Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to make a better default Firefox UI

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 266 posts

Re: How to make a better default Firefox UI

#241

Post by justsomehnguy »

asadotzler wrote: post #220
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…

Most users, like 90% or more have tabs that all fit visibly in the horizontal space. Look it up. Mozilla's telemetry is public. 5 or 6 tabs fit just fine and in a sidebar are hugely wasteful of pixels. You think everyone browses just like you so you can't imagine why the browser is shaped for people not like you but your browsing habits are in the ultra-minority. Take a look at the telemetry before making silly posts…

> sidebar are hugely wasteful of pixels

You know what is also a waste of pixels? Websites pretending they are mobile view only on my 4K desktop monitor in landscape. Blogs, new Reddit, Twitter, Mastodon, news sites, whatever else.

The vertical tabs wouldn't hurt that shit at all.

And if the vertical tabs would be a first class citizen in a browser it would greatly help so if needed I could have switch to it.

Re: How to make a better default Firefox UI

#242

Post by donkeybeer »

yorwba wrote: post #110
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…

Do you perhaps have muscle memory for the Ctrl+Shift+B shortcut that used to open a large side panel but now just shows a narrow horizontal bar? I do and I'm certainly annoyed by this redesign, but I discovered the "manage bookmarks" shortcut Ctrl+Shift+O that opens a larger pop-up window with your bookmarks, which so far seems almost as comfortable as the old side panel. It also lets you search for bookmarks and rig…

I am not sure what Ctrl+Shift+B used to show you, but Ctrl+B shows me a sidepanel (similar to the History panel) for bookmarks for me.

Re: How to make a better default Firefox UI

#243

Post by prmoustache »

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.

Tabs do not look as on your supposedly "2024" screenshot nowadays.

And most people don't care how their tabs look and are used to dropdowns menus being reorganized and losing or getting added entries. People are used to software slowly but gradually changing. It is not like mozilla went from original phoenix browser[1] to the current one in one release. These kind of changes only annoy a small fraction of people with some special disorders.

[1] whose simplicity and colored buttons I loved personnally

Re: How to make a better default Firefox UI

#244

Post by account42 »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #177
darkwater wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we have people in the camp "don't waste space with padding, please" and then, each time a KDE discussion appears "how the hell can they cram so many information and text with no padding, it's unreadable" camp. Damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

Well, yes and no. Different people want a different user experience. So this strikes me as a need for a new user configurable option. Make a new user option, so it is easy for users to compact information if they want to. It sucks having to support multiple states (more things to test and verify) but it seems like there is an audience for both ideas.

Firefox did have such an option - they removed it (or rather significantly gimped it) with the Proton UI update.

Re: How to make a better default Firefox UI

#245

Post by account42 »

afavour wrote: post #224
ndriscoll wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you use telemetry then you don't deserve any trust.

Re: How to make a better default Firefox UI

#246

Post by account42 »

asadotzler wrote: post #216
jwells89 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually when people call a feature bloat it’s because its presence, resource consumption, etc is too great relative to its value and utility to users or it’s not particularly relevant. I’d hesitate to call something like optional compact UI metrics “bloat”. To me the term is better applied to e.g. features associated with only tangentially related services or something running in the background sucking up CPU cycles…

All features require maintenance as code around them and through them changes with time. Feature bloat is very often code bloat and maintaining code costs money, especially 20 million lines of it. When a module owner sees an opportunity to improve their module by removing low-use features that are built on code that's a challenge to maintain, that's a good thing for the long term health of the code base and the featu…

And that's why all backup software should remove the restore feature, right?

Re: How to make a better default Firefox UI

#247

Post by alex3305 »

madeofpalk wrote: post #88
alex3305 wrote: post #26

Brave browser recently also introduced buttons. I was a tad annoyed with it, but accepted it. Until my wife recently saw the new look while I was working and asked how I could even put up with this. She argued that tabs should look like tabs and not buttons. Fortunately for Brave the rollback is quite easy with a flag in `brave://flags` where you can disable the `brave-horizontal-tabs-update` feature.

The downside of using hidden flags like this is that most of the time you're just delaying the inevitable, as opposed to just biting the bullet now. Up to you to decide which is the least worst.

You are right. However sometimes a change can be so bad, that there is no other option. For instance when Chrome changed the way zoom worked in their Android browser. I had to revert, otherwise it was unusable for me.

1. https://old.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/143ynrk/text_scalin...

Re: How to make a better default Firefox UI

#248

Post by afavour »

account42 wrote: post #245
afavour wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you use telemetry then you don't deserve any trust.

Why? If I trust Mozilla why should I be opposed to providing them anonymised data on what features I do and do not use?

Re: How to make a better default Firefox UI

#249

Post by djao »

jsrcout wrote: post #196
DonHopkins wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It bewilders me that any rational UI designer would be so arrogant as to make the unilateral unchangeable decision for all their users that they should only have tabs on one side, be it the top, bottom, left or right of the window. Why restrict users to using tabs on only one side and one side only? What's so special about that side, and bad about the other sides? What if the user is left handed, or has a tall monito…

I, too, remember when GUIs (not UXs!) respected the user's desires, workflow and general agency. That's not entirely gone yet, but it's going. Heck, Office 365 updated lately and now I have this ongoing little contest of displaying the tiniest number of coworker Teams comments in the hugest amount of white space. The results beggar belief. Edit: Teams (it's a Chrome browser window, but that's not really relevant to m…

For me, Pidgin with the MS Teams plugin solves this problem. Now I can chat with others on Teams, using a program designed for chat.

Re: How to make a better default Firefox UI

#250

Post by hulitu »

DonHopkins wrote: post #162
015a wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It bewilders me that any rational UI designer would be so arrogant as to make the unilateral unchangeable decision for all their users that they should only have tabs on one side, be it the top, bottom, left or right of the window. Why restrict users to using tabs on only one side and one side only? What's so special about that side, and bad about the other sides? What if the user is left handed, or has a tall monito…

> But all keyboards have all four arrow keys,

Please don't tell that to UX experts. They will replace all four with a hamburgher menu. /s

Post reply on HN