We've been in the era for some time now where software has to look good. All browsers work well; now they only compete on graphic design and usability.

You had me at pastel gradients.

I'm using Firefox ESR so that I don't have to do reconfiguration of the customizations at [1]https://github.com/Aris-t2/Cus... [github.com] except about once per year. As long those CSS customizations work then I'm fine with Mozilla foundation spending their money however they like. That addon is magnificent.

My Firefox still looks exactly like it did 10-15 years ago. I still get my status bar, I get my tabs below toolbars & address bar, and icons are still the same.

Yeah, stuck in my ways, I also use Openshell on the Windows PCs I have to use so I get Windows 7 look. I don't mind learning a new UI paradigm if I see a clear benefit and it's going to remain for a long while. Change for the sake of change...bah.

[1] https://github.com/Aris-t2/CustomCSSforFx

I may have to switch to Falkon.

Any decent Firefox alternative appeared?

I've long started dreading Fx upgrades. It's an unpleasant feeling. Time to move on.

Is there any Firefox-based browser appeared that is suitable as a "workhorse browser" like e.g. older Firefox/Mozilla/Navigator versions?

Something that just works without idiotic animated everything or sliding menus BS? no pop-ups announcing "new features"(tm)? and please no pastel or gradient BS?

It seems that Mozilla still has no clue why they're getting their asses handed to them by Chrome. They need to stop fucking with the inconsequentials, and spend more time making their browser work. I have a few sites that just don't work in Firefox, but work fine in Chrome.

The simple utilities are chirping, the Gimp lumbers out of its cave and sniffs the spring air. The latest kernel hasn't quite surfaced from the lake, but is expected at any time.

This year, however, special. It is Mozilla Molting season.

These can be difficult times for Mozilla. Shedding its skin and forming a new one doesn't happen easily or painlessly. Frequently, vestigial appendages unexpectedly burst forth, like VPNs and LLM buttons. Sometimes it is more subtle, with Mozilla's own extensions failing to recognize its new visage.

Window dressing is not substantial. Young people and graphic designers (if that's still a thing) are the only ones who care about that.

Look at email clients.

Email readers essentially look like spreadsheets with 3 different panes, accounts, messages, message details.

There is no other way to do it.

If you try, you always end up back at the same functional place.

Redesigns like this are just what graphic designers suggest... because... designers gotta design.

NO. We don't need it.

But why though?

The current one works fine?

Browsers are, for most people, a white (or black) empty square that gets filled with whatever website is trendy. The least intrusive it is the better.

I'm not sure focusing on a redesign with flashy elements and bigger (and emptier) components, alongside with color-changing and other bells and whistle is improving the experience for anyone. It certainly won't help with less tech-literate users that are lost every time anything change. It won't help with power users, because they tend to have functionality ov

Enough with the UI fluff already. You have bugs to fix and memory leaks to patch.

We literally just want it to be very fast and consume as little memory as possible. No fancy features. Just freeze what you have currently for a while a make it super fast, super slim, super stable.

Since when are z-axis negative frame borders a thing?

This design appears to require "frame borders" to be bigger to actually visually separate elements using the background, and the elements themselves still do have z-positive borders...

I also wonder how this design will work with setups that have no titlebar (in fullscreen mode - think kiosk usecase)

Make it look like Netscape 4 but with a modern HTML rendering engine. Bring back scrollbars, the status bar, menus, buttons, and the throbber.

how bad this could be!

But then with expectations lower than low, maybe they could spring a surprise!

... have liquid glass? Just like [1]Apple [mltshp-cdn.com].

[1] https://mltshp-cdn.com/r/1RG66

At this point I can't really say I'm a Firefox fan, I'm a Ublock Origin fan. I've been using Firefox since back when it was originally called Phoenix. I've tried most of the major browsers, but always hated how fonts looked on any chromium based browser in Linux, plus other privacy related issues. The key feature that's kept me on Firefox is the Ublock Origin extension. These people actually understand what I want out of a browser, privacy. I'm also not going to install a browser made by crypto bros, s

I'm really tired of all these programs feeling like they need to completely change the interface and redesign things every couple years. It's a web browser, I just want it to work and be a window to the website I'm accessing, I don't need all the bells and whistles, and surely don't need any AI crap tacked into it. I'd love to just go back to a simple Netscape Navigator style browser, add in some of the modern security and extension availability and we're good. I've always preferred Firefox going back de

No doubt this will be one of their crap UI changes that doesn't actually improve usability nor attract new users as their market share continues to decline. Why about fixing some real issues? Or how about invest in maildir support in Thunderbird? How many years has [1]this page [mozilla.org] said it's experimental? There are two warnings on the page telling you that you will lose your data if you use it, FFS.

[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/maildir-thunderbird

I realise these are just a few mock-ups, but it looks like the approach here was to use as much screen space for as little as possible.

There used to be a time when you could go into Settings and easily find what you wanted to change, check or uncheck a box, and you were done. With the current version you have to dig through nebulous sounding locations with unclear nomeclature and hope you found what you're looking for.

For example, if you wanted to manually remove all the saved cookies and such for specific web sites, you could go to Privacy and Security then open the Manage Data area. Everything was there in one location. No muss, no fuss.

Now you have to dig through at least two other boxes to find the same thing, and it doesn't even work the same.

Are people trying to justify their existence, because that's what it sounds like. Instead of keeping things simple and usable we're now forced down the path of shiny for shiny's sake.

Here's a question: with all this reworking and "updating", will we once again have the ability to check a checkbox and never be harassed about updates ever again? Is that too difficult to implement, because it used to be like that for decades until someone needed to show they were being "useful" on the project.

... so that it doesn't take so much memory and system resources, and that it doesn't randomly crash when there are too many unstable layers to get to the GPU, and when you have two DisplayPort GPU monitors and one native HDMI monitor, and ...