Mozilla Is Working On a Firefox Design Refresh (ghacks.net) 246
Mozilla is "investigating" a design refresh for its Firefox browser. Ghacks reports that the refresh is referred to internally as "Photon."
Information about the design refresh is limited at this point in time. Mozilla created a meta bug on Bugzilla as a reference to keep track of the changes. While there are not any mockups or screenshots posted on the site, the names of the bugs provide information on the elements that will get a refresh. These are:
- The Firefox address bar and tabs bar.
- The main Firefox menu.
- Infobars.
- Doorhangers.
- Context Menus.
- Modals.
Most user interface elements are listed in the meta bug. Mozilla plans to release the new design in Firefox 89; the browser is scheduled for a mid-2021 release. Its release date is set to May 18, 2021...
[Developer/Firefox extension author] Sören Hentzschel revealed that he saw some of the Firefox Proton mockups... He notes that Firefox will look more modern when the designs land and that Mozilla plans to introduce useful improvements, especially in regards to the user experience. Hentzschel mentions two examples of potential improvements to the user experience: a mockup that displays vertical tabs in a compact mode, and another that shows the grouping of tabs on the tab bar.
- The Firefox address bar and tabs bar.
- The main Firefox menu.
- Infobars.
- Doorhangers.
- Context Menus.
- Modals.
Most user interface elements are listed in the meta bug. Mozilla plans to release the new design in Firefox 89; the browser is scheduled for a mid-2021 release. Its release date is set to May 18, 2021...
[Developer/Firefox extension author] Sören Hentzschel revealed that he saw some of the Firefox Proton mockups... He notes that Firefox will look more modern when the designs land and that Mozilla plans to introduce useful improvements, especially in regards to the user experience. Hentzschel mentions two examples of potential improvements to the user experience: a mockup that displays vertical tabs in a compact mode, and another that shows the grouping of tabs on the tab bar.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:a refresh from the current abomination? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm happy with Firefox, and all it took was about fifty different tweaks, ten extensions, and the creation of a custom css file that they want to drop support for.
Re:a refresh from the current abomination? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have PaleMoon too, but do more with Firefox nowadays. PaleMoon doesn't have the security ecosystem that Firefox has. Facebook Container, Ghostery, and other tracker-blockers aren't on PaleMoon. NoScript is desupported on PM (though it still usually works) and was a pain in the arse anyway.
Mozilla is having financial issues and it's sad that they're wasting their time on silly fritterware stuff and copying Chrome, rather than improving stuff people use and keeping the API stable for extension devs.
Re:a refresh from the current abomination? (Score:5, Insightful)
Be afraid, be very afraid ...
Re:a refresh from the current abomination? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now is your chance. Get in there and submit some comments. Subscribe to the meta bug and you will be notified of proposed changes so that you can give them your opinion.
Re:a refresh from the current abomination? (Score:5, Informative)
Now is your chance. Get in there and submit some comments.
What could possibly make you believe the hacks at Mozilla will listen to a single word anyone puts in a comment? While the saying, "Past performance is no guarantee of future performance" applies to mutual funds, in this case it most definitely applies to Mozilla. They have deliberately gone out of their way to ignore user comments, to ignore user requests, to ignore user concerns.
As others have said, their "modern" design will be a total shit fest, just like Chrome and Edge. Options will either be buried in obscure places, hidden from the user, or totally absent. Instead of a nice, simple, readily available menu bar across the top, we'll be subjected to the shit show of a vertical ellipsis where the most important items are relegated to the bottom of the list instead of placed at the top. Forget being able to see anything, Mozilla will make things as transparent as possible, with the thinnest edges possible so you can't find them unless you happen to find one of two pixels which will magically make it appear. Because having a visible, easily graspable scroll bar is so yesterday. Who wants to see something so neolithic?
Here's one for you, I don't want suggestions for either web sites or searches when I type in the address bar. I know exactly what I want and I will go there. I have turned off "suggestions" in the options. What happens when I type in the address bar? It types the exact same thing I'm typing as if it's trying to give suggestions. Under what circumstance should I see anything if I told the browser not to give me suggestions?
The list goes on what a joke Firefox has become, but using those other two pieces of spyware is worse yet. However, absolutely, positively guaranteed this redesign will take us down that same route: a nightmare scenario of people who have no business programming Hello world let alone a browser shoving the latest and greatest eye candy onto the masses while ignoring basic functionality and usability.
Re:a refresh from the current abomination? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've had some positive experiences with feedback before. Not always but you can't expect to always get what you want. I've been trying to contribute to the Android version in particular because it's what's blocking me from switching to Firefox desktop.
It is open source too, you can contribute your own UI fixes.
Or just throw your hands up and switch to Chrome or a Chrome derivative. Because that's the only real choice, all the Firefox forks have stagnated and died because it's too much work to maintain them.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
because you'd rather live in the 90's or something.
And this kind of bullshit attitude is the problem. Just because YOU don't find something useful doesn't mean that others don't, and also doesn't mean your idea of how things should work is any better. Also, the poster had said he already disabled the autofill, so your response was also useless on its face.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If you don't give feedback it's hard for them to guess what you want.
It might be worth it just to explore your own ideas as well. Go through the UI and think about each part and how you use it, and what the ideal would be. The first Firefox UI was far from perfect.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:a refresh from the current abomination? (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of their decision making seems to be driven by telemetry... Which old timers tend to turn off.
Explaining why things are a problem does get productive responses in my experience, at least sometimes. What tends not to work is "I don't like this" with no explanation and no interest in even trying to understand it or get the supposed benefits of it.
Re:a refresh from the current abomination? (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of their decision making seems to be driven by telemetry... Which old timers tend to turn off.
Explaining why things are a problem does get productive responses in my experience, at least sometimes. What tends not to work is "I don't like this" with no explanation and no interest in even trying to understand it or get the supposed benefits of it.
...A lot of their decision making seems to be driven by telemetry... ... --- If that is correct, and I doubt it is, then Mozilla seems to purposefully ignoring a swath of their user base. Having said that, I would say that more new "features" seem to arise from a user-antagonistic form over function design team, who care more about how things look than how well they work. I doubt if any user input would change their view of what Firefox should be. Just look at the shoddy manner in which the Mozilla developers have treated the add-in contributors with the ever-changing API and little to no support. Sorry, I don't buy what you're selling.
Re: (Score:3)
If that is correct, and I doubt it is, then Mozilla seems to purposefully ignoring a swath of their user base.
I remember reading years ago a comment from a Mozilla developer saying that they indeed takes as their main input telemetry. They keep tabs on what user click the most, and try to bring those parts to the forefront, reduce how many clicks are needed to achieve whatever the related workflow is, and move out of sight things they rarely see people using.
Therefore, when power users disable Firefox telemetry in name of privacy, their privacy is indeed respected: their advanced workflows are never recorded, their
Mozilla should ask Dice about "design refresh" (Score:4, Funny)
The Mozilla team should ask Dice about how a "design refresh" might go over.
Remember "Slashdot Tries something new, audience responds"?
Re:a refresh from the current abomination? (Score:5, Insightful)
....He notes that Firefox will look more modern when the designs land
"More modern" is the giant red flag. Whenever some uses those words in connection with the appearance of ... anything ... it's a guarantee that it's going to be a horrendously ugly fucked up mess.
They have already successfully driven Firefox's market share into single digits, but apparently that isn't enough. The dumbfucks at Mozilla are determined to kill Firefox completely, even if they have to resort to a straegy of death by a thousand cuts.
"But you just don't like change"
Damn straight. The web browser is a solved problem. Fix bugs that genuinely need to be fixed, and that's it. Period. The End. Full Stop.
Re: a refresh from the current abomination? (Score:2)
I think the browser UI can be approved massively. Surprisingly, precisely because of what you said. Interpreted a bit different: It is a dead end.
No improvement can happen of you see it inside of the "browser", "monolithic application" and "desktop" boxes. Mostly the first one.
But if see it as a set of modules ... mainly a virtual machine (engine), OS platform (HTML5), layout engine (engine), multiple document formats, a process manager (tabs/engine), task bar (tabs), network file system (URLs), sync manage
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The Premise of Monkey (Score:2, Interesting)
When I took my user interface design back in 2000, on our first day the teacher had this great saying written on the board: (that I'm sure can't be used today because it will trigger someone somehow)
"If you can't train a monkey to use it, you can't train a human to use it"
He then spent 30 minutes talking about the early space program, where they literally did exactly that. They had to train monkeys to use buttons, levers and switches to test cognitive ability in space since they had no idea what space would
Re:a refresh from the current abomination? (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. And more than that, they don't know jack about basic design principles. Especially in UI/UX design, any change which isn't driven by necessity or to implement a significant and provable usability improvement, is bad design by default. Espcially when when it is forced down upon users without choice, change for its own sake. People are right when they don't like such change.
Unfortunately, ignoring that principle has been the rule rather than the exception over the last two decades of UI/UX design in computer software, with Microsoft as the leading desktop operating system's manufacturer having set one bad example after the other, permanently ignoring their own UI/UX style guides, when what they should have been doing would have been very carefully and slowly adjusting their style guides over time with real and demonstrable usabiltily improvements in mind, and painstakingly adhering to them and demanding the same for third-party developers.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure they can. They mentioned that danger word, "modern," which:
This might be the final nail in Firefox's coffin.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes they can, because the designers likely won't accept any feedback, because any negative feedback is seen as a threat to their safety - it's likely they are all diversity hires. If it's happening at Google, well it's likely the same at Mozilla.
Google is getting left behind due to horrible UI/UX https://news.ycombinator.com/i... [ycombinator.com]
Quoting:
anonygler 19 days ago
As a former Googler, Google has been utterly hostile to self critcism on this front. Responses to any criticism of Google's UI falls in the foll
Re: a refresh from the current abomination? (Score:2)
I'd say, dear Mozilla... maybe, if you are shit, you SHOULD feel unsafe in your views, and feel motivared to improve them?
Just, you know, an idea from the human dimension. ;)
(Just like we should not protect our children from everything, but give them the ability to protect themselves! Like not being so insecure that grown men can get "offended" as if they were still in puberty or a hairy-chest-thumping mediterranean Mafia stooge. ^^)
Re: a refresh from the current abomination? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The good thing is that the placement of address bar can be configured. But I wonder for how long?
Re: (Score:2)
of course they can. but they have design experts on the team and they have to come up with something different. I think they'll add a big circle on the lower _left_ corner to open new tabs and put the address bar on the left side rotated 70 degrees and overlaid with web content.... tabs are selected then in a different window. they'll call this the soulpresentor mode.
also while doing it break extensions again because why not.
So it's going to be even worse than ever (Score:5, Interesting)
* designed for the lowest common denominator of user, might as well be a childrens' web browser
* lower contrast text
* more whitespace ('negative space')
* more frequent and slower animations
* the ability to customize with userChrome/userContent.css will be disabled irreversably
This is what happens when you no longer hire UX staff based on merit.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: So it's going to be even worse than ever (Score:2)
You forgot:
* Yet another implementation of the task switcher and bookmark metaphors on top.
* Moar inner platform effect! Because moar!
* Removal of all add-ons (yet again).
* Even fewer features.
* And two container ships worth of ktichen sinks, to close the kitchen sink gap to Google Chrome.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
* designed for the lowest common denominator of user, might as well be a childrens' web browser
That would be actually a useful improvement over what they have right now, as there would be a clear target audience and a set of design parameters and performance goals.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: So it's going to be even worse than ever (Score:2)
I've been to many small businesses, where people are hired out of merit. People of any sex or color, but not out of ideology. Merely if it happened to fit. If not, then not.
The thing is that it is *small businesses* only. And only with intelligent bosses that were also there out of merit.
And in rare cases, departments of bigger companies with enougj independence and a bit of luck in terms of department leaders.
No, they were not the profiteering explosions. They were organically growing, highly respected bus
Re: (Score:2)
I've been to many small businesses, where people are hired out of merit.
So the people they rejected were not meritorious enough. One wonders how they could get a job elsewhere, if they didn't have merit.
Re: (Score:2)
By the assumption that hiring by merit is achieved, it must stand to reason that those who were rejected were not meritorious enough to be software developers. So another company who hires that developer cannot be doing it by merit alone - they are also hiring based on availability. They hire the reject because they can't hire the most meritorious person.
Or let's say you hire someone. Then someone comes along w
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What exactly is it that you think "merit" means?
Because you just said that "some people were hired based on merit. But that's not the same as merit".
Re: (Score:2)
some people were hired based on merit
I said based on their CV and interview strength. If you equate that with merit, that's your oversight. By replacing what I wrote with the word "merit" as though they were interchangeable, you are literally arguing that merit is a piece of paper, and a first impression. If you can't see the logical and statistical flaw in equivocation, you might want to re-evaluate your merit.
But that's not the same as merit
AND I also wrote ", judging by their output". So already in my comment, I alluded to what gets overlooked in superficial definitions o
Re: (Score:2)
Notice how at no point in that diatribe did you define merit. While using that word in every other sentence. In other words, you define merit like UN Women define women. As something that cannot be defined and that can take any shape, form or meaning that you want it to take in that specific context.
Problem is, you're purporting to be talking about actual merit. While talking about Cthulhu. Which is where misunderstandings you're running in this thread with everyone else come from.
Job performance != self-sales performance (Score:2)
What exactly is it that you think "merit" means?
Ability to do the job. This is not, as you appear to imply, perfectly correlated with CV and interview strength. Some of this is caused by human resources staff's unconscious ableism.
Autism and other social interaction disabilities selectively diminish first impression strength. This hurts an interviewer's perception of a candidate even if the position is not the sort of sales position where first impression strength is strongly correlated with job performance. Thus someone qualified to do the job has a mor
Re: (Score:2)
First of all, the point you're making is irrelevant to concept of merit which is being attacked by user I'm asking for his definition. Which he notably proceeded to dance around defining in a multi-paragraph post that contained word "merit" in every second sentence, while never defining it.
But I'll go off-topic into what you appear to attack:
>[Merit is] Ability to do the job. This is not, as you appear to imply, perfectly correlated with CV and interview strength. Some of this is caused by human resource
Re: (Score:2)
Well, small businesses that hire incompetents go out of business. For large businesses hiring incompetents is business as usual and does not have a negative impact. Hence you find most of the really competent people at small businesses. The incompetents all go for jobs in the large ones, as you really, truly have to fuck up to be sacked for that there. Of course, a large business may just sack you in their next useless "reorganization".
I really do not understand how large businesses do not all fail. Al leas
Re: (Score:3)
Did you really think before the error of wokeness, that white men were hired on merit? Tell me, what years in history were white men hired solely on merit?
I can remember when the great majority of IT hiring, which was never just "white," was done on merit. In those days people were fired for the primary sin of turning forty.
And after all this talk about Wokeness, the catering-to of every snowflake and the building of so many new bathrooms, ageism is the one form of discrimination that has never been addressed.
Re: (Score:2)
> ageism is the one form of discrimination that has never been addressed.
Because the sexist, racist, woke whiners like The Evil Atheist learn their hatred at college, in their Wimmins and Media Studies courses, and carry on hating hile they're young, but when they finally enter the real world and meet real people they eventually discover that different people like different things, all their sexist and racist discrimination was wrong, full fucking stop, and they end their complaining and campaigning, an
Re: (Score:2)
What does skin color have to do with the talent pool?
Because I was making it easy for him to answer the question. He obviously can't separate the meaning of merit from the "woke" movement, so I took out that complication from the question to focus on what merit means to him.
So yes, they WERE hired on merit.
So in a pool of only white men, white men were never hired based on, I don't know, family connections? Never hired on the basis of back scratching, or doing someone else a favour? Never hired because they were in the same fraternity or some other club connection? You REALLY believe that?
And it's up to you to prove
Wh
thread jacking trolls and the people who love them (Score:2)
Please go thread jack somewhere else.
Plonk
Can I haz (Score:4, Funny)
Oh no! Please not again. (Score:5, Insightful)
Last time they decided to reinvent the wheel with Firefox, (Webex) they instantly deprecated half the useful plugins add-ons for that browser. Not to mention, the UI turned from not terribly great to hateful.
But... if you're committed enough, you get used to anything. I stuck with Firefox, and eventually I got used to the current UI. And most of the good add-ons are back - either adapted or replaced.
Can PUH-LEEZE leave Firefox the fuck alone Mozilla? I won't be committed twice...
Re: (Score:3)
> they instantly deprecated half the useful plugins add-ons for that browser.
I run an old version of Firefox on my phone because of this, so another new version where add-ons are still deprecated has limited interest for me.
Re: Oh no! Please not again. (Score:3)
They killed add-ons again on Android, with Daylight.
Add-on search is still gone, and only a handful of pre-approved addons are allowed.
I guess now third time's the charm ... for obliterative suicide.
Re: (Score:2)
I like the new UI, the only real issue I have with it is the annoying "email" options on the context menus. Other than that it's fine. What annoys you about it?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Oh no! Please not again. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it's not as if the updates ever address significant [mozilla.org] security [mozilla.org] flaws [mozilla.org] or [mozilla.org] anything [mozilla.org] like [mozilla.org] that [mozilla.org].
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Oh no! Please not again. (Score:3)
Free?
So your argument is that if I serve you a cup of ice cream for free each week, and then one week, serve you a stinking turd instead, I should just eat the one from last wek that has gone off with mold on top, and I cannot say that the nee cup is shit and go somewhere else?
You /wish/ we would still have expectations from you...
Look, we're not complaining and demanding to get anything better.
We are telling you that apparenty, you want our attention with those releases, but since you've only served shit,
Correction: *You* should just ... (Score:2)
Not "I".
Mixed up the sides there.
Re: (Score:2)
Ever heard of security updates?
I use the ESR release stream for exactly that reason - not wanting to be exposed to their newest and greatest ideas - but eventually there comes a point where a stream runs dry and I have to "upgrade" or find a new browser. Not to mention that Firefox has changed its mechanism for opting out of updates a couple of times, at least that is what Windows Firefox users tell me.
Speaking of Windows, you use XP? Windows 7?
Stop trolling.
Re: Oh no! Please not again. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Are you being thick on purpose? Have you tried to hit the internet with a 1998-era browser?
Yeah, nobody's forcing you to update your browser... until your browser fails to render websites. And then you're forced to upgrade
Re: (Score:2)
PRs vs. detailed bugs (Score:2)
Why are pull requests the only form of worthwhile contribution? Why is detailed root-cause troubleshooting seen in Bugzilla issue reports like #1622859 about the "race cache with network" feature causing SYN floods [mozilla.org] worthless?
Re: Oh no! Please not again. (Score:2)
Nobody's forcing you to breathe! ... mouth ... open.
Yet you keep your
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
GUI Design Principles for People not Designers (Score:5, Informative)
- BUTTONS must look like BUTTONS
- ENTRY FIELDS must look like ENTRY FIELDS
- STATIC TEXT must look like STATIC TEXT
- RIGHT CLICK must bring up a contect menu - EVERYWHERE
- Actions on BUTTONS must ALSO be in the MAIN MENU, not either/or.
Re: Design Principles for Slashdot maintainers (Score:2)
Text that is entered aligned in an entry field must remain aligned when submitted.
Re: GUI Design Principles for People not Designers (Score:3)
Were we're going, kid, we won't need any ... widgets.
*clicks*
user@workstation:~ # _
Re:GUI Design Principles for People not Designers (Score:5, Insightful)
> Actions on BUTTONS must ALSO be in the MAIN MENU, not either/or. ... plus keyboard shortcuts.
Re: (Score:2)
- BUTTONS must look like BUTTONS - ENTRY FIELDS must look like ENTRY FIELDS - STATIC TEXT must look like STATIC TEXT - RIGHT CLICK must bring up a contect menu - EVERYWHERE - Actions on BUTTONS must ALSO be in the MAIN MENU, not either/or.
It's good that you SPEAK UP on the matter of FUNCTIONALITY, but I doubt those squealing with excitement over the new emoji menu and Facebook buttons can HEAR YOU.
Re: GUI Design Principles for People not Designers (Score:2)
And who cares about those?
If you actually speak to people, most of those are imaginary anyway. And if real, then much towned down and easily peer-pressured into switching to a more sophisticated image of themselves. Hell, many are only like that because we peer-pressured them *into* it with our prejudices. Especially children.
Re: (Score:2)
Forgot one:
- ALL TEXT must be SELECT,COPY-able.
Re: GUI Design Principles for People not Designers (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF is the point of hamburger menus on the desktop??
They were only used on mobile due to a lack of (input) space.
Anyone consciously wantinf hamburger menus on the desktop, need to commit himself to a mental facility for the results of severe mental abuse.
Laptop runs same OS as desktop (Score:2)
WTF is the point of hamburger menus on the desktop??
The laptop runs the same kernel and same GUI toolkit and runs the same applications as the desktop. Many laptops have 768-pixel-tall screens (or 1440p high-DPI screens with the same physical size). A menu taking less vertical space frees up more vertical space for text on the laptop.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:GUI Design Principles for People not Designers (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm glad disabling the top menu is not an option on OSX. On my Windows machine, applications without a menu bar are a PITA. Luckily Firefox still has it as an option, but apps like Teams that don't have one at all suck.
Re: (Score:2)
Hamburger menus are fucking awful. Straight ignorance of Fitts' Law.
Re: (Score:3)
If the hamburger menu were the only thing you needed to click, that might be true.
However, you still need to go select something else, which won't even be available for you to see until after dealing with targeting and clicking the hamburger menu and refocusing your vision to find the next target--and you still haven't accomplished your actual goal of clicking a menu item.
Clicking to get into the menu is just an extra set of steps.
Re: (Score:2)
Just in case you are stuck in the original formulation of Fitts' Law (we've learned a bit since then), which only addresses movements toward a fixed, always available target in a 2D plane,
Temporal targets
Fitts's law deals only with targets defined in space. However, a target can be defined purely on the time axis, which is called a temporal target. A blinking target or a target moving toward a selection area are examples of temporal targets. Similar to space, the distance to the target (i.e., temporal distance Dt) and the width of the target (i.e., temporal width Wt) can be defined for temporal targets as well. The temporal distance is the amount of time a person must wait for a target to appear. The temporal width is a short duration from the moment the target appears until it disappears. For example, for a blinking target, Dt can be thought of as the period of blinking and Wt as the duration of the blinking. As with targets in space, the larger the Dt or the smaller the Wt, the more difficult it becomes to select the target.
The task of selecting the temporal target is called temporal pointing. The model for temporal pointing was first presented to the human–computer interaction field in 2016.[27] The model predicts the error rate, the human performance in temporal pointing, as a function of temporal index of difficulty (IDt)
Re: (Score:2)
It's nice to see that I always think AniMoJo is an idiot. Dealing with people whose intelligence is domain dependent always produces some painful cognitive dissonance.
But have no fear, AniMoJo, past experience shows that mozilla.org needs no prompting in jumping on bad ideas, in their restless quest to destroy the "jewel of the open source movement".
The smart money is on them breaking every remaining keyboard command, as well as trashing all the addons again, and
Again? (Score:2)
I didn't think there was anything left to ruin after Firefox Daylight.
Re: (Score:2)
https://play.google.com/store/... [google.com]
Incredible: 1 star, 2 stars, 1 star, 1 star, 1 star, 1 star, 1 star, 3 stars
Hehehehehehehe...
So much for all your 'delightful' interfaces, UXtards....
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Again? (Score:3)
Maybe we shoud create some new type of disruptive browser. With a nice UI microkernel, and highly module-based system... What do we name it? ... How about.. Phoenix?
April fools come early? (Score:5, Insightful)
I almost lolled when I read the headline. I can count the number of times I liked the 'visual refresh' the mozilla team implemented on zero hands. Every time it's worse. Every time I have to seek out extensions, secret configs, XUL/CSS hacks to undo it. Visual refreshes are like make-work jobs that solved problems no one has.
Re: (Score:2)
Visual refreshes are like make-work jobs that solved problems no one has.
I agree. Blame the rather pointless competition in this space. After all, one can't have a 2021 browser that still *looks* like a 2020 browser. You will be viewed as everything from unfashionable to unpatched.
This is also why Apple feels the need to release a new iPhone model every single year. Hell, they might as well start adopting the year model trend that cars have. Might be a little easier to sell the "2030 iPhone Premium" vs. the "iPhone 19s Pro XS Max Plus Force" or whatever the hell marketing w
don't be "clever" (Score:5, Interesting)
"The only thing more annoying than a computer is a computer that tries to be helpful."
Please, for the sake of sanity, include a mode where an address bar is an address bar. No more, no less. Just a plain input field that allows me to enter an URL and it shows an URL. That's all I ask for.
Re: (Score:2)
Or you could just leave the combi bar or omni bar or whatever they call it as is. I mean somehow the entire world actually uses it just fine except for the high IQ people here on Slashdot.
Mozilla, Please Stop (Score:5, Insightful)
You do this every year or two, and the UI always gets worse. I say this as someone who have been using Mozilla/5.0 as my primary browser since Milestone 18, long before Firefox was even a thing.
Firefox 79 on Android is a chore to use because half the browser UI elements simply disappeared. Back, forward, reload/stop, bookmarks bar, tab bar... all gone. Every basic browser task requires more steps than before.
Stop fucking with the browser UI. If Mozilla wanted to lure users back (and their revenues up), they would reverse course on everything they're doing. Firefox used to be the power-user's browser, now its only distinction is "the one not based on Chrome".
can you read? (Score:3)
Mozilla created a meta bug on Bugzilla
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/s... [mozilla.org]
Type:task
It's a "ticket" tracking system, not a bug tracking system.
Re: can you read? (Score:2)
I get you, and partially agree, but . . . :)
It's normal, in software development nowadays, to just call everything a bug, including tasks, ideas, proposals, etc. As long as it's in the "bug tracker"
Because let's be frank: A software defect is not an insect either.
And it is not a train ticket of receipt or whatever "ticket" means here, either.
P.S.: (Score:2)
It's called Bugzilla. Hint hint, nudge nudge? ;
Mobile Browser (Score:2)
Black on grey text is horrible. Don't (Score:3, Insightful)
firefox devs need to go back (Score:2)
Great! (Score:4, Funny)
My proposals:
1. Completely do away with using different colors for different things. The interface should be uniform grey. Text should be grey (818080) on grey (808080). In particular, make sure scrollbars are completely free of all contrast. Oh wait, they already are...
2. Don't label any buttons. Use incomprehensible pictograms for everything. Oh wait, they already did.
3. Don't use any standard controls. They just 'confuse' people.
4. Put all controls (including the address bar and the go back button) behind a single-pixel dropdown menu.
5. Remove the 'extensions' mechanism.
6. Remove all the about: pages. They are just for experts anyway.
7. Remove all configurability so nobody can change the layout from their factory defaults.
8. Replace the browser engine with the one used by Chrome, so we are ensured compatibility across all browsers.
mod parent up (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, they need to fire their UI / UX people; hire just a few psychologists. Not only will they maybe come up with something new that works better instead of baseless copycat work.... but they might be able to do something about the poor management.
The GUI people are restless (Score:2)
Bookmarks Side Bar (Score:2)
Please keep the bookmarks side bar.
I'm worried that with Chrome not having a similar feature, Mozilla will drop it.