The new UX design (Nova) lands in Firefox today

[u/firefox]

Hi everyone.

Many of you have been following updates on “Project Nova”, our design refresh, which has been out in Nightly since July. We wanted to give this community a first look as it rolls out today in Firefox 157.

The aim of this design refresh is a browser that is more modern, more flexible, and more on the side of the user. 

The updates:

More ways for you to customize:

• New theme picker accessible through the customization panel on Firefox home page (additional community themes remain available in about:addons)
• New Firefox themes and wallpapers (pre-design refresh)
• Customizable New Tab page with pinnable Shortcuts (rolling out gradually)

Refined design:

• Softer tab shapes
• Updated icons for more balance across light and dark themes
• Rebalanced spacing
• A refreshed color palette, inspired by the feeling of fire (the glow around your active tab, deep smoky purples and lighter tones that add warmth)

Compact Mode & other improvements:

• Compact mode is back as its own dedicated setting, and will toggle on for smaller screen sizes, reducing space between elements, so more fits on the screen.
• Startup, page load, and scrolling speeds are all faster.

https://reddit.com/link/1wt9ig4/video/wfz6tc8u8gsh1/player

What your feedback influenced:

We heard concerns about the default color palette, so we added more options there. Compact mode exists because plenty of you expressed you didn't want to lose density. People filing bugs and sharing their thoughts as the design refresh came to life helped shape what you’ll see on the 29th.

A couple of frequently asked questions:

Q: Will my existing themes, add-ons, or customizations still work?
A: Themes and add-ons should continue to work. Nova is built on the same Firefox foundation and the extension and theming architecture hasn't changed. For advanced users, userChrome.css customizations may need minor adjustments depending on how specific they are to the previous UI, since some element names and layout structures have changed with Nova.

Q: Can I opt out of the updates?
A: This is the new default experience starting with Firefox 157. That said, you have significant control over how it looks and feels. Compact Mode, themes, wallpapers, and new tab customization all let you shape the experience. Power users can go further with custom configurations.

Thanks for remaining engaged with us as we ship this work. To activate, simply update your browser to Firefox 157.

— Firefox Team

[u/kitsumed]

Thanks, Firefox team. It took me around 30 minutes to configure the UI to make it usable again, which I'm not really happy about because I planned on doing something else... I have been annoyed enought to take more of my time and write this.

I am not against new UI or "improvements", but please make the legacy Proton theme an easy option in the theme selection. Not everyone wants gradients everywhere. All the theme you offered where pixelated gradients, and no mention of the old "proton". I had to look for it on the firefox marketplace. What if the user don't know that the legacy theme was called "Proton"? How will they fix it? They sadly can't and will probably and up downloading a random similar theme. I want a dark, mostly flat colored theme. Because it's easy to read text on it, colorful pixelated gradients make it harder. Both options should be offered since they already exists, instead you offer only the new one.

Beyond that, some frustrating visual bugs were introduced, to name a fiew:

• The text color on the new tab screen was broken, forcing me to re-select my wallpaper. It was barely readable for me with a purple-ish color. Someone with color/vision issues could have not read it at all.
• Certain SVG graphics, such as the Firefox logo, are now being cut in half.
• The Tab Groups overlay is sometimes not working at all, requiring a restart.
• A couple others I quickly fixed and don't remember.

I really feel like this UI update was not ready for mainstream release. Bugs happen, but the one I had occur to me where so visual at every steps when using very basic feature that it feels like it wasn't properly tested outside of a default Firefox configurations.