I hope it’s just a joke
the old one is fine
i don’t think the ui is your main problem, mozilla, but ok i guess.
You’re right. It’s too few AI chatbots!
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re-invent the wheel every so often and chase the trends of others doing the same thing so your Ui designs don’t look “outdated”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.
This seems so out of place on every OS and DE I can think of.
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.
bring back native styling!
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
?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 Firefox screenshot 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 space
Ah, 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
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!
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 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.
All 10 years or so is fine. General design (what people are used to) does change. But all 3 years, is annoying.
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.
I swear some people would use NetScape GUI if they could.
I’d use it if it provided blazing fast performance. For me, usability and performance beats any nice looks
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?
But the space isn’t wasted. Its used for greater legibility and generally improved accessibility and UX.
Just looking at the photo you provided, OP’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?
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
morbidly curious abt this 👍
Don’t threaten me with a good time
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
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.
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…
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.
userContent.css is absolutely essential for me. I use that to limit the size of images on Thunderbird.
Monterey theme or Gnome theme forever.
I don’t like gaps, included rounded corners. Let me use all my screen space dammit
The mobile client and fork I use both have that design language now. It’s a little cutesy for me and I dislike having to click twice to get the full menu but otherwise no complaints.
dislike having to click twice
Settings –> customize -> toolbar layout -> expanded
Firefox hasn’t looked good since they changed “Photon” for “Proton” with those awful floating tabs. Thank god for Zen Browser.
literally just fix bugs
I hope it’s just a joke
Yes, the classic Mozilla April Fools joke, released a full month early.
off by one error
They forgot that Date.getMonth() is zero-indexed
😡
Again?
I like this a lot! However I hope they keep the userChrome function because as nice as it is I’m going to keep my LibAdwaita skin anyways.
