There is way too much white-space in this design. I'm tired of getting higher resolution displays only to lose that resolution to applications that get chunkier.

Wow look at those default screenshots. They look horrible, what a mess.

A useless sidebar, a lot of mess in the homepage, stupid shit being pushed to you.

Everytime i install Firefox i need to do a huge config setup to remove all that useless crap

Agreed, never asked for the side bar, never gonna use it.

But the space isn't wasted. Its used for greater legibility and generally improved accessibility and UX.

Just looking at the photo you provided, OC'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?

I used the side bar constantly in work as ive usually got 6 million tabs open. You can collapse it, and its off by default.

Its already in Firefox. Its disabled by default. They're just showing what it looks like.

You're right. It's too few AI chatbots!

Well, their main problem is attention. And we are looking at a news article right now.

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?

Believe it or not, they make the browser not just for you. I don't use the sidebar either, but a colleague uses nothing but the sidebar.

From the article:

Before Nova, there was Firefox Proton, an update focusing on removing visual clutter with simplified menus back in June 2021 alongside Firefox 89. Going back even further, we saw the 2017 "Photon" redesign land with Firefox 57.

(The design that landed alongside the Quantum update was called "Photon".)

Designers need a reason to exist. So instead of doing user surveys and making new, modular themes (so you can choose the redesign), they scrap everything every few years so they have something to do. Because apparently modularity is hard.

Seems like Mozilla is still too rich if they can afford complete redesign of their product every 3 years. Let's hope the lepton ui fix will continue to work, I might have to up my donation there..

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..

I meant between Proton and Nova.

do you have a link? I'd like to try it out.

As much as I loved firefox in the early days - i find it so slow compared to just about all the chrominum based offshoots ive tried. And UX wise - its just confusing to see things change constantly.

I'm thoroughly convinced UI designers are under the impression we cut ourselves on sharp corners.

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.

Golly I can't wait.

But could they get rid of the spy shit first?

It's slower because no one cares about web standards anymore, websites are just optimized for Chromium nowadays.

Old Firefox looked perfectly fine. I don't know why they keep wasting so many resources on changing something that already worked.

Argh, yet another userchrome.css overhaul to do.

All 10 years or so is fine. General design (what people are used to) does change. But all 3 years, is annoying.

Please don't AI...

?

Yeah I wished there was an option to not use their new look... I've just had the up dated look on android and honestly don't like it. I'll get tmuse to it but you know it's just a question of time.

If they just want attention maybe buying some add would be a better way to put them forward honestly. Or even trying to go on B2B custom deal for larger companies thar want a corporate experience...

They forgot that Date.getMonth() is zero-indexed

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?

By "optimized", I assume you mean overloaded with tons of crap, ads, spy-features but somewhat running less slow on Chrome?

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 redesign screenshot from the article 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

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"

That could be an aspect too.

No, it's enabled by default when you install Firefox :(

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!

in a few years they will suddenly forget it and it will be all sharp corners again

I just updated my Jetbrains Rider IDE and holy border radius batman.

Bring back more drop shadows and skeuomorphism

You know, the whole reason why GIMP eventually added single window mode is because people didn't like the multi-window thing that they were doing. Did Mozilla fire all of their good design people after COVID? Hope this one gets dropped.

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).

For the love of Odin can I please get a title and menu bar.

When you have tabs across the screen where would you click and hold to drag the window?

I've never really understood the whole obsession with browser speed....

I mean so what if one browser loads a page in 10 seconds and this one takes 11 seconds. There's no real difference.

Cabt say I have noticed a difference in the last 5 years. They seem about the same to me.

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.

Proton was already fuck awful.

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

Looks identical to Opera browser theme.

Actually, I have round edges. The reason I still prefer Firefox is its squarish design looks more professional and authentic. Anyway Mozilla will never add any features that users wish to have but actively changes unnecessary things. Anyway good luck Mozilla!