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Comment by sovande | Hacker News Reader

Not the OP, but I'll chip in with my $.02. I really want to like Firefox, but everything UI feels wrong (on macOS). From tabs, where the close button is on the wrong side (right) and if you click the + button to open a new tab the cursor ends up over the new tab, not over the + button so you can click again to open a new tab. The whole UI looks and feels non-native. Pressing ESC in full screen mode does not bring the window back to its original size. In-page search opens a clunky (javascript?) search field in the bottom status bar. Firefox does not support proper macOS dark-mode (try cmd-O). Cannot print to PDF. (Magic mouse) gestures does not work. No automatic keychain integration for login forms. Fonts are rendered different than in Chrome and Safari, e.g. thin fonts are tick and font's in general look more ugly (something with antialiasing?). The list goes on and on. Basically Firefox feels like browser version of Slack.

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> No automatic keychain integration for login forms.

Chrome also stopped doing this, AFAIK.

Fun fact: I was subscribed to a firefox ticket "Password manager should support OS X Keychain" which is 18 years old, it got closed some months ago. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=106400

The other one that bugs me the most is lack of bouncy overscroll with my trackpad. Being used to that in the rest of the OS, it feels very jarring when you scroll up to the top of a page and it abruptly jerks to a stop.

> and if you click the + button to open a new tab the cursor ends up over the new tab, not over the + button so you can click again to open a new tab.

Same experience for me on Chrome on macOS too, so... You sure you didn't change those defaults somehow?

I usually open new tabs with Command + t or Control + t on Linux / Windows.

> From tabs, where the close button is on the wrong side (right)

Chrome does this.

> and if you click the + button to open a new tab the cursor ends up over the new tab, not over the + button so you can click again to open a new tab.

Chrome does this too.

> The whole UI looks and feels non-native.

Yep, that describes Chrome.

It sounds to me like you're a Safari user, since the things you're describing are things Safari does correctly. I'm a die-hard Safari user, and both Chrome and Firefox feel wrong to me. But Chrome feels even worse than Firefox does.

I'm so confused. I'm on Chrome for mac right now and half of those things seem to not exist in Chrome either.

- The 'x' is on the right of every tab.

- When I press '+', the cursor ends up over the new tab - I cannot immediately click '+' again.

- Pressing esc does not do anything for full-screen mode.

> From tabs, where the close button is on the wrong side (right)

In Firefox, using the Customize option from the menu, you can move the new tab button to the left side of the tabs, or even to the far right side so that it doesn't move.

agreed, the list is huge and so many of them seem like minor fixes -- for example the white flash that appears when opening a new tab in dark mode can be fixed with userChrome.css. its been an issue for a year. i don't know if mozilla is just broke or what, but it sure feels like their projects are hanging together by a thread. i still use it because i want them to succeed. i would be happy to work on it personally if mozilla would have me lol (instead ive made lots of extensions).

The close button has been on the left for years on mac?

What version are you using?

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