People who care about constant visual refreshes all the time - common users.
If you mean "care about" as in "really like", then s/common users/designers/ .
Otherwise I think they are also as irritated by needless UI changes, although they will rarely talk about it at length, because unlike more technical/power users they tend to rely a lot more on memorising where things are and "pattern matching" to navigate a UI.
Firefox 89 has hidden the "Compact" interface mode that makes the tab bar take up less vertical space than the "Normal" and "Touch" modes, and has marked it as an "unsupported" feature. It may be removed in the future. If you want to provide feedback on this, Mozilla has opened a forum and this is already the most popular topic:
"Techies don't care about bling, they care about functionality and efficiency. When you make their search box almost indistinguishable from the background, they care. When they need extra mouse clicks to find a desired option, they care. The average mouthbreather out there? They couldn't care less. Developing tools for idiots is wrong."
An oddly belligerent way of putting it. People without an advanced understanding of software are not all morons. It's true though that Mozilla should have realised some time ago that they need to target advanced users, something they still don't seem to understand.
I agree with the article that Proton is an inferior UI. Fortunately it can easily be disabled, at least for now. [0]
For what its worth, I have partially switched to ff 89 and will fully do so in 3 months time. I have 24 chrome profiles and consider myself to be power user.
I like the new ff design barring the tabs which is the main concern of the op. But you have to give ff the benefit that they are trying hard to keep everyone happy and improving things as they go. I like the fact that atleast with ff I browse in containers and use their password manager compared to other browser password manager. Android ff nightly is great and supports extensions.
Would I trust my password to chrome ? Would google allow ublock origin on android ? One only needs to think a bit more to answer these questions.
Dissenting opinion: my first reaction was, "Wow, that's strange and pretty ugly," but after using it for an hour I stopped noticing. It's still Firefox. The UI changes were mildly annoying at worst and the people I see losing their minds over it are overreacting.
I just wonder who is clicking on the border instead of the text or icon on the tab. I don't see where a visual demarcation of a tab is helping someone navigate when there are other much stronger visual indicators. Is there some secret turn off favicon and title text mode for tabs I don't know about?
I agree, these UI changes are practically unnoticeable except the menu changes. I would like more contrast for the address bar, though.
I've been using FF 89 for a few days now, and other than tabs-on-bottom getting broken by the update, my only - but major - complaint is that the new "tabs" suck. They don't look like tabs any more, just a bunch of buttons on a bar.
Not only don't the "tabs" look like tabs anymore, it's also very difficult to tell which one is actually selected, which can be very annoying depending on how you use tabs.
How is a bunch of page-select buttons on a bar an improvement on a design where they actually look like tabs?
Edit: Actually, the lack of visual feedback on which "tab bar" button corresponds to the current page (i.e is the current tab) is likely annoying for most users, since you need to know in order to close that tab rather than some other one by mistake. Best bet to be sure is to click on the tab button you think is the current one, to reselect it, before clicking again on the "x" to close it.
>Not only don't the "tabs" look like tabs anymore, it's also very difficult to tell which one is actually selected, which can be very annoying depending on how you use tabs.
I couldn't even tell which tabs were selected before this update, which is really frustrating if you have over 400+ tabs open. I realise it is excessive, and would appreciate a solution other than Tree style, Session management, Tab suspender add-ons/options to manage everything 'smarter' and also limit the fingerprinting at the same time.
Anyways, from my limited usage of the new version, I am glad that the container accents are now shown at the top, and tabs playing audio have more focus.
> My Home button is gone, why. I put it there on purpose!
Previously the home button was there by default. In 89 it's gone by default but can still be added back with right click -> customize toolbar. My guess was that Mozilla found very few users using it (I personally didn't).
> There are no borders to any of the background tabs. None. This makes "focus" harder because your brain needs to guess the borders rather than use existing demarcation. This would-be modern minimalism fad needs to be abolished, preferably by sending it to chillax in the Gulag somewhere.
> The tabs are not really distinguishable from one another. The official reason is some marketing nonsense like tab focus and whatnot - look, if a person struggles to "focus" on their tabs, then the browser UI revamp is the least of their problems.
Seems strange to have these two paragraphs directly after each other. Claiming that the new style is bad because it requires more focus, then - when addressing Mozilla's claim of the opposite which is possibly backed by user research - immediately disregarding the whole topic of focus.
> Maybe some awkward decisions here and there, but the bigger goal of using FF is to save the internet from another monopoly.
Is that really going to happen by spending their resources on widget redesigns which themselves will inevitably be denounced as the reason for firefox's unpopularity and replaced in about 18 months?
What would happen do you think if they just skipped one or two of those cycles?
Given the well-known bias humans have against change - to be fair, there are good reason for this bias - I think it's important to give a design a good while of use before evaluating it against the predecessor, and only using objective criteria to evaluate the successor. Any form of 'it looks worse' is not useful.
Useful as in useful for knowing whether the successor was better than the predecessor. Without this information, you cannot fairly assess whether the changes where worthwhile, given the inherent cost in breaking established workflows for current users.
It's not possible to make a fair assessment without doing this because users (read: you) are biased towards what existed regardless of whether the successor design may actually be worth adopting.
22 comments
[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 74.0 ms ] threadIf you mean "care about" as in "really like", then s/common users/designers/ .
Otherwise I think they are also as irritated by needless UI changes, although they will rarely talk about it at length, because unlike more technical/power users they tend to rely a lot more on memorising where things are and "pattern matching" to navigate a UI.
https://mozilla.crowdicity.com/post/719764
I agree with the article that Proton is an inferior UI. Fortunately it can easily be disabled, at least for now. [0]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27433646
I like the new ff design barring the tabs which is the main concern of the op. But you have to give ff the benefit that they are trying hard to keep everyone happy and improving things as they go. I like the fact that atleast with ff I browse in containers and use their password manager compared to other browser password manager. Android ff nightly is great and supports extensions.
Would I trust my password to chrome ? Would google allow ublock origin on android ? One only needs to think a bit more to answer these questions.
I agree, these UI changes are practically unnoticeable except the menu changes. I would like more contrast for the address bar, though.
Not only don't the "tabs" look like tabs anymore, it's also very difficult to tell which one is actually selected, which can be very annoying depending on how you use tabs.
How is a bunch of page-select buttons on a bar an improvement on a design where they actually look like tabs?
Edit: Actually, the lack of visual feedback on which "tab bar" button corresponds to the current page (i.e is the current tab) is likely annoying for most users, since you need to know in order to close that tab rather than some other one by mistake. Best bet to be sure is to click on the tab button you think is the current one, to reselect it, before clicking again on the "x" to close it.
I couldn't even tell which tabs were selected before this update, which is really frustrating if you have over 400+ tabs open. I realise it is excessive, and would appreciate a solution other than Tree style, Session management, Tab suspender add-ons/options to manage everything 'smarter' and also limit the fingerprinting at the same time.
Anyways, from my limited usage of the new version, I am glad that the container accents are now shown at the top, and tabs playing audio have more focus.
Previously the home button was there by default. In 89 it's gone by default but can still be added back with right click -> customize toolbar. My guess was that Mozilla found very few users using it (I personally didn't).
> There are no borders to any of the background tabs. None. This makes "focus" harder because your brain needs to guess the borders rather than use existing demarcation. This would-be modern minimalism fad needs to be abolished, preferably by sending it to chillax in the Gulag somewhere.
> The tabs are not really distinguishable from one another. The official reason is some marketing nonsense like tab focus and whatnot - look, if a person struggles to "focus" on their tabs, then the browser UI revamp is the least of their problems.
Seems strange to have these two paragraphs directly after each other. Claiming that the new style is bad because it requires more focus, then - when addressing Mozilla's claim of the opposite which is possibly backed by user research - immediately disregarding the whole topic of focus.
It's far less bloated than the (only) competitor, and does most things right.
Is that really going to happen by spending their resources on widget redesigns which themselves will inevitably be denounced as the reason for firefox's unpopularity and replaced in about 18 months?
What would happen do you think if they just skipped one or two of those cycles?
It's not possible to make a fair assessment without doing this because users (read: you) are biased towards what existed regardless of whether the successor design may actually be worth adopting.
gnome is the only place where the new ff design looks good vs old.
A "tab" is literally a small thingy attached to the rest of the page so that you can quickly open it up if you want to, like this: https://www.google.com/search?q=file+folder+tabs&tbm=isch
I see no point in detaching the tab, other than obscuring the visual metaphor and making it harder to understand. Designers these days...