Let's talk about this new UI - suggestions for improvements and thoughts

Developer Tools
#1

Hi everyone.

I’ve never really posted in a forum format like this, but I wanted to create a post to discuss the new UI that has popped up in Developer Edition 89.01b and 89.02b.

Overall, I think the new changes are nice. The new dark theme is much easier to look at and the thicker elements appear to be more in line with what systems are doing these days, particularly in the realm of macOS or something like Gnome desktop on Linux.

I’d personally prefer to see the tab bar lose the margin above and below the tabs, it doesn’t really serve any real purpose and is visually distracting, having the tabs flush against the top/bottom of the window seems appropriate to me. This is how it used to be, and there was a toggle for drag space above the tab for those who wanted it. Below is an example I’ve quickly cobbled together using the in-browser developer tools.

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I always wish for this, but it never happens, but the ability to turn off close buttons on tabs is something I’d love to see. I don’t use them (I just middle click to close/open tabs) and often accidentally click them, closing tabs I didn’t intend to close. I always remove them by just adding display: none to the chrome, but regardless.

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Disappointingly on macOS (on Intel devices) the system UI (context menus, the titlebar if toggled on, some buttons and other default page elements) still use the light theme regardless of the system’s preference. I don’t believe this is an issue on any other OS I use regularly, so it’d be great to see this fixed in Firefox for Intel Mac’s also. I commonly come across this gripe as someone who uses pop-out dev tools a lot (which uses the default system titlebar) and uses context menus to go backwards/forwards…

…speaking of. The context menu has removed the old buttons to go backwards, forwards or refresh the page. I haven’t done too much digging in settings or in the browser flags, but having this as an option would be appreciated. As ridiculous as it sounds, they were a feature of Firefox I raved about a lot, because it made quickly going back and forth between pages essentially a muscle memory action that is much quicker than using the buttons in the address bar.

What does everyone else think? What could be done to improve or what would make a nice option for the new UI?

1 Like
#2

Thanks for the feedback!

This section of the forum is mainly monitored by people working on the Developer Tools, and the UI changes you see here are out of scope of DevTools, they’re a global UI change ongoing for all release channels of Firefox.

I’m not sure how folks working on the proton redesign prefer to collect & answer to feedback. I asked and will update if I get any answer.

Regarding the back/forward buttons, we started using native menus for mac os, which I guess means we can’t customize them as much as we used to.

#3

Aha, thanks for letting me know. Actually the feedback button for Developer Edition automatically took me here, so I just assumed it was correct. My bad! :wink:

Context menus make sense - hopefully that means we can eventually see native OS theme taken into account on Intel Mac’s, also!

#4

I personally do often use the close button on individual tabs when I’m doing online shopping and need to close some when I’m doing my business. It’s more work to right click and open up a menu for me but the work required by the user is practically the same when I think about it.

I personally have never used the back & forth button under the context menu for Firefox. I always use what’s up on the navigation toolbar or I use keyboard shortcuts (a lot easier).

The only suggestion I have for Mozilla and their UI devs for Firefox is to stop trying to be like Chrome. Google may be a leader in some things but their UI is not for all. They attempt at a solution that is forced on everyone and it doesn’t work.

Mozilla/Firefox needs to allow users to customize their UI as they see fit lest they become the very thing they swore to destroy.

Don’t let us go through another this:

image

#5

No worries! Which feedback button was this? Maybe we should update it to point somewhere else :slight_smile:

#6

Up until this last version I was able to use userChrome to push the tabs under the navigation toolbar (I’m used to have all the frequently used shortcuts and extensions on the navigation toolbar and tabs underneath) but now it just doesn’t work any more… It may be just a question of setting up a new css, but I think that we should be able to adapt the toolbars to the way we like to work - and have an easy way for doing it (without the need to search for new css after every update).
Whatever new look and improvement comes along, there should be a reasonaby simple way to adapt it to ones liking, at least the toolbars to some extent. It is my oppinion that new UI’s, not just in Firefox, tend to become simpler and the buttons, tabs and similar - bigger, but this forces us to change the way we work, not always for the better. I can see that an average user, who’s just browsing, can apprecciate the simplicity, and doesn’t need “complicated” extensions or toolbar adaptations, but I, and probably other developers, do, and the developer edition should make that available. Just to be clear, I’m aware of many improvements that were made available over the time through updates, but I would like to be able to just use Firefox DevEd with it’s improvements, without the need to completely change the way I work, just to be able to use it.

#7

Apologies for the late response! It’s actually just the link on the Developer Edition page here: https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/developer/

I guess grouping the devtools and developer browser together makes some sense, but I suppose not what is expected here! :slight_smile:

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@vespera I agree in that userChrome should never become a dead/removed feature. I basically always make tweaks to the browser, from like I said removing the close buttons on tabs to changing weird inconsistent colours in GTK environments. It’s an easy win to please those of us who want things a very specific, personalised way, like you and I, it seems!

#8

Folks - cut the technobabble. The new UI is a disaster for those of us who anticipated a seamless transition from the “old Firefox”. Bookmarks gone with no hope of retrieval save a spectacularly impenetrable array of remedies. Incredible. Trust me … a majority of Firefox users encountering this cluster f__k of an upgrade will bail within seconds and move to a new browser. I’m gone, that’s for sure.