me as well, I need to use the firefox profile creator website to get rid of all these things. It takes a good few minutes to configure. But for someone who may not know about the website? At least half an hour to thoroughly go through Preferences, and most things aren’t even there!
Dynamic colors are cute and fun.
Sure!
Until you try putting them on an old laptop. Because why would anyone be using an old laptop in
20252026? And then, how dare they expect to be able to browse the web? (Because static sites to download useful stuff apparently don’t exist, nor do people who’d like to do that which don’t know about curl).This isn’t just a Firefox problem, it’s a global one. Instead of functionality, what’s preferred is aesthetics. Instead of accessiblity, how accessible able people feel it is. Instead of performance, bloat.
Most of these things could be optional, Firefox Approved First-party add-ons or integrations, but this isn’t the route this timeline has taken.
You can. For now.
my god you’re right, they’ve sold out to Big Sidebar. the problem with their Sync is that it has no self-hostable e2ee option and you need to use Firefox servers that use Google stuff. comparing apples and rotten oranges most of this is silly
Yeah, because for Windows, when you accidentally hover over the weather widget for 0.5 ms longer than some programmer decided will force you to connect to MSN.
Mozilla is clearly immune to analytics and took a hard stance that didn’t and will never change, so pardon me for entertaining your thought.
And there’s just no way the Sync icon becomes an auto-opening popup (possibly in the Sidebar), because the designers won’t come up with the brilliant idea.
- Hey, how can we make the numbers seem like more people are using MSN (or Sync)?
- Just open it whenever an unlucky soul hovers over it accidentally. They have 50ms to run across it if they really don’t want to use it!
- Wow, what a great idea!
This talk at M$ can never happen at Mozilla, from what we’ve seen in the past 5+ years.
Given with Mozilla’s recent track record, it just might.
This isn’t ideologcal creep that can be forestalled by purism and hatred of sidebars 😭 the corporate side of Mozilla with push that stuff whether or not you complain about the occasional good thing they do. Please get a grip
One of the most irritating things about their management is these delays, the worst of which can be seen with Thunderbird/Betterbird situation. Community has been waiting years for shit that was already fixes to be added & they won’t add QA testers
AFAIK, Thunderbird isn’t a Mozilla product anymore. They are an independent team.
Ah thx right right I forgot how it’s all laid out now exactly, it really is a similar way of handling feedback + contributions though. I’ve taken some space from those discussions since they straight up wormhole me back to a bad emotional place 🤣 I wasted so much effort on Mozilla as a kid, it was like a direct transition from video game forums + modding
I know it’s not the designers’ fault (at least not completely).
They’re part of the problem - mostly a symptom. The only real sin they’ve done is tried to keep their job - which I can’t really blame them for. But it is a shame it harms users as a consequence.
But I see no problem in bashing bad design, because if no one does, Corporate is gonna continue doing what they do. People need to speak about their wishes. Sure, most won’t be heeded, but what other way do you suggest for me (and most others in the thread) to do? Like this we at least have our little echo chamber to shit in.
It’s not about the sidebar, but what it represents. It’s a symptom of a larger problem - one you’ve correctly identified, yet do nothing about. I’m at least being a brat about it. Maybe if enough people complain, someone “in power” might get an idea as well.
I would argue this kind of blanket condemnation of Mozilla Doing Anything could be used by the Google opps in the org to justify adding more “premium features” that make money (but really don’t) instead of improving the goddamned browser and convince them we are not worth considering anyways, which WILL kill the browser. The default launcher on one of my ereaders has a fucking dead Pocket button and you think I’m not pissed off at this lol
Yeah, because for Windows, when you accidentally hover over the weather widget for 0.5 ms longer than some programmer decided will force you to connect to MSN.
I guarantee the programmer wasn’t the one who made the decision there lol
Agreed, never asked for the side bar, never gonna use it.
Believe it or not, they make the browser not just for you. I don’t use the sidebar either, but a colleague uses nothing but the sidebar.
God forbid the most unresponsive software dev group standardize a feature remade 4+ different ways by the community, years late
This looks… nice actually, the settings reminds me of Microsoft Edge though
I like it too 😅 Although I’d prefer to be able to reduce the spacing as much as possible
speaking of spacing, here’s one of the main reasons I’m still using Firefox, if that goes away, I’ll stop using it altogether, I’m not a grandpa to deserve all that spacing!
?I wasn’t that interested in rounded corners for a while, but I do see some value in it now. When it’s done well, the UI becomes more usable and intuitive. The problem is when a lot of GUIs do it poorly in order to be trendy.
It helps with the grouping of visual elements for one, for Gestalt reasons
Zen browser has iterated to something pretty good now: https://zen-browser.app/
The
Firefoxredesign screenshot from the article has a few issues imo. The floating task bar doesn’t make sense to me, since that’s a core part of the program. The other items are either attached or contained within it, it shouldn’t be isolated off like that. Otherwise yea, too much wasted spaceAh, no, the “taskbar” is Tree Style Tabs, usually full of tabs. But screenshoting that here, i could as well post my browsing history.
Or you do mean the “Awesomebar”. But then i don’t get what you mean, since i’ve just removed the borders from the urlbox & co (the reverse of them being isolated).
Ah sorry I meant the screenshots from the article, I should have specified.
I like yours. Best for me would be something with that layout and spacing, and modern design elements
I prefer standardized OS wide appearances that are respected by all apps. The only skinning I want are Dark Modes or Mini Player modes (for media players).
Argh, yet another userchrome.css overhaul to do.
thanks i hate it if youre gonna keep going chromium then take from vivaldi.
but really you should take from seamonkey and palemoon for ui ideas mozilla
oh please no. i fucking hate having to edit my userchrome on every updates…
