Firefox 57: new Photon design screenshots | Hacker News Reader

Firefox 57: new Photon design screenshots

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56 pointsanaxag0ras60 comments

Live mockups here (found via a link in Bugzilla; I don't know how accurate they are, but S[tephen] Horlander is a Mozilla designer): https://people-mozilla.org/~shorlander/projects/photon/Mocku...

And here are some first images for Photon on Android: https://www.soeren-hentzschel.at/firefox-android/erste-bilde... (article is in German, but the images will do ;)

That actually feels pretty good, and gives a far better impression than the static screenshots. Thanks for sharing!

What are they using for these mockups? I really enjoyed being able to show them in different desktop environments.

Oh, is Stephen Horlander back at Mozilla? I'd be happy to hear it, I thought that he had left a few years back.

Looks really nice

IMHO, Firefox needs to focus on performance now. There's nothing wrong with the 'old' UI. It is performance that made me move to Chrome.

Yes, this is part of those efforts. The UI redesign and performance projects are part of a cross-functional group working on making Firefox faster. They've talked about how part of the reason for square tabs is that they're much faster to draw for example.

Weekly newsletters about the "Quantum Flow" performance project here: https://ehsanakhgari.org/blog/2017-03-09/quantum-flow-engine...

Electrolysis has made a huge difference in performance for me in Firefox. It's really quite impressive once it's turned on. The problem is that having any number of legacy add-ons will turn it off. And "forcing" it on via the config menu won't get the full benefit, either. I had it forced on, but a number of my add-ons prevented the full multi-threaded performance and sandboxing from kicking in. So, on a whim, I disabled all of my add-ons that were interfering and gave it another go. The difference was like night and day.

I'd suggest at least giving it a shot.

Yes, performance, stability, and security are the primary goals of the quantum initiative. I suppose they figure that such a disruptive change might as well warrant a new UI while they're at it.

This is part of that.

The old UI required an antiquated, single-threaded, XML based widget system.

The new UI is a clean rewrite, which allows them to drop all that old, slow code from Firefox.

Try Brave to get a taste of what browsing used to feel like. Just ridiculously fast. It's so fast it "feels" fake, hard to explain. Try it.

Brave is built with the same rendering engine and JavaScript engine as Chrome (Blink and V8). I think the speed increase is probably due to the built-in ad blocker.

A fresh Chrome install with no extensions + uBlock will give you the same performance as Brave as evidenced from every independent test I've seen online. That's what Brave is. Chromium + custom theme + adblocker - extension support. You can get similar performance from Firefox now with a fresh install + uBlock + turning on Electrolysis.

Where's the search bar? I use that more than the URL bar, doesn't mean I don't want a URL bar too. Classic Theme Restorer will stop working when Mozilla goes web extensions only, and now this?

I stopped using the search bar long ago in favor of using "smart keywords" (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-address...) in the urlbar. Maybe that's an option for you as well.

I make DuckDuckGo my principal search engine, then use !bang syntax in the url/awesome bar.

I'm probably the biggest critic of Mozilla's godawful UI, but this is mostly acceptable. Really the only gripe I see here is that the URL bar isn't the full width of the page for some reason.

What remains to be seen is what happens to their user count once all the plugins get broken. That will impact a lot more people more dramatically than whatever UI fad they cook up.

The main reason they plan to break all old plugins are because of performance issues. They will probably lose some users, but they might gain others if they make Firefox sufficiently smoother and/or less memory hungry than Chrome.

I use several plugins that won't work and I'm not happy about it at all, but what's the alternative?

Chrome.

Mozilla's basically asking their user base to use a worse browser for some amount of time, during which they will have absolutely no tangible benefits over Chrome. They're not faster right now (judging by nightlies), they won't be faster on day one.

Firefox's current advantage is its addon system. It's losing a lot of functionality there.

Once that goes away, what's left? And is that "what's left" better than the competition?

I find firefoxs performance to beat chrome. While it's true Firefox lags slightly behind chrome in benchmarks, it also uses about a quarter of the RAM as chrome and electrolysis has fixed most of the hang problems I have. Why would I want something imperceptibly faster that makes every other app on my machine slower. And even with the nerfed addon system it's not like all the addons are going away, though some really popular ones will. RIP tab groups.

Then there's the soft arguments, chrome is designed to share my data with google and isn't fully FOSS, etc.

Chrome doesn't support more than web extensions either, and I think Firefox have other benefits over Chrome. One is that it isn't from Google, another is that I don't like how Chrome seems to have become the new de facto standard browser. The first site I found when searching just now has Chrome usage at 61.2% and Firefox at 6.3% [0]. I don't like monopolies, so I won't switch to Chrome. I've also used Firefox since before it was called Firefox, so there's a certain amount of sentimentality and brand loyalty, even though I certainly don't agree with every decision they make.

[0] https://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php

A clean Firefox install with Electrolysis enabled will get similar performance to Chrome for most folks these days. And you're using a browser that's more customizable even without legacy addons than Chrome is.

One advantage non-speed for many people is that it's not written by a company with a vested interest in ensuring you see advertisements and use their search engine. This can turn into technical and user experience advantages, too. As an example, Firefox on Android can use uBlock or AdBlock Plus to block ads. Chrome on Android can't.

It's still available if you drag it out of the configuration pane, it's just not in the default layout.

Mozilla needs to stop messing with the UI and removing functionality. From removing a lot of UI customization, to requiring extension signing, forcing PulseAudio on Linux and now removing the search bar. Congratulations Mozilla, it's Chrome.

I'm not sure who they're catering to anymore. People that like Chrome, but don't want to use it?

Edit: it looks very different than Chrome, but I feel like they're constantly copying (removing) functionality

They’re messing with the UI because the current UI still uses XUL (an antiquated XML based widget toolkit with lots of bugs, slow performance, and the cause of many Firefox issues).

This new UI is entirely HTML – allowing the browser to be a lot faster.

> to requiring extension signing

That’s to prevent the vast majority of Firefox users from getting auto-installed toolbars.

> forcing PulseAudio on Linux

You’re free to maintain the Firefox ALSA backend, which less than 1% of Linux users use, and which no one was willing to continue maintaining.

>This new UI is entirely HTML – allowing the browser to be a lot faster.

No, that is definitely not true. The rewrite is, however, part of an effort to make the UI something which can be represented in HTML easily, and they may be working on making as much of it HTML as possible, but bits of the UI will be XUL for a long time to come.

If they don't kill VimFX and Tree Style Tabs, I might still stick around because the competition is pretty weak. FireFox without audio pretty much sucks though.

Tree Style Tabs won't work with WebExtensions unless some new features get added to that framework.

Anyone know what's going on with the icons in the top left of the first screenshot? Or on this mockup posted by abrowne below:

https://people-mozilla.org/~shorlander/projects/photon/Mocku...

Would be quite useful to have an area like that for web apps. The browser could apply a heuristic similar to that used by Chrome for the 'pin to home screen' (a website that fulfills the PWA guidelines, and is used repeatedly), which would then be pinned to the new tab page, and when they are open go to that area at the top left. Or something.

But, anyone know what it's actually used for?

Pinned tabs, with a notification for new activity?

Ah, yes, just found that this already exists in firefox. Is it new?

Not particularly, I can't remember it not being there.

IIRC it came about during the last big redesign, australis.

Ah, right, thanks, just never stumbled across it.

People are so worried in moving buttons around and making things blue while calling it a redesign and here I am, just wishing for native horizontal tree style tabs in Firefox.

The page constantly re-renders on mobile - worst "responsive design" coded in JS ever seen.

Firefox market share is in free fall for months. Sad, but no wonder. They don't care about users. Support the old API as long you call your browser "Firefox". Fire all your "designer" that mess around with the UI - they habe too many off them, they are bored and change the look way too often. I removed the update service, and use Firefox only for local development and reverted back to the old Firebug. I would be interested in Servo plus an HTML based UI from them - but I don't wait for them, it see,s it will take 2+ more years for a useable version. I would have assumed the support the current Firefox with XUL until then, but without old API support and without XUL support, there is no reason for Firefox anymore. Chrome and Safari are far ahead.

Overall I like it but the short centered URL bar, unused space around it, and trimmed URL are terrible.

I've been loving the "minimized" tab theme that shipped recently (I can't remember what it's called - I can never find the "themes" stuff for Firefox... not prefs, not sure where you set it) - but one issue with it is you can't drag the window around by clicking a tab. I see they've addressed that by adding a few pixels above the tab now. I think this is a good idea, but I hope it means they've reduced the vertical size of a tab too: otherwise all the vertical-space gain is lost.

People here are complaining "stop changing the UI", but web browsers are our main interface to everything... and they are feeling very 90s - I welcome any efforts to do something different or updated!

One thing that I think would be interesting to try is to treat the browser as only the header by default: it doesn't have a "height". When you start the browser it's 80px high, and the window only shows after you load a tab. The landing pages seem like a waste/unnecessary to me. Annnyhooo.

The design looks great - I look forward to other improvements to follow suit (performance, plugin architecture, security, etc).

I'm still annoyed at Mozilla for killing off Jetpack. They told developers that was the long-term path. I haven't decided whether to update my add-ons or end-of-life them. Usage has declined in proportion to Firefox usage.

For me, Firefox's customizability is its biggest advantage. When this update rolls out and breaks many extensions and complete themes, I'm not sure what reason I'll have to choose Firefox over Chrome.

Looks like an EDGE ripoff. Why is there space to the left of pinned tabs and to the left of URL field? Is it used for something? I have no unused space in my Firefox UI right now, so this seems wasteful.

The only thing I like is that they moved bookmarks star back into the awesome bar. The current "joint bookmarks button" is the ugliest piece of UI I've ever seen.

It's really weird how for a long time stuff looked like Chrome with everything getting the smooth corners everywhere and then they gave the Developer Edition theme which had angles everywhere and now we get the Edge/Chrome all-in-one treatment. If I didn't know any better, I'd think Firefox is just throwing different UIs at a wall and seeing what sticks.

> to the left of pinned tabs

Presumably to allow one to click on the title bar, which the tabs otherwise occupy. The same gap exists in today's Firefox; when the window is maximized, I can slam my cursor into the upper-left corner and see that it's not hovering over a tab.

I'd prefer to see firefox attempt to disrupt the browser UI landscape somehow (in the same way tabs-in-the-browser did way back when) than see them just copy another design. Firefox decided it wanted to look like Chrome and now it's deciding it wants to look like Edge.

it's looking more and more like chrome

i'm not a fan of the wasted space around the centered but not-wide-enough url bar (urls are truncated even in the screenshots)

the rest seems decent though

it says the screenshots are mockups so i hope they improve

> i'm not a fan of the wasted space around the centered but not-wide-enough url bar (urls are truncated even in the screenshots)

Somewhere previously I saw a mockup screenshot that showed customizing the toolbar, and the URL bar was flanked by flexible placeholders that could be removed. Removing them would also let you have the URL bar be left-aligned instead of centered.

Photon is significantly less like Chrome than Australis.

As far as I can tell, among technical commentators, there is a one-dimensional spectrum of browser UI design: on the one end is Chrome, and on the other is Netscape Navigator 3. Because this does not look particularly like Netscape Navigator 3, by definition it must be Chrome-like. :)

Someone on HN posted the spec-ulation talk by Rich Hickey recently [1]. I found it really persuasive, with the fundamental point being: when you update your software in an incompatible way, you shouldn't bump the "major version" number; you should rename it.

I hope the firefox devs consider this approach. Firefox has great name recognition, but it will be a deficit if users learn that it is a name that means breakage.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyLBGkS5ICk

I might give it another look if they finally use native scroll behaviour in Android.

They keep messing around with the UI and changing it so often while also breaking extensions.

If you remove those features why wouldn't I just use chrome? It's faster and has more consistent usability

Fucked again. No one can stop Mozilla make Firefox more like Chrome.

Not again...

We can't we just summarily execute all designers? It would save so much diffuse suffering.

Tagentially, since Fx 57 will also kill legacy extensions like Htitle¹, I'm glad CSD (tabs in the titlebar) on Linux is showing some recent activity: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1283299

1: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/htitle/

They’re going to go even more GTK centric? That might actually drive me off, tbh.

I don’t want to rewrite my GTK themes all the time, just because GTK loves breaking the API. I don’t want to patch every version of Firefox manually to at least use Qt’s file and print dialogs.

Firefox already (ab)uses GTK+. Tabs in the titlebar will be optional.

It’s not about tabs in the titlebar being optional – in fact, I want them – but Qt’s API for that is still in development, and GTK’s CSD is probably the worst possible implementation of that feature.

And yes, every day Firefox continues using GTK or even adding any more integration is a bad day.

Fair enough – I certainly wouldn't mind a Qt version of Firefox – but as a user of GTK+-based desktops – lately mostly MATE, but also Xfce and sometimes GNOME – I like Firefox's GTK+ integration

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