One thing I don't understand is why they felt the need to make the UI bigger, I can't be the only one who mostly uses a 13" screen
Behind the design of the fresh new Firefox coming June 1
71–80 of 185 posts
Re: Behind the design of the fresh new Firefox coming June 1
#72I remember reading about the end of "compact" mode some weeks/months ago. With this update, it seems that change is finally here... Almost.
Downloading the nightly build, some investigation reveals the ability to reduce the space stolen by the user interface for pointless margins is hidden in about:config and can be found by searching there for "density."
Nonsensically, the browser.uidensity field allows values 0, 1, and 2, but:
* 0 has some useless UI margin space
* 1 has less useless UI margin space
* 2 has more useless UI margin space
What?? I guess incremental values were always supposed to go middle, low, high and I am just a crank.
All three options waste more vertical space with useless UI margins than the current version of Firefox. Designers have decided that their user interface is more important than the content it enables, and therefore we all must have more useless UI margin space.
Edit: Upon further investigation, browser.compactmode.show can be set to true and restore the feature on the customize toolbar page. For now. With the scary parenthetical warning "not supported."
Re: Behind the design of the fresh new Firefox coming June 1
#73For the Pocket haters:
1. Why?
2. How would you implement a replacement functionality, whether in or outside the browser itself?
3. If you're using an alternative now, what is it?
Re: Behind the design of the fresh new Firefox coming June 1
#74Firefox doesn't need another UI refresh. It needs performance enhancements and bug fixes. I've been using Firefox as my primary browser for years, and I'm tired of feeling like I'm using second class software.
The people who are making the designs are not the same people who are fixing bugs and improve performance. If you replaced all UX designers with SWE you will gain development speed in the short term and end up with an outdated looking app after a few years.
The funny thing is that I don't use any of the buttons in the browser. I use the URL bar to tell the browser what to show me. Cmd-T for new tap, then Cmd-opt-arrows to view the various things I've asked the browser to show me. Cmd-R for a refresh. Don't need a button for that. Multi-finger swipes for back/forward. My home is set to a blank page, so it's a useless button for me. Seems to me like a simple UI could be had. Got no opions on mobile. Don't use it enough to know what that experience is like. No get off my lawn!!
Re: Behind the design of the fresh new Firefox coming June 1
#75Firefox doesn't need another UI refresh. It needs performance enhancements and bug fixes. I've been using Firefox as my primary browser for years, and I'm tired of feeling like I'm using second class software.
Yes, they also need to tackle power efficiency, otherwise laptop users will be forced to use either Edge or Safari. At the moment, as I understand it, it pretty much runs all open tabs at full throttle.
Re: Behind the design of the fresh new Firefox coming June 1
#76Every announcement makes me happier that I disabled auto updates several versions ago
From a UI/UX perspective, yes.
From a security perspective: hell fucking no. You need those updates.
Even if you're just doing plain-jane browsing, with no finance, commerce, professional, government, or personal interaction, you're putting your entire system at risk.
(TailsOS users possibly excepted.)
Re: Behind the design of the fresh new Firefox coming June 1
#77Ah yes, we have no money so let's invest a ton of work into something that will do nothing to bring in new or lost users, but, given our track record, has the potential to alienate even more of our ever fewer remaining users.
Back in the early days of Chrome, I definitely feel that a lot of people switched and continued using it because it looked and felt better.
When I use Edge Chrome, ironically gmail tells me to switch to Chrome, that is how people switched to Chrome.
Re: Behind the design of the fresh new Firefox coming June 1
#78And this kids is how Web ===> ChromeOS.
Re: Behind the design of the fresh new Firefox coming June 1
#79The UI heatmap shows that nobody clicks Pocket, but the video highlights that pocket is "refreshed" and is part of the new design. Dear Firefox, that's not how things work.
No, that's exactly how UX research works: - Users are using X feature a lot. 1) the researcher likes the feature: let's invest time into improving it. Or 2) the researcher dislikes the feature: we need to remove it because it's adding too much friction - Users are not using feature X a lot. 1) the researcher likes the feature: users aren't discovering this feature, we need to make it more prominent. 2) the researcher…
Hopefully they'll copy Chrome as usual and bring back RSS support.
Re: Behind the design of the fresh new Firefox coming June 1
#80Users: we hate it. Metrics: few people click this Managers: MAKE IT BIGGER Dear Firefox Mangers: you make it hard to want to use your product. I used to love it. I only like it now. Really the only thing you've got going right now is that you're NOT Chrome. Get good!!
For me "love" was last felt for Firefox in maybe the 2.x days, at the latest. After that it was back to "why am I still not using Opera? Oh yeah, the banner ads. Back to FF I guess, even though it's slow now". Then it was "Chrome is like FF but crashes less and the dev tools are better, also Google's only probably evil and not yet definitely evil so it's fine, now I'm a Chrome user". Then it was "Chrome and FF both make my system beachball a lot and eat a couple hours of battery life for, apparently, no good reason, guess I'm a Safari user now, sure didn't see that coming". I'm not thrilled that that's where I'm still at, but, it is.
Firefox needs to Phoenix itself to get me to like it again. It's the Netscape Navigator / Mozilla Browser it replaced, now. Or go nuts and incorporate some other Internet protocols. Maybe become the open social network browser? Anything to give me a reason to care about it again. I want to.