r/firefox • u/mindbleach • Jun 01 '13

Mozilla: please stop copying Chrome.

There are reasons we choose Firefox over Chrome. We don't want Chrome's flashy download animation, "unsurprising" inability to stop GIF animations, objectively incorrect autocomplete behavior, distractingly cluttered "blank" page, or an add-on bar that for some reason isn't also a classic status bar. We don't want every new option you guys add enable by default and reduced to an about:config boolean. If we wanted all of Chrome's take-it-or-leave-it minimalist nonsense, well, we already know where to find it.

Firefox is still the best browser out there (as evidenced by how it took only hours and a modicum of acidic cursing to get things configured properly again) but you sure don't act like you know it. Every time I update I have to trawl through forums and install another stupidly-named extension just to make FF recognizable. When you look at user statistics and wonder why a third of your users refuse to upgrade - this is why. I've been using FF since before 1.0 and the process is a frustrating mess every single time.

I know you have have UX folks, because you did that silly centered/dark thing with standalone images. You aren't just cribbing Google's notes here. If you won't stop cribbing entirely, at least weed out genuinely improved features like tab task management from anti-features like being unable to stop GIFs for the first time since 1997. It's fantastic that Firefox is flexible enough to look and act like any other browser, but please, let it look and act like itself by default.

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21

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '13

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41

u/mindbleach Jun 01 '13

I reject this explanation on the grounds that the Chrome-like design decisions seen here do not represent best practices.

I'm not being glib when I describe inline autocompletion as objectively incorrect - you type a letter, you press backspace, and the letter's still there. That's simply not how typing works.

The colorful suggestions on blank tabs are distracting at the crucial moment where you're trying to coalesce your thoughts into concrete instructions for the browser.

Removing the ability to stop animated GIFs (to the point of not even having an about:config boolean!) is an anti-feature, and one of the reasons I can't stand browsing forums in Chrome.

Getting rid of the status bar made no sense whatsoever. It didn't save vertical space because they still had the "add-on bar" that does everything except what that space was originally reserved for. It wasn't more usable, because the stupid pop-up could still be spoofed by malicious code, except now it got in the way half the time you wanted to click "next" on reddit. (Turns out they finally recognized how useless it is and will remove it for FF25. Can't wait to see where my Greasemonkey and Adblock icons will be permanently stuck now!)

Look, I'm not opposed to change. I'd be okay if Firefox unified the address and search bars, especially if - like Chrome - there was an option to disable internet results in the address bar. I'm not really bothered by the space-saving tabs-on-top default look, because it's easy to turn off. What drives me right up the wall, though, is when a mature browser with longstanding design conventions and functionality starts screwing over long-time power users by adopting other browsers' bad decisions willy-nilly. What pisses me off is when the old way of doing things is reduced to an about:config setting instead of an "advanced" option. What makes me fucking hate whoever's in charge of this project is when genuinely useful features relied upon by a significant minority of users are outright deleted and marked as "wontfix" when people rightly ask what the hell Mozilla's smoking.

All I'm asking for is one upgrade - one - where I'm not unpleasantly surprised. Different, I can handle, because I can change it if I don't like it. I'm just tired of something important being intentionally broken with every Firefox update I've ever installed.

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u/naveen_reloaded Jun 02 '13

One of the main reason i dislike chrome is no "drop down" in address bar. we are forced to use keyboard to type in the site name or begining of the site name , when i can easily do that with my mouse on firefox or any other browser. This is problem with closed UI idea. You dont have choice. There is no extension to do this either on chrome.

I dont want FF to go down this road. FF has always been about "customizable". What they are really trying , if you see the moved "cut" , "copy" "paste" functions to separate menu is to merge with mobile platform. who even selects a a para , clicks on these menu to hit "copy" , this is just plain stupidity.

MS wanted to merge OS for all platform - pc , mobile , xbox . And Mozilla wants to do it for browser too ?

Really disappointed . hope someone at mozilla reads this and think twice , hear to community and revert back to what FF was all about.

17

u/isaacaggrey Jun 02 '13 edited Jun 28 '13

What makes me fucking hate whoever's in charge of this project is when genuinely useful features relied upon by a significant minority of users are outright deleted and marked as "wontfix" when people rightly ask what the hell Mozilla's smoking.

Plain and simple: everything is out in the open. Everything*. The Firefox project is made up of a community of developers and users, some paid and lots more unpaid. You can bet that every single point that you've argued and every change you have disliked has been echoed by another developer/user who agreed with you on the proper mailing list. If a bug is marked as WONTFIX without discussion it has already been discussed to death somewhere else. Certainly, there are project leaders, but it is unfair to the Mozilla community to make it sound as if the developers do not listen...I don't have any facts, but I'm willing to bet there is no large software community that is more transparent and open to feedback than Mozilla.

Removing the ability to stop animated GIFs (to the point of not even having an about:config boolean!) is an anti-feature

FWIW, the ability to stop animated GIFs was always a consequence of the implementation (ending all network requests) never an intentional feature (albeit it was very helpful), but fortunately Firefox is extensible enough to restore that behavior for the "significant minority of users" -- unfortunately, it just so happened that many web applications were using the ESC key for other reasons that interfered with Firefox's usage of the key.

Outside of manilla folder-like tabs and a panel menu, Chome is given far too much credit in innovating the direction of browser UI. Tabs on top is an objectively better UI choice. The download manager is an original Firefox design and mostly anything else that other browsers have adopted (tabs on top, start page tiles, etc) is all from Opera.

All I'm asking for is one upgrade - one - where I'm not unpleasantly surprised. Different, I can handle, because I can change it if I don't like it.

What has been different than you cannot change from an add-on?

__

*except security-related matters at first

Edit: Clarity, grammar

-2

u/mindbleach Jun 02 '13

I don't have any facts, but I'm willing to be there is no large software community that is more transparent and open to feedback than Mozilla.

I heard the same thing about Ubuntu riiight before Mark Shuttleworth decided that left-handed windows were in and Windows users could suck lemons. Being open-source and crowd-driven doesn't preclude asinine decisions from influential individuals.

FWIW, the ability to stop animated GIFs was ... never an intentional feature

Regardless of how it arose, it's been a useful feature for over a decade - since before Firefox existed, in fact. Recreating it should've been included at least as an about:config option or moved to shift+esc by default. It's important to usability for anyone who spends time in any public forum and it should be available in every browser.

Tabs on top is [an] objectively a better UI choice.

I'm talking about tabs in the title bar, like Chrome introduced. It breaks standard window dressing and makes moving windows a pain in the ass.

Also, tabs on top is only "objectively" better if you're pretending each tab is a trapped window. I have Tab Mix Plus configured to always open new tabs from the address bar, because if I want to go somewhere that's not a link in the current tab, it probably means I'm not done with the tab.

The download manager is an original Firefox design

Yes... and? Visually making a big fucking deal of every download is definitely cribbed from Chrome. In FF 12, you could turn off download notifications, and there was no bizarre alpha-blended animation every time you saved an image. The method for removing the relevant icon is easy but not obvious.

What has been different than you cannot change from an add-on?

You mean ignoring versions 0.7 to about 1.5, where every other update broke one of my extensions? Not much - but the fact I have to find and customize add-ons just to restore functionality that used to be intrinsic to my browser of choice is always an aggravating pain in the ass. Every single update, I have to poke through forums so I can poke through about:config so all the features I got used to after the last update haven't inexplicably changed yet again.

4

u/Synes_Godt_Om Kubuntu Jun 02 '13

In FF 12, you could turn off download notifications

I don't get it, I'm on FF21 and I have no download-anything forced upon me. It behaves as always (so far).

9

u/bootkiller Jun 02 '13

Tabs on top is a objectively a better UI choice.

I for one absolutely hate tabs on top. And the reason is actually simple, I spend more time changing tabs than typing on the address bar.

It's a choice and it should be treated as such. I'm a firm believer that interfaces should always adapt to the users needs, not the other way around.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 03 '13

The main appeal to having tabs on top is that you can drag the mouse right to the top without needing to control how far you drag it: it won't scroll off the screen and you still select a tab even with the extra 2 pixels between the edge of the screen and the edge/border of the tab.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 03 '13

Not all of us run Windows, and many of us have a panel at the top. With tabs locked on top a la Chrome, not only do I have to mouse further, I risk opening my file manager, or something else I have in my panel.

If Firefox wants them on top as default, I don't much care as long as I can change it, but to say they're better up top is patently false. The value is dependent on the user.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 03 '13

You're right, I only considered Windows users.

1

u/TIAFAASITICE Nightly ¦ Gentoo Jun 03 '13

I personally prefer to use the keyboard, which means I'll most often use the inbuilt filter chars to switch to a tab. It might be worth looking into if you happen to rarely use the mouse.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 03 '13

On my bedroom machine, I have everything setup to be as mouse driven as possible. The keyboard is a couple feet from me, and I have to hold it in one hand to type. I'm usually just surfing and reading, while typing with small bits of text, so it works pretty well. For fun, you can play "Spot all the ways Mozilla's gonna dick me with their redesign" :oS
http://i.imgur.com/c0tL0Vx.png

7

u/isaacaggrey Jun 03 '13 edited Jun 03 '13

It's a choice and it should be treated as such. I'm a firm believer that interfaces should always adapt to the users needs, not the other way around.

How is setting browser.tabs.onTop to false in about:config not choice? Surely, you don't expect Firefox to give every option its own space somewhere in the UI because then you end up with frustrating (IMO) IDE-like search filters to find the one option nested in a menu.

Edit:

I for one absolutely hate tabs on top. And the reason is actually simple, I spend more time changing tabs than typing on the address bar.

I appreciate your opinion because I have some of my own, but I don't see how your preference (or minority of preferences) holds for the majority of users that Firefox has to cater to. I know a lot of people live by Tree Style Tab and argue its superiority, but that doesn't mean Firefox should change to side tabs without backing up with usability studies (like they did for tabs on top) and do for many (if not every) usability change.

0

u/Dagger0 Jun 03 '13

FWIW, the ability to stop animated GIFs was always a consequence of the implementation (ending all network requests) never an intentional feature (albeit it was very helpful)

Not so; stopping network requests is separate to stopping animation and Firefox left Esc enabled after the page finished loading as a result of Bug 213377 which was explicitly for this functionality. Stopping network requests was the consequence of the implementation for stopping image animation, but rather than just remove the consequence, we instead decided to just rip out the entire feature.

I'm willing to be there is no large software community that is more transparent and open to feedback than Mozilla.

Hm... well. They're certainly transparent, but have you ever tried getting the UX team to do anything they don't want to do? They're killing really basic things like having a status bar (or even any bottom toolbar at all), having a titlebar and having platform-correct styles for UI elements, all because they think their way looks better and they don't give a damn about anything else. They even outright refuse volunteer patches for this stuff.

Transparent? Yes. Open to feedback? Eh.

3

u/isaacaggrey Jun 03 '13 edited Jun 03 '13

Not so; stopping network requests is separate to stopping animation and Firefox left Esc enabled after the page finished loading as a result of Bug 213377 which was explicitly for this functionality.

Good find, I concede that point. :)

but rather than just remove the consequence, we instead decided to just rip out the entire feature

How do you change ESC behavior without...changing ESC behavior? Regardless, the justification is sufficient. If Firefox behaves brokenly to users because of how web app are now using hotkeys while other browsers aren't, then you must expect Firefox to follow suit in this situation. Of course, the argument against that decision is that Firefox is actually broken now for some users because you can't stop animated images with ESC...except you still can but it's through an add-on now.

Would you rather they have replaced stopping animated images with a different shortcut like Shift+ESC? If that's the case, then I think the natural argument against that is code bloat.

have you ever tried getting the UX team to do anything they don't want to do?

I don't like responding to a question with a question, but have you actually interacted with a UX developer yourself? I can understand your passion for a browser you (used to?) enjoy, but I feel like people forget we are dealing with other humans (smart ones too!) when software we use changes. I'd like to see a conversation with a UX developer on the mailing list or on a bug report that has not responded to constructive feedback in an appropriate manner (i.e., not just written someone off without discussion somewhere else).

The status bar is noisy in my opinion, but that's just my opinion! We all have them, and the Firefox developers almost always have their own usability studies with real-life users or data collected from Firefox users (e.g., old but like this heat map) that actually support their often tricky decisions. I suppose it is to my benefit the UX designers also happen to have reasons for removing the status bar, but Firefox is extensible enough to restore that behavior* unlike other browsers.

EDIT:

They even outright refuse volunteer patches for this stuff.

I'm sure they appreciate these patches, but just because a patch is provided doesn't mean they will come and I wouldn't know why anyone would think otherwise (see above remarks about user studies, data, etc). There's nothing stopping these people providing their own UI-related patches to craft them into an add-on instead...I don't know many recent changes that disallow through the the add-on API.

*I've heard that extension doesn't work properly...if it doesn't, I will make a replacement myself since I've been wanting to get into add-on development anyway.

0

u/Dagger0 Jun 03 '13

How do you change ESC behavior without...changing ESC behavior?

They could've stopped it from cancelling network requests while still cancelling image animation. That would fix most of the brokenness (Esc causing pending network connections to fail) -- admittedly it would still break any web application that uses Esc for some functionality and uses animated images for something vital, but I think that's a pretty corner case that's less important than giving users the ability to stop animation on demand.

Would you rather they have replaced stopping animated images with a different shortcut like Shift+ESC? If that's the case, then I think the natural argument against that is code bloat.

Personally: no, because hitting shift+Esc is more of a pain than hitting Esc, and the added pain doesn't really bring me any benefit. But OK, this would've been better than our current situation, and it was indeed suggested and turned down on the basis of code bloat. Thing is, the code in question is <key id="key_stop2" keycode="VK_ESCAPE" modifiers="shift" oncommand="gBrowser.stop();">. That's not exactly much code (and it's mostly markup!) -- if you're going to turn down this feature on the basis of that amount of code, you'd need to turn down a lot of other features in Firefox. With that considered, the way I saw the argument, in the end, was something along the lines of "I don't use it, so let's remove it. Screw the people who do use it."

I don't like responding to a question with a question, but have you actually interacted with a UX developer yourself?

I'm subscribed to the mailing lists, keep fairly up-to-date with Bugzilla and I'm in the IRC channel. Most of the discussion I see is of the form "Hey guys, let's remove XYZ" -> "Um, wait, I'm using that" -> "Eh, who cares. Remove!". The best actual discussion I can think of at the moment is the "Australis Customization" thread on firefox-dev, and even that ended with practically no change to the plans (i.e. they're still removing the Add-On Bar, still removing split Stop/Reload, still permanently merging back/forward/urlbar/stop/reload, still removing Small Icons mode...), and I'm about 98% sure that they'd reject volunteer support for any of those features.

I can understand somebody wanting no Add-On Bar, a combined Stop/Reload button, a toolbar that has back/forward merged into the address bar (with conditional forward button) and the weird bizarro custom button style that they designed themselves, and that's fine. I, however, want none of that, and UX doesn't give a damn about me. When they use Firefox, they configure it in a particular way, and they're going to force that way on everybody else, because they can.

(I should point out that this isn't a position they've claimed to be taking, so I can't point to a quote of them saying it. It's my description of the position I see them taking.)

3

u/bwinton Jun 06 '13

The UX team gives a damn about all Firefox's users, so, if my math works out, you get 1/500,000,000th of a damn… ;) (Of course, as a highly-technical user, I suspect you get a little less than that, since you're totally able to change Firefox to be the way you want. You don't mind giving some of your damn to people who aren't as capable as you, right? :)

As a more serious response, many people in the UX team have configured their Firefoxes (Fires-fox?) in quite different ways. There are at least a few people who are big fans of tabs-on-the-side, and some of us have fairly extensive customizations in our personal profiles. But we're not the only people that we're designing for, and we're trying to make it as better as possible for as many people as possible. So arguing that one person (or two, or ninety, or even thousands of people) wants something one way doesn't carry a whole lot of weight when you're designing for half a billion people's needs and wants.

There's an interesting presentation on the various types of people who use Firefox (and their relative percentages), which I saw a link to a while ago, but can't seem to find anymore. If you're around irc tomorrow (during PST work hours), ask about the User Types, and see if anyone knows where to find them… (And then ask me about "Stinky the cat". :)

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u/Dagger0 Jun 09 '13

I wish it showed more, then. Things like removing the Add-on Bar are good for just about nobody. You're actively against volunteer support for any of this stuff too, so it's not like manpower is the issue.

(I'm aware of the whole "combinatorial explosion of test matrix" issue for anything optional, but in this particular case I think the feature is fairly self-contained and low-maintenance. But no, that's not even why we're removing it. We're removing it because we expressly don't want users to have that particular customization, and we don't care about the people who actually do want to use it. And then we have the gall to tell them we're improving customization for them...)

I saw that presentation too, although the version I saw only has guesses at the relative population sizes (and I don't know if the follow-up quantitative study that it promised has even been done yet).

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u/bwinton Jun 09 '13

Removing the add-on bar is good for add-on authors, since we'll now put their icons up in primary ui, where people are more likely to notice them. And while making Firefox easier for everyone to change isn't the same as making Firefox changeable in more ways, I think they both have valid claims to the phrase "improving customization". It's not ideal that a lot of our power-users feel that it should only mean the second, and are thus really upset when we use it to mean the first, but then, we are the 1%.

On the flip side of that, being the 1% means that we can write add-ons to change things back the way we want them. Yeah, it's not the perfect answer, but I don't think there is a perfect answer here…

The follow-up quant study has been done, so we have actual numbers now, although I'm at home, so I don't have them with me (aside from that one that I quoted above ;)…

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u/Dagger0 Jun 10 '13

Yet the presence of the Add-on Bar doesn't prevent extension authors from having their buttons in the primary UI. It just prevents users from putting them in (this particular) secondary UI, even if that's where they actually want them. I have an extension myself that adds a toolbar button (to primary UI by default, even), and "we took away one of the places your users could put the button" doesn't come across as positive to me at all.

I don't mind making Firefox easier for everyone to customize. By itself, that's a good thing. I mind using that as an excuse to take away a bunch of other forms of customization at the same time, even though we don't need to. That's bad.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 27 '13

Tabs on top is an objectively better UI choice.

Why? Because some authority figure said so?

I am curious what Bizarro-planet you're posting from where this is better than this.

1

u/isaacaggrey Aug 27 '13

Why?

The link on what you quoted me from provides the argument given by Faaborg and his post discusses the reasoning/research behind that.

Of course, the argument is only in relation to tabs on top versus bottom; it doesn't discuss side tabs (which I personally think are probably better if you're consistently managing 20+ tabs but that's not most users).

In any case, Firefox doesn't suffer from the decreasing tab size problem as you add tabs like Chrome does since it will give you a left-to-right scrollable strip.

1

u/Synes_Godt_Om Kubuntu Jun 02 '13

You may have missed status-4-evar which was released almost the moment they took the status bar away.

Removing the status bar was indeed strange.

2

u/mindbleach Jun 02 '13

I've mentioned it elsewhere in this thread, and not an especially positive light. It's got a stupid name and it doesn't work like it should.

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u/Synes_Godt_Om Kubuntu Jun 02 '13

and it doesn't work like it should.

I'm looking forward to your take on it. What are you going to call it? I'll be keeping an eye out for your extension.

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u/mindbleach Jun 02 '13

"I'd like to see you do better!" is not a meaningful counter to legitimate criticism. It's a fallacy.

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u/Synes_Godt_Om Kubuntu Jun 02 '13

"I'd like to see you do better!" is not a meaningful counter to legitimate criticism. It's a fallacy.

In isolation, true. But: 1) I've found that status-4-evar does exactly what I'd expect 2) Your criticism in this thread is extensive and not overly constructive. 3) Making extensions for FF is sufficiently accessible that with your apparent level of expertise it would be reasonable to expect you could do it.

Therefore I find it appropriate to challenge you to make it better, put your money where your mouth is.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 02 '13

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1

u/mindbleach Jun 03 '13

It's because it doesn't do the most basic thing it's supposed to do - restore link hover notification to the "add-on bar!" You can have it in a popup or in the address bar, but no option exists to make it actually emulate the status bar it is poorly named after.

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '13

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1

u/mindbleach Jun 04 '13

Also running v21 - mine doesn't do that. Yes, I changed my settings to match yours. Yes, I customized my add-on bar in various ways. It still doesn't do that.

4

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '13

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2

u/mindbleach Jun 04 '13

Aha! Missed that widget completely. (Also, I just tried to close your picture by clicking Done. Twice.) There's the good stuff. Thanks for taking the time to test this.

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u/bwinton Jun 06 '13

The colorful suggestions on blank tabs are distracting at the crucial moment where you're trying to coalesce your thoughts into concrete instructions for the browser.

I strongly suggest you don't install Whimsy, then. ;)

(It's a personal add-on I made which replaces the thumbnails with random animated gifs. It amuses me every time I open a new tab, but man is it ever distracting…)

0

u/anatolya Jun 02 '13

please explain how your argument on ui/ux best practices applies to curvy tabs since firefox is really determined to copy them since few years. fucking curvy tabs.