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The new Firefox design is here

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/new-firefox-design-is-here/
51•timpera•1h ago

Comments

MoraliaApp•1h ago
“Warm, but still precise” is an interesting goal. I wonder how much users actually feel that difference, though.
PalmPilotProMax•46m ago
I still have hilarious memories of "aerodynamic tabs" in that era of Firefox design docs.
dennismenken•25m ago
True
thetallgeek•1h ago
I want the page headings to look like tabs, not pills. You don't have to be different for the sake of it
serbuvlad•50m ago
It's not different, it's just what Apple is doing (Safari uses pills).

In fact, I propose that all computer User Interface design proceeds as:

    D(s) = (1 / (c * s + 1)) * (A(s) + N(s))
Where c is some constant, A is what Apple is doing and N is random noise.
cosmic_cheese•28m ago
I daily drive multiple Apple products, but this is one of those things where I disagree with Cupertino. I find that pill-tabs are bad design and that the way they mesh with Liquid Glass is strange. Tabs should look like tabs.
VCFundedGenYer•8m ago
Safari does almost everything wrong. They’re not a good role model.
serbuvlad•4m ago
My model is not a value judgement on quality. It simply is.
prodmod•55m ago
Is their overview video doing it for literally anyone at all? I would love to not be infantilized.
glenstein•45m ago
Ooof, it's definitely not just you. I definitely root for Mozilla to succeed and think they're critical in the grand scheme of the browser wars, but that video is rough. It's practically Cocomelon.
micromacrofoot•31m ago
They're trying to regain mass market appeal because the only people using it now are diehard nerds, the video isn't for you
palmotea•55m ago
Let me guess: even more whitespace, hiding stuff for a "clean" look like a baby toy.
xoac•54m ago
the ui fix still works, nice

https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix

drcongo•54m ago
Remarkably few images of design on this page about design. No I'm not going to watch a video.
iAMkenough•50m ago
Most of them are creative renderings too, not actual screenshots.

Besides the fake macOS window controls for some renderings, I don’t see how one would close, minimize, or zoom windows with this new design.

jeddy3•48m ago
There are remarkably few examples in the video as well
kevincox•47m ago
Seriously, are you proud of the new look? SHOW IT TO ME. Even the video was mostly themed mock-ups that didn't show what the actual design looks like. Just post a screenshot of the whole browser.
gray_-_wolf•49m ago
Out of curiosity, if you use the split view, why? I never understood what it can do that my window manager cannot, but maybe I am overlooking something?
yoz-y•47m ago
Sometimes is just nice to have a tab related to an activity, which might involve having two web sites open
zamadatix•45m ago
I suppose that depends what your window manager is and how it's configured? Most don't have an easy way to lock two windows together as they are moved as one though - especially on corporate devices.

Practically, it's most useful when I have two references for the same thing I want to move together as I work on that thing. E.g. Jira + Functional Spec as I do things related to them.

modified001•42m ago
Well, for one I use it to watch two videos at the same time.
TheqO•37m ago
Convenience.

For a non technical user it is much easier to right click a link (for example a reference in a news article) and choose Split View than arrange two windows (which may involve 2 different monitors).

For a Teams/Zoom screen where you are sharing only one app rather than whole desktop, again split may help.

Also good for mental switching, as you can open a link to the side and either promote to it's own tab/close and carry on with same page rather than have it open separately and break the flow

It's just another tool.

richwater•49m ago
Firefox needs to start adding actual embedded functionality improvements rather than constantly tweaking the UX. Chrome's integration with Googgle Pay for example (which lets you generate virtual card numbers on the fly) is what allowed Capital One to replace their browser agnostic extension. Now I cannot use Capital One virtual card number generator in my checkout workflow if I don't move to Chrome.
TheqO•28m ago
That's an edge case is it not?

99% of users don't need to generate virtual card numbers on the fly, so won't be a high priority item.

richwater•27m ago
It's edge case, but I think it's an example of how Firefox is not keeping up with demand for more functionality. Firefox is slowly becoming obselete and Mozilla won't acknowledge it.
TheqO•18m ago
Yes, no doubt over the years it has not been well run from a business perspective, and it is of note that the browser that was created by it's ex co-founder is found above it in the download charts on app stores.

Mozilla have been terrible at marketing and strategy and innovating technically from a end user experience perspective. With the amount of guaranteed money from the Google deal they had annually, they should have done so much more.

hattar•47m ago
I wish Firefox would stop rolling out redesigns, color themes, and other visual tweaks every couple years and instead focus on features and bugs.

Improve Adblock capabilities, better tab and session management, improve sync, improve site css and js management, built in dark-mode.

Hell, just look at the list of most used extensions, it’s a great place to start understanding what users want.

micromacrofoot•33m ago
they can't focus on adblock because most of their money comes from google
TheqO•15m ago
Yup. They can only offer limited built-in protection due to their revenue source, but important to note that unlike Chrome they don't dictate on what extensions can offer.

So they are practically speaking the only game in town (Brave being the exception on Chrome as they are keeping support for UBlock Origin)

Firefox Nightly on Android also allows desktop extensions to be used.

coldpie•33m ago
> built in dark-mode

It has built-in dark mode, check out the Themes in your settings.

hattar•47s ago
[delayed]
zawaideh•10m ago
A lot of what you are asking for is already there.
tosti•47m ago
Lots of pooh pooh, lots of blah blah, almost nothing on show.
formerffuser•46m ago
FF has been my primary browser for 20 years. But in the past 6 months it spawns so many FF processes from a single web page with advertising like yahoo - 60 FF processes or more - that it's unusable. The X button to stop it doesn't work, and going to another website can take upwards of 10 seconds. I am looking for an another browser.
leawi•45m ago
Hey! That's essentially Zen browser's UI?
mosselman•42m ago
Which in turn is essentially the Arc browser's UI
timpera•41m ago
"We have Arc Browser at home".

More seriously, it's nice to see this UI finally copied by a major browser, but sad that there's still no real replacement for Arc.

cosmic_cheese•26m ago
Except Zen’s is more consistent and in my opinion, cleaner looking.
hackerbrother•45m ago
I think Firefox is doing a good job overall.
timpera•44m ago
I just updated. I think it looks great overall, but there is way too much lost space on the horizontal tabs.
coldpie•38m ago
Try out the Compact UI mode (Settings -> Appearance -> Window Density), which I didn't know about until I read this blog post. Tightens things up nicely.
clumsysmurf•44m ago
I gave it a few minutes of trial and then disabled it.

With memory prices increasing, many people unable to afford new machines, and web browsers being one of those things that can potentially take a lot of system resources, I wish the Firefox team would prioritize CPU and memory performance of the core engine for users with lots of tabs.

I have stuff like 'Auto tab discard' installed but it seems to break other things, like 'Close Duplicate Tabs'.

IlikeMadison•36m ago
so sad you have to use the surveillance enabled chrome browser now, I feel so sorry for you
clumsysmurf•16m ago
Don't feel sad or sorry :) There are other options, like Orion that runs uBo just fine. I haven't used it enough to say either way though.
anonthrownaway•34m ago
768 tabs open. Total suspender works great.
coldpie•7m ago
Lol, there's enough people out there with hundreds of tabs open that there's clearly a real usecase for it, but I have just never understood this usage model. Feels to me like complaining you get bad gas mileage in your car because you're carrying around 15 years' worth of discarded McDonald's wrappers. The car isn't the problem! :)
n4bz0r•39m ago
The UI was tidy and nearly perfect, now it's all over the place: weird paddings, different border radiuses even within a single element, clashing background colors, and boy, do I love rainbow gradients everywhere.

Update: for those unhappy with the changes, you can roll them back for now:

  about:config -> browser.nova.enabled -> false
romanovcode•36m ago
I cannot find a setting to disable the gradient. It's very annoying indeed.
alsetmusic•34m ago
I just turned off auto-updates after reading this. Safe for now.
n4bz0r•32m ago
The gradient is part of the theme. Updated the post with how to roll back the UI changes for now. After rolling back, select an old theme.
coldpie•29m ago
You can browse the Themes to try to find one you like better. But yeah it'd be nice if one of the default built-in themes was super plain. Closest they have available by default is a grayscale gradient ("Ash").
anonthrownaway•37m ago
OMFG! Look at the massive amount of space between the stupid pill shaped tabs - this is the exact opposite of what I want as a tab hoarder! If I wanted to use a shitty safari UI that sacrifices usability for cutesy looks, I would use Safari.

I am still having to use an extension (Sidebery) because Firefox failed to implement vertical tabs half as good. On my MBP, I have two rows of small panel icons to switch between 2 rows of 8 different categories of tabs (16 panels). Below that, I have 3 rows of pinned tabs on each panel (24 pinned tabs). Below that, I can see 24 open tabs without scrolling. That's 48 visible tabs per panel and with a single panel click, I can see a different set of 48 tabs. That makes a total of 768 tabs accessible via a single click. Now that is an amazing UI/UX - not some designer pill shaped tabs (that Safari has had for years).

Mozilla: why in the hell do I need to trust some extension builder to give me an amazing UI/UX? Instead of copying Apple's bad decisions - innovate!

p.s. I don't get why in the hell anyone who has more than 10 tabs open at once isn't using vertical tabs? Especially when most monitors have more horizontal pixels than vertical.

swed420•33m ago
> Mozilla: why in the hell do I need to trust some extension builder to give me an amazing UI/UX?

Because Mozilla is basically owned by Google, neither of them care about you or your UX, and Ladybird isn't ready yet.

vvarp•30m ago
Sideberry is GOAT, nothing can beat its flexibility.

I wouldn’t really expect base experience to match what it offers, so as long as Firefox doesn’t break extensions for power users, I am more than happy to see them experimenting with stuff that could help to win back some of the audience.

JohnFen•11m ago
> so as long as Firefox doesn’t break extensions for power users

You mean, as long as they don't break them any more than they did a few years back? Yes, I'm still salty about that loss.

But to your point, I agree with you. The native Firefox UI hasn't been one I loved for many years, and isn't getting any better. But I am still able to (mostly) massage it into something I'm OK with. As long as I can do that, then I'm fine with them doing whatever they need to do with the default look-and-feel.

EvanAnderson•34m ago
I keep trying to switch from Chrome to Firefox. I had been trying pretty hard this last time but now this... >sigh<

Change for change's sake is so damn tiring.

throwawayAAUGGH•33m ago
This is horrible. I still can't find out how to disable the new border radius. The compact option kind of saves it but this is absolutely horrible.

Are they forcing this? You have got to be kidding me. Why force a change like this instead of adding this as an additional UI customization feature? Why is this happening? Is this making them money or is this to cater to the ego of some product manager?

The "Ash" theme saves the theme for me. The sidebar is easily disabled by clicking the settings icon on the bottom of the sidebar and selecting the easily spottable option. I cannot find how to disable this border radius. "about:config -> browser.nova.enabled -> false" only slightly fixes it, does not disable it.

I can't believe they're forcing these pills. What a fucking hostile, brazen change. Yeah, fuck you too Mozilla. Looks like I can't do anything about it! You punked me!

chriswarbo•33m ago
I struggle to use UIs like in the image shown under "Compact Mode". I can't tell what is/isn't clickable, since there are no bevels or other visual indicators (maybe something changes on mouse-over? but that's too late to indicate that I should try mousing-over!)

Thankfully user-chrome still seems to work, so these things can be overridden (and LLMs make those overrides easier to write & maintain).

righthand•32m ago
Finally, the one thing users have been asking for! The N+1 Firefox redesign!
baggy_trough•26m ago
I like the idea of Firefox, but the UI has always been awkward on macOS. It looks a little better, but I don't like the huge tab pills in the window header, or the popups if you linger for more than a moment on the tab pill or favorites.
coldpie•22m ago
> or the popups if you linger for more than a moment on the tab pill

You can turn that off in the settings if you like. Settings -> Tabs and browsing -> Disable "Show an image preview you when you hover on a tab".

baggy_trough•21m ago
Thank you, but there's still a popup with the page title and site name.
coldpie•15m ago
Ha, yeah. If you really want to get rid of those almost entirely, you can tweak "ui.tooltip.delay_ms" to something really big like 10000 (10 seconds).
VCFundedGenYer•10m ago
They’ve done this so many times I’m just numb to it. These designs aren’t how I use a browser. The existing UI required no work, it was fine.

Vertical tabs are the dumbest thing they are wasting effort on. That firmly belongs as an extension, not a browser feature. Same problem as Pocket and the VPN garbage.

bitmasher9•37m ago
I do it sometimes for highly related work (referencing on tab against the other) that will be a longer running task (30+ minutes).

It means that both tabs get maximized and minimized at the same time, and the two tabs are always side by side. Which means if I need to jump to another task, like answering a message or joining a video call, I can get back to my work faster. It’s a small thing that helps with context switching.

I do it when I consider both side of the Split View one unified context I am working on. I do it not only with browser tabs, but sometimes terminal tabs. I most commonly do it with IDE tabs.

ac29•35m ago
I use a tiling wm, but the split view is more compact because it doesnt have two (vertical) tab bars. Useful on a cramped laptop, less so on a large screen
cosmic_cheese•33m ago
I don’t use split view much, but I can understand the appeal.

It makes a lot of sense if one uses subject-based browser windows (e.g. 1 window == 1 subject); it keeps all tab organization within the browser and makes it easy to minimize it, move it to different screens/desktops, save/restore it, etc consistently with less overhead (no secondary organization system [such as that of the window manager] involved).

This becomes even more valuable for cross-platform users who sync and can’t rely on their favorite uberleet-haxor-wm package being available everywhere.

johncoltrane•30m ago
The big selling point is that everything stays in the same window.

- The split view is a special looking tab you can come too easily. - You can have several split views in the same window. - Selecting what tab you want in the split view is much cleaner than tearing off tabs into windows. - No conceptual switch between "tab" and "window".

_flux•14m ago
I think the key here is that split view makes one tab show two sites. So when you switch the tab, you switch both views at the same time. You can't achieve this with a window manager, unless you already (instead of tabs) used only windows that your window manager rendered as tabs, and then comes also with this feature. Does any?
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