And now my address bar expands on click, because browser.urlbar.update1 was removed from about:config. I knew this day was coming, but I'm still not happy it's here.
The movement is distracting, and the alignment of the bar's expanded state is terrible. There's a reason most graphic design follows a grid system.
We need a way to turn this off. I realize the old about:config flag was tied to a legacy code pathway, but now Mozilla should implement a new flag. I don't think that's an unreasonable ask.
I'll probably try fixing that horrible location bar improvement with some custom userChrome.css https://www.userchrome.org/megabar-styling-firefox-address-b...
I already removed some unused items from context menu and it feels great. Sadly, userChrome.css modifications are considered "legacy" and probably one day will be removed.
Why can't we have customizable browser UI? I'd prefer Firefox to be more like KDE and less than GNOME (feature and configuration wise). Early versions of Opera had amazing customization options, and now - all browsers are same-ish.
I had to go ahead and make a userChrome.css because I couldn't take it anymore. This was the best one (although I did remove .urlbarView-row:first-of-type), so thanks for that. Still looks kind of messy, unfortunately, but an improvement!
Do you know if there's a way to specify custom userChrome in AutoConfig[1]? I rely on that to keep my customizations consistent across machines—I really don't want this to be a part of my profile.
It's really obtrusive. It takes up too much space, perhaps only by 2 pixels on each side or so, but it's too much, the contrast is too large, the outline is too heavy, and the a m o u n t o f w h i t e s p a c e is plain annoying.
Why do they persist in these ugly design shenanigans?
I don't find it that obtrusive and it's likely it would have taken me a while to notice it if it wasn't pointed out in this version and in 76 threads.
When I click it I also get the address bar drop-down with other common addresses in it, which is many many times larger than the small expansion of the address bar - unless I am missing the gripe here.
I don't know why it was needed to expand like that, but it certainly doesn't seem like an egregious use of space to me.
After having lived with this turned on for about a month I am happy to report that it doesn't really bother me at all any more now. In the first week or two it just seemed pointless to me, but over time I actually started using the thing more and more.
It's definitely not a massive improvement and I'm not sure if I'd have added it if I had had the choice but it may be worth just giving it a chance.
There will always be people who swear they never get used to it. Truth is, our brains are experts at getting used to things. Specially little style tweaks. I don't love this one, but it honestly took me a day or two to stop caring.
And that doesn't mean the change is good! Our brains also get used to bad smells, after we've been around them for long enough. But newcomers will notice, and the air will still seem fresher when we step outside.
I agree - I thought it was horrible at first (actually, I thought something was broken at first), but I have grown to like it. Sure it can be tweaked a bit but overall I think this is a good move.
Yeah, it's definitely not worth dealing with weird hacks just to get rid of it. In the first week or so it bothered me too, then it seemed pointless but I didn't care and after I while I actually started using it.
Enough is enough. I just downgraded to 76.0.1 and it should be good enough for a long time. Here is what I did on MacOS:
1) Uninstall Firefox
2) Install v76.0.1: brew cask install https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/40b6b69674d6a068105059668163476f21d94258/Casks/firefox.rb
3) /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox --allow-downgrade
4) Quickly disable auto update in Preferences
5) Be happy with the old bar ;)
Now, v77 is already "Install Pending" in "Show Update History", but it can be ignored. But still, does anyone know how to remove it being pending?
AIUI, you can set the amount of items shown to 0 in about:config, and have what amounts to a non-expanding URL bar. It's not perfect, but it's a viable workaround.
That sounds like you're talking about the dropdown menu that shows up below the URL bar, but the problem is the URL bar itself expands outside of its bounding box when it gets focus.
I'm not quite sure what you mean because I've not used the default Firefox skin for a long time. You can change almost every aspect of the Firefox UI by editing your userChrome.css file, for which there are tutorials online. If you need some help figuring this out I could check it out later
I don't doubt that every change will have some detractors—but that isn't a reason to shout down all complaints. "It's just a vocal minority—most users like it!" Well, maybe that's true, and maybe it isn't—we'll never know, because this isn't the sort of thing you can measure with analytics. All you can do is listen to feedback.
Right now, my comment is sitting at the top of this HN thread, even though we're several updates out from when the design change was first introduced. There's similar outcry over on Reddit. I think it's safe to extrapolate that a significant enough number of people dislike the expanding bar to at least warrant a hidden config flag.
For sure it is valuable feedback for Mozilla, but honestly as a long term user of Firefox and based on following various controversies and criticism my aggregate opinion is that many Firefox users often chose the strangest arguments.
A pinch of how "linux is not about choice"[1] would improve the discourse around Firefox.
I understand that many choices Mozilla made are dubious and that the browser is one of the most important pieces of software on a modern computer... still that xkcd looked quite relevant
You're right—what Mozilla should really, ideally do, is revert back to the old behavior, with no option to re-enable the new one. :)
Just about any other design would be fine, actually; I'm not married to the old one. No other browser has a URL bar I find particularly offensive.
I would bet a very large sum of money that if you sat every person in the world down in front of two computer screens, and let them play with both URL bar designs side-by-side, a large majority would say they prefer the old design. Not everyone, to be sure—humanity will never agree on what is most aesthetically pleasing—but most. That is why the modern field of graphic design focuses on grids systems and consistent spacing and margins—because most people find them appealing. (Not even to mention the other issues around covering the bookmarks and tab bars.)
If I seem a bit overly worked up about this, it's because working in the graphic design industry has made me very sensitive to poorly-aligned visuals, in the same way type designers become sensitive to bad kerning. And I live in my web browser.
I'll eventually adapt, as most people will. That does not mean this is a good change.
Everyone not happy with pocket recommendations, what is the alternate source of revenue? Not enough will pay for the product. On the other hand Mozilla has to compete with Apple, Google & Microsoft, all of whom are fighting hard for the Web.
Mozilla is doing good overall. They are doing some fundamental work to get back the technical edge, still trying to keep the future of the platform open with WebAssembly and their products have become much more reliable now. We have to cut them some slack.
I will be honest, I used to be a very active Pocket user as soon as it got bought by Mozilla, hoping that Mozilla would have open-source a significant part (in not all) the tech behind Pocket (so I could use my own install if wanted) and because the personalized recommendations it provided were very relevant to my interests.
Sadly, Pocket hasn't become open-source nor has it kept its awesome personalized recommendations.
They could use the donations to improve Firefox, to pay the salaries of the engineers, instead of all the political nonsense they do with the foundation. Yes, your donations go towards that.
And they could cut the salaries of management instead of giving themselves raises.
I don't think you get what I said. I said: if they stopped throwing money down the drain with the politised foundation and the executives stopped raising their salaries they wouldn't have to run ads and maybe they could even pay their engineers more money.
Can you elaborate on the ways in which you feel the Mozilla Foundation is politicized? Their advocacy page[1] feels incredibly vanilla: it emphasizes private communication, online safety, and collaboration with generally well-regarded groups like the EFF.
First that's her. Then I am going to entirely ignore yoir pointless jab at developers. The discussion was strictly about Baker 150% raise.
The 2017 deal was a 8% increase in revenue. That's a significant slow down of the increase trajectory of these deals. Meanwhile every other metrics were going down, most notably market share.
2017 also saw the rebranding and the Pocket deal go through. I still don't think it was worth a 150% increase.
I find it to be rather well-written for this sort of thing. As in, it was written with an intent to communicate what it's saying, which is the opposite of the usual.
When Pocket was first introduced in Firefox, the official party line was that it was just something temporary donated by the good people of Pocket to plug a feature hole so that you, dear users, won't suffer much while we develop a proper replacement.
And now this has somehow transformed into a vitally important revenue stream?
Having a secondary revenue other than Google's donations is not a bad idea. Some of us actually like Pocket. My only wish for Pocket to handle links to PDFs
> ...some of the best stories on the web, will appear on the Firefox new tab...
Why is FireFox trying to get into article recommendations? I can only assume it allows some method of monetisation once users get used to it being there. Feels a bit off.
It looks like they are already monetizing it. A few of the articles have a "Sponsored by X" below them. I don't love that, but at least they set it up in a way where they aren't collecting data on users to show them. They have to pay the bills somehow.
Having other sources of revenue outside of a benefactor whose interesting in you relies on having a relevance in the browser market with them also actively engaged in implicitly or explicitly undermining that with a product of their own doesn't seem like too bad of an idea.
The day Google stops paying mozilla and mozilla close shop, they will get the same treatment Google itself set up in courts against Microsoft for IE6. It's pretty much protection money for their past selfs.
Google doesn't actually need Mozilla to increase their search market share. When Mozilla switched to Yahoo in the U.S., many users switched back to Google [1], and those who care about privacy switch to things such as DuckDuckGo anyways.
Developing more than one revenue stream is likely to be a more resilient strategy than hoping that Google is happy to keep paying a competitor browser to stay in business
I'm sure it will be able to be disabled but it's so frustrating seeing more advertising being baked into the browser. I really don't want web browsers to subtly (or not so subtly) influence what people are reading.
edit: Like many others have noted before this everything is "free" model of the Internet seems completely broken to me and I feel a bit sad/hopeless about it.
I disagree. The main recommendations are not ads, they are recommendations. Formerly known as clickbait, but without the full negative connotations that the term has gathered. But still clickbait in that it's a source of distraction, a mechanism for derailing your train of thought.
In small doses, I rather like them. Back when Firefox only displayed 3 or 4 on the new tab page, I even left them enabled. Now that it has the huge grid of options, with a row peeking out above the fold in the classic dark pattern that demands discovery, I have turned them off.
As for ads, yeah, you'll get those by default too. (But there's a checkbox still where you can turn off the sponsored content.)
I just think it's useful to distinguish true ads from stuff that's intended to provide value. (Sure, ads theoretically can occasionally provide value, but the difference is huge.)
The biggest item on my wish-list is still a user-option to restore the previous (sensible) click behavior for the address bar: one click places the cursor, double click selects (all, but if I need to triple click for that it would be fine, too).
Sadly, this wish will probably not come true any time soon... or ever.
I filed a bug, thinking this was an inadvertant side-effect of the new address bar, but it was closed WONTFIX. The old user setting was never really supposed to be used on Windows, just as a workaround for something I don't remember, and the use case is invalid.
I still wish I'd get that distinction between single click and double click back.
Yeah, I was aware of that bug report (thanks for filing it). The rationale given is ridiculous, though - anywhere else on my system if I click on a text field, the cursor gets placed where I click and nothing gets selected.
It's hard for me to imagine what use case the current behavior is optimized for.
> It's hard for me to imagine what use case the current behavior is optimized for.
I think the current behavior is optimized for people who use the mouse for everything and don’t feel confident enough to edit the URL of the site they’re on. Such people aren’t comfortable with learning new keyboard shortcuts like Ctrl-L or Alt-D, so they will notice an increase in speed because they only have to click once to select the URL. I imagine before they were either triple-clicking or clicking once and hitting Ctrl-A. Then those users type the name of the next site they want to visit, completely replacing the current URL, and press Enter to visit it.
Same here - I've pinned my Linux machines to Firefox 74 for the moment, in the no-doubt vain hope that someone upstream will see sense before too long.
I was previously using the option (that was removed in Firefox 75) to make the URL bars on the Windows and Mac versions behave in the same way as on Linux - I was really happy to be able to do that, since I've never understood why the single-click-highlight behaviour in some other browsers was supposed to be a good thing. But those Firefox installs are self-updating rather than managed through the package manager, so they got the new behaviour automatically. It's been a couple of months now, but I still don't like it.
The action that the recent change to Firefox made harder is not any the actions you just described how to do, but placing the cursor at a point _within_ the URL. The recent change made it require a click to select the whole URL, a pause, and another click to place the cursor, instead of just a place to place the cursor.
I used to place the cursor inside the URL a lot and was disappointed when that action got slower. I was all set to give an example of why it’s bad, but right now, I’m actually having trouble thinking of such an example. I used to place the cursor inside a URL and then hit Shift-Command-Right to select the text after that, but I’ve just realized that clicking inside the URL and then dragging the mouse down is even faster. And I used to place the cursor near a section of the URL and use the keyboard to select and delete it, but double-clicking and dragging seems to take a similar amount of time in the examples I can think of.
Hmm… okay, I’ve thought of a good use-case for placing the cursor inside the URL: adding a subdomain. If I’m developing http://example.com/foo and want to go to the staging server http://staging.example.com/foo, I used to be able to click before “example” and type “staging.”. Now that requires two clicks and a pause, and the selection shortcuts above don’t help.
Thanks, I'm talking about the mouse, though. I do use these keyboard shortcuts all the time but that is sort of orthogonal to the changed click behavior -- which is unlike for any other text field on my system.
I would financially support a fork of Firefox with all the garbage removed. The home page bullshit, Pocket, all the automatic requests made without user action, and more that I probably don't know of.
> Source map support also got a lot more reliable and will just work for a lot more cases
This is good news if it's true. Source map support seems pretty patchy across both Chrome and Firefox. I've had the work reliably at times in the past. But something always seems to shift which breaks them again, and I've never been able to work out what it is.
People keep recommending Brave, but I keep countering with Firefox. It's getting a lot harder to convince people when Firefox is doubling-down on BS like the expanding address bar, integrating articles/ads, telemetry, etc.
When I see Brave recommendations, they're primarily because of it's built-in ad-blocking. People value sanity. Don't introduce more visual distractions (essentially what the average person gets from an ad; they see it as a visual thing, they don't comprehend tracking and resource management like we do). Make Firefox clean, make it so that it can be easily recommended. When Chrome came out, people were excited because it was simple and sleek. It's okay to learn from competitors, don't let hubris be the downfall!
I think a lot of people agree. And a lot of other people are pissed off about Firefox following Chrome's lead in stripping everything down visually.
There's a solution, though -- as it happens, I happen to have the best opinion on this. Like, always the best. So really the Firefox designers should just ask me. I would think they would appreciate being able to confidently say that they're always doing the right thing?
I doubt that any big site would be affected, since Firefox is the first browser shipping any form of AVIF support, even though most browsers already have AV1.
I hope that about:performance has not been nerfed still further. Currently I have an issue wherein some tab, unknown to me, begins using one or more cores at full speed. About:performance allows me only to search by the eco-friendly "energy" usage bit, which somehow does not reveal which tab is doing it. I kill off the most active tabs according to that stat, nothing happens.
And so I have had to default back to killing off a process and guessing which tab has crashed.
"Pocket recommendations, featuring some of the best stories on the web, will appear on the Firefox new tab for our users in the UK."
I really hate to admit how often those darn Pocket recommendations get me! I don't know how they choose what shows up on my tab, but more often than not, there's at least one thing in there I end up reading.
> Are these stories personalized to me? For the most part, no. Most recommendations on your new tab come from a general list of the best of stories on the web.
> Pocket occasionally partners with select publishers and brands to deliver high-quality sponsored stories to our users. These stories will always be clearly marked
> Pocket’s 30+ million global users help guide our curation by pointing us to thought-provoking essays, hidden gems, and fascinating deep-dives from across the web. Editors at Pocket then sift through the most-recommended and most-read stories and handpick the best to share with the wider Pocket and Firefox communities
The bottom of the page says it was updated today, now it says this:
> Are these stories personalized to me?
> For the most part, no. Most recommendations on your new tab come from a general list of the best of stories on the web. But Pocket is actively exploring ways to deliver personalized recommendations in a way that vigorously protects users’ privacy. Importantly, neither Mozilla nor Pocket ever receives a copy of your browser history. When personalization does occur, recommendations rely on a process of story sorting and filtering that happens locally in your personal copy of Firefox.
> When personalization does occur, recommendations rely on a process of story sorting and filtering that happens locally in your personal copy of Firefox.
I use Safari on my laptop but, I have Firefox on my personal desktop. I don't see why Firefox keeps on putting in more and more features that compromise their previous brand image and actions that remove privacy oriented features or add features that revert this.
Even Windows is putting ads in your face in the operating system itself.
Surely it's not difficult to come up with 5-10 interesting articles?
Anyway, personally I've never seen pocket on my firefox. My new tab opens to a blank page. And I love firefox for allowing this degree of customization.
Why remove config options and force some UI that clearly people are not happy with?
I can not type in a url without showing the most visited sites? At least let me press ctrl-l or click in the url bar and start typing before showing me helpful information, trying to enter a new URL, I really do not want to see the most common sites again and again and again and again!
Is Firefox trying to kill the long tail of the internet and get everyone to just visit the top 5 sites?
"Why remove [the] config [option]" is easily answered in this case. When Mozilla changed the address bar, they also rewrote a lot of overall address bar code, and the old about:config flag activated the old code pathway—it wasn't just a simple design tweak. You don't want to have all that old code sticking around in Firefox.
What we need is a new flag that changes the design specifically.
Oh, don't worry: more options have been removed again: setting browser.urlbar.update1 = false no longer gives you back the old, unintrusive urlbar behavior. Mozilla UX people have once again shown that they know best and you won't need to worry about getting a bad user experience just because you mistakenly thought you liked it.
Edit: Changed 'disabled' to 'removed' in the first sentence, as it's probably clearer.
What a pointless question; how can any of us know what your individual preferences are like?
Mozilla aims to ship a default configuration that works well for a large number of users. Of course there'll be people -- like yourself, apparently -- who'd prefer some things to be configured differently, but what you'd like changed is entirely up to you.
Maybe you should be grateful Firefox offers (quite a lot of) customisation opportunities, instead of just posting snarky remarks.
It's not pointless to ask what long-standing behaviors are changed this time around. Mozilla has a history of making gratuitous UI changes that force existing users to re-learn something and have questionable benefits for new users. They also have a tendency to leave those changes (or at least the about:config workarounds) out of the release notes.
> Maybe you should be grateful Firefox offers (quite a lot of) customisation opportunities, instead of just posting snarky remarks.
That's called user feedback. Users are always right. And looking at Firefox's browser share they are not getting too many new users anymore. Making the life of your existing users a little more miserable does not sound like a very sustainable strategy.
Not in any useful sense. "What do I need to turn off this time" presumably just implies "they should never change anything, the product is perfect already". (Which one was the perfect version, out of curiosity?)
> they should never change anything, the product is perfect already
You're exaggerating. The problem isn't that Mozilla changes things, it's that they've set the bar too low for changes. Many of their updates seemingly deliver change for the sake of change, when a more reasonable strategy would be to require a change to be compelling enough to outweigh the frustration and friction it will cause. An imperfect UI that users know how to use is better than a moving target UI that constantly brings new surprises.
They don't need to know what my individual preferences are, actually, I would be glad if they don't try to "find them out".
Are you sure they're trying to ship what works best for most people? I've not read that anywhere. If they really wanted people to have a choice, they wouldn't be adding configurations that can't be switched on/off through they're preferences menu - like for example, that crazy bar they just added a couple of releases ago - oh.. and which apparently you are not allowed to switch off no more, not even through about:config, according to sibling comment. Also, they have a track record of breaking old configuration options quite often through updates.
I am grateful by what they offer - just not sure they're not sneakily changing course, similar to what chrome did.
Part I never get is how and when did we got into the mindset of, open source means free and the backlash Mozilla receives for trying to monetize their product. Either I'm reading too much in-between the lines or I'm missing something.
Whenever I looked at pocket recommendations, I would either get:
1. political content; which is something I barely read. And a lot of the content doesn't even align with me (But again, I don't read a lot of political articles)
2. US Sports; I'm european!
I'd try to mark everything as "Not interested", but that never really changed anything in the end.
I do use Pocket, but mostly as a bookmarking tool. And all the topics that I bookmark are either tech, or self help / phychology related. I never get anything that matches these topics in my recommendations. Not really looking forward to seeing them on my new tab. But I assume you can switch it off.
To all who aren't happy with the way FX is going, may I suggest palemoon. I've been using it a long while and it's just straighforwardly good. http://www.palemoon.org/
Perhaps the easiest way of letting Mozilla know how you feel is by helping them lose market share to another.
PM is a good browser. Not affiliated, it just works for me.
Interesting. I didn't know this. BTW I wonder where the assorted silent downvotes are coming from - just from my suggesting an alternative browser and your posting useful info.
I’m sick of Firefox megabar. I’ve downgraded Firefox to the 76.0.1 already. It’s time to switch to another browser. Can you suggest any good ones? Or there is only one choice left?
For me his release broke uBlock Origin (Dashboard shows only menu without options and doesn't block anything), Twitter doesn't load, Reddit doesn't load
No Firefox, no! Please don't embed distraction directly into the browser (pocket recommendations)! I don't want to hear about Coronavirus or ongoing politics bullshit whenever I open a tab! I just want to ignore this noise.
The movement is distracting, and the alignment of the bar's expanded state is terrible. There's a reason most graphic design follows a grid system.
We need a way to turn this off. I realize the old about:config flag was tied to a legacy code pathway, but now Mozilla should implement a new flag. I don't think that's an unreasonable ask.