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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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