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Comment by neltnerb | Hacker News Reader

I think my problem with it is two-fold, but I acknowledge I'm not some kind of UI expert.

First, I dislike that I cannot quickly count how many things there are. Borders also make me feel more confident in locating a button.

Second, by detaching the borders from the main window it disconnects the analogy of a "tab" as a, well, tab. Now a button takes you to a new window, but I dislike that it breaks a long-standing analogy that is easy to grasp.

More importantly, it's really hard to see the upside. That's usually why people complain about UI changes in Firefox or anywhere else -- if you can't elucidate what the upside is, all anyone can see is downsides. And mild lack of familiarity is enough downside to outweigh an inexplicable change with no upside obvious.

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if Mozilla did lay out their rationale, it'd be a lot easier to get past lacking UI expertise or being unable to see upsides (while seeing clear downsides).

UI changes attract a lot of ire from current users in general--this isn't a Mozilla-specific thing--but Firefox is ostensibly an open, OSS project. there shouldn't be much organizational discretion to just keep UI research or data private: Mozilla should be more than happy to share data or UX research demonstrating why they're making changes, but they don't.

absent explanation from Mozilla or a helpful UX expert to pip up and say "the change is actually good, here's why", the changes often feel like they're either trend-chasing or change for change's sake to show that the UI designer's salary isn't going to waste.

I felt their blog post [0] kind of did that. Maybe not as detailed as you’re suggesting (which I agree would be nice to see) but it got the point across.

[0]: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/news/modern-clean-new-fi...

I dunno, that page looks like 110% received wisdom. It's "clean," "inviting," "streamlining," and so on. All positives, sounds like every change listed is awesome!

"Good design is invisible. So if things just work, you don’t really think about it."

Ah yes, and if you can't see the benefits of a change, that just means you're blind to its invisibly good design.

"Bookmark bar – About 5% of the clicks go to the section where people bookmark their frequently visited place"

"5% of the clicks go to the thing we haven't touched in forever and have actually made worse over the years. Naturally we're going to continue this strategy of fostering attrition until you only ever go to the sites listed on your new tab page (which we're watching how much you use)."

It's all basically that, more of doing whatever they want and calling people who don't like it wet blankets. I still don't know why they changed to that supremely unintuitive "sliding panes" menu design. Ah, such is the cost of being on the cutting edge with my ESR installation.

That page says they "put a lot of thought into it," but I haven't seen where that thought might be reviewable, because I'm skeptical that a lot of thought went into this. A lot of thought may have been how to counter criticism, but that's not the same thing.

I think the way I'd put it is that most of the claims there are orthogonal to the UI complaints people make. I don't see people complain about the ease of browsing to a desired place, sometimes I do it with the toolbar, sometimes the URL bar, sometimes the start page, who cares? None of these things have anything to do with borders on buttons...

If something has a clear advantage people don't tend to complain about it. The ability to search from the URL bar has a utility that is clear. Making tabs break a paradigm and be (mildly) harder to see doesn't really seem to have any utility and the system would work the same both ways.

I still use Firefox, don't get me wrong. But I don't understand why this stuff is changing before being made into a skin so that us old people can have something stay the same for a few weeks.

I think the ire comes from the lack of general stability as a concept among internet sites and apps, as even a desirable concern. If Mozilla isn't saying "ha ha tabs are buttons now!", Google is scrambling the colors and/or button locations and/or icon designs on Android, or whoops, a browser addon you like has updated and it's only compatible with the nightly build so you're going to be waiting a while to have that to use again, or the internet connection is spotty because Comcast is shit and you're a nobody.

The lack of stability in everybody's technology and online experience is a problem. Move fast and break things, who cares how it affects the users!

When I watch a film, I don't want the film to make me aware I am watching a film. Good filmmakers can encourage my belief sometimes even as I am analyzing the film's construction and intentionally maintaining my disbelief. I can appreciate quality special effects, but no matter how technically, film-theoretically, or visually good those effects may be, if they don't serve the greater film they are a part of, they aren't good special effects.

Modern UI feels like painting the shark in Jaws hot pink in order to make sure everyone sees the great special effects. Yeah, the shark is still cool, but you've made the film much more difficult to enjoy.

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