Firefox 77
mozilla.org
mozilla.org
The movement is distracting, and the alignment of the bar's expanded state is terrible. There's a reason most graphic design follows a grid system.
We need a way to turn this off. I realize the old about:config flag was tied to a legacy code pathway, but now Mozilla should implement a new flag. I don't think that's an unreasonable ask.
Why can't we have customizable browser UI? I'd prefer Firefox to be more like KDE and less than GNOME (feature and configuration wise). Early versions of Opera had amazing customization options, and now - all browsers are same-ish.
[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customizing-firefox-usi...
Note that this also removes the search stuff from the dropdown list, which may or may not be what you want (I prefer the separate search bar).
edit: depending on context, the
.urlbarView-row:first-of-type { display: none !important }
Why do they persist in these ugly design shenanigans?
When I click it I also get the address bar drop-down with other common addresses in it, which is many many times larger than the small expansion of the address bar - unless I am missing the gripe here.
I don't know why it was needed to expand like that, but it certainly doesn't seem like an egregious use of space to me.
Right now, my comment is sitting at the top of this HN thread, even though we're several updates out from when the design change was first introduced. There's similar outcry over on Reddit. I think it's safe to extrapolate that a significant enough number of people dislike the expanding bar to at least warrant a hidden config flag.
A pinch of how "linux is not about choice"[1] would improve the discourse around Firefox.
I understand that many choices Mozilla made are dubious and that the browser is one of the most important pieces of software on a modern computer... still that xkcd looked quite relevant
Just about any other design would be fine, actually; I'm not married to the old one. No other browser has a URL bar I find particularly offensive.
I would bet a very large sum of money that if you sat every person in the world down in front of two computer screens, and let them play with both URL bar designs side-by-side, a large majority would say they prefer the old design. Not everyone, to be sure—humanity will never agree on what is most aesthetically pleasing—but most. That is why the modern field of graphic design focuses on grids systems and consistent spacing and margins—because most people find them appealing. (Not even to mention the other issues around covering the bookmarks and tab bars.)
If I seem a bit overly worked up about this, it's because working in the graphic design industry has made me very sensitive to poorly-aligned visuals, in the same way type designers become sensitive to bad kerning. And I live in my web browser.
I'll eventually adapt, as most people will. That does not mean this is a good change.
It's definitely not a massive improvement and I'm not sure if I'd have added it if I had had the choice but it may be worth just giving it a chance.
I mean, it's not like I have a choice now.
1) Uninstall Firefox
2) Install v76.0.1: brew cask install https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/40b6b69674d6a068105059668163476f21d94258/Casks/firefox.rb
3) /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox --allow-downgrade
4) Quickly disable auto update in Preferences
5) Be happy with the old bar ;)
It won't be good forever, but it will last longer at least.
Mozilla is doing good overall. They are doing some fundamental work to get back the technical edge, still trying to keep the future of the platform open with WebAssembly and their products have become much more reliable now. We have to cut them some slack.
And they could cut the salaries of management instead of giving themselves raises.
Instead we got ads in the home page.
2. Developers shouldn't have to build software for the greater good by sacrificing their livelihood.
3. I am pretty sure many people building all this amazing tech can definitely get paid better in other places
4. These days when someone like Facebook fails to be bold, I would prefer to support someone like Mozilla who walks the talk.
No one is talking about the developers. Mitchell Baker received $2,458,350 in 2018. That's up from $1,035,114 in 2014.
Have you seen the incredible results which justified this tremendous raise? Personally, I haven't.
His raise is 100% justified...unless your implying that any software dev pulling in 150k would be able to negotiate a deal like that.
The 2017 deal was a 8% increase in revenue. That's a significant slow down of the increase trajectory of these deals. Meanwhile every other metrics were going down, most notably market share.
2017 also saw the rebranding and the Pocket deal go through. I still don't think it was worth a 150% increase.
Sadly, Pocket hasn't become open-source nor has it kept its awesome personalized recommendations.
I'd be happier if I knew how my data is being stored, however, since the recommendations seem to be well tailored to my interests.
I find it to be rather well-written for this sort of thing. As in, it was written with an intent to communicate what it's saying, which is the opposite of the usual.
Not sure if it can work for Firefox, but there are enough freemium apps on mobile which seem to make it work
When Pocket was first introduced in Firefox, the official party line was that it was just something temporary donated by the good people of Pocket to plug a feature hole so that you, dear users, won't suffer much while we develop a proper replacement.
And now this has somehow transformed into a vitally important revenue stream?
It sounds quite meek if the worst attack just consumes more of my battery.
Why is FireFox trying to get into article recommendations? I can only assume it allows some method of monetisation once users get used to it being there. Feels a bit off.
What happens if the money stops coming?
Firefox is a "feature" for Google Chrome.
The day Google stops paying mozilla and mozilla close shop, they will get the same treatment Google itself set up in courts against Microsoft for IE6. It's pretty much protection money for their past selfs.
It's cheaper to keep mozilla barely alive than to pay lawyers and governments for anti-trust lawsuits around the globe.
And they get to harvest search data from firefox users as a bonus.
[1] https://searchengineland.com/report-yahoo-search-losing-fire...
edit: Like many others have noted before this everything is "free" model of the Internet seems completely broken to me and I feel a bit sad/hopeless about it.
In small doses, I rather like them. Back when Firefox only displayed 3 or 4 on the new tab page, I even left them enabled. Now that it has the huge grid of options, with a row peeking out above the fold in the classic dark pattern that demands discovery, I have turned them off.
As for ads, yeah, you'll get those by default too. (But there's a checkbox still where you can turn off the sponsored content.)
I just think it's useful to distinguish true ads from stuff that's intended to provide value. (Sure, ads theoretically can occasionally provide value, but the difference is huge.)
Sadly, this wish will probably not come true any time soon... or ever.
I filed a bug, thinking this was an inadvertant side-effect of the new address bar, but it was closed WONTFIX. The old user setting was never really supposed to be used on Windows, just as a workaround for something I don't remember, and the use case is invalid.
I still wish I'd get that distinction between single click and double click back.
It's hard for me to imagine what use case the current behavior is optimized for.
I think the current behavior is optimized for people who use the mouse for everything and don’t feel confident enough to edit the URL of the site they’re on. Such people aren’t comfortable with learning new keyboard shortcuts like Ctrl-L or Alt-D, so they will notice an increase in speed because they only have to click once to select the URL. I imagine before they were either triple-clicking or clicking once and hitting Ctrl-A. Then those users type the name of the next site they want to visit, completely replacing the current URL, and press Enter to visit it.
I was previously using the option (that was removed in Firefox 75) to make the URL bars on the Windows and Mac versions behave in the same way as on Linux - I was really happy to be able to do that, since I've never understood why the single-click-highlight behaviour in some other browsers was supposed to be a good thing. But those Firefox installs are self-updating rather than managed through the package manager, so they got the new behaviour automatically. It's been a couple of months now, but I still don't like it.
single click: select all
double click: select word
single click after selecting something: place cursor
single click: place cursor
double click: select word
triple click: select all
Then, if needs be, hit left arrow to move cursor to start of URL and deselect text. Hit right arrow to move to end of URL and deselect text.
Seems to be a standard keyboard shortcut across browsers. Works for me in Firefox, Yandex and Opera.
I used to place the cursor inside the URL a lot and was disappointed when that action got slower. I was all set to give an example of why it’s bad, but right now, I’m actually having trouble thinking of such an example. I used to place the cursor inside a URL and then hit Shift-Command-Right to select the text after that, but I’ve just realized that clicking inside the URL and then dragging the mouse down is even faster. And I used to place the cursor near a section of the URL and use the keyboard to select and delete it, but double-clicking and dragging seems to take a similar amount of time in the examples I can think of.
Hmm… okay, I’ve thought of a good use-case for placing the cursor inside the URL: adding a subdomain. If I’m developing http://example.com/foo and want to go to the staging server http://staging.example.com/foo, I used to be able to click before “example” and type “staging.”. Now that requires two clicks and a pause, and the selection shortcuts above don’t help.
Expanding location bar is close though and unlike removing navigation arrows from context menus I cannot see any reason at all for it.
I will pay $100 annually, but I would need assurances that the telemetry is also 100% removed (no calls home, WHATSOEVER).
This is good news if it's true. Source map support seems pretty patchy across both Chrome and Firefox. I've had the work reliably at times in the past. But something always seems to shift which breaks them again, and I've never been able to work out what it is.
I think my employer's gulp config has had source maps broken for 2 years now, but I'm probably the only person who would do anything about it...
When I see Brave recommendations, they're primarily because of it's built-in ad-blocking. People value sanity. Don't introduce more visual distractions (essentially what the average person gets from an ad; they see it as a visual thing, they don't comprehend tracking and resource management like we do). Make Firefox clean, make it so that it can be easily recommended. When Chrome came out, people were excited because it was simple and sleek. It's okay to learn from competitors, don't let hubris be the downfall!
There's a solution, though -- as it happens, I happen to have the best opinion on this. Like, always the best. So really the Firefox designers should just ask me. I would think they would appreciate being able to confidently say that they're always doing the right thing?
I have the same superskill.
We could make a consulting agency and people would pay us good money to know exactly how stuff should be done.
And so I have had to default back to killing off a process and guessing which tab has crashed.
I really hate to admit how often those darn Pocket recommendations get me! I don't know how they choose what shows up on my tab, but more often than not, there's at least one thing in there I end up reading.
Anyway, personally I've never seen pocket on my firefox. My new tab opens to a blank page. And I love firefox for allowing this degree of customization.
Even Windows is putting ads in your face in the operating system itself.
From the Firefox New Tab FAQ (https://help.getpocket.com/article/1142-firefox-new-tab-reco...)
> Are these stories personalized to me? For the most part, no. Most recommendations on your new tab come from a general list of the best of stories on the web.
> Pocket occasionally partners with select publishers and brands to deliver high-quality sponsored stories to our users. These stories will always be clearly marked
> Pocket’s 30+ million global users help guide our curation by pointing us to thought-provoking essays, hidden gems, and fascinating deep-dives from across the web. Editors at Pocket then sift through the most-recommended and most-read stories and handpick the best to share with the wider Pocket and Firefox communities
If they wouldn't be personalized, the answer would be no, instead of "for the most part, no". Lawyer speak.
> Are these stories personalized to me?
> For the most part, no. Most recommendations on your new tab come from a general list of the best of stories on the web. But Pocket is actively exploring ways to deliver personalized recommendations in a way that vigorously protects users’ privacy. Importantly, neither Mozilla nor Pocket ever receives a copy of your browser history. When personalization does occur, recommendations rely on a process of story sorting and filtering that happens locally in your personal copy of Firefox.
Is Firefox trying to kill the long tail of the internet and get everyone to just visit the top 5 sites?
What we need is a new flag that changes the design specifically.
Because swinging and appeasing the vocal minority is not sustainable.
Mozilla aims to ship a default configuration that works well for a large number of users. Of course there'll be people -- like yourself, apparently -- who'd prefer some things to be configured differently, but what you'd like changed is entirely up to you.
Maybe you should be grateful Firefox offers (quite a lot of) customisation opportunities, instead of just posting snarky remarks.
Are you sure they're trying to ship what works best for most people? I've not read that anywhere. If they really wanted people to have a choice, they wouldn't be adding configurations that can't be switched on/off through they're preferences menu - like for example, that crazy bar they just added a couple of releases ago - oh.. and which apparently you are not allowed to switch off no more, not even through about:config, according to sibling comment. Also, they have a track record of breaking old configuration options quite often through updates.
I am grateful by what they offer - just not sure they're not sneakily changing course, similar to what chrome did.
That's called user feedback. Users are always right. And looking at Firefox's browser share they are not getting too many new users anymore. Making the life of your existing users a little more miserable does not sound like a very sustainable strategy.
Not in any useful sense. "What do I need to turn off this time" presumably just implies "they should never change anything, the product is perfect already". (Which one was the perfect version, out of curiosity?)
You're exaggerating. The problem isn't that Mozilla changes things, it's that they've set the bar too low for changes. Many of their updates seemingly deliver change for the sake of change, when a more reasonable strategy would be to require a change to be compelling enough to outweigh the frustration and friction it will cause. An imperfect UI that users know how to use is better than a moving target UI that constantly brings new surprises.
Edit: Changed 'disabled' to 'removed' in the first sentence, as it's probably clearer.
https://www.ghacks.net/2020/04/08/how-to-restore-the-old-fir...
Should people get excited about it?
Wake me up when you bring back text-reflow. It's only been 9 years...
I'd try to mark everything as "Not interested", but that never really changed anything in the end. I do use Pocket, but mostly as a bookmarking tool. And all the topics that I bookmark are either tech, or self help / phychology related. I never get anything that matches these topics in my recommendations. Not really looking forward to seeing them on my new tab. But I assume you can switch it off.
Happens all the time on HN, and our defense is a little link above.
Perhaps the easiest way of letting Mozilla know how you feel is by helping them lose market share to another.
PM is a good browser. Not affiliated, it just works for me.
1. http://www.palemoon.org/releasenotes.shtml
2. https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=22270
3. https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=22399
4. https://old.reddit.com/r/palemoon/comments/evywwj/how_secure...