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How to make a better default Firefox UI

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Re: How to make a better default Firefox UI

#221

Post by asadotzler »

beAbU wrote: post #44
OJFord wrote: post #22

Whenever I see someone using (or a screenshot of) horizontal tabs I'm just shocked that people put up with it, or perhaps even more so that it's still the default in all major (and minor?) browsers. I recommend Sidebery, but more than that I just recommend something to get your tabs listed vertically in a sidebar, so they don't squash each other up as you add more until you can't tell what's what at a glance, the wid…

Whenever I see someone using (or a screenshot of) vertical tabs I'm just shocked that people put up with so many open tabs at once. I have maybe max 20 tabs open at any given time. When I'm done with $TASK I close all the tabs (save 2-3 that remain open and pinned, mail, calendar, etc). The tab bar is like my stack. I only fill it up for the task at hand, then clear the stack and move on when done. If there are thing…

Look at Mozilla telemetry and you'll see most people have a few tabs open, and overwhelmingly most people's tabs all fit in the horizontal bar with no scrolling. People with more tabs than that are a low single digit percentage.

Re: How to make a better default Firefox UI

#223

Post by jwells89 »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #208
jwells89 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s fine for some things to have a popover and window, but it needs to be implemented intelligently. Like in Safari, downloads are a popover by default, but the popover can be “torn off” to become a window. Use cases for both are served, yet consistency is maintained. Firefox could use a good dose of this thinking.

Thats exactly how firefox works out of the box, no? On my firefox at least theres a popover with a few recent downloads and a button to show all downloads.

Not quite, in Firefox the downloads popover and downloads window are totally separate from each other with different UIs that can both be open simultaneously. In Safari the window and popup are one in the same, with the user being able to choose how to present it.

Re: How to make a better default Firefox UI

#224

Post by afavour »

ndriscoll wrote: post #134
afavour wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be metrics driven the whole way. - Compact mode is rarely used and a pain to maintain - If we hide the feature, what's the user reaction? - Minimal user reaction to hiding, we're safe to remove

Of course, people who modify their settings in the first place are more likely to disable telemetry, particularly if they're choosing a non-default, low market-share application that specifically bills itself as privacy friendly.

If you disable telemetry that’s being sent to a company you trust and a product you care about then that’s on you, frankly.

Re: How to make a better default Firefox UI

#225

Post by TillE »

jwells89 wrote: post #137
j1elo wrote: post #98

Everyone is writing their pet peeves, so here are mine: * Having a large tree of bookmark folders, navigating it to add a new bookmark is horrible in the small pop-up that is the "Add Bookmark" UI. * The Bookmarks sidebar allows to search by name but not to find where they are. A bookmark search add-on (Bookmark search plus 2) solves this, but it shouldn't be needed. EDIT: I've been told about right-click -> Show in…

Bookmarks have received woefully little attention in all browsers for reasons unknown to me. If one pulls up a browser from 20 years ago, bookmark management is basically identical or even slightly better in some circumstances. I guess making bookmarks better isn’t sexy so nobody’s bothered.

Over the years, there have been dozens of serious attempts at reinventing bookmarks (from third-party services and plugins), and none of them have caught on.

My conclusion is that they're just not a concept that works for people; they got squeezed out by web search on one side and complex note-taking applications on the other.

Re: How to make a better default Firefox UI

#226

Post by nathansherburn »

medstrom wrote: post #152
logicprog wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's strange, I much prefer a substantial amount of padding to my interfaces. Having a good amount of padding lowers the visual noise/clutter and gives everything room to breathe, which may not give a specific practical advantage, but makes me feel less anxious looking at it.

It's strange, the absence of padding gives me room to breathe, because if I can quickly scan a menu with my eye then I feel I have good overview and control over affairs. With more padding, you cannot do the same scanning motion with the eye, you have to read each item as a single atom unto itself, and suddenly the menu has become a jungle of megaliths where it's easy to get lost.

There is research out there that shows use of white space can improve things like reading speed and comprehension.

An example for text paragraphs: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Reading-Online-Text%3A...

I think it really depends on individuals though. If you can memorise a dense screen of buttons you'll be able to work faster, avoid scrolling etc. But it'll make the UI harder to use for people who don't use it regularly.

Ultimately, every UI has to strike a balance. If you do it right you'll piss off both sides equally.

Re: How to make a better default Firefox UI

#227

Post by jwells89 »

TillE wrote: post #225
jwells89 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bookmarks have received woefully little attention in all browsers for reasons unknown to me. If one pulls up a browser from 20 years ago, bookmark management is basically identical or even slightly better in some circumstances. I guess making bookmarks better isn’t sexy so nobody’s bothered.

Over the years, there have been dozens of serious attempts at reinventing bookmarks (from third-party services and plugins), and none of them have caught on. My conclusion is that they're just not a concept that works for people; they got squeezed out by web search on one side and complex note-taking applications on the other.

I think there’s room for better bookmarks, but they have to be a part of the browser proper… third party apps and even browser extensions can never be integrated to the required extent, but none of the big browser makers have iterated in this space at all.

Re: How to make a better default Firefox UI

#228

Post by pxc »

Shrezzing wrote: post #89
logicprog wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's strange, I much prefer a substantial amount of padding to my interfaces. Having a good amount of padding lowers the visual noise/clutter and gives everything room to breathe, which may not give a specific practical advantage, but makes me feel less anxious looking at it.

Padding's great on my desktop with two 24" monitors. On my one-screen 13" laptop it's less welcome.

Padding still gets in my way on a 38" ultrawide with two 24" monitors next to it, because my poor (uncorrectable) vision requires substantial UI scaling.

If you can use tiny fonts for everything else I'm sure the padding is less painful but it's super annoying if you have to scale things up and you can actually get completely lost in it if you have to use much fullscreen magnification.

This would be less frustrating if I could easily scale up UI fonts without also scaling up the whole UI proportionally, along with the padding.

In terms of apps in my life with annoying padding or wasteful use of screen real estate, though, I have to say Firefox doesn't even remotely make the list.

Re: How to make a better default Firefox UI

#229

Post by 1317 »

Izkata wrote: post #173
prmoustache wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Chrome looks almost exactly like it did over 10 years ago. I suggest you look for screenshot of Google Chrome in 2008. Market share is what it is because google is pre installed in the majority of the mobile market, that firefox had bad performance rep in some areas, and that google is a synonym of internet in the mouth of the majority of people nowadays the same way explorer was a few decades ago. Most people don'…

2008: https://techcrunch.com/2008/09/01/first-public-screen-captur... 2016: https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/google-chrome 2024: https://flathub.org/apps/com.google.Chrome They're basically the same, nothing like what Firefox has been doing. Buttons went flat, bookmarks moved to the right, and two dropdowns got combined into one menu. Tabs haven't changed at all.

your 2024 screenshot is outdated; here's a more recent one: https://www.google.com/chrome/static/images/heroes/browser_n...

Re: How to make a better default Firefox UI

#230

Post by pxc »

015a wrote: post #113
bloopernova wrote: post #90

Better browser UX, in my strongly-held opinion, starts with vertical tabs. With horizontal tabs, you can have maybe 6 to 8 tabs open before things tabs get difficult to manage or track. With vertical, nested tabs; links that open in a new tab are automatically made a child tab. From that you can infer structure and context more easily than horizontal tabs. Then you add colours to indicate different sites and now you…

To each their own, but: I strongly believe the opposite. Of course having more than 6 or 8 tabs open in a horizontal tab bar makes tabs difficult to manage and track. I've used Arc for the past 6 months. Having 6 or 8 tabs open in a vertical tab bar is also difficult to manage or track. I end up just spam-closing all of them and starting fresh pretty much every 4 hours anyway. Here's the two arguments I've heard that…

> (2) But: Monitors almost always have more horizontal pixels than vertical pixels. So, actually, a vertical tab bar better-leverages the aspect ratio your monitor is built at. This feels true at 16:9 and greater aspect ratios

This is true, and as a vertical tab bar user, it's important to me. However, when every app follows this logic and decides it gets to have a sidebar (or two!), all of a sudden I'm looking at a lot of apps that are barely usable unless they're maximized.

I often find myself thinking 'hey, fuck you, $APP! those pixels are for my vertical tab bar!!'

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