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Comment by FiveOhThree | Hacker News Reader

I'd feel a lot more 'respected' if they didn't keep forcing unwanted UI changes on me.

If UI changes needed everyone's approval, we would still be looking like a 1990's browser.

True, but if you're running a beta test and the feedback is negative, you can't be surprised that people don't feel "respected" when you decide to push the change anyway.

Every UI change has negative feedback to some degree because a part of the user base just doesn't like change.

Overall FF is just as usable as the decade before in my opinion. And I kind of like the new tab design. The old super rounded tabs looked great for a while but it was time for a change.

I'm not a designer, but in my experience it helps to change up user interfaces now and then. However I wish we as users had more control over that. Color themes are not enough.

> it was time for a change… it helps to change up user interfaces now and then

Why? I mean if users are used to the interface, can use without any friction and there's no real need to, why change it just for the heck of it?

> because a part of the user base just doesn't like change

So don't force them to change? Or has Mozilla really forgotten that they got their users by making the most customizable browser in the first place?

Would that be so bad? Netscape Navigator 4.6 circa 1999: https://ia902901.us.archive.org/21/items/netscapecommunicato...

Twenty three years of churn has brought what UX benefits exactly? Hiding the protocol, hiding details about secure connections, hiding the status bar, hiding the text on tiny buttons, hiding the menus: https://mk0ghacksnety2pjrgh8.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/upload...

and for what? Optimising for people on 1366x768 laptops and people who don't want to do very much but search and click one result?

Judging by my coworkers and relatives, I don't think many users care that much about the screen real estate. Those of us who do customize the hell out of the browser chrome anyway.

Firefox 2 looked fine in my opinion, I would be happy if they just kept it as it was back then.

Changing menu item names and locations is just stupid. A month later and I am still looking for "Undo Close Tab." Was it really that important to change the name to "Reopen Closed Tab?"

The UI/UX team's salaries need to be justified.

Just learn the shortcuts. It's ctrl+shift+t. I've been using it for 16+ years and have no idea how it's called now, or how it was called before.

ctrl+shift+n to reopen the last window.

If the shortcut isn't listed next to the menu option, I'm never going to learn it unless I need to use it constantly. The top level menu items show the shortcuts but the context menu items don't! Inconsistent!

The funny thing is that I just tried to find the "shortcuts" list for Firefox and is is nowhere to be found in their menu or in Preferences! Do I need to find it on some webpage?!?

I see no problem with that. I downloaded the most recent version of Netscape Navigator a few days ago and while it's unusable for HTTPS websites, plain HTTP browsing is quite pleasant and surprisingly fast (even though it uses only one core). What is particularly nice is the SERP page of Google - very tidy and without any ads.

For me it is not so much they change the ui, it is that they changed the ui like 2 or 3 times in the last like 5 years.

Where do I sign up for that browser? When it comes to UI, less change is better.

You mean like most major platforms do from time to time, even FOSS ones like Gnome?

With most things, if you want to completely avoid eventual, inevitable UI changes, you need to just never upgrade.

The new "chunky" layout and UI elements are not really an improvement, and a lot of users have been unhappy with this. Despite plentiful feedback about this during beta testing Mozilla have basically opted to force it through anyway.

UI changes in general are something to expect, but if you're just going to disregard user feedback then you can't claim to respect users.

Equally a lot of users are happy with it. Should those users have been disregarded instead?

If that many users are happy why does it keep losing market share?

Personally every other release they remove features I like and make arbitrary UI changes. The only reason I'm still complaining and not using something else is because I don't like the alternatives either.

Its losing market share long predates recent UI changes. UI changes are completely and utterly irrelevant to that.

I was just pointing out that the grandparent was conflating their opinion being ignored with all users' opinions being ignored

It's a good way to further push away a chunk of your userbase. They're moving towards a touch-friendly UI, but a lot of us just want a compact desktop app that doesn't waste screen space with excessive padding.

The proper solution to this would be to have different modes if this is so critical. To their credit they did put in a "compact" mode after beta, but this is explicitly "unsupported" and even then still has more padding than "large" mode in the old UI.

Push where? At least you still can configure chrome padding and element sizes with CSS tweaks, unlike the main competitor and its wooden interface with absolutely zero customization possibilities.

There's Vivaldi, and it too uses HTML for its interface, but the team doesn't seem to care about UI performance at all.

The average browser user doesn't know anything about CSS tweaking. Advanced users may know about it if they're curious enough or work with web technologies. People get pushed around by other reasons, mostly things like OS integration (Edge, Chrome).

> There's Vivaldi, and it too uses HTML for its interface, but the team doesn't seem to care about UI performance at all.

Thanks to that, Vivaldi also actively supports CSS tweaks like Firefox. They do indeed care about UI performance and work towards fixing it... The 3.7 update really improved its UI responsiveness. Still, it feels slower than Chrome/Brave/Firefox.

So they did exactly what you describe as the "proper solution".

> and even then still has more padding than "large" mode in the old UI.

This is objectively false. Your hyperbole undermines your argument.

My mistake, there may have been more than two modes in the older builds. Perhaps it was called "Regular" or something, whatever the default was.

Know what I can do in ESR that I can't in 89+? See my whole bookmarks menu without scrolling.

Know what I can't do on any of my machines? Touch the screen.

Have you tried compact mode?

Decreased UI density doesn't just help touchscreens.

> even FOSS ones like Gnome?

This sounds like a counter-argument. What the Gnome team did (during the 2->3 transition) was a huge overhaul while completely ignoring the habits and wishes of their users. I understand they had to rewrite the old code, that's perfect. I also understand they wanted to "refresh the UI" at the same time. But you can't just change everything and think your users will be happy. If you act against the wishes of your users, who do you write your software for? It simply made no sense and that's why people turned to MATE.

>even FOSS ones like Gnome

Not sure what your argument is supposed to be but not everyone liked GNOME's new UI. That's why you've gotten forks such as MATE.

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