I’ve been using vertical tabs for a while, and I do think that the round icons are 1: better suited to the design of the majority of favicons, and 2: offer a quicker visual separation at a glance. It’s easier to distinguish between tabs.
If you prefer horizontal tabs, the rounded tabs with a light stroke are even more stark. Firefox has long had a problem with the visual language of the tabs. It has been hard to clearly distinguish between active and background tabs. If you were not already familiar with the color scheme, and someone showed you a window with two tabs, you’d have to make a wild guess to know which was the active tab. Chrome for example represents this by connecting the active tab to the window view - immediately clear. The old Firefox tabs were ambiguous because they didn’t connect, and they also weren’t clearly separated. This design makes a clear commitment.
The new app icons are gorgeous. The design looks more coherent across the app. It manages to be modern and clean, while presenting a characteristic personality. For too long, Firefox has been chasing trends and aiming for a middle that doesn’t exist. Firefox is different and should look different. I think it’s much better to make a visual statement that not everyone will love than to have no perspective at all.
Some people have railed against the new default theme. It’s not for everyone, but there are 1000s of official and user-created themes to choose from. I have been using a custom theme for ages precisely because the old default theme was ugly.
A small addition, I use Firefox as my default PDF viewer. The new viewer has a few minor improvements and fixes one or two past missteps. I’m sure folks will (rightly) say there are better options for a PDF viewer, but it meets my needs.
I doubt that’s an unpopular opinion. It’s just easier to complain than to praise and we have a lot of techies here who have their specific workflow + customizations that are disrupted by the changeover.
I like the new design too as a horizontal tabs user.
I think debating on this subject at all is “not seeing the forest for the trees”. All of this crap is visual theming. It’s preposterous to me that all these visual changes aren’t already exposed to the theming engine of Firefox, which would make this and multiple previous nearly identical debates in Firefox’s past into non-events. It also would have prevented these changes from alienating more and more of their now frankly cratering user base.
Whether you like it or not, some don’t. Some can’t because of diminished contrast and visual delineation. Firefox can’t afford to lose ever more market share by continuing to focus on unrequested features while ignoring long-standing widely requested improvements. Nearly everyone that uses Firefox picked it specifically for one or more specific reasons. Mozilla ought to consider that fact when making irreversible visual and workflow changes.
The minute another FOSS browsing platform is ready to go, it is over for these guys.
Counterpoint: They need to get into the news to attract new users. There is no better way to do that than to update the theme or the icon.
If the only objective is to get into the news, their CEO could just say something bombastic on TV.
“There’s no such thing as bad publicity,” is an antiquated notion in the Information Age. People’s lives get destroyed and products have been boycotted out of existence overnight in the modern era.
But it isn’t bad publicity. The reporting on a new theme or icon is generally pretty neutral.
Chrome did the same thing. 👍
Chrome bundled itself with every software you could find like a malware, thats how it gained all that market share so fast.
There was a long period of time where you couldn’t install a damn thing without diligently watching out for “checked yes by default” shovelware, and Chrome was the absolute worst offender.
Hm? I was just saying Chrome had also undergone design changes seemingly for the sake of just doing so.
Mozilla ought to consider that fact when making irreversible visual and workflow changes.
I mean I fully agree with the test of your post, but you can literally set a single flag to get the old ui back. Not exactly ‘irreversible’. To be fair, we don’t know how long that flag is gonna exist, and three probably won’t be any (meaningful) work on the old ui either.
Go look at a screenshot of the previous versions of Firefox. All that flag “sets back” is that everything rounded is rectangular again. The ability to create a visual distinction between tabs is gone, and many are unable to use it now due to visual impairment. They changed more than is in those about:config flags.
Also, you’re right to suspect it will be temporary. Every single previous change like this with about:config options to revert the change has been temporary, and you can bet this one will be too.
Its super easy for people to be dismissive of detractors when they are not affected by the thing that makes them detractors. It also ignores the larger point of “why the hell isn’t ALL of this just Firefox themes in the first place?”
My beef with the new design isn’t the new design. It’s the opportunity cost of it.
What do you mean?
They only have so many resources and time. When they focus on updating the way it looks, they aren’t updating something under the hood.
Honestly I keep a dev version installed and the vertical tabs on that- it’s very nice.
I’m a little less enthused horizontal but it’s not bad. And now I’ve found a theme called proton that is more like the old dark theme that is just black all around so that’s fine too.
In any case, most people either will like it or not care. Lemmy is a pretty negative place overall so I don’t take it to be representative of the general population.
Personally i like the new rounded tabs. A small change and of no practical benefit but nice none the less.
I took one look at it and went back to using Tree Style Tabs, it’s more compact and allows nesting.
If you like that try Sidebery. The performance is so much better it’s incredible. I used TST for years but the performance is total ass. I didn’t like the theme at first but I managed to make it look just like TST without too much effort.
That said I think you do still need that userchrome trick to hide tabs at the top. Annoying that extensions apparently can’t do this.
TST has bad performance? How do you even notice that?
TST is better than the built in vertical tabs but having to set up a userChrome.css file is kind of a hassle
The userChrome part is at least a one-time job. Set
toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheetsto true in about:config, open about:support and click the button next to “Profile Folder”, create a folder calledchromethere and putuserChrome.cssinside it.The catch is that Sync doesn’t carry it over, so if you use more than one machine it’s worth keeping the file in a dotfiles repo or a synced folder and copying it in after a fresh install.
