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Comment by akersten | Hacker News Reader

I really wish this went into more detail, or linked to a technical change log. What does this even mean:

> Fewer interruptions: We’ve removed unnecessary alerts and messages.

What messages were removed? What if they were useful to me?

Also, it appears that they're sticking with their decision to remove a useful menu setting (compact mode) and hide it in about:config[0]. I guess I should count my blessings that they aren't removing it entirely. If anything, they should remove the standard size mode - I want to see less of my browser's chrome when using the web, not more.

[0]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1703254

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> compact mode) and hide it in about:config[0]. I guess I should count my blessings that they aren't removing it entirely

I see this is your first rodeo. Probably within 2 years the story will change to "removed rarely used setting to minimize maintenance burden". Make no mistake removing it from the UI means the feature is already dead

At this point I wonder why they even add new features seeing all the useful features that they remove.

They don't want to run out of things to remove.

They start to sound like Google... and guess where the money comes from?

Yeah, making the browser's chrome _bigger_ is a really weird choice. A whole lot of work has gone into making the browser chrome as small as possible. By default now, the bookmarks bar is gone, the menu bar is gone, toolbars are gone, the title bar is gone, some browsers even remove the tab bar when there's just one tab. Using _more_ vertical space for the chrome, without even providing new or improved functionality, seems like the exact opposite direction of both what users want and the industry trend.

I really like the current Firefox design, and it doesn't get in the way. I hope I'll learn to like this new design too once I get to use it for myself.

I feel like this is an extension of the "make everything tablet-friendly" design trend that seems to have taken over GNOME development (who in turn clearly got it from Apple).

In fact, the new UI reminds me quite a bit of the GNOME Epiphany browser.

It's not bad... I guess? I don't like it, personally.

I also don't understand why they're spending any amount of time on this.

With touchscreen laptops I don't mind a more touch friendly mode. Though ideally it would only take extra space when touch input is available on the device.

Thank you for pointing out the about:config setting. Looks like the new compact mode is roughly the same density as the old normal mode. Definitely a loss.

> I want to see less of my browser's chrome when using the web, not more.

Yeah, a few internet-centuries ago Firefox was marketing itself with how much more space they gave to content than other browser vendors.

>What messages were removed? What if they were useful to me?

They could list them, but do you think anybody would care to read them?

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