Hacker News Reader

Comment by m-p-3 | Hacker News Reader

Not fond of the bottom address bar, I guess I'm not used to it because I always tap the top-right corner to switch tabs... I just need to get it in my muscle-memory, not a big deal. I still cross my fingers this will be configurable at some point.

My main gripe is that I feel like bookmarks are now a second-class citizen in Firefox Preview, they're not as accessible. I could see my mobile bookmarks right on the new tab screen in Firefox, now I have to press ⋮ > Your Library > Bookmarks and then click the bookmark I want.

4 clicks, while it took only one (or two) before with bookmarks as the default panel on my homepage on Firefox "classic".

View on HN

Bookmarks have become even more first-class now - just swipe up from your address bar anytime. Try it now ( in the Firefox preview).

Also, I feel the opposite regarding the address bar position - give it a few days, you'll absolutely love it. Edge on Windows Mobile had the same position, and it was a very nifty and time-saving UX. You can now use the phone one-handed more easily, even for small-handed people.

> Bookmarks have become even more first-class now - just swipe up from your address bar anytime. Try it now ( in the Firefox preview).

Swiping up seems to only give me the option to share and/or bookmark the page, and in Fennec those things were already possible through the main menu, so not much of an improvement (though I suppose swiping might be a little easier than precisely hitting the menu button).

Actually viewing my bookmarks has indeed become more cumbersome, though, and that is what your parent comment is referring to: In Fennec bookmarks were accessible through the about:home UI, which appears both when opening a new tab and when tapping the URL bar to enter URL edit mode, both of which feel quicker than "Open main menu -> Open library -> Open bookmarks" in Fenix.

Any UI element that you can't find by searching is not first class. In particular, if there's some gesture you have to randomly guess exists, it's a hidden feature for advanced users only.

I'd actually downvote my own comment right now.

There's a thumb that indicates dragability. They're about as hidden as a feature in a menu - that's not great, but it's a lot better than I understood before. (The preview took several hours to download and install on my phone. It's big, but it's not that big that it should've taken that long.)

Can I get to my bookmarks that way? Seems to only allow me to make them.

Funnily enough, top-address-bar has been one of my two biggest UX gripes about Android FF. Especially since iOS FF has the bottom adddress bar (which seems like a UI decision independent of their reliance on Safari's engine), and is so much nicer to use.

With you on the bookmarks though. Especially since they're putting this new "Collections" feature front-and-centre but it seems to have no integration with Your Library. The whole "Tab Groups", etc. paradigm has been tried time and time again: the reason it never sticks isn't because it's a bad idea, it's because it's never integrated with idiomatic browser features.

Mobile Chrome is moving to address bar on top, buttons / tab switcher on the bottom.

This has been the case on the dev release for months but they've yet to merge it to stable.

Sure it's disturbing at first but from a usability standpoint it seems vastly superior, especially for bigger screens.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com