Seems like Mozilla is still too rich if they can afford complete redesign of their product every 3 years. Let's hope the lepton ui fix will continue to work, I might have to up my donation there..
this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2026
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There is way too much white-space in this design. I'm tired of getting higher resolution displays only to lose that resolution to applications that get chunkier.
Wow look at those default screenshots. They look horrible, what a mess.
A useless sidebar, a lot of mess in the homepage, stupid shit being pushed to you.
Everytime i install Firefox i need to do a huge config setup to remove all that useless crap
I used the side bar constantly in work as ive usually got 6 million tabs open. You can collapse it, and its off by default.
Agreed, never asked for the side bar, never gonna use it.
Believe it or not, they make the browser not just for you. I don't use the sidebar either, but a colleague uses nothing but the sidebar.
God forbid the most unresponsive software dev group standardize a feature remade 4+ different ways by the community, years late
Guarantee you can turn off the sidebar. They already have this and it can be disabled. Why not use it for three seconds? I despise the Mozilla NGO stuff ruining Firefox but this is utterly benign. Dynamic colors are cute and fun.
Guarantee you can turn off the sidebar.
You can. For now.
They already have this and it can be disabled. Why not use it for three seconds?
Because every now and again, it's a new three seconds. First it was the password manager. Then Sync. Then Monitor. Then AI chatbot.Before all of that it was a bunch of other things. Then it was the side tabs. _You gotta check them out!* Now it's this.
For me as well, I need to use the firefox profile creator website to get rid of all these things. It takes a good few minutes to configure. But for someone who may not know about the website? At least half an hour to thoroughly go through Preferences, and most things aren't even there!
Dynamic colors are cute and fun.
Sure!
Until you try putting them on an old laptop. Because why would anyone be using an old laptop in ~~2025~~ 2026? And then, how dare they expect to be able to browse the web? (Because static sites to download useful stuff apparently don't exist, nor do people who'd like to do that which don't know about curl).
This isn't just a Firefox problem, it's a global one. Instead of functionality, what's preferred is aesthetics. Instead of accessiblity, how accessible able people feel it is. Instead of performance, bloat.
Most of these things could be optional, Firefox Approved First-party add-ons or integrations, but this isn't the route this timeline has taken.
You can. For now.
my god you're right, they've sold out to Big Sidebar. the problem with their Sync is that it has no self-hostable e2ee option and you need to use Firefox servers that use Google stuff. comparing apples and rotten oranges most of this is silly
Yeah, because for Windows, when you accidentally hover over the weather widget for 0.5 ms longer than some programmer decided will force you to connect to MSN.
Mozilla is clearly immune to analytics and took a hard stance that didn't and will never change, so pardon me for entertaining your thought.
And there's just no way the Sync icon becomes an auto-opening popup (possibly in the Sidebar), because the designers won't come up with the brilliant idea.
- Hey, how can we make the numbers seem like more people are using MSN (or Sync)?
- Just open it whenever an unlucky soul hovers over it accidentally. They have 50ms to run across it if they really don't want to use it!
- Wow, what a great idea!
This talk at M$ can never happen at Mozilla, from what we've seen in the past 5+ years.
Given with Mozilla's recent track record, it just might.
This isn't ideologcal creep that can be forestalled by purism and hatred of sidebars 😭 the corporate side of Mozilla with push that stuff whether or not you complain about the occasional good thing they do. Please get a grip
One of the most irritating things about their management is these delays, the worst of which can be seen with Thunderbird/Betterbird situation. Community has been waiting years for shit that was already fixes to be added & they won't add QA testers
I know it's not the designers' fault (at least not completely).
They're part of the problem - mostly a symptom. The only real sin they've done is tried to keep their job - which I can't really blame them for. But it is a shame it harms users as a consequence - especially ones not as lucky as me to not need accessibility
But I see no problem in bashing bad design, because if no one does, Corporate is gonna continue doing what they do. People need to speak about their wishes. Sure, most won't be heeded, but what other way do you suggest for me (and most others in the thread) to do? Like this we at least have our little echo chamber to shit in.
It's not about the sidebar, but what it represents. It's a symptom of a larger problem - one you've correctly identified, yet do nothing about. I'm at least being a brat about it. Maybe if enough people complain, someone "in power" might get an idea as well.
I would argue this kind of blanket condemnation of Mozilla Doing Anything could be used by the Google opps in the org to justify adding more "premium features" that make money (but really don't) instead of improving the goddamned browser and convince them we are not worth considering anyways, which WILL kill the browser. The default launcher on one of my ereaders has a fucking dead Pocket button and you think I'm not pissed off at this lol
again??? why????
Designers need a reason to exist. So instead of doing user surveys and making new, modular themes (so you can choose the redesign), they scrap everything every few years so they have something to do. Because apparently modularity is hard.
oh please no. i fucking hate having to edit my userchrome on every updates..
It looks fine, I guess...? Then again, I thought the old design was fine as it was...
the old one is fine
i don't think the ui is your main problem, mozilla, but ok i guess.
Well, their main problem is attention. And we are looking at a news article right now.
You're right. It's too few AI chatbots!
I really hate the trend of people just randomly changing UI in apps for no apparent reason. It's just a pervasive problem at this point.
I hope vertical tabs will get hidden in fullscreen mode this annoys me a lot now
Switch to Zen. You can toggle vertical tabs with a key press.
I prefer standardized OS wide appearances that are respected by all apps. The only skinning I want are Dark Modes or Mini Player modes (for media players).
Again?
thanks i hate it if youre gonna keep going chromium then take from vivaldi.
but really you should take from seamonkey and palemoon for ui ideas mozilla
I think Quantum was last redesign which is older than half a decade now, time flies
nope, they switched to proton from photon around 2023 iirc
From the article:
Before Nova, there was Firefox Proton, an update focusing on removing visual clutter with simplified menus back in June 2021 alongside Firefox 89. Going back even further, we saw the 2017 "Photon" redesign land with Firefox 57.
(The design that landed alongside the Quantum update was called "Photon".)
No thank you. I like Firefox the way it is. I hate big changes for the sake of designers keeping their jobs changing my tools and workflow and making things ugly.
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literally just fix bugs
I don't like gaps, included rounded corners. Let me use all my screen space dammit
😡
I hope it's just a joke
Yes, the classic Mozilla April Fools joke, released a full month early.
off by one error
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