Mozilla is working on a big Firefox redesign, here is what it looks like
I hope it's just a joke
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Comments105https://www.neowin.net/news/mozilla-is-working-on-a-big-firefox-redesign-here-is-what-it-looks-like/Open linkView original on lemmy.ml
I hope it's just a joke
I'm thoroughly convinced UI designers are under the impression we cut ourselves on sharp corners.
Bring back more drop shadows and skeuomorphism
I hope I can live enough to see that.
I just updated my Jetbrains Rider IDE and holy border radius batman.
No thank you. I like Firefox the way it is. I hate big changes for the sake of designers keeping their jobs changing my tools and workflow and making things ugly.
Right. My sentiments exactly. Hopefully this won't trickle its way into LibreWolf ...
I don't like gaps, included rounded corners. Let me use all my screen space dammit
I really hate the trend of people just randomly changing UI in apps for no apparent reason. It's just a pervasive problem at this point.
I'm far from an expert, but Ui design as a job seems to have a huge flaw were if you eventually make the "perfect Ui" you're suddenly out of a job.
So you're straight up punished for doing your job well and the only way to maintain a career is to just re-invent the wheel every so often and chase the trends of others doing the same thing so your Ui designs don't look "outdated"
You are correct. Unlike other teams design teams can be actually "done" at some point. But just like other teams design teams need to constantly produce something.
That could be an aspect too.
Definitely, after the redesign i now have to read all the labels because just about everything has changed its layout
Exactly, and I get why companies do it. They generally prioritize bringing new customers on, so they tweak things because they think it's more trendy or appealing. But for an open source project to do these things just makes no sense at all. I get the impression people running things at Mozilla are completely disconnected from what Firefox users actually want at this point.
Well, their main problem is attention. And we are looking at a news article right now.
If they just want attention maybe buying some add would be a better way to put them forward honestly. Or even trying to go on B2B custom deal for larger companies thar want a corporate experience...
You're right. It's too few AI chatbots!
literally just fix bugs
There is way too much white-space in this design. I'm tired of getting higher resolution displays only to lose that resolution to applications that get chunkier.
This seems so out of place on every OS and DE I can think of.
bring back native styling!
I'm seeing this trend towards rounded corners in quite a few places, though. Certainly feels like early days of a larger design trend...
Yes, my first thought went to JetBrains IDEs recent "Islands" redesign, but it somehow looks better in dark mode than it does in these mockups.
Old Firefox looked perfectly fine. I don't know why they keep wasting so many resources on changing something that already worked.
Because aesthethics also change through the years. You have to make your product appealing to today's standards.
While this may be true for commercial products and services, Firefox was never supposed to be one.
Every software application Is a commercial product itself. The more appealing, the more users and thus relevance...
Ultimately I just need Firefox to always support about:config, manifest v2 compatibility, and userChrome.css and userContent.css.
That said, usually changes like these break my extremely minimal redesign and configs I have on my desktop. So... boo, Mozilla, boo....
userContent.css is absolutely essential for me. I use that to limit the size of images on Thunderbird.
Isn't userchrome.cc already deprecated for quite some time?
It'd be news to me, I've used the same userChrome.css and userContent.css for years now and I keep my Gentoo Linux desktop up to date with weekly updates, so the Firefox I'm using is confirmed to be the latest version.
Additionally, a quick search on ddg reveals no recent mentions nor plans for deprecation of the feature as far as I can tell.
I found this Reddit discussion
The timeline fits (pre-covid), but I got the word wrong. I thought userchrome would've been killed of by now.
I prefer standardized OS wide appearances that are respected by all apps. The only skinning I want are Dark Modes or Mini Player modes (for media players).
Wow look at those default screenshots. They look horrible, what a mess.
A useless sidebar, a lot of mess in the homepage, stupid shit being pushed to you.
Everytime i install Firefox i need to do a huge config setup to remove all that useless crap
Guarantee you can turn off the sidebar. They already have this and it can be disabled. Why not use it for three seconds? I despise the Mozilla NGO stuff ruining Firefox but this is utterly benign. Dynamic colors are cute and fun.
You can. For now.
Because every now and again, it's a new three seconds. First it was the password manager. Then Sync. Then Monitor. Then AI chatbot.Before all of that it was a bunch of other things. Then it was the side tabs. _You gotta check them out!* Now it's this.
For me as well, I need to use the firefox profile creator website to get rid of all these things. It takes a good few minutes to configure. But for someone who may not know about the website? At least half an hour to thoroughly go through Preferences, and most things aren't even there!
Sure!
Until you try putting them on an old laptop. Because why would anyone be using an old laptop in
20252026? And then, how dare they expect to be able to browse the web? (Because static sites to download useful stuff apparently don't exist, nor do people who'd like to do that which don't know about curl).This isn't just a Firefox problem, it's a global one. Instead of functionality, what's preferred is aesthetics. Instead of accessiblity, how accessible able people feel it is. Instead of performance, bloat.
Most of these things could be optional, Firefox Approved First-party add-ons or integrations, but this isn't the route this timeline has taken.
my god you're right, they've sold out to Big Sidebar. the problem with their Sync is that it has no self-hostable e2ee option and you need to use Firefox servers that use Google stuff. comparing apples and rotten oranges most of this is silly
Yeah, because for Windows, when you accidentally hover over the weather widget for 0.5 ms longer than some programmer decided will force you to connect to MSN.
Mozilla is clearly immune to analytics and took a hard stance that didn't and will never change, so pardon me for entertaining your thought.
And there's just no way the Sync icon becomes an auto-opening popup (possibly in the Sidebar), because the designers won't come up with the brilliant idea.
This talk at M$ can never happen at Mozilla, from what we've seen in the past 5+ years.
Given with Mozilla's recent track record, it just might.
This isn't ideologcal creep that can be forestalled by purism and hatred of sidebars 😭 the corporate side of Mozilla with push that stuff whether or not you complain about the occasional good thing they do. Please get a grip
One of the most irritating things about their management is these delays, the worst of which can be seen with Thunderbird/Betterbird situation. Community has been waiting years for shit that was already fixes to be added & they won't add QA testers
AFAIK, Thunderbird isn't a Mozilla product anymore. They are an independent team.
Ah thx right right I forgot how it's all laid out now exactly, it really is a similar way of handling feedback + contributions though. I've taken some space from those discussions since they straight up wormhole me back to a bad emotional place 🤣 I wasted so much effort on Mozilla as a kid, it was like a direct transition from video game forums + modding
I know it's not the designers' fault (at least not completely).
They're part of the problem - mostly a symptom. The only real sin they've done is tried to keep their job - which I can't really blame them for. But it is a shame it harms users as a consequence.
But I see no problem in bashing bad design, because if no one does, Corporate is gonna continue doing what they do. People need to speak about their wishes. Sure, most won't be heeded, but what other way do you suggest for me (and most others in the thread) to do? Like this we at least have our little echo chamber to shit in.
It's not about the sidebar, but what it represents. It's a symptom of a larger problem - one you've correctly identified, yet do nothing about. I'm at least being a brat about it. Maybe if enough people complain, someone "in power" might get an idea as well.
I would argue this kind of blanket condemnation of Mozilla Doing Anything could be used by the Google opps in the org to justify adding more "premium features" that make money (but really don't) instead of improving the goddamned browser and convince them we are not worth considering anyways, which WILL kill the browser. The default launcher on one of my ereaders has a fucking dead Pocket button and you think I'm not pissed off at this lol
I guarantee the programmer wasn't the one who made the decision there lol
I used the side bar constantly in work as ive usually got 6 million tabs open. You can collapse it, and its off by default.
Agreed, never asked for the side bar, never gonna use it.
Believe it or not, they make the browser not just for you. I don't use the sidebar either, but a colleague uses nothing but the sidebar.
God forbid the most unresponsive software dev group standardize a feature remade 4+ different ways by the community, years late
Its already in Firefox. Its disabled by default. They're just showing what it looks like.
No, it's enabled by default when you install Firefox :(
Straight to jail?
Argh, yet another userchrome.css overhaul to do.
This looks... nice actually, the settings reminds me of Microsoft Edge though
I like it too 😅 Although I'd prefer to be able to reduce the spacing as much as possible
speaking of spacing, here's one of the main reasons I'm still using Firefox, if that goes away, I'll stop using it altogether, I'm not a grandpa to deserve all that spacing!
?
I wasn't that interested in rounded corners for a while, but I do see some value in it now. When it's done well, the UI becomes more usable and intuitive. The problem is when a lot of GUIs do it poorly in order to be trendy.
It helps with the grouping of visual elements for one, for Gestalt reasons
Zen browser has iterated to something pretty good now: https://zen-browser.app/
The
Firefoxredesign screenshot from the article has a few issues imo. The floating task bar doesn't make sense to me, since that's a core part of the program. The other items are either attached or contained within it, it shouldn't be isolated off like that. Otherwise yea, too much wasted spaceAh, no, the "taskbar" is Tree Style Tabs, usually full of tabs. But screenshoting that here, i could as well post my browsing history.
Or you do mean the "Awesomebar". But then i don't get what you mean, since i've just removed the borders from the urlbox & co (the reverse of them being isolated).
Ah sorry I meant the screenshots from the article, I should have specified.
I like yours. Best for me would be something with that layout and spacing, and modern design elements
thanks i hate it if youre gonna keep going chromium then take from vivaldi.
but really you should take from seamonkey and palemoon for ui ideas mozilla
oh please no. i fucking hate having to edit my userchrome on every updates..
Yes, the classic Mozilla April Fools joke, released a full month early.
off by one error
They forgot that Date.getMonth() is zero-indexed
again??? why????
Designers need a reason to exist. So instead of doing user surveys and making new, modular themes (so you can choose the redesign), they scrap everything every few years so they have something to do. Because apparently modularity is hard.
Please don't AI...
Monterey theme or Gnome theme forever.
Golly I can't wait.
But could they get rid of the spy shit first?
Looks identical to Opera browser theme.
Actually, I have round edges. The reason I still prefer Firefox is its squarish design looks more professional and authentic. Anyway Mozilla will never add any features that users wish to have but actively changes unnecessary things. Anyway good luck Mozilla!
Seems like Mozilla is still too rich if they can afford complete redesign of their product every 3 years. Let's hope the lepton ui fix will continue to work, I might have to up my donation there..
Firefox hasn't looked good since they changed "Photon" for "Proton" with those awful floating tabs. Thank god for Zen Browser.
The mobile client and fork I use both have that design language now. It's a little cutesy for me and I dislike having to click twice to get the full menu but otherwise no complaints.
Settings –> customize -> toolbar layout -> expanded
Thank you, that's great.
Again?
Again?
It looks fine, I guess...? Then again, I thought the old design was fine as it was...
😡
I like this a lot! However I hope they keep the userChrome function because as nice as it is I’m going to keep my LibAdwaita skin anyways.
I hope vertical tabs will get hidden in fullscreen mode this annoys me a lot now
Switch to Zen. You can toggle vertical tabs with a key press.
Hmmm, I think it needs more rounded corners and padding. - UI designer in 2026
Wtf are the symbols on the left?
FFS I miss drop down menus with text options instead of hieroglyphics.
::: spoiler Sparkles icon means stochastic parrot (already in current Firefox) :::
Thanks. And fuck. I guess you can remove it from the menus. So there's that. Relegate that shit to extensions if you have to.
As much as I loved firefox in the early days - i find it so slow compared to just about all the chrominum based offshoots ive tried. And UX wise - its just confusing to see things change constantly.
It's slower because no one cares about web standards anymore, websites are just optimized for Chromium nowadays.
By "optimized", I assume you mean overloaded with tons of crap, ads, spy-features but somewhat running less slow on Chrome?
I've never really understood the whole obsession with browser speed....
I mean so what if one browser loads a page in 10 seconds and this one takes 11 seconds. There's no real difference.
Cabt say I have noticed a difference in the last 5 years. They seem about the same to me.
Yeah I wished there was an option to not use their new look... I've just had the up dated look on android and honestly don't like it. I'll get tmuse to it but you know it's just a question of time.
For the love of Odin can I please get a title and menu bar.
When you have tabs across the screen where would you click and hold to drag the window?
I didn't know people actually liked title bars eating up a window's vertical space.
Firefox specifically adds a bit of padding either side of said tabs in non-maximised windows.
No, I'll install a better designed browser instead.
Then why are you asking for a separate titlebar?
That's a different user. I wonder what browser they will switch to which does have title bars enabled by default.
I think Quantum was last redesign which is older than half a decade now, time flies
nope, they switched to proton from photon around 2023 iirc
From the article:
(The design that landed alongside the Quantum update was called "Photon".)
Unfortunately, style in the GUI means a lot these days. If you don't match what MacOS and Windows are doing, your software will look old and unappealing.
Changing Firefox is risky because you can lose current users, but necessary if you want new people.
I'm hoping this rewrite simplifies the ui code rather. The existing userstyle system is a headache to modify with the documentation being so scattered.
Proton was already fuck awful.