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3Firefox 89 Proton Feedback Megathread
Use this post for feedback and comments about the new UI update.
Ideas can be submitted to Mozilla Crowdcity.
Known workarounds
If your "tabs" are too large, you can try the compact density option: Compact mode workaround in Firefox
Lepton is a userChome hack that tries to fix annoyances in Proton
Submitted ideas
92% Upvoted
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level 1
· 6d · edited 6d
For my usecase I don't feel very strongly about tab height but the new mute tab 🔇 ui sucks ass, I used to be able to tell at a glance through the corner of my eye which tab was playing sound but now I have to read the tab subtitle which can be "playing", "muted" or "autoplay blocked" so I have to actually read and look for the "playing" text instead of being able to do it at a glance. If I open a bunch of youtube videos in new tabs I end up with a bunch of "autoplay blocked" I have to sift through when searching for the "playing" one
is "autplay blocked" even a useful message to display in such prominent area, visible from all tabs, and persistent until the user interacts? were firefox users puzzled before about the reason why webpages weren't playing audio automatically? wouldn't the little icon next to the URL suffice? I don't get the choice of using the favicon space to interact with audio controls either, it has zero familiarity with conventional UI practices, completely random and non-intuitive
with the broader aesthetics decisions at least there's people who like them, I have yet to read anyone complimenting the 🔇 change
e: userchrome css to get rid of the useless and intrusive "autoplay blocked" text, courtesy of user It_Was_The_Other_Guy
.tab-icon-sound-blocked-label{ display:none }
151
level 2
new mute tab 🔇 ui sucks ass
being a naive one, i've gone deeper.i formed detailed bug reports, where tried explain why we dont like it, detailized.
about inconvenience of controlling tab sound: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1713995
about inconsistent sizes of "close tab" and "mute tab" buttons https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1714012
both rejected
this is all expected behavior and as such we don't have any plans to make any changes here
so disappointing experience :(
i give up.
brand new mozilla: inconvenience is expected, it's by design ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
109
level 2
Compact mode fixes the thing where it shows text, fortunately. I'll be very disappointed if they remove it, and I hope they bring it back to being supported in the next update. That said, I'm not sure why, but I keep accidentally unmuting tabs when I mean to switch to them. Could be that I'm just not used to it, but it could also be an issue in the ui.
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level 2
You summarized my thoughts completely. This genuinely is my only problem with the new UI so far. I do like the general aesthetic of proton, and I haven't encountered any other UI change that has actively hindered the usability of the app.
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7 more replies
level 1
This is first time in a long while that I actually regret updating.
First off: obviously tab bar. No clue why would we go back in time and regress back to bubble design. We just ended up with something that requires more vertical space for no benefit at all. Vast majority of users dont use their desktops in portrait mode and preserving vertical space should be priority even if it's only few pixels. The bubble doesnt bring any benefit to the table, it just asks for padding and makes everything look bloated.
Now, there is (still) compact mode which makes things a little better, sure. But it feels like finding stuff in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard". Jumping through extra menus and then knowing exact setting to enable to get an option that's clearly marked as (not supported) does not fill me with confidence whatsoever.
Icons. Who is waging war on the menu icons of all things??
Last thing, I am using dark mode and the new color seems a lot brighter. My color picker says we (only) went from 5,5,5 to 28,27,34 and I know that doesn't seem like a lot, but it's way more distracting after using old color for so long. I wish dark could stay true dark, it makes more sense to make new theme for new design philosophy instead of moving all users instead.
128
level 2
Usually Firefox updates garner no real comments from me. Nothing spectacular, but I’ve never had a poor experience.
Until now.
I hate the new UI. Tabs look terrible (like they’re designed for a touch screen). Preview icons don’t even preview anymore. The whole thing looks like some cheap, slapped-together Java interface.
I might have to find a new browser, but I’ve been using Firefox for years and chrome/edge/IE are non-starters for me.
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level 2
· 5d
Vast majority of users dont use their desktops in portrait mode and preserving vertical space should be priority even if it's only few pixels.
This. I have to watch people doing screen presentations of a report in Excel with the ribbon on. Their task bar takes up 8% ofthe vertical height, whilst the ribbon and title bars take up perhaps 20-30% of the screen. Not much going on horizontally and rarely used during presentation.
Whilst I have to watch the presentation in teams, yes, more screen wastage.
I know firefox wasn't involved (because Teams doesn't work within it, for reasons unknown), but if people think about how long the eyes are looking at screens, if we all do a bit to save some space we can make better use of what we're using.
Compact mode gave me an impression of a positive future.
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level 2
· 5d · edited 5d
Same. When I updated and saw the tab bar I immediately regretted my decision. It's ugly, looking like something from an old apple product. It isn't any easier to read than the old style, while taking more space. The mute icon is asinine to say the least, and it was just completely unnecessary and unasked for.
Also as for the icons, I don't know if it's just me, but there's a good 260px between the home icon, and the url-bar of just empty space... It looks like someone meant to put something there and forgot. (Edit: Figured out what it was, it's "Flexible space". No idea what it was actually supposed to do, but it looked awful).
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level 2
Vast majority of users dont use their desktops in portrait mode and preserving vertical space should be priority even if it's only few pixels.
This is why I'm confused that vertical tabs aren't more of a Thing. Edge has them built-in, now, and while FF has sidebery and similar vertical tab extensions, but the extensions can't remove the tabs at the top.
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level 2
Non-skeuomorphic design is kinda a mistake in my opinion - one should always aim to emulate physical reality if there is no downside to not doing so - in this case they chose to get rid of tabs and go with a button interface.
There's no point calling them tabs anymore, because they don't physically resemble tabs. They're not visually attached to the page they relate to, so they're buttons. That might work better for mobile (I guess?) but it's not useful from a UI point of view.
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4 more replies
level 1
I prefer compact mode in all ways because I prefer to fit more information on my screen.
I also like to have more differentiation between my tabs, as to which is "active" and which is not.
Thus I have had to disable "Proton" in the about:config menu because, not only does it make the toolbars wider by adding redundant spaces, but the drop-down menus too: and even using the option to restore "compact" mode only affects the toolbars, not the menus.
A major difference is in the fact of whether my Bookmarks drop-down actually fits on the screen without scrolling, or requires scrolling, given that it has just over 30 entries: in "compact" it fits on the screen, in Proton "normal" it doesn't.
I'm on the internet to see the internet, not to see browser menus and browser logos. These things should be discreet, small, but clear, and able to keep out of the way. I don't have a touch-screen, and will never have one on my desktop computer: touching the screen is for devices which do not have a separate keyboard or mouse.
Wasted space is wasted space.
For the same reason I have always tried to revert my Windows menus and style back to the "Classic" style from earlier versions - it seems that every version wants to have bigger icons or buttons and fewer of them on the screen. It looks like the whole thing is an arms race between mobile devices, which have smaller screens, and touch-screen technology which requires buttons and menus to be no smaller than a certain size because of fat fingers... But those of us who don't use touch screens because we use desktop computers, want our screens to contain more useful information and less empty-space padding.
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level 1
Lepton is a userChome hack that tries to fix annoyances in Proton
this is so much better than the official Proton. this is basically what the actual theme should have been
the biggest problems i noticed:
tab disconnected to its page
no delineation between tabs
in compact mode, the sound/play icon overwrites the favicon
no compact version of menu item spacing
terrible contrast
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4 more replies
level 2
· 5d
The whole idea of the audio icon for me was that I know which tab plays audio without having to click on it.
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1 more reply
level 1
Removing icons, removing demarcation lines for tabs, removing the clear active audio icon/ mute button, halving the now hidden mute button so you can have a tiny line of text to tell me what the clear icon means, Floating tab that’s now an active distracting focus point
Are all elements that show no consideration has been put in to accessibility, you have basically removed all the elements used by people with visual and learning difficulties. Accessibility is a widely taught part of UI but in one update you have axed those principles to have a rounded floaty button in the tabs bar.
That is an achievement, congrats it deserves its place in textbooks
“A picture speaks a thousand words” has been in common use for about a century but is an idea that needs refreshing it seems
177
level 2
I'm not even disabled and I find these issues to be jarring at best and unbearable at worst.
There is no longer any clarity of information.
72
level 2
This entire update has been a fantastic anti-thesis on UI design. There's no way they didn't deliberately go against every UI guideline, right? There's no way a massive organization like Mozilla could actually be this incompetent, right?
I'm quite positive, that if I went to a high-school web class, and asked them to design a web browser, they would produce a better result.
22
level 2
Apropos accessibility: I have ADHD, and it destroys my short-term visual memory, and I've seen a lot of people talking about "Removing icons", but am completely unable to remember what icons that used to be there, which are gone now. Do you mind helping me out? (Or maybe blissful ignorance is best here haha?)
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level 1
I severely, severely dislike that when I type in my search bar now it jumps up to the address bar. The old about:config fixes for that don't work anymore.
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level 2
· 6d · edited 6d
This is what i'm currently looking for a fix for... i set it so my url bar can't search, and now with this update my search bar can't search either (it just types into my url bar which can't search)
so, for me to google (or bing/whatever) something i have to actually go to the google web page. (or figure out how i made my url not search... but i don't want it to search.)
found the fix elsewhere, sharing it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/nsr9vb/firefox_89_issue_google_search_box_on_blank_new/
Open about:config
Set browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.improvesearch.handoffToAwesomebar to false
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level 1
· 5d
|
Tabs are called "tabs", because they're inspired by the way people put tabs in binders to be able to go flip and forth between different pages quickly. Their design was influenced by this - namely, the fact that the active tab is "connected" to the active content and all the inactive ones are "behind" it. This has been true for decades and in every piece of software that ever tried to implement tabs.
What we got with Proton are, simply put, no longer tabs! These floating, disconnected-from-the-content buttons are nothing like tabs in real life and nothing like what people are used to. Tabs tell the user "don't worry, this is just changing views - your content will stay in the background". This is more like a regular navigation bar - "pills" in Bootstrap terminology. It's just plain confusing! What is this floating blob above my content? Is it a link to somewhere? What about the other ones? If I click on the "active" looking one, will it reload my page like a link would? If I click on another, will it navigate me away?
Why break such a basic expectation? Who does this benefit? You can explain tabs to anyone from a 100-year-old to a toddler - just show them some in real life. Buttons and pills, however, can have a wide variety of functions. This is like using buttons instead of checkboxes in a form - yes, it works, but it also breaks the user's expectations completely and for no reason. It's already a big enough accessibility problem that everything is moving away from various knobs and switches to pixels on a screen - don't make those pixels all look the same too!
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level 2
Exactly this - its almost like there's a rich history of why they are used: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/tabs
Meanwhile, fresh new talent into the UI/UX pool think they can improve on the tried and true by teleporting back 25 years in design...
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1 more reply
level 1
Make tabs more visible, please!
My monitor has a shit view angle, so I can barely make out what tab I'm on while sitting in a position that could even remotely be called comfy. (｀3´)
103
level 2
I'd like to express my appreciation that you're just saying what you want and why in straightforward language without an extra layer of sarcasm or contempt.
26
level 2
I completely agree. I don't like the trend of the last few years, we have gone from UIs with millions of colours and clutter, to utilitarian UIs and now to minimalist UIs that make it difficult to see the different elements. At least add one line between tabs or something like that.
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level 2
· 6d · edited 6d
There's a current workaround:
about:config
browser.proton.enabled
Set to "False" option to use old style of tabs.
[This makes the tab design and color similar to before the update, but not exactly the same]
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9 more replies
level 1
I've been a firefox user since it was called Phoenix (2003?).
Unfortunately, over the past years, firefox required more and more effort from me to maintain it usable, while it got loaded with features that I don't need.
I always was in hope that the focus of the development will return for it to be a fast, slim, chromium-independent browser that it once was.
With 89 I was once again proved wrong. Yes, I understand how I can restore some of the previous usability, but I don't want anymore.
Finally after all those years, I've migrated to a different browser, which makes me kind of sad. I will keep an eye on the future development of FF, but I doubt that I will return back soon.
Farewell and thanks for the good years.
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level 2
Same. I haven't been using it nearly as long (six-seven years, not including another seven or so on-and-off), and unless they roll back all, if not nearly all changes I don't think I'll be sticking around. If they remove the config workaround for tabs, I'm definitely gone.
It's just a shame having to watch how far, what was once one of, if not the best browsers on the market.
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level 1
It seriously makes me wonder when UI stuff like the new Proton design gets approved. UI/UX design across just about every program is taking a massive downward turn these days and this Proton is just another symptom of it.
If I'm reading things right there's been months of the Nightly users pointing out many of the problems with it but, nope, Mozilla Knows Best and then wonder why the current market share is tanking. I do wonder and hope if number keep falling that there's at least some reflection on why this design might be part of it but I severly doubt it.
From my own perspective, if the wizards that manage the userChrome.css tweaks (kinda like Lepton) can't negate most or all of the issues and return some semblance of usability to the design I'll be looking to finding a new browser (seen good things about Vivaldi) and not using a Mozilla based product for the first time in about 30 years to browse and that's a very bad sign of things. I shouldn't even need to resort to userChrome but here we are.
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level 1
So whose brilliant idea was it to replace the tab's favicon with the mute icon when you mute a tab, instead of just placing it on the other side of the tab? They're so big now anyways what are they trying to save by doing that? Way to make it significantly harder to figure out which tab is which when it's muted.
Also they need to add the system accent color back to the tab bar. It's complete bullshit that they're ignoring it. Just because big apps like Steam and others utilize their own custom theme doesn't make it a good thing. Ignoring the standard system settings unlike every other browser out there does not make Firefox a better browser.
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level 1
Blowing up the tabs has got to be one of the dumbest design decisions I've seen in years. I'm glad there's something of a workaround, but the fact it's hidden does not bode well for the future of the browser. I hate to be doom and gloom here, but as a longtime (10+ years) user of Firefox, you're only another bad update or two away from me jumping ship.
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level 2
you're only another bad update or two away from me jumping ship.
this is me. Firefox is trying to be another chrome, but at that point why would I choose it over the actual Chrome? FF used to be different and tried to do stuff differently, now it loses its core functions and principles with each release and they keep wondering why people are leaving.
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level 2
First Android and now PC, Mozilla have been on a downward spiral for a while now.
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level 1
I think the reason why this thread is under utilized is because it assumes people know this update is called Proton, but most do not. If it was called the Firefox Update Megathread, or similarly generic people might post here more often instead of making smaller topics. Like me, who didn't know it was called Proton.
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level 2
I didn't know it was called Proton either. All I want to know is where are my frequently visited sites? Do I have to log in individually everywhere now?! And I went to a lot of trouble to get rid of stupid stupid Pocket, and now it was stealth installed once again? WHY? How do they call themselves privacy-protecting when they foist Pocket on me? WHY. How do I get rid of it? Not disable, get rid of.
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level 1
As someone who relies on musclememory for navigation..
Who thought it'd be a good idea to rearrange the context menu?
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level 1
· 5d · edited 4d
I have no idea what they are thinking. There is so much wrong with the design:
Visual disconnect between tabs and the content of the window. So far, tab and content pane seemed connected, giving you the visual clue of belonging together. This visual clue is now gone, leaving you with "a weird looking button" and random text fading into gray
The button does not reach to the top, but you can click into the empty space above it to still click it in fullscreen when just shoving your mouse to the top of the monitor (as always). With the weird button design this now does not make sense: Visually you are clicking into the dead space above the button, making people believe they have to aim for the button while in reality they can just shove the mouse pointer to the top of the screen.
The "normal" tab height takes up a significant amount more space than before. The "compact" style can only be actvivated via about:config and then has to be manually enabled again in the "Customize Toolbar" page. At the bottom of the page, where all the setting that absolutely do not belong on this page are placed (another really, really bad design choice). The compact design is marked as "(Unsupported)".
The mute/sound icon now replaces the favicon (at least in the compact view), making it extremely hard to find a tab. Edit: In the normal mode, there is no icon for the tab that currently is playing sound. You have to actively read the text of all the tabs to differentiate between muted and playing tabs.
The inactive tabs don't have any visual separator between them, making them look like a long blob of text, icons and X-es.
All the icons from the hamburger menu are gone. Why? There are zero good reasons to do this. We are now back 5-10 years in time.
Overall, the new tab design is extremely poorly executed from a UI design perspective.
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level 1
The ability to identify the currently active tab at a glance got murdered with this update for most users. Previously on Windows 10 you could have the system accent colour show up in the title bar and act as a contrasting background for inactive tabs. Now the choice is between either entirely light or dark with only a barely visible highlight for the active tab. This means it takes a concentrated effort to identify the active tab, whereas a contrasting tab could be darted to instantly thanks to peripheral vision. For the record, I have "Ctrl+Tab cycles through tabs in recently used order" disabled, so I'm used to reordering tabs and navigating them based on positioning.
See this image for a comparison. Some specific theme settings on Ubuntu let you retain this contrast between tabs (light theme with dark title bars) and it looks great. But this is no longer possible on Windows with the built-in themes. Advanced users can download a custom theme to fix this but 99% of users won't do that and will stick to the broken default themes (fully light or dark based on OS settings).
I don't even care that much about tab shape and padding, or whether tabs float, but I think this is a huge usability issue because now the whole top UI just blends together into an indistinct blob of similar colours by default on most PCs.
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level 1
Make the right-click menus smaller. It's HUGE now.
It seems to have more than doubled in size, and takes up almost the full screen (1920x1080 resolution monitor). It's so much harder to use because you have to move your mouse a much larger distance to click on menu options.
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level 2
· 6d
Advocate of open Web
Yeah and especially the menubar, now it doesn't even fit in my monitor I have to scroll to get into some button!
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level 2
They seem to be taking the out of touch, rich Silicon Valley developer with massive 5k displays stereotype too literally.
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level 2
Try this in your userChrome.css:
menupopup > menuitem, menupopup > menu {
padding-block: 2px !important;
}
If you don't know about userChrome.css check this website and r/FirefoxCSS
EDIT: 2px will just make it smaller. If you set it on 1px it will be like it was before the update.
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level 1
When using firefox containers (this feature needs to be promoted more) the container color is no longer clear. The container color is a thin line above the tab name with no spacing between it and the UI above it, which in my case is the window decorations. The tab color needs to be slightly thicker and have space above it so the tab color, a security feature, is easily discernable. (an option to return the tab color to the bottom of the tab would also be helpful)
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level 1
Copying my comment from another thread:
I feel like they forgot not all of us use a touchscreen laptop; I don't care about logos, icons, shapes, and colors, but the size and padding of the tabs in the new design was just ridiculous, especially since I'm stuck on an older 1280x1024 screen. I've switched to the Lepton design and enjoy this much more.
(Note: I was already on Compact mode and even that was really thick.)
Like, I understand that the designer's textbook says "things need to breathe", but not to the point where it starts getting in your face, you know. I want the browser chrome to melt away so I can enjoy the content I'm actually wanting to look at.
Also, complaining about it is kinda the point of an open-source software. I think open source is more about the community than anything.
Edit: I'll also like to add. Proton on mobile = looks good. Proton on desktop = has the weird breathing space mistake.
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level 1
This update is a very compelling reason to switch to Chrome.
I like having a top bar that doesn't take up a third of the screen, and UI that isn't obnoxiously large in general. I like being able to see the boundaries between tabs. I like having a truly separate address bar and search bar. I like icons.
No shame on whoever was saddled with implementing this, but whoever made these design decisions needs to be sent to an Eastern European country to farm potatoes instead of going anywhere near a user interface.
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level 1
Just a daily reminder that all this effort to make Firefox look like it used to is just showing how bad Mozilla developers think of its users. Nobody needs to go so far to write so much CSS code to roll back some atrocious UI decisions the Mozilla developers made, nor having to go to the about:config menu to toggle a hidden menu
These folks from Mozilla, I'm sorry to say this, I really am. These developers suffer from serious inferiority complex and lack any social skills. To dismiss its users is equivalent to a literal spit on the face, probably in the mouth LOL
What's even more sad is that Microsoft Edge devs ACTUALLY listens to its users and made some really nice changes to the chromium browser, like vertical tabs and hide the title bar. Yet Mozilla, one of the usually talked about browsers featuring some neat customization features doesn't even have that
Wtf is wrong with these people? Are they this dense?
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level 1
Not gonna lie, there isn't a single thing I like about this "upgrade" if you can even call it that. Way too large tabs and the workaround just makes it look worse, the gap between the tabs and the actual bar drives my OCD insane because now it just kinda floats there, even the default theme looks too weird for my taste, and literally everything else that I loved about Firefox is just gone. The autoplay blocked and all the other subtitles annoys the crap out of me too, really poor "feature" to add if you can even call it that.
My biggest complaint though is the fact they removed the "restore previous session" manual button. I get that it usually does it automatically, but that doesn't work for me over half the time and that button was a lifesaver, but now I just have to bookmark the crap out of everything and its pretty garbage.
All around, old Firefox was a solid 9/10 for me, but I would struggle to give this new Firefox even a 2/10 on the generous side. Sucks balls.
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level 1
Make ballot screen to let the user choose between proton and lepton and see through telemetry which one wins.
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level 1
The redesign is clean, but I'm struggling to use it. There are no dividers anywhere. The tabs blend together. The bookmark bar blends in with the search bar, which blends in with the tab bar. There is a star at the end of the search bar which is surrounded by miles of white in all directions.
Right click on bookmark -> delete. Shit, nothing is here. There's only cut/copy/paste. Maybe I missed it, I'll just read every option.... still nothing. Wait... there's a remove choice. I wonder what that does. Click. Bookmark is deleted. So, we seemed to have renamed delete to remove. Odd. Made extra difficult because my scan for 'delete' didn't find the two word command 'remove bookmark'. 'Remove' would have been easier, but why not 'delete'? Why is 'remove' separate from cut/copy/paste. Further, to change the name of a bookmark folder, it's called 'Rename Folder' but to change the name of a bookmark, it's 'Edit Bookmark'. There should be consistency here.
Opening youtube in a new tab throws up the message autoplay blocked. That could be represented by a symbol instead of making the tab a giant mess of words. The solution before was far more elegant, with a > symbol for autoplay on click, with a hover for the option to mute. Bring that back.
Fix these things, please.
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level 2
The reason for the discrepancy in the 'Rename Folder'/'Edit Bookmark' is that you can also change where the bookmark points to, whereas you can only rename a folder.
I agree with everything else :)
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level 1
· 6d · edited 6d
how do I get the old icons back? I disabled proton in about:config, got the old tabs but no icons
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level 1
Accessibility should be priority number one then design for visual appeal. I don't get how Mozilla could mess up the contrast of tabs so badly. Thorough testing requires using multiple different monitors and resolutions to see what works for all users. Not just a 13" Macbook and consider it done.
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level 1
Designers should understand that when a change negatively impacts VISIBILITY that it is a bad change. Whoever green lit not having tab separators should be fired. Some for the person who though lack of contrast, that makes everything blend together into a mush, was a good idea.
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level 1
The new update is another step in the history of the recent (last 5 years or so) of mozillas increasing efforts to kill firefox for good. The new UI is bad and I personally am just another change (removing the about:config fix) away from switching to MS Edge for good. Once this hits ESR expect the usage of Firefox in a business environment to reach less than 0.1%.
If I as a "power user" cant stomach those changes I dont/wont and cant imagine normal users (read office workers and older people in general) to like this new interface one bit.
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level 1
After spending days trying to make the new Proton interface usable and practical for my intense working routine with webapps and jupyter notebooks, I'm completely fed up.
I have switched to Chrome. I hope that to be a temporary measure, but guess what? Chrome UI shows no major change since the last time I have touched it (3-4 years ago) and because of that I was completely able to readapt back to it and regain most of my productivity.
I am genuinely horrified by how the Mozilla developers were able to ruin the Firefox experience up to this point. I'm at the point in which I'm considering conspiracy theories for that...
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level 1
Copying and pasting here, since the mods want all remotely-non-fully-positive feedback hidden inside an unfriendly megathread:
Why was "new tab" added to the right click menu on tabs? If I'm clicking on a tab, I don't even need "new tab". There's a button for that. And now that reload -- the most commonly used tab right click item [at least for me] -- is moved down to 2nd item (and pretty far with the new Proton "everything is way more padded than necessary"), reloading tabs is a hassle and pain.
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level 2
· 6d
Firefox Windows
I assume this is a workaround request and not a history project. On r/FirefoxCSS you can get code for your userChrome.css file to hide or re-order context menu items.
If you don't already have a userChrome.css file, it's a good time to start one. ;-)
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level 1
I think a lot of people here would agree with these ideas:
fully restore the compact theme option so it isn't hidden so non tech savvy users and enable it.
Decrease the tab size back to the size of the old photon tabs.
Change the size of the bookmarks, context menu, downloads menu, etc (basically all UI menus that became gigantic right now) back to the size they had on the previous version, they were the perfect size pretty much.
Restore the icons that where removed on most menus, they really didn't take much space and it helped people with poor eyesight/any other kind of issue to find the menu options more easily.
Make it easier to tell what is the current active tab.
Implement proper container tabs support, currently its hard to tell what is the active tab since you can be confused by the line created by a container.
Restore the old mute button on tabs rather than the current text so you can mute a tab playing multimedia without needing to open it.
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level 2
fully restore the compact theme option so it isn't hidden so non tech savvy users and enable it.
I've tried the compact mode in Proton and it's still less dense than normal mode in the previous UI. I honestly don't care about +- a few pixels tab width, but the difference is egregious in the bookmarks menu. It can now only fit about half the items that it previously could without scrolling. There's no reason to waste this much space. Give me a compact mode that's actually compact.
23
2 more replies
level 1
to say what everyone else is already saying, the "floaty" tabs were an awful idea with no consideration to anybody in mind. it pleases nobody but the aesthetic hippies who value fashion > function
i've been a power user for almost a decade now and it baffles me at how bad FF has gotten. i was pretty content with a lot of FF's older changes, even if they weren't for the better. FF 89 was a different story however, and a lot of the changes seem to be changes for the hell of it.
moving around the hamburger menu, resizing different tabs, and all of that dead space next to the address bar really shows how far FF has fallen from grace. it's a pity too, because i am one of those """disabled""" people that everybody has been referring to when discussing how inaccessible the browser is (my eyesight is awful and i've got an astigmatism in one eye; i heavily rely on a combination of muscle memory and defined shapes to see my monitor). for the first time in 10 years of using the browser, i had to enable dark theme just to see what tab i'm in. and it's still hard to make out because apparently breaking the tried and true norm is what mozilla thought we wanted! hooray for button tabs!
for a browser that made it a priority to make everything accessible a few updates ago, it's wild seeing how fast they stripped away said accommodations to fit a minimalistic trend that appeals to almost none of FF's core userbase. i don't know whether to laugh or be sad at the state it's in. even more comical, is the blog post that went along with UI changes. it's hard to take mozilla seriously when they cite telemetry statistics (something i'm sure most people opt out of. if we wanted to be tracked we would've been using chrome to begin with) and going off of which buttons sparked the most joy as justifications for completely reworking the browser's interface.
it's ironic because i'm currently writing this from another browser (vivaldi) that took literally a minute to set up similar to FF. i'm glad i got to experience what good there was in FF, but in it's current state i cant use the browser, even with all the workarounds to the proton changes. call me greedy for expecting too much out of a free piece of software that "i can just fork and edit it myself!", but i shouldn't have to learn how to maintain a browser just so i can use it. especially when most other browsers are free and way more efficient in terms of customizability
10
level 2
I am a designer and admittedly quite a bit of a 'form over function' type thing and I really like designing and skinning my Firefox to look great - so when I say that even the 'aesthetic hippies' - whatever that is supposed to mean - hate the design of this update it should mean a lot. This isn' even good looking, it's shit functionality AND ugly.
7
level 1
What is this update? it makes me want to go back to Chrome, the UI looks horrendous. There is NO way to distinguish tabs, no colour, the icons are bland and it's just terrible
10
level 1
Firefox with Proton breaks my workflow.
The white space, the wasted space. Its horrible. I'm a LONG time user having started with Netscape 2.11 back in the 90's, I jumped to Mozilla when Firebird was new and have stayed with it since for the most part.
The day I can't shut proton off is the day I'm probably going to jump to a different browser. I just don't have the time to fight with it through UI scripts and the like.
10
1 more reply
level 1
· 6d
God, why would they get rid of the literal perfection that were the old tab UI? It was so simple and clean. I might consider going back to waterfox just for that.
10
level 1
i have disabled auto update and considering the new ui is being forced upon us i will uninstall firefox when it comes. i generally have multiple vms with 100+ tabs open. all worked fine till this update. This is like windows 10 and the idiotic tablet settings menu.... its worth swapping OS for that. swapping browser will be mandatory if it disrupt my workflow even more.
give us an option to use the old ui and keep it as it is or lose a LOT of users.
9
level 1
[deleted]
· 6d
level 1
I hope the telemetry/survey/feeback system actually get to work some day.
it has been like 15 years of firefox devs not listening to their users. no wonder they have less than 3% of the share market right now. Decreasing since firefox2. probably the goal is to kill firefox at this point.
35
1 more reply
level 1
Stop copying gnome and making everything way too big (funny, I read in one article that tab change was because 50% or more of users had 4 or more tabs open at all times or so... so you made tabs bigger so less tabs fit on screen? 0 logic). Tabs needs to be smaller, downloads popup needs less padding....
Connect tabs back to page. Not only it looks bad it does not make sense.
Downloads popup, application menu - Stop rounding corners. This is not phone. It makes no sense since everything else still has corners (right click, folders of bookmarks in bookmarks toolbar).
Return old mute indicator on tabs
Fire whoever designed this mess
Why is there rainbow colored on dark theme in application menu below "sync and save data"?
Search field in home tab types in address. Are you mad? 1. I have separate search and address bar. 2 I have disabled searching in address bar (because it does not make sense)
Dark theme is bit too dark. Its more like "black theme".
I am angry.
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1 more reply
level 1
So sorry to be that person but this update's made me pretty frustrated.
The dividers between tabs were a good thing, now I feel like I'm dyslexic whenever I have 3+ tabs open. They were a good and useful thing. I don't know how I can elaborate on that since it was plainly obvious.
Contrast was lowered across the board. Why? Why is this a good thing? Understanding the boundaries of an element should take less than one second, and I shouldn't have to consciously do so.
The top bar no longer takes its color from the windows 10 accent... when 99% of other applications do. Now, if you want some color, you have to change your windows default app color (only light or dark options) or download a custom theme, but neither restore any of the readability of the former design. Tell me Mozilla, why do you think you're special enough to break away from the standard look of windows applications, ironically lessening personalization? Genuinely, what is the thought process?
Since there's no accent color, it's now much harder to tell if the window is in focus. This is a bad thing because I want to know when the window is in focus.
The right click menu styling was similarly changed for no reason other than to be different. Again, you aren't special.
Considering all the bad of this update, and the advertisements on the home screen, I'm seriously considering looking into switching to an outdated version of Firefox, or to Chrome. This is bordering unusable.
24
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level 1
Connecting tabs to their page is just so fundamental to how tabs work that I don’t know where Mozilla thought they were going with this redesign.
I don’t get the double height tabs if you’re not going to use the space well either.
On a more positive note, the menu bar does look a lot tidier, so that’s good.
9
level 1
I can imagine Proton working beautifully with small touch devices and big fingers, but I have a regular monitor and a mouse, so I don't see many advantages.
- It lacks contrast, especially in the tabs. My sight is not that great and before it was quite OK, but now? It's awful on normal and add page icons that mirror the theme's darkness and I have no clue which Tab I'm opening.
- To much space in the Bookmarks drop downs. I took quite some effort to organize my bookmarks in a way that doesn't require scrolling and I could click them blindly. Now I have read carefully what to click, and scroll half the time.
If I wanted a browser that looks more like Chrome, I would use Chrome. Finally giving in to the temptation of Waterfox I guess.
8
level 1
[deleted]
· 4dHere is the feedback from a 45 year old married father of four who has used firefox since high school (graduated 1995).
Im uninstalling this turd. No home button? Two inches of wasted screen space where tabs used to be? Cannot move url bar so it isnt wasting so much room? Cannot use my themes or plugins I wrote myself? No documentation on these idiocy of changes??
Honestly Im not sure whom chose this but they can go suck a dick. I hope they never get to design a UI ever again. This is the YUGO of browsers now. Im out.
You arent the only free browser but you sure as hell are the least functional, ugliest, most inefficient now.
Bye.
8
level 1
Mozilla, please. I don't like the reductionist design philosophy that Chrome has; why do you think I don't use it?
Please stop cutting accessibility, inflating/adding unnecessary whitespace, and cutting/hiding features!
The Right Click bar on link images is now half the height of my screen. WHY?! Some are even the full height of my screen???
Easily identifying which tab is playing audio is now much harder, for... no reason??
Why did the icons get smaller in about:newtab, but take up the same space?! The new size sucks, and it's not very usable, but if you're going to make it hard to use, at least put the extra space to good use (And not your suggested stories etc; I don't care those - you're a browser organization, not a news company)!
Removing menu icons?! WHY?!?!
I can't drag tabs now?? I dunno if this is just an issue with my browser or not, but it's supremely irritating (yes I've tried restarting both my PC and my browser)
Close tab button is now 1/3rd the size of the tab when you have enough! WHY?!
Very much not enjoying this update.
8
level 1
· 3d
I can't even begin to describe how much I hate the new UI. I was ready to move to another browser, but i thankfully found a way to bring the old tabs back, now it's tolerable.
9
level 1
I wish they'd remove like 25-50% of the vertical padding on all the tabs and context menus and whatnot, connect the tabs to the address bar, and add back everything that was removed feature-wise. That'd be great.
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level 1
I have mixed feelings about this update. I've remained a regular Firefox user since 2008 and through many changes I don't like, I'm not sure how much more I can take. This update has pushed me to start trying out all the competition (something I haven't done in several years), whether or not Firefox remains as my default browser remains to be seen.
I'm interested if these changes will affect market share. Will it halt or even reverse the slow exodus of desktop users? I suspect it will not. I want to be wrong because Google's domination of the market is bad for all of us.
8
1 more reply
level 1
I’m sorry, but Proton looks like shit. I downgraded to a previous version despite the security risks because it’s just that bad. I respect what you’re trying to do, and if other people like it, more power to them, but the new version would be 10 times better if you put in a “go back” button. No shenanigans, no “slightly improved” UI. No new icons for buttons. Just exactly what it was before. That’s all I want.
7
level 1
Proton is hideous.
Which version was it that first introduced the "sponsored" previews in new tabs? Because I intend to revert to the version just before that, and forbid FF on pain of death from ever "upgrading" again.
6
level 1
I logged in this morning and got the update and I honestly thought the browser was broken and did a factory reset on it to try to restore the interface.
I'm trying to give constructive criticism but all I can say is This Proton interface is really bad...
No tab delineation, no icons, no contrast, too much dead space.
It's actually really painful to look at.
I've had to switch Proton off just to make it usable and prevent myself from becoming nauseous while working with it.
It just looks, wrong? Why is their plaintext floating in the middle of empty gray space? Did you get design queues from a command prompt or something?
One of the main reasons I used Firefox was because you hadn't gone down the flat design route. This is a really great way to lose all your long time users...
6
1 more reply
level 1
· 3d · edited 2d
Has Google / MS bribed someone at Mozilla?
Pretty much been using firefox since v1 and for the first time ever I think I actually want to switch to Edge or Chrome (on Windows).
With my pretty default Win 10 set-up the top edge of the window doesn't have a border, so if it's open over outlook or something it practically merges with UI of the other application.
The private browsing window is harder to spot as it's the same colour as the normal window if and the only differences is the privacy icon. Harder to spot if behind another window or from the taskbar.
The active tab now looks like a text entry field and the design breaks how tabs work visually
I could go on and on...
I'm certainly not going to update the version on my mac, and when it stops working properly then Safari or Chrome it is.
Edit: Thankfully it does appear to be possible to restore classic look, https://winaero.com/how-to-restore-classic-look-in-firefox-89-and-disable-proton-ui/
6
level 1
It's ugly, this is a desktop browser! Not everything needs to be rounded and light! Please continue to allow us to keep the old look
6
level 1
The new tab design is awfull. I don't like it that there is no visible seperation between them unless you hover the mouse over them. Man was so pissed. I had to search for an hour until I found a post where someone fixed that with the custom css.
Also I miss the view image button. Opening a new tab to view the full image is a pain in the ass. I have to open a lot of images daily and opening them in a new tab is more extra clicks to do. I had to bring it back with an addon.
7
level 1
I don't love Firefox enough to fix the browser every 4 months. Now disabled Proton and it is back to normal. When this toggle is gone and the problems aren't fixed I'm going back to another browser.
7
level 1
Adding my voice to the pile of criticism. Absolutley terrible update.
The tabs look horrific.
The search box and location bar have grey backgrounds... why?
Removing icons from menus is a slap in the face to accessibility
Seriously, Mozilla. Your design team are simply not good at their jobs. I say that with all seriousness as an industry professional.
8
level 1
Aside from what was said before I'd suggest firefox at least consider community polling. This way we get a say in what we want the ui to look like before we get another ui bomb with a "hey here's a new feature! oh you don't like it? we don't care. kkthxbai".
18
level 1
Dividers between tabs should at least be an option in order to make it easier to distinguish different tabs.
Tabs should also be tabs and not buttons --> they should be visually connected to the page.
Add the option to customize the roundness of corners.
Add the option for icons in the burger menu.
6
1 more reply
level 1
I hate the visual style. I can't see the tabs. Hating this browser with every big update.
The day edge gets containers, I'll switch to it
6
level 1
· 6d
Another person mentioned this, but the most frustrating part of this update for me is the padding bloat in the bookmarks menu. Now I have to scroll constantly to use my bookmarks, which adds time and effort to my browser usage. How the heck does that improve the user experience?
I read Mozilla's blog post about the update, which claims they want to "streamline" and that they're "on a mission to save you time." Making me scroll to see all of my bookmarks doesn't do either of those things.
I'm a longtime Firefox user, and I'm used to having to tweak it - that's fine, as long as the option exists. But it sounds like Mozilla plans to take away the ability to suppress the changes introduced in Proton. If that happens, I'll be looking for another privacy-oriented browser.
6
level 1
Hate the tab size and bookmarks no longer fit on one screen - why would they do this with no option to change/revert??
6
2 more replies
level 1
Unhappy with compact, the new lack of density. They are prioritizing 'pretty' over functional. It's a terrible trade off.
5
1 more reply
level 1
I can get used to the detached tabs, but the waste of vertical space is rather disconcerting, especially when using a 16:9 1366x768 display like some of my family members. (This is exacerbated by the fact that most UI elements also take up Horizontal space, from GNOME title bars, macOS Dock and Menubar, Windows/KDE/MATE/Cinammon/XFCE/LXDE/LXQT Task Bar, etc.)
Please continue supporting compact mode. This is the only thing I am asking for.
6
level 1
This is a truly terrible update. If they ever remove the about:config option to disable Proton I'm switching browsers, those tabs are unusable.
6
level 1
· 4d · edited 4d
Tabs are a nightmare. I use dark mode on everything to minimise my chances of getting headaches/migraines. Then comes the new update that makes me wish I hcould invert colours. It's bad enough that they became bloated for some reason, they removed the separators as well. I had to strain my eyes to find which one ends and the other begins.
Options/Menu, anything in the "about:" settings. The highlight colour (bright blue) was just glaring and distracting. It looks gross in any of the settings tabs, even worse when it involves other parts. When the search bar had gone back to a white background and I turned Reader View on, I could barely see the icon (bright blue on white). This also affects others like the URL of a website in the search bar. You can change the text color in the search bar (whatever the tab name is on a url) but the url itself will still be bright blue. Does Mozilla hate people who prefer/need contrast to be able to see things?
Firefox Color is a lie. The Custom color tab easily shows you what part of the browser you're messing with when you click it, so it's great for beginners who want to tweak their theme. But then you go to the Advanced colors tab and you're on your own. They even left a useless little option there called "Tab Background Separator". Oh, it's hilarious! You can choose the most bright neon colours so you can see it but it never shows up coz it's never there. HA HA HA
So far, this has been the worst update for me. All other previous times, I was surprised and delighted by UI changes but not with this one. This just screams of "Go F**** yourselves, you blind b*******! 😈"
The only thing I've enjoyed so far about this update is the about:config > browser.proton.enabled > false.
6
2 more replies
level 1
· 3d
Windows 10 and Linux
What really annoys and irritates me is that the volume/mute icon on a tab has now replaced the website's favicon. Some websites provide info via the icon, like Reddit showing the number of unread messages.
It's also far easier to switch between tabs by identifying them via their favicons, which becomes especially important if you have a lot of tabs open and the favicon is basically the only way to tell which tab is which because there's just no text anymore.
Next, why have the accelerator keys for various functions been changed? Right-clicking a bookmark and pressing D deleted it, but someone who should be treated equally to the Sirius Cybernetics marketing devision has deemed it a good idea to change "Delete bookmark" to "Remove bookmark", and thus changing the accelerator key to E.
Speaking of keys, having the key for "Open in a new tab" be T is good, and it works that way when you right-click a link on a webpage. So why is that key W instead when you right-click a bookmark? Instead T cuts (as in cut/paste) that bookmark. And I mean the bookmarks in the bookmarks bar. That's just mind-boggling dumb.
Seriously, as much as I love Firefox, Mozilla seems to go out of their way lately to make the browser worse by doing dumb and unnecessary bullshit like the above. Chrome is becoming more and more of a valid alternative not because that browser is getting better, but because Firefox is getting worse.
6
level 1
I usually upgrade browsers as soon as the notification appears, so I did FF on my home computer this weekend. It shocked me when I saw what they had done. Now I'm sitting at my work computer with the notification icon over the hamburger, and I can't bring myself to click it. Why in the H___ would I want to make FF look/function worse?
7
level 1
I managed to fix much of what was screwed up with this update. Using a systems theme so the tabs have different colors... and then turning off all the proton stuff with:
browser.proton.enabled = false
browser.proton.contextmenus.enabled = false
browser.uidensity = 1
browser.compactmode.show = true
I understand that the next update will nuke our ability to disable proton... so I'm not going to update until there's a new fix for the next version to fix the tabs back to somewhat normal.
7
3 more replies
level 1
· 2d
Dev on Linux
The thing that annoys me the most is that there's no easy way to customize the experience, or even go back to the old UI.
I remember the backlash when Aurelius just came out, and how someone made a pretty nifty extension that let you customize a bunch of look-and-feel things: tab shapes, button shapes, etc.
And yeah, a lot of this is customizable with CSS, but if you wanna really customize the browser towards your own needs, you've gotta have pretty extensive knowledge of Firefox's UI DOM, and debugging userChrome.css is not an easy task.
5
level 1
With the Megabar addition, this new Proton interface and the upcoming removal of the about:config options I decided to make the jump to Vivaldi. Has great customization features, a normal interface and most of the features from FF I use the most (take a SS, PiP, tab muting, reader mode, etc). This is just an observation but it seems the devs there also seem to have a more active dialogue with their users.
6
2 more replies
level 1
What a steaming pile of shit.
Is this the end for Firefox? Their final push to make their dedicated userbase evaporate? Where do we go now?
5
1 more reply
level 1
· 6d
Lepton is legit.
And if you want something a little different there's always the ever useful r/FirefoxCSS community ready to help you to take advantage of the hidden User Stylesheets feature.
17
1 more reply
level 1
Everything just feels like its the same size, yet has margins for twice the size. Theres a ton of empty spaces, especially within the tabs, and its quite annoying. The previous version felt very streamlined and visually pleasing; nothing from what Ive seen improves things.
Further, this is the second major change in a row that has made "restore previous session" even more hidden.
16
level 1
I hate Firefox 89
We should be able to use the Old UI, I hate the new Dark Theme and want the old one back as is
Making this megathread and instantly closing every feedback post because of this is blatantly suppressing negative feedback as it's very clear that positive feedback posts are allowed
EDIT: Wait wtf I just noticed what the hell did they do to the Boomarks tab? Why change the colour and why increase the bookmark size that much? What fit on the full screen for me before, now requires 3-4 scrolls to get to the bottom of it. WTF Firefox?
28
level 1
I don't like how the shortcuts on the new tab page look like. Before Proton, the favicons used to take up the entire shorcut button, and now they have a large margin around them. It makes it more difficult to find what I'm looking for and it just doesn't look aesthetically pleasing.
With regards to the tab bar:
it needs some sort of visual separator between tabs.
the default theme doesn't look right with adwaita, the default GTK theme on most Linux distros. There's not enough contrast between the currently active tab and the rest of the tabs.
The included light theme has the same problem.Edit: Actually it's a lot better, so that's what I'm using now. The url bar and the surrounding area could use a little more contrast though.
4
1 more reply
level 1
This is the first time I come here because I'm legit so annoyed by a UI update in Firefox that I don't want to get used to it. I use the Bookmark Toolbar with folders a lot, and the new update has added so much blank space between the individual bookmarks in the dropdown that around half of my bookmark folders, for which all content fit into a page easily now spill over it, requiring scrolling to see the bottom bookmarks. Here's what I mean.
Is there a way to trim the bookmark height without straight up reverting to an earlier Firefox version? I tried the
browser.proton.enabled
option but that seems to only affect tabs, not the bookmark toolbar. Same for the compact mode, trims down the tab bar, but my bookmarks remain comically large.
E/: For anyone else who is interested, I found the fix here: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/nrrm6r/i_truly_hate_the_tab_redesign/h0jvnn3/?context=3&utm%25255C_source=share&utm%25255C_medium=web2x
5
1 more reply
level 1
My biggest woe so far is oddly some miniscule detail: That the accent color on Windows 10 isn't used.
I think I wouldn't mind this at all if the browser had no color. But it does. It uses a weird bright cyan,which not only is found nowhere in the Firefox or Mozilla color palette, but it's also entirely nonfitting to the rest of my OS. If there has to be a bright accent, why not just use the one the user sees in ˜every other app they open, as it's defined by the OS?
5
level 1
I don't really understand why any of these UI/UX changes were necessary, perhaps I'm not the target user, but now I find the experience quite clunky. Without clear dividing elements between the controls everything blends together and I can't find what to click. The tabs are atrocious too. It's probably worth mentioning that I'm not one of these people who leave open 100 tabs, I probably have 5 to 10 open at any time.
I've disabled all the proton related stuff in the about:config but will probably jump ship if the options are removed. I've stuck with Firefox for what seems like ever (is it 15 years now?) but I have to value usability first.
6
level 1
I feel sorry for all 16:9 user out there. My display is 16:10 and even tho a few pixels lost is not much but it's noticeable. IMO unnecessary loss in height.
New tab page is completely broken.
Main menu seems fine.
That update seems like huge step back to me. Since now I used to like most of redesigns but this one is the worst in history.
5
level 1
Bookmarks are now broken for me since update. When I right click them, all the options are grayed out. I can no longer delete any of them or anything else. That is my most used feature.
Backspace to go back a page is my second most used feature and is still broken from last update.
All the new themes are hurting my eyes, please give the option to have the old theme. I tried using the new Firefox Color thing, but it's seriously broken and glitched out. I had to uninstall it. I was able to use it once, but it will NOT load anymore, no matter what I do. And it lacked the one option I needed. Drop down menus you can't choose the color of, neither the background nor text, it was auto chosen, and when I made the tool bar the color I wanted, it made the menus the opposite color I wanted, and vice versa. So no matter what I choose, it's the opposite color I want and is extremely ugly. I have a VERY bad headache from using Firefox.
I've been using Firefox for about fifteen years, but if they don't let me properly choose my colors or give the old theme back, I'll have no choice but to switch to another browser, and since I've been on Firefox for so long, I truly don't want to do that.
Please fix this!
6
level 1
· 6d · edited 6d
Like others have mentioned, it is rather hard to tell which tab is active. I'm using the default light theme (default) and now I have to carefully look at the tabs, to find which one is active. It rather annoying.
Here is a picture of the tabs, like I see it on my monitor:
EDIT: Dark theme makes it far more obvious, which tab is active. Too bad I generally don't like dark themes (Yes, I'm weird).
5
1 more reply
level 1
WTF Firefox, why remove Tab separators, now I just have an awful mess of disjointed words and icons in my tab bar list of open tabs, with no obvious delineation between tabs.
This kind of basic design error always makes me wonder.... DID NO ONE THOROUGHLY CHECK THE USER INTERFACE AND USER EXPERIENCE BEFORE RELEASING THIS MAJOR UPDATE THAT WILL AFFECT MILLIONS OF PEOPLE!!!!
Sorry for raging but getting basic things wrong like this just grinds me big time.
6
level 1
· 6d
I'm really baffled by the approach taken by the mods here. Why on Earth is only positive allowed? So much for engaging with the community, lul. Can you imagine for example if Amazon ratings only allowed 5 star? That's basically r/firefox right now. They quite literally want this to be an echo chamber and refuse to face any criticism from the community they pretend to love so much.
6
level 1
· 6d
I want to go back to the way GUI's were done in the 90's - respecting screen space for content. Look at the Win95/NT shell - everything is slender. Now in 2020 my 2K monitor feels like a 320x240 display because every app takes up an insane amount of space for padding. The new tabs are horrible.
5
1 more reply
level 1
My userChrome.css got a lot bigger with this update, mostly to reclaim the lost screen space.
I miss the "View Image Info" and "View Page Info" that were removed in the last update. They justified it with bad telemetry, while leaving many far-less-popular context menu items intact. They had also broken both dialogs so they could no longer report image filesizes in a prior update. It feels like the Firefox project is being sabotaged sometimes.
5
1 more reply
level 1
· 5d
The main reason I use Firefox is because it prioritizes function over form in its UI. Firefox has always been focused on usability until this update.
I like how you've tidied up the menus to look more modern, but FOR THE LOVE OF GOD BRING BACK THE TAB SEPARATORS! People will ditch your browser for this. I would have few qualms switching to Chrome or Edge if you're going to be no different to them.
6
level 1
I'd suggest reverting to the old design, this is the worst update so far. Tabs are unrecognizable, new icons are too big and a pain, and not to even mention the size of the menus.
Literally nobody likes it, why would you mess up the old clean design with this monstrosity?
6
level 1
· 5d
This new UI is awful. It wastes screen space, it makes it less obvious at a glance which tab is active, it makes it less obvious which tab is playing sound, and it's generally just not an improvement over what already existed. I don't know what changes you made behind the scenes, I won't even pretend to because it's out of my depth. But the fact that tabs now provide the same information but less efficiently should let you know this was a bad move.
4
level 1
I disabled all proton entries in about:config after firefox updated.
Dear god, what is this mess?
6
level 1
I've been using firefox daily since 2.0 and this is the worst update I have ever seen.
browser.proton.enabled = false
Is the only thing that fixes this mess. There was no reason to change the UI why? It's like designing square wheels.
Improvement suggestion: bring the old UI back. The new UI is not better in any way.
5
level 1
· 5d · edited 5d
Not a subreddit I follow but I just came here to say that I'm having a tough time seeing which tab I'm currently in.
Edit: I'm using multi-account containers and maybe that's issue ? inactive ones look active
5
1 more reply
level 1
Man I'm not one of those people who gets mad at any changes they make to apps or things like that, but this change to the UI is just a huge throwback to the browser.
Why did you decide to go against all trends in terms of comfort and accessibility?For example, so that reducing the amount of content visible in the browser only to enlarge the tabs, which is something that nobody asked for and to make matters worse, is a regression in terms of use, because they do not provide anything useful outside of the "playing" that in Instead of occupying one more line, it could have continued as it was with the horn icon.
The same with not having divisions between the tabs and the line that determined the active tab.Finally, the color palette is not bad, it is uncomfortable to navigate.
Please go back to the old UI, fix it, improve it, etc, but keep going in that direction not this one that honestly makes me want to use the new Edge instead of FF.
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· 4d · edited 4d
I submitted an Idea (just bring back inactive tables separator). It said to wait for a moderator to look at it. The idea disappeared.
Good job, Mozilla, really good job.
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The new tab design makes no sense to me. It takes much more space, doesnt even look like a tab, it looks like a button that needs to be clicked. Its margins look pixelated and unprofessional. I really hope the FF devs revert this decision or I might have to start using some FF clone or weird workarounds.
New icons like sound and bookmarks look worse and more childish.
I didnt even use it enough to stumble upon all the other negative changes people keep mentionning here. I reverted to 88 for now, and hopefully 90 or 91 will revert those changes.
Really not sure who approved of these changes. might be the same guy who came up with the brilliant idea of a forced "other bookmarks" button just a few versions ago.
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Being unable to distinguish between containers in the new UI is killing this update for me. I can't use the proton UI if the container stripe is 2px thin and right at the top of my screen. Whats the point of using containers if I can't tell what container I'm using at a glimpse. Put it back at the bottom of the tab and make it a few pixels thicker.
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This upgrade goes like shit with X-forwarding over SSH.
It's not until you visit about:config and set gfx.webrender.force-disabled then restart - that it restores back to normal performance.
I think it's trying to shove a shitload through the network connection for some reason, the ssh daemon just about shits itself with 100% CPU usage.
Oh, and don't steal my menu. If I had a File/Edit/View/History/Bookmarks/Tools/Help toolbar before, you can bet I want it now. Removing it and then making me scramble to find out how to restore it is BAD behaviour.
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Frankly I think it was a mistake to make the tabs this thick. At bare minimum, you need to double the tab height. Ideally, I want 50% of my screen space to be tabs. And make sure the font size increases with it - just because the tabs are bigger doesn't mean you should utilize that space.
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· 6d
Primary password prompt is not working for me. If I visit about:login,
The page says 'Please enter your primary password to view saved login & passwords'. When I click login, the page just flashes. No password prompt.
Cannot autofill username and password in other sites as well. I have to disable my security - (primary password) to get this used. This is disappointing.
Aside from the UI changes, this is a very critical bug that needs to be addressed as soon as possible as I am currently unable to log in to many websites, including my work, without compromising my security.
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So, all my extras seem fine and functionality seems overall unaffected, that's good.
UI-wise I was very surprised. It's very ugly, but I'll get over it with habituation.
To my surprise though, the font change and changes to the borders of the elements made everything blur and become indistinguishable. The lighter tone and the thinner font also made it very hard to read anything. Had to use a couple of workarouds.
This choice seems very unfriendly to new users, but I'm not an early adopter, maybe this is just what everything looks like now and will make for easier new users to join in. To me, I now have to invest some time on finding themes that will fix the readability issues of Proton.
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just give us an option to go back to the old theme, no separators and these weird themes (tried all of them out, the contrast is really bad..)are really messing with my eyes and annoy me to hell
I will be swapping to Chrome if this stays like this because that theme is clean
Edit.: also seriously what's this...why wasn't the play and mute icons good enough..you assume people don't have like 200 tabs open so they can see the written "playing" and muted" signs under the tab, not to mention you translated these to other languages too, so they won't fit
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level 2
In about:config, set
browser.compactmode.show true browser.proton.enabled false
That will take you back to the good UI until they remove those options. We can only hope Mozilla will wake up and fire their oh-so-modern UI designers instead, but it seems unlikely.
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Is there a way to revert back to UI before the update? Don't get me wrong, I'm sure a lot of people enjoy it, but it's not for me.
Also on Youtube, the Theater Mode looks smaller because the tabs bar is pushing the search bar of YouTube down into the video. Last night I opened a video with the thumbnail saying "I'm Gonna Win" very clear in letters, top area of the screen, now today with this update, the Youtube search bar has been pushed down to cover the top half of those words. Very annoying.
Anyways, if there was an option to revert just the UI, that would be greatly appreciated. :)
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level 1
Very ugly imo, no divides in the tabs, too much "spaces", menus are so large, everything "round". Please do not remove option to turn it off. Why everything i'm using develop "new cool design" which is significant downgrade, without option to turn it off?
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level 1
· 6d
Unlock this thread, it is legitimately useful for anyone who wants the old layout:
https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/nsptb1/known_workarounds3_to_new_ui_to_get_old_ui/
Add an option for the old layout BTW. It's still in the data, there's no reason for it to not be an option.
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· 6d
Wow the new interface is horrible; first thing I did was google how to undo it.
The biggest problem is everything is too spaced out; easy to fix so hopefully either there will be a "tight" option or some rethought on an interface that looks like it's really for fat fingers/touch interface rather than desktop. The "floating" tabs looks pointless to me but I could learn to live with it; but everything being unnecessairly spread out (in every menu, every dialogue box - everything padded) was just far too annoying.
I've stuck with Firefox through thick and thin, I think it's a great browser, but I think the "proton" interface is a mistep. Design has to match function; I get this design may work on tablets but don't cookie-cutter impose it on desktop users; it needs a desktop iteration.
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I like the new look, but one thing that keeps happening is that I keep closing the wrong tab.
They look so similar now, it's hard to tell which one is the open tab from the other ones.
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· 5d · edited 2d
The current mute/unmute button is functionally worse than before. It is not clear in any way that you have to hover over the favicon to access it, and you can no longer see at a glance the status of a tab's audio. There is more space in the tab buttons now, so there is no reason to hide this option like that.
The color indicator for container tabs feels cramped at the top of the tab. It's too thin and it's even thinner on the active tab due to overlapping the highlight box. I would like the bar to be both thicker and moved to the bottom of the tab. Placing it at the top means your eyes have to move further up the screen to identify the current container.
The new "Always open this site in" container tab button in the address bar is confusing. The button appears for all sites, even if that site has already been set to always open in a certain container tab. The button being there in this instance is contradictory. Even upon clicking on the button, there is no indication that the site is already set to open in a certain container tab, it just presents you with the list of containers without added context.
When there's a lot of tabs, it becomes impossible to close them without making a tab active first. Firefox should behave like Brave, where hovering over a tab reveals the x button. It only makes sense to remove this option when the tabs become so small that an x button would take up more space than the text. As it stands, the x buttons are removed when there's still miles of real estate within the tabs.
The History button in the toolbar now requires you to make an extra selection for whether you want to look at your bookmarks, history, or downloads. This adds an unnecessary step compared to before the update, when it would just show you your recent pages and some options at the same time- only one click is required. If I'm clicking on History, I want to see my history. It doesn't make sense to cram bookmarks and downloads in this button when those both have their own buttons that can be added to the toolbar.
The icons should return to the hamburger menu. It was very easy to identify options at a glance before. Removing the icons here is purely a choice of style over function. And this can be done without making this menu even bigger than it currently is.
Which brings to my next point. Everything is a tad too big. The tabs are too tall, there's too much padding around tabs, and there's too much padding around menu options in general. I understand it makes things more readable, but the menus are slightly less usable as a result. The new context menu is especially annoying. Before, the context menu was small enough that it would always appear with the top next to the cursor. Now, situations where I must move my cursor upwards to access "Open in new tab" are way too frequent. Just shaving a couple pixels here and there on all the padding would save so much real estate without sacrificing much readability.
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level 1
The Firefox 89.0 release notes say:
"Inspired tab design: Floating tabs neatly contain information and surface cues when you need them, like visual indicators for audio controls. The rounded design of the active tab supports focus and signals the ability to easily move the tab as needed."
and that could not be more wrong. I don't know who these tabs are designed for, but they are not designed for me. These huge, ugly tabs don't help me at all. They give me no additional cues or information. The rounded design does not make it easier to understand or move anything. I regularly have 20-50 tabs open, move them around all the time depending on what I'm currently going, and all the new design does it make me mistakenly hit the audio controls more often and take up space. Also, the lack of divisions between tabs just looks awful. It is a continuous ribbon of tabs now. I don't know how this is supposed to be an improvement.
All of this would not be so bad if Compact density was a standard option that I could rely on. But for some unfathomable reason the team decided not to support that. The moment it disappears or stops working correctly will probably be the moment I move to another browser. I simply don't understand why anyone thought that was a good move.
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I don't usually search out comment threads about software updates, but the current changes to Firefox in the latest update makes Firefox look ugly and bloated. There is too much vertical space being taken up by the tabs, and the menus have the same problem. It's distracting and takes away space from the webpages you actually want to see with the Firefox UI. The whole point of minimalist UI is to be less distracting and preserve screenspace, which the current UI totally goes against. I disabled Proton, and enabled compact mode, which helps a little bit, but the fact that these are only temporary fixes, that are likely to be removed doesn't bode well for me to continue using Firefox in the future if these terrible UI design decisions aren't reversed in the next update.
The way things are going I might as well use Chrome or some other browser. At this point Chrome looks better and cleaner than this version of Firefox. Also, I had to switch to the dark theme, because the light theme I was using is now glaringly bright, which the bigger UI makes even worse, before I switched as much as I could of it to the way it was before.
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I'm sorry to say I don't have any real feedback on the proton update because I disabled everything proton as soon as I found out how due to the indistinguishable tabs and how everything became approximately the same shade of grey.
Please give some consideration to people who don't want to have to mess around too much with the UI and make the default something less horrible.
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The bookmark menu is too large, the blank space between each entry is unnecessarily large, before I could access everything instantly upon clicking the bookmark star, now I have to painfully and slowly scroll to get to the bottom.
any fix for this?
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· 4d · edited 4d
New UI is not good and way too BIG.Too much space is unused and gets in the way of the actual content we are looking at.Compact mode needs to be fully reinstated and not hidden for new users.Tabs need to be connected and not floating in space.Active and inactive tabs should be obvious at a glance.Tab separators seem to be too much work for the designers now too. Contrast is terrible.Icon removal is a bad design choice.With icons the workflow is much faster.There is no convenience to this new design.Replacing the mute icon with text is another very bad decision.The list goes on and on for Firefox 89.0.It is also slower than version 88.0 on my desktop.The people responsible for this should hang their heads in shame.This was designed for touch users not desktop.
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· 4d · edited 4d
Firefox 90
Changelog: The Update prompt has been removed as we studied over 17 billion clicks to avoid updating what you loved. /s
I'm not a fan of the new design and in fact detest it, why were these changes not previewed to a test group? Does Firefox even internally test their new releases?
Everything I used Firefox for, the simple complexity, if I can say that, is why I preferred Firefox over Google Chrome. Now it's just all over the place.
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I have no idea why developers of today think that wasted screen area is so desirable. Do most desktop Firefox users use laptops or small screen devices? Everything has to be BIG! Taller tabs, taller favorites. In the future the tabs will take up half of the screen.
Also the "floating" tabs look (sorry for strong wording here but) horrible! It reminds me of when a website hasn't loaded properly, breaking the UI, from e.g. having javascript disabled or that something is missing or broken. It really looks like the the Firefox UI has become corrupted.
I disabled everything proton through about:config immediately.
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One thing ive noticed, is replacing the tab icon with the speaker for audio-source tabs makes those tabs much harder to find. The speaker icon blends in with the background and you can no longer use the website icon to identify say, a youtube tab.
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Design for design sake, downgrading user experience. No benefit other than pizzazz. Cannot find one improvement discussed in this thread --- not a single I hate it, but at least they ___. Let me know if I missed it.
I hope the about:config>proton>false settings keep this obnoxious interface at bay for a long time.
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More posts from the firefox community
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WWDC 2021 — June 7 | Apple [1:31:34 → 1:32:07]
It's a shame to see Mozilla dropping support for compact mode. Especially when a company like Apple (with plenty of money for market research) makes their browser interface much more compact.
EDIT: you can vote for it here: https://mozilla.crowdicity.com/post/719764
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Great work over there at Mozilla.
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2Look, to be blunt, nobody asked for this redesign. Other browsers go for years without redesigns, look at Chrome which stayed the same for years until a redesign in 2018 with rounded tabs or Safari which basically has the same look as 10 years ago. Yet Firefox keeps being redesigned for no good reason, based on inaccurate telemetry data that power users have disabled anyway.
All the while the share of users on Firefox is dropping: it is currently at 3.4% of the worldwide market share. Its performance is lagging behind its competitors. Extensions are still broken after the switch over to web extensions. Mozilla should redirect resources from the UI/UX work to the backend development to improve performance and help Firefox to stay the browser that we love and differentiate itself in the browser market by being its own thing, not a clone of Chrome.
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Casual users around me, namely my gf and parents, love the new redesign. They all use Firefox because I use it too and I'm "the IT guy". I talked to my gf about it today and she said she feels better using it now. It seems to me that even though it has its issues (and some like the lack of an easy way to enable compact mode are VERY real issues), it might attract new users just by its look and that is a good thing!
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With so many negative feedback around here I just wanted to say some good stuff.
Firefox on Android has nailed the UI. Looks cool, easy to use and understand. There's no reason I have to use other browsers on Android.
Yes desktop interface could have been improved like the active tab color, missing icons for menus etc. But of course Mozilla might consider this in the coming versions.
Let's not be jerks to an organization that cares about open web and let's provide them constructive criticisms instead of rants.
Thank you Mozilla for giving us Firefox.
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Your preference of the best default experience with Firefox (without requiring mods to userChrome or anything else).
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I like the new theme, it's fresh air and somewhat consistent with Windows (excluding the global roundness), but the contrast is completely gone. Without focusing with the eyes, it's basically all white. It's fatiguing and ugly to look.
On a side node, while writing this post, I realized font rendering on Windows has worsened. Is it just me?
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So, shortly after the Firefox update rolled out, I had a conversation about it with a friend. I said that the changes didn’t make much of a difference for me personally. He said that he absolutely loved it (yes, those people do exist). And then I said (pulling the quote out of our Discord chat): “I don’t really know what I would change about its current UI [speaking about Firefox]. I would probably put everything on just one bar with a bunch of dropdown option. I basically only need an address bar, bookmarks, and tabs.” My friend’s answer was (direct quote): “Sounds horribly crammed.”
WWDC comes around and Apple announces the Safari redesign and I loved it! It comes very close to what I had in mind when I was having that discussion with my friend. In fact, it’s a lot better than even what I thought up in my head. I now wish I had the money to buy any Mac, just so that I could use Safari.
I doubt that Firefox would ever get a radical redesign like that, so now I wonder: Through extensions and whatnot, could I achieve something like what Apple did with Safari on Firefox?
Also, how would you like it if Firefox got redesigned the way Safari did? All on one bar? Highlighted tabs expand to reveal address bar? If you saw the Safari redesign, what did you think of it?
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Comments are locked
Even if I go to about:config and set the compact mode enabled there is still a huge amount of space taken by the new design which is taking far beyond being compact making it almost the normal size of the old version. I loved that feature and going to miss it...
https://i.redd.it/canof9ujnl371.jpg126
Apple is releasing a new version of Safari and it actually looks pretty good. They are using the same kind of floating tabs as proton rn but they're much smaller. I wonder what you all think of it, especially compared to proton.
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Are tab separators going to be added?
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Comments are locked
Can you please make UI changes opt-in rather than FORCE those changes on us? Thank you!
I don't need to waste 3 hours just trying to restore everything as it was. Not to mention that this update completely broke my tabs, so my browser was without tabs AT ALL, so I couldn't even use it to search for information on how to restore it.
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Created Jan 25, 2008