[HN Gopher] Firefox UI/UX History
___________________________________________________________________
Firefox UI/UX History
Author : black7375
Score : 241 points
Date : 2022-03-27 15:18 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| epolanski wrote:
| Where can I find more information about the svg filmstrip
| technique?
| abhinavk wrote:
| Between all these efforts of UI redesign, they removed one
| feature that was unique to Firefox: Tab Groups.
|
| Ironically, it's now present in all other major browsers. Safari
| went above and beyond to make it a headline feature.
| fuzzy2 wrote:
| Ah yes, the skeleton screen. Because it's so much better to have
| the application in an unusable state, but at least it's on-
| screen!
|
| There's another state that may be related to uBlock Origin (or
| other extensions) immediately afterwards, too: You can click
| bookmarks etc. but nothing loads (only after a significant
| delay). Again, awesome UX.
|
| I guess I'm slowly becoming conservative because I've come to
| hate change. Most of the time, it doesn't improve anything. And
| then, with increasing odds, changes actually make things worse.
| Not just limited to Firefox, of course. Also Windows, macOS, iOS,
| Android, whatever. Hell, even cars are getting worse every year.
| kevingadd wrote:
| Skeleton screens are a great example of bad design being
| popularized because a couple people in power set arbitrary
| requirements. "It has to start fast" is a common requirement (a
| certification requirement on some game consoles, in fact) which
| leads to skeleton screens, and it juices certain metrics in a
| way that appeals to metrics-driven leadership, so eventually
| you get them everywhere and it hides the fact that your
| application takes forever to _actually_ load and be usable.
| There are a few different pieces of software I 'm stuck using
| that will often show me a skeleton for _multiple seconds_ while
| I wait to actually be able to use the app. Just show me a
| loading screen and a progress bar.
|
| Some people in the browser space haven't lost their minds and
| track things like how often the layout of a page _changes_
| during loading, how often it wiggles around, etc - which
| penalizes skeletons and other bad tricks, as it should. But
| this particular sensibility hasn 't caught on elsewhere.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I used to love change up until about a decade ago. Back in the
| day, computing was still pushing the boundaries of what's
| possible and new features could change your life.
|
| Nowadays, the innovation has plateaued and computing became an
| ad delivery mechanism and a way for employees of bloated
| corporations to justify their salaries "fixing" things that
| didn't need to be fixed.
| MMS21 wrote:
| Photon was so good why they hell did they mess with it
| conradfr wrote:
| Agree. I disliked the tab design of Australis (but remember
| being able to remove that curved nonsense) but Photon was great
| (until they started to mess with url bar dimensions etc).
|
| Damn do I hate Proton.
| black7375 wrote:
| I'm making a firefox custom theme, and researching the UI/UX
| history of Firefox.
|
| 1. Early (v1 ~ v3)
|
| v1~v3 are classic UI that we remember when we were in the early
| 2000s.
|
| Features
|
| - Clear as the icons do only one thing
|
| - Unique color for each icon
|
| Limits
|
| - Not fused with OS UI
|
| - UI height
|
| - Contrary to the modern interface philosophy as there is no
| abstraction
|
| - Inconsistent icon size and texture
|
| 2. Classic (v4, 2016.10)
|
| Thus, v4.0 was released after a large-scale UI reconstruction
| project was launched!!
|
| It is the longest-lived UI and loved by many people.
|
| Commonly called a Classic theme.
|
| Features
|
| - Orange app button at the top left like the symbol
|
| - Calmer tone
|
| - Win7 Aero Glass support
|
| - Stop / Reload / Go with one button
|
| - Tab moved to the top
|
| Limits
|
| - Unfamiliar interface with large-scale changes
|
| 3. Australis (v29, 2014.04)
|
| Australis, which had a lot of likes and dislikes compared to
| Proton UI.
|
| It was a change that put a lot of effort into simplicity.
|
| Features
|
| - Curved Tab
|
| - Drag & Drop customizing UI
|
| - Change settings UI pop-up to contents(tab) format
|
| - Animation
|
| Limits
|
| - Panel UI that looks like a tablet
|
| - Remove status bar
|
| 4. Photon (v57, 2017)
|
| Photon was a generally well-received update to the UI that was
| used until June of this year(2021), when Proton appeared.
|
| Features
|
| - Components: List based panel and page actions, library menu
|
| - Animation: Add animation to actions of buttons, tabs, panels,
| etc.
|
| - Visual redesign: tabs, icons, density, etc.
|
| - Performance: improved initialization, synchronization reflow,
| etc.
|
| Limits
|
| - It looks a bit complicated
|
| - Only light weight themes are allowed.
|
| 5. Proton (v89, 2021.06)
|
| This is the moment I started working on themes.
|
| Features
|
| - Neatly organized menu
|
| - Icon that are pretty enough to remind of the edge
|
| - Some of animations that I like & skeleton screens
|
| - Stylish color scheme
|
| - Moderate rounding
|
| - Meticulous implementation
|
| Limits
|
| - Excessively wide padding
|
| - Remove icons from menu
|
| - Feels like a button rather than a tab with a connected look
|
| - Confusion of tab indicators
|
| - Remove page action menu in address bar
|
| - Delete bookmarks / library animations and illustrations
|
| - The icon size of the new tab contents
|
| - Changed the search bar of the new tab to be performed on the
| URL bar.
| binwiederhier wrote:
| I've been using Firefox since it was called Firebird. I feel old.
| It's gotten better and better every year.
| hudo wrote:
| Any way of returning tabs back instead of this new awful awful
| buttons for tabs!?
| ghosty141 wrote:
| I never liked the standard browser UI/UX. I hate the wasted
| vertical space that's used up by menu bars, adress bars and
| whatever.
|
| I customized my firefox so all the "bars" are in the window-
| title.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/xop7oVJ.png
| userbinator wrote:
| That's the exact opposite of what I like. How can you drag the
| window if there's no place to click without activating
| something? My monitor has plenty of vertical space.
|
| ...which just shows that there's no one-size-fits-all, and that
| being able to customise the UI is a very important feature.
| kleiba wrote:
| Sure, UI/UX can be a whole science, but in the end, a lot of it
| boils down to preference. As you can see when reading through
| this comment thread.
|
| My personal biggest pet peeve: I hate, Hate, HATE that they
| changed the default behavior of clicks into the address or search
| bar, from simply "put the cursor here" to "select all". Oh my
| goodness, do I hate this, even after all these months. It breaks
| a fundamental behavior of text fields since, I don't know, the
| beginning of time?
|
| Even today, I don't know how many times I keep inadvertenly
| deleting the contents of my search bar when all I want to do is
| add another term at the end. My brain is probably just too old to
| learn something new, I guess.
|
| Also annoying: with the new add-on system, you cannot even write
| a plugin to restore the previous sane behavior.
| [deleted]
| Shadonototra wrote:
| What a mess
|
| On other hand Chrome didn't change, they kept a simple, effective
| and clean UI/UX from the beginning
|
| Firefox followed Gnome's design philosophy mess, hence why users
| left the ship
| wolverine876 wrote:
| What browser GUI do people, here in the HN bubble, look at and
| click on?
|
| I look at the URL for the hostname, look at tabs to find the one
| I want and sometimes click on it (more often I use ctrl +
| pagedown/pageup), click on a certain extension GUI regularly
| because it lacks a keyboard UI, and that's about all but the edge
| cases. Everything else is done on the keyboard and sometimes the
| mouse scrollwheel (when presssing the spacebar doesn't work).
|
| My guess is that browser GUI design has limited impact here;
| website GUI is a far bigger factor for me.
| Lammy wrote:
| See also: "A Visual Browser History, from Netscape 4 to Mozilla
| Firefox": http://www.andrewturnbull.net/mozilla/history.html
| yoavm wrote:
| I loved Photon. Proton added a lot of nice touches, but I never
| understood why would you want to turn the tabs into buttons. Tabs
| is a great metaphor from the real world, and they take less
| space. I don't see a single advantage of styling them as buttons.
| The whole point is that they're visually connected to the
| currently visible page.
|
| Thankfully however I don't care too much because I can still
| completely hide the tab-bar with my userChrome.css, and use "Tab
| Center Reborn" to have my tabs on the side instead.
| pier25 wrote:
| Completely agree. Objectively buttons don't seem to have any
| advantage and personally I find them fugly.
| throwaquestion5 wrote:
| Seconding the tab idea. I need to know in which tab I am.
| Sometimes I have the five tabs of the same page (hello hn),
| look up, and I don't know which tab I am. I end up closing the
| tab with Ctrl+W when I'm done and learn where I was.
|
| Thanks for the extension suggestion I may give it a try.
| heftig wrote:
| I think using a theme with a high contrast between the active
| tab and inactive tabs is probably the easiest way to fix the
| UX for you. E.g.
| https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/proton-redone-
| hybri...
| skavi wrote:
| One advantage I could see is a vertical tab bar mode that's
| more visually consistent with the standard horizontal tab bar.
| Could even animate seamlessly between those modes.
| thangalin wrote:
| You're not alone. Here are some steps to restore the old tab
| style:
|
| https://superuser.com/a/1669549/9067
| vsskanth wrote:
| I really like their UI for desktop. Has anyone managed to package
| their latest UI into a framework that can be used like Qt ? I
| remember they had an XUL based framework but I understand it's
| deprecated now ?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Modernity and simplicity is nice an all, but the Proton redesign
| process was a big failure in my opinion. I've heard nothing but
| annoyances from basic users about the weird tab display, and many
| advanced screens (like in the settings) are being disappeared for
| the sake of simplicity without an equivalent implementation. The
| redesigns are welcome but left unfinished.
|
| Up until around Photon, I considered every UI update an
| improvement. Photon itself was a bit of a mixed bag, but mostly
| contained improvements. That marked the turning point for me;
| Photon is where I actively started disliking the more prominent
| features. Unlike Photon, Proton was just a huge step back, with
| no real improvements to compensate.
|
| Trying to get details about a TLS certificate, something only
| power users do and even then is done very rarely, is now a full
| page ordeal, with a small column down the middle of the page for
| content. Apparently the popup was too clumsy or something? I
| seriously don't understand why any UI designer ever cared.
| Everything is now bring dumbed down, information that doesn't
| satisfy the top 80% just gets completely removed and the space
| saved is dedicated to padding and margins making the entire UI
| more bloated.
|
| Then there were dumb plans to make Firefox interesting (I think?
| What else were they doing?) like the idea of "colourways" being
| available for a limited time only, which was simply preposterous.
| Earlier they took over Pocket, a service everyone has now seen
| the icon for and barely anyone ever uses. When it comes to
| decisions about the browser, everyone who dares reduce telemetry
| gets ignored . Mozilla brands itself as a privacy aware company,
| but when you try to use that privacy it turns its back on you.
|
| I suppose I should be thankful Mozilla isn't trying to ruin
| Firefox in desktop as much as it's trying to push users to
| abandon Firefox on mobile. My tab bar has gone through three
| changes I don't really give a damn about, collections have come
| and gone, and I've given up on ever using the addon API again.
| The text encoding settings and menu seems to have inexplicably
| disappeared, leading to some very annoying broken web pages that
| can't be fixed anymore.
|
| You can't even enter an IPv6 address on Android. The browser
| engine can browse to IPv6 addresses just fine, the URL bar just
| doesn't accept them. The regex to determine if an input is a URL
| or not doesn't test for IPv6 and the single attempt by someone
| else to fix it was apparently too complex and therefore removed
| later. That person abandoned their efforts and the whole process
| doesn't exactly make me want to contribute either.
|
| In my frustration I've actually considered (and quickly
| dismissed) the idea of writing a tool to spam Mozilla with
| telemetry to get the features that I use more hits. Telemetry
| warfare, of sorts.
| dkbrk wrote:
| > it's trying to push users to abandon Firefox on mobile
|
| The funny thing is, extensions are completely functional on
| mobile. All you have to do is:
|
| 1. Create a collection at addons.mozilla.org containing exactly
| the addons you want 2. Install firefox for android, developer
| edition 3. Sign in to sync 4. go to "about firefox" and tap the
| logo 5 times 5. select "custom Add-on collection"
| [deleted]
| politelemon wrote:
| I quite like the new certificate page, the information is a lot
| better presented than the previous tiny window where the
| information was in weird nested panels and harder to find. It's
| a lot easier to search through the cert info now.
|
| Yeah agree about the 'colorways' thing. I've read through their
| blog post a few times, and I still cannot understand why it was
| necessary or whether it accomplished its goals.
| https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/introducing-new...
| userbinator wrote:
| That was more likely marketing having nothing better to do,
| just like what happens when designers are left idle. They
| need to justify their existence somehow.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| For me Firefox's UI design started going off the rails with
| Australis and Photon, where its UI began to be a major component
| of Firefox as a brand. I much preferred v1-v4 where Firefox felt
| more focused on being a tool that fit well into your desktop
| instead of trying to stand out.
|
| I'm sometimes tempted to try to start a Firefox fork that returns
| its UI to a "smaller part of a larger desktop" look and feel, but
| then I remember how impossible it would be to maintain that over
| time. Wish Gecko was still embeddable so one could just write a
| new UI and not have to keep patches maintained.
| djbusby wrote:
| Or finished Servo enough to embed that. Either would be
| awesome, then it could be "easy" to make a new browser. Used to
| be able to do this on Windows (c2000) and reuse the IE renderer
| all over.
| bscphil wrote:
| Very well said. People often claim that everyone complains
| about _every_ Firefox UI change, but this is a perfectly
| consistent thing to do if you think Firefox has been getting
| slowly worse since v3.5 or so.
|
| The one thing I will say in its favor is that Firefox still
| maintains a decent amount of customizability, at least for the
| seriously dedicated. I still have a separate search bar, a menu
| bar, and have removed the "hamburger" menu button entirely. For
| me, the UI has changed very little over the years, but the pile
| of hacks in my usercss file has grown over time...
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| This is a scourge of all applications these days. The user's
| need for consistency is demoted to favor the developer's need
| for brand awareness.
| ouid wrote:
| The lesson here is to intentionally use an older version of
| firefox.
| destructionator wrote:
| Kinda astounding how the firefox v1 was not great but ok, and it
| got overall worse in literally every redesign since then. v1
| remains the best UI firefox has ever had to this day.
|
| No wonder they peaked user share early on and have rapidly
| hemorrhaged since then.
| SECProto wrote:
| > Kinda astounding how the firefox v1 was not great but ok, and
| it got overall worse in literally every redesign since then. v1
| remains the best UI firefox has ever had to this day.
|
| As someone who's been using it since the phoenix/firebird days,
| I disagree strongly. There have been hiccups along the way
| (particularly the tabs appearance in proton), but in general
| the UI has gotten significantly better with each redesign.
| Looking back at the v1-3 UI all I can see is how much vertical
| screen real estate is wasted on things I would very rarely
| click.
| [deleted]
| agumonkey wrote:
| The v1-v4 have a feeling of immense simplicity. Now Firefox is
| a fighter jet, but I miss driving a mini.
| masswerk wrote:
| The "Classic" theme was still very much reminiscent of
| Netscape 4 (just reworked icons and toolbar and location bar
| were merged), while the "Modern" theme was much the same in
| layout but introduced round buttons of varying size. (Firefox
| came with both themes.)
| yoavm wrote:
| I feel like it became somewhat popular to bash Firefox (and
| Mozilla) on HN, which is sad. What exactly did you like about
| v1? It takes huge space and literally most buttons are
| completely useless. Are you using "refresh" very often? Do you
| need a huge "loading" indicator that takes space even when
| you're not loading? a button to show all-"history"-of-the-
| forward-button-in-the-current-tab? What makes v1 "the best
| ever"?
| destructionator wrote:
| > Are you using "refresh" very often?
|
| Ummm yes? Funny, I just wrote another comment complaining how
| hitting refresh on a major airline's flight status page is
| liable to give one of those terrible "something went wrong"
| messages (apparently the search results are liable to expire,
| but until they do, refreshing will actually update the info,
| so it is useful to periodically press to see if the flight
| got delayed).
|
| Combining stop and refresh is also dangerous since that's a
| race condition. Suppose the page is taking forever, I decide
| I've had enough of that and want to press stop. But in the
| second it takes me to actually click on it, the page decided
| to finally load! Now my click, instead of stopping the
| annoying spinner animation, clears out the information that
| FINALLY arrived and brought the annoying spinner back.
|
| (I actually think there is a pretty good case to just remove
| the stop button though, it isn't vital and just hitting back
| or close does the same thing anyway. But combining it with
| the refresh button is about the worst possible thing you
| could do to either button. It takes one useful button and one
| meh button and combines them into one awful button.)
|
| Speaking of clicks, that's actually the last straw that made
| me abandon firefox entirely: in version 75, they broke
| clicking on the url bar. Instead of doing the sane thing -
| putting the cursor where I clicked - it instead selects all.
| Before, double click would select all, meaning if you wanted
| that, it was still easily available. Now double click instead
| selects... a word. So they completely removed the very useful
| single click functionality and turned double click into a
| completely useless behavior. Absolutely unbearable.
|
| I could tolerate or undo most the other UI changes they did,
| but this click thing couldn't be user style'd away, couldn't
| be configured away. They just shoved this massive breakage
| down. So I uninstalled it .
|
| > takes space even when you're not loading
|
| I'd rather have a predictable UI of marginal utility that
| doesn't change out from under me than a UI that randomly
| changes from bad to worse in its own time. At least you can
| get used to consistency, even if it is consistently mediocre.
|
| > What makes v1 "the best ever"?
|
| Don't put things in quotes that weren't actually said. I
| actually said "v1 was not great but ok, and it got overall
| worse".
|
| There's actually specific changes I think were good, coupled
| with other changes that were bad.
| yoavm wrote:
| I'm sorry I rephrased your text, but you did write "v1
| remains the best UI firefox has ever". How is that so
| different from "the best ever" is beyond me.
|
| What browser did you move to after you uninstalled Firefox
| because of the click in the URL thing? Seems like Chrome
| does the same. To me it actually makes sense - I think most
| of the times when a user reaches the URL they want to put a
| new one, not to edit the existing one. This behavior makes
| that easier.
| destructionator wrote:
| > How is that so different from "the best ever" is beyond
| me.
|
| "the best ever" implies it is the best.... ever.
| Inclusive of all competition. "the best firefox has ever
| had" limits the comparison to just firefox.
|
| > What browser did you move to after you uninstalled
| Firefox because of the click in the URL thing?
|
| I made my own ui skin for chromium. I'm not terribly
| happy about using chromium but I couldn't figure out how
| to use the firefox engine for it - another strategic
| mistake by the incompetent buffoons at Mozilla not making
| this easy, and of course doing the whole browser myself
| is a big job (heck, even the UI skin is a big job,
| there's a LOT of things still on my todo list, but it
| minimally works without driving me absolutely nuts which
| is more than I can say about Firefox's recent versions).
|
| > To me it actually makes sense - I think most of the
| times when a user reaches the URL they want to put a new
| one, not to edit the existing one. This behavior makes
| that easier.
|
| Most the time I want a new one, I'll open a new tab and
| thus have a blank url. If I'm clicking on an existing
| url, it is because I want to edit it.
|
| But if I do want to replace it, the old double click
| behavior to select all made this utterly trivial too:
| single click to edit, double click to replace. Hell, they
| even used to have an about:config thing to make single
| click select all, but in their infinite wisdom, they
| removed even that hidden config option to turn it back
| off.
|
| With the new behavior, editing a url becomes quite
| frustrating. The work around is to click, wait until the
| double click time period elapses, then click again. Don't
| do it too soon though, or it will do the completely
| useless "select word" thing instead. If you click a third
| time, it will now select all again! Fourth click? Back to
| select word. You _must_ wait for a while before you can
| just click to edit.
|
| Oh, and do you use middle click on X? That single click
| select all... does NOT assert the PRIMARY selection. But
| double and triple click do! So if you single click it, it
| looks selected... but it isn't. Double click out of old
| habit? Now it is wiped out. Ridiculous.
|
| So this change marginally benefits some users (who
| probably don't really care) while being _devastatingly
| crippling_ to the people who do. Maybe some utilitarian
| function can say +1 usability point times 10 million
| users outweighs -1000 usability points to 1000 users.
|
| But I'm gonna go ahead and disagree. Mozilla is a niche
| product at this point, maybe they should start caring
| about the 1000 users they have left.
| Teever wrote:
| If you're using your mouse to refresh why not right click
| and refresh instead of moving the cursor all the way up to
| the top left of the screen?
| jhasse wrote:
| Doesnt always work because some pages overwrite the
| context menu.
| metadat wrote:
| Only popular to bash because Mozilla has been husked and is
| now a money siphon for the executives while they slowly
| destroy everything good about Firefox, one bit at a time.
| mdoms wrote:
| I'd almost forgotten how much I hated that big orange FIREFOX
| dropdown menu.
| userbinator wrote:
| Predecessor of the infamous hamburger menu?
| userbinator wrote:
| I've always found the UI after IE6 / FF2 to look "off", and
| that's likely because they started using non-native controls,
| drawing their own instead of relying on the platform UI.
|
| _Firefox's Redesigned Preferences Feel More like the Web_
|
| That expresses exactly what's wrong --- the native UI controls
| are predictable and accessible and styled with the rest of the
| OS, and as the cascade of dialogs above it (I'm not sure how
| that's even possible --- getting to "Offline Data" From
| "Exceptions - Saved Passwords"?) shows, you can actually see that
| you're controlling the browser and not merely a page inside it
| (related article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30697329).
|
| _Another important change is the introduction of a skeleton
| screen to make the start feel fast_
|
| I've never heard that term before, but whenever I see things like
| that, I'm reminded of fancy progress bars and such --- the real
| problem is that you need one in the first place, and instead of
| fixing the underlying problem of why it's taking so long, you try
| to hide it...
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _I 've always found the UI after IE6 / FF2 to look "off", and
| that's likely because they started using non-native controls,
| drawing their own instead of relying on the platform UI_
|
| Wow, I think you've identified the probable cause of something
| I've felt was "wrong" about Firefox for a long time but
| couldn't pin down. Firefox just "feels" bad on a Mac even in
| comparison to Chrome, not to mention Safari.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Still not enough to make me hold my nose and use Chrome. I'll
| stick with Firefox
| chefandy wrote:
| Product designers should definitely favor local OS norms in
| most cases. Using one design for all OSs might be
| organizationally easier in many ways, inter-OS visual
| consistency offers little benefit to users and doesn't leverage
| their familiarity with similar idioms in their environments.
|
| > _Another important change is the introduction of a skeleton
| screen to make the start feel fast_
|
| Yeah. Sometimes you _do_ have to make users wait-- e.g. parsing
| a huge cache to put in a dialog or making shaky network calls--
| and most designers mental model for addressing that frustration
| is the slow elevator problem+. Skeletons seemed like a good way
| to address it. We don 't parse screens instantly: we first
| interpret structure/visual hierarchy so we know where to scan
| for titles, ordinals, controls, or whatever else we need.
| Skeletons theoretically let us do that while content loads.
| More recent research doesn't corroborate claims of silver-
| bullet efficacy:
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326858669_The_effec...
|
| + The related anecdote goes something like this: Tenants of an
| NYC office tower complained of slow elevator service during
| peak use. The property manager consulted with experts to
| evaluate the algorithmic efficiency and mechanical components,
| but it resulted in little improvement. The property manager
| then turned the exterior elevator doors int mirrors. Most
| riders were sufficiently emotionally engaged by a life-sized
| version of themselves long enough to make the wait seem much
| shorter.
| nerdponx wrote:
| > Firefox's Redesigned Preferences Feel More like the Web
|
| This is such a weird thing to me. Did anyone ever want this?
| Were users asking for this? Did user studies show that this was
| somehow desirable or preferable? Did they do a study of Chrome
| users and find that they were more likely to stick with Firefox
| if they made this change? Does it significantly reduce code
| maintenance burden somehow?
|
| It seems like the kind of thing where users only "want" it
| because it's familiar, and it's only familiar because it's
| already been forced on them everywhere. Basically it's circular
| reasoning. It's like the meme of hiding a button and then
| claiming that users never use that feature, so you can justify
| removing it.
| baal80spam wrote:
| > Did anyone ever want this? Were users asking for this?
|
| In this day and age, noone cares what actual users want.
| Instead, corporations tell users what they "want".
| politelemon wrote:
| Removing icons from the menus has been one of the most puzzling
| decisions they made. In the year or so since its removal, using
| their menus has been a real struggle, and I can see there's even
| an entry on Mozilla Connect Ideas for it:
| https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/bring-back-menu-icons/i...
|
| As for the 'curvy' tabs, I can't say I was a fan of it, even in
| Chrome, it feels like a waste of space and draws attention to it.
| The straight tabs, even the 'button' tab is a lot better in being
| out of the way.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > using their menus has been a real struggle
|
| Could you give an example of it being a struggle?
| Sunspark wrote:
| Let's say you want to print something, all you need to do is
| pop open the menu and can quickly scan for the printer icon
| which is a recognizable shape.
|
| Without the icon, you have to consciously read the lines in
| the menu to make sure you are clicking on the right one.
|
| You still read the text with the printer icon, but it's a
| faster index-match when the icon is present.
| cosmotic wrote:
| Icons in menus are good visual anchors which leads to better
| usability, but only if they are used sparingly. An icon for
| every menu item ends up being worse.
| cute_boi wrote:
| I think they were using icons properly.
| https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/image/serverpage/image-
| id/18i...
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| The key here is that the icons next to the entries robustly
| tied the menu entry to the icon in the toolbar: "this menu
| item does what the button with this icon does".
|
| Getting rid of the icons in this case means you don't get a
| hint that this menu entry is an alias for that button (or
| vice versa).
| longstation wrote:
| I have been using Lepton since the beginning. Currently browsing
| this page with Lepton! Thank you for making the theme and a
| detailed history of FF theme.
| Dunedan wrote:
| https://github.com/MrOtherGuy/firefox-csshacks/ offers a nice
| collection of CSS hacks to customize the appearance of Firefox
| and to restore some design elements from previous versions. I use
| it for example to get a usable tab visualization again.
| causality0 wrote:
| Peak Firefox UI was when the "close current tab" button was
| always in the same place and I could do it with muscle memory
| instead of hunting for wherever my current tab is on the list.
| lucb1e wrote:
| You probably know this, but Ctrl+W can be an alternative to
| close the current tab since those buttons won't move. Or using
| mouse gestures (blast from the past I suppose, but e.g. I use
| the 'up' and 'down' gestures to scroll to the top or bottom of
| a page very often).
| causality0 wrote:
| _Contrary to the modern interface philosophy as there is no
| abstraction_
|
| Modern interface philosophy means that if you don't use something
| every day you have no fucking idea what it does anymore. For
| example, every time I use the desktop Gmail interface I have to
| wait for tool tips just to figure out which inscrutable icon does
| what.
| losingom wrote:
| The great thing about Firefox before the Photon addons apocalypse
| was that anyone could theme the browser in whatever way they
| wanted. Sure, it's still possible, but userChrome is a messy hack
| that Mozilla are trying to get rid of any moment now.
|
| Soon, we'll be stuck dealing with whatever UI Mozilla feels like
| implementing for the current week. Thanks for your efforts for
| now at least.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| I'm fond of that capability as well. Still it was good to
| restrict things for security and support reasons. Preserving
| the integrity of the line of death is hard enough without
| arbitrary UI changes and interactions among X different add-
| ons.
| technobabbler wrote:
| The only UX/UI request I have for Firefox: Stop changing it.
| Don't add any more useless tweaks or adware or bundled services.
|
| Its UX "history" made it plummet from the top browser at one
| point to a forgotten has-been. These tweaks were not successes or
| celebrations, they were the death by a thousand cuts.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| > Its UX "history" made it plummet from the top browser at one
| point to a forgotten has-been.
|
| My guess is the rise and marketing of Chrome and its offspring
| had more to do with Firefox's decline than anything Mozilla has
| done.
| antisthenes wrote:
| While that's true, constant UI changing certainly didn't help
| retain what little market share it already had.
|
| It made the browser compete with itself, and pushed people
| into alternatives. After all, if you're going to learn a new
| UI, why not try another browser altogether?
| grumbel wrote:
| Firefox would still have declined, that's kind of unavoidable
| with Google owning Android, but Mozilla wasn't helping here.
| Turning Firfox into a lame Chrome-clone by removing
| everything that made it unique in the first place just
| ensured that there was no more need to bother with Firefox.
| Loading the browser up with all kind of telemetry, cloud
| nonsense and ads also removed any desire to ever bother with
| it again.
|
| I still think there is plenty of room for a privacy
| respecting browser in the market, but Mozilla hasn't even
| been trying to fill that niche in years and still claiming to
| do so just makes them look like untrustworthy liar.
| yoavm wrote:
| We hackers like to complain about stuff that bother us, but
| the truth is they don't bother anyone else but us. Firefox
| didn't lose marketshare to Chrome because it had telemetry.
| Users don't care about it, and if they did, they'd know
| Chrome is doing it much worse. Same for "cloud nonsense and
| ads" - you really think they disliked it so much, so they
| went to Chrome were they are forcefully logged-in, have
| every action linked to their Google account and have
| inferior adblockers? C'mon.
|
| It's kinda like saying "I'm moving to North Korea because
| freedom of speech in the US sucks!"
| technobabbler wrote:
| Meh, long before I was a dev, I was a user... and it's
| true I didn't care about telemetry, but a HUGE difference
| is that Google's services were USEFUL. Syncing passwords,
| extensions, bookmarks etc. were automatic, easy,
| unintrusive, etc. Staying logged into my Google account
| meant I could auto login to Gmail, GDrive, GSheets,
| Geverything else along with a bunch of social logins on
| other websites.
|
| Firefox Sync eventually arrived, but it was a PITA to set
| up because I didn't need a Firefox account for anything
| else. And then they added a bunch of third party services
| that I still don't know what they do (Pocket), ads on the
| main screen, ads on startup, full-page release nags for
| pointless features, constantly changing UI for no good
| reason at all...
|
| It was like Chrome took Phoenix's philosophy and Firefox
| tried to become Netscape Communicator again. Zero of the
| Firefox features added in the last decade helped me as a
| user, but instead constantly bugged me. I can't remember
| a single annoying thing that Chrome added in the same
| timeframe. It still feels leaner, quicker, and less
| intrusive.
|
| Funny how the sides have switched...
| grumbel wrote:
| People that don't care are already well served by Chrome,
| they are never going to switch, so there is little point
| in catering to them. People that do care however aren't
| well served by Firefox, that's an issue.
|
| Every thread about Firefox is filled with complains, be
| it removal of essential feature, shifting around the UI
| for no reason or addition of stuff nobody asks for. Not
| every user might care about every of those issues, but do
| you think that amount of negative feedback is good for
| attracting new users or keeping existing ones? I don't.
|
| Also the level Firefox has sunken too is mislabeling the
| Screenshot cloud upload button "Save". That's plain old
| malware dark pattern strategy to steal your data. They
| took almost a year to fix that and it's downright
| puzzling how that ever made it anywhere near a release in
| the first place.
|
| Chrome might be crap, but I am not going anywhere near
| Firefox anytime soon either. They have shown time and
| time again that they really aren't on my side, yet love
| to claim so. The sooner we get rid of Firefox, the sooner
| there is a chance a real alternative might arise.
| yoavm wrote:
| So what are you using now? Is Chrome on your side?
|
| IMHO, the _moment_ we get rid of Firefox, the _moment_ we
| lost the free web. Building a web browser is just too
| damn hard, and never again would free software stand a
| chance. All will be Chrome-based, and Google will decide
| what "standards" to adhere to while it sits in a
| committee with itself.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Does Chrome interrupt your flow with some bullshit on
| every update? My understanding is that Chrome is a
| privacy nightmare but assuming you submit to it and opt-
| in to all the dark patterns _once_ , they'll at least
| leave you alone and just stalk you _in the background_.
|
| Every Firefox update on the other hand will always find
| one way or another to interrupt your flow at the worst
| possible option, whether it's with useless UI updates,
| post-update notifications about bullshit "features" such
| as Colorways or a VPN, etc. In contrast, Chrome's
| minimalistic UI has barely changed in its entire
| lifetime.
| userbinator wrote:
| Indeed, it almost feels like Firefox is being
| deliberately made gradually offensive to push users away.
| But I'll never drink the Goog-Aid and give up.
| technobabbler wrote:
| The thing about Chrome is that it's a known evil. Google
| monitors me and sells me ads. OK, not exactly benevolent,
| but I can live with it. I'd prefer they just charge me
| $100/yr or whatever instead of ads, but at the end of the
| day it's a tradeoff I can accept.
|
| The thing about Firefox is that it's an UNKNOWN evil.
| Mozilla always feel like it's on the cusp of bankruptcy
| and constantly searching for new dark patterns to sneak
| in. When Wikipedia needs money they beg for it, but don't
| purposely sabotage the user experience to get funding.
|
| Mozilla does that with every new release. I always feel
| like they've added some shady new malware/adware with
| every new patch, and then use some stupid UI tweak to try
| to hide it. It's only a matter of time before they sneak
| Norton in there. I trust the Firefox team even less than
| Facebook at this point. Firefox just isn't trustworthy,
| whereas Chrome is a known compromise.
| cosmotic wrote:
| Aero Glass support is mentioned as a positive change but Aero
| Glass was always a hindrance for me; it made things hard to read
| and was disorienting.
| tormock wrote:
| Talking about Firefox.... it again reseted to default settings
| for my new tabs... and started to show pocket spam again.
| cute_boi wrote:
| One of the design feature I abhor in Proton is sound icon in tab.
| Its too confusing for my peanuts brain. Further, it add text
| "Playing " which looks redundant.
| black7375 wrote:
| Yes. Actually the tab indicator behavior is weird.
|
| https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/25581533/160292608...
| https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/25581533/160292618...
|
| Each language has different behavior and does not display
| information properly.
| amelius wrote:
| Who made these designs?
| kactus wrote:
| v3 was the last good Firefox UI imo, even if it was heavily
| inspired by IE.
|
| v4 was a ripoff of Opera's design at the time.
|
| Australis was a Chrome UI clone.
|
| The Photon design is my second favorite after v3.
|
| I really hope Proton gets dropped. Worst one they've done since
| Australis.
| jd3 wrote:
| call me orthodox/traditional, or just a creature of habbit, but
| for most of my adult life, i've just kept a userChrome.css which
| reverts the current firefox ui/ux du jour back to the classic
| netscape/mozilla suite xpfe interface (w/ a jwz-inspired
| throbber, just for fun)
|
| i value productivity above all else, so over the years, I've
| found that a familiar interface that i have muscle memory for is
| the most important aspect of browser ui/ux, imo
|
| https://imgur.com/a/xSoDYai
| baal80spam wrote:
| Is that how your Firefox looks like?
|
| Could you please share your userChrome.css file or does it
| contain any sensitive data?
| masswerk wrote:
| Here's an image of the prehistory: Netscape Navigator 2 and 3,
| Netscape Communicator 4, all on MacOS. (NS3 is the Gold Edition,
| as discerned by the edit button in the toolbar. NS4 introduced
| the bookmark bar, by this requiring more vertical screen estate
| for the Chrome. Also mind the default grey page background of
| #CACACA common to all iterations of the Netscape browser.)
|
| https://www.masswerk.at/nowgobang/images/netscape-navigator-...
|
| Edit: The "Classic" themes of early Firefox and SeaMonkey were
| still very much reminiscent of Netscape 4, but the toolbar and
| the location bar merged. (In the early days Firefox and Netscape
| 6/7 still coexisted in parallel, packaging the same engine, and
| the "Classic" theme represented the Netscape legacy UI.)
| pixelbeat__ wrote:
| Here's an equivalent visual history of the mozilla mail clients
|
| https://www.pixelbeat.org/docs/netscape_email/
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(page generated 2022-03-27 23:00 UTC)