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Firefox Redesign Drops Compact Density Option (pcmag.com) 89

Posted by BeauHD from the features-on-the-chopping-block dept.
Firefox's "Compact density" option, which reduces the size of the user interface, is set to disappear when Mozilla rolls out its Proton visual redesign for the browser later this year. PCMag reports: A bug was posted on Mozilla's bug tracking system entitled "Remove compact mode inside Density menu of customize palette." The reasons given for its removal include the fact it's "currently fairly hard to discover" and "we assume gets low engagement." The development team wants to "make sure that we design defaults that suit most users and we'll be retiring the compact mode for this reason." The Bugzilla thread highlights a desire for compact density to be retained as an option, but it doesn't seem likely to survive right now.

When Proton arrives, the Normal and Touch density options are expected to remain, with Touch increasing the size of the user interface to make it more finger-friendly. Meanwhile, the development team is optimizing the Normal density for displays that use 768 pixels for height, while most displays now use a higher resolution than that. Hopefully this doesn't mean the UI will be larger than it is now by default.
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Firefox Redesign Drops Compact Density Option More

Firefox Redesign Drops Compact Density Option

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  • userContent.css (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TypoNAM ( 695420 ) on Monday March 15, 2021 @07:09PM (#61162840)

    Mozilla can just fuck right off. They're pulling this shit at the same time they're planning on removing userContent.css support.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by backslashdot ( 95548 )

      OMG what are you and, well literally no-one else, going to do that happens?

      • Re:userContent.css (Score:4, Insightful)

        by caseih ( 160668 ) on Monday March 15, 2021 @07:49PM (#61162986)

        Are you serious? Maybe the majority of users don't have userContent.css customizations. But a significant minority do. And consider who evangelizes firefox. You guessed it. It's the power users. Take that away and there's very little reason for any user to pick Firefox over Chrome. Mozilla is losing ground and they can't figure out why and your post shows what the problem is. If Mozilla goes out of their way to alienate users like me (and the GP), they're going to slide into irrelevance.

        • Pfft. If users like you were as powerful as you thought nearly half the news stories on Slashdot would disappear.

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by slack_justyb ( 862874 )

          If Mozilla goes out of their way to alienate users like me (and the GP), they're going to slide into irrelevance.

          Take that away and there's very little reason for any user to pick Firefox over Chrome.

          Welp, then just go use Chrome and hasten the inevitable, fork your own browser, or heck just head over to IcyPaleWeaselMoon with it's whooping 0.02%, JS engine straight from 2006, tab instance security that is non-existent, and tasty single-threaded browser (mmmm, loving it when all my webpages share the same memory space)! The endless whining from folks who contribute zilch towards a code base they continually hate on gets old fast.

          But a significant minority do.

          AKA, nobody.

          And consider who evangelizes firefox.

          Clearly not because all I ever hear from the "power users" is

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by tokul ( 682258 )

            > Welp, then just go use Chrome

            Chrome is running internet police mode for a while already. In latest build they blocked *.eml downloads or something that looks like scripted downloader in other webmail. Normal user would be unable to do anything about it as even whitelisting website does not disable that block.

            > AKA, nobody.
            Hello from nobody. userContent.css is the best option for dealing with brain dead web designers who think that web users should be unable to copy any website text. Even if I need t

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          The problem is that all these things cost time and money to maintain. Mozilla is open source so if someone wanted to work for free maintaining them I'm sure Mozilla would listen, but nobody does.

          Besides, what are power users going to do? Switch to a Chrome based browser?

          I'd count myself as a power user, and I'm switching back to Firefox as soon as they fix one blocking bug on the Android version. The enhanced privacy protection and blocking functions alone are worth it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by DrXym ( 126579 )
          There has NEVER been a "significant minority" using userContent.css. Never. I'm sure there is the odd person who uses it, maybe to override some annoying font or for their own needs but that's it. That doesn't mean it should be removed because it should be trivial to implement and test ("if userContentFile.exists() { loadCSS(userContentFile); }" but perspective.

        • On any post about firefox people complain it (a) has too many features (b) has too few (c) is too much like chrome (d) is not enough like chrome (e) looks terrible (f) visual changes are evil.

          It's the browser nerds apparently love to hate now.

          Thing is what all of the complaints seem to amount to is "Firefox is just like chrome (except with better extensions, no snooping by google) so I'm just going to use chrome".

          But you do you. Your computer your choice. If Firefox is too much like chrome, go switch to chr

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by caseih ( 160668 )

            Yes Firefox does have features that seem to be rather silly or useless. And they have been removing features at a rapid rate. Currently Firefox is still useful to me and has features I rely on and desire. As those get eliminated, like userContent.css, then my reason for using firefox diminishes considerably. I'm glad Firefox is here now and I hope they not only listen to average users, but the users like me who uses these features.

            I realize a browser costs money to make, but it also seems like Mozilla is

    • I was just about to come here and say how stupid it was to remove this feature when it's basically just a user stylesheet.

      Now it makes sense.

      Removing user stylesheets is even more stupid though...

    • i completely agree in spirit. Features of an application are not subject to whimsy. "We felt like now was a good time to take away or bastardize this thing - Oh and we are going to force it on to users or else they get screwed by some hacker." The bug discussion they had is unimportant. They have the power to change things, but the question is do they have the _authority. This is the crux. They believe they do. Users disagree. Until recently it didn't matter, so what if the new version of Word has ugly

      • >, but the question is do they have the _authority.
        It's their software. They're the ones doing all the work. I can't think of who else would possibly have the authority. As a freeloading user your authority is limited to deciding which software you want to use.

        That said... BOOO! I use compact mode pretty much anywhere I'm not on a huge 4k screen. Which admittedly isn't often these days, but I do plan to get my laptop running again eventually.

        • I'm more amused by the kind of thinking that goes into "you can't tell me what to do". If people who do open source didn't have the authority over their own code, what would that mean for the longevity of the movement? Baby-bathwater-browser.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Torodung ( 31985 )

          As a freeloading user your authority is limited to deciding which software you want to use.

          Oooh. Watch that assumption. A significant percentage of Firefox users donate some money and/or time to Mozilla. It's a community, supposedly.

          I've think that's been a load of crap for years, but that's why you see posts like this. It used to be the case -- all you had to do was offer a little time or money -- but some people haven't figured out that they don't matter to the mission any more.

          • That might buy you influence, but not authority. It's right there in the name: donation. And generally I think it's treated more as "keep up the good work", particularly if you don't include any requests or commentary along with with your donation. You've generally got to be kind of explicit when buying influence, especially when you're only responsible for a drop in the bucket.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by DrXym ( 126579 )
        As a developer I can completely understand why they'd dump some esoteric feature that very few people use. It still has to be tested every release and in these modern days there may even be an automated test that has to be maintained.
      • Of for fscks sake, someone just take Firefox out behind the woodshed and put it out of its misery. Mozilla has been slowly strangling it for years and we can all see where it's headed, it's just taking forever to get there. It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion, one freeze frame at a time.
    • They also disabled browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll. When a bunch of people reported it [mozilla.org], one of the devs effectively said "no" then locked the bog report, and is closing all new reports as duplicates.

      The only way I found to fix the issue [superuser.com] was to literally hack it back into firefox.

      This is all a long way of saying; I use firefox above other browsers because I can customize it to disable the BS I don't want, and enable timesaving features I do want. More and more, they demonstrate that they care less about

      • Edge while certainly not ideal in any way is actually a better chrome than Chrome.

    • They only change the settings they want and they delete the settings they don't use. For example, ALT V Z R was the key sequence to reset the zoom level since version 4.0 and that's now been changed to something ignorant, 'actual size' with the key sequence of ALT V Z A, which means 10+ years of muscle memory down the drain.

      • Re:userContent.css (Score:5, Informative)

        by the_other_chewey ( 1119125 ) on Tuesday March 16, 2021 @06:50AM (#61164106)

        For example, ALT V Z R was the key sequence to reset the zoom level since version 4.0 and that's now been changed to something ignorant, 'actual size' with the key sequence of ALT V Z A, which means 10+ years of muscle memory down the drain.

        "reset zoom" has had the – localization independent! – shortcut Ctrl+0 since introduction of the zoom feature.

  • Long time FF user here, like since the betas. This worries me. I have no issue with things as they are. I'm used to the current UI and see no reason to change it. It does the job. It works, it's efficient. Watch these idiots kill Firefox.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • they're not going to make it any further from the ideal UI they had about 10-15 years ago Of course everything was better in the noughties, the web was only just beginning to become fucked at that point. Tthere's no going back now but there's plenty of scope for it to get even more fucked.

        • Murphy's Law #836: No matter how bad things get, there's always plenty of room for them to get worse.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by colfer ( 619105 )

        The menu bar is easy: right-click the tab bar, click menu. It stays on when you close and restart too.

  • "currently fairly hard to discover" and "we assume gets low engagement."

    True reason is they couldn't be bothered to implement it. Also, do they not have telemetry for metrics like how often a feature is enabled by the end user? They can just pull that data out of their telemetry and actually use it to prove why the feature should go away.

    • Re:Where is that vaunted telemetry metrics as proo (Score:5, Insightful)

      by theshowmecanuck ( 703852 ) on Monday March 15, 2021 @07:33PM (#61162904) Journal
      Anyone who is savvy enough to use features like this are also smart enough to turn off telemetry.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Anyone who is savvy enough to use features like this are also smart enough to turn off telemetry.

        Thus proving the point that no one uses the feature. After all, if telemetry says few people use it because everyone who does use it disables telemetry, well, same result.

        The main problem with Firefox is losing ground to Chrome and others by alienating the user base. Firefox already lost a majority of its users by alienating them because Chrome just worked better and faster and didn't break every freaking extens

      • Anyone who is savvy enough to use features like this are also smart enough to turn off telemetry.

        You are begging the question: "is it smart to turn off telemetry?".

        People are refusing to let Mozilla know which features they use then complaining on a forum that Mozilla doesn't read that they're not listening to you. I wouldn't say that's particularly smart either.

        So here's the thing, firefox will only ultimately work as a browser if it captures a high enough proportion of users, which means for want of a bet

      • Anyone who is savvy enough to use features like this are also smart enough to turn off telemetry.

        So what you're saying is that telemetry shows that the feature has no engagement and therefore they won't bother?

        The technically adept community is so incredibly self defeating it's comical.

    • Telemetry is used to make nice pie charts for the bosses. It doesn't result in improvements for the end user.

      Microsoft collected telemetry for years, and the end result was Windows 8 Metro.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DrXym ( 126579 )
        Mozilla has had telemetry for DECADES all the way back to when it was Netscape. Every time the browser crashed you got a popup that appeared asking you to submit a crash report. That crash report would be sent in, sorted along with the others by frequency and then prioritized for fixing. So the browsing experience DIRECTLY resulted in improvements for the end user in the form of less crashing.

        And more recently Mozilla has used telemetry [mozilla.org] to gather usage statistics for version usage, features, statistics by

        • I hate to break it to you, but the consent is not opt-in, it is opt-out. This means that the only telemetry that they really need to get is the telemetry that they are denied because we have disabled it.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by DrXym ( 126579 )
            No. Experiments only defaults to on in the nightly / developer edition builds. Some data collection such as crash collection and general usage statistics is on by default.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by TWX ( 665546 )

      Pretty much. I use the compact layout because when we made the switch from 4:3 to 16:9 we already lost vertical headroom. Having a large UI is dumb. The point of the browser is the content it delivers, not browser itself.

      • I'd really love to see more programs get into using sidebars instead of top/bottom. Vertical space is at a premium, horizontal only is when using multiple programs tiled side by side.

        I've been using a sidebar taskbar/launcher/OS-equivalent since running Windows 95 on a 4:3 screen, and it helps considerably despite taking like 3x the screen area on Windows so that the buttons are wide enough to hold some useful title information (with a bit of tweaking XFCE on Linux lets you use "bookshelf style" vertically

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          The edges are no longer in my central vision. They're all peripheral. It's largely irrelevant. I have widescreen monitors and I always tile two windows side by side horizontally for 2 portrait displays per monitor. I can't get the entire width of a monitor in my central focal cone anymore--or the vertical height of one either.

  • CDs are old technology. Who uses that anymore? I prefer to use DVDs. They are much better, and can hold nearly 5GB of data.

    • Discs are old technology. Who uses that anymore? I prefer to use Fujifilm 400TB tape cartridges...

      • Technology is shit, I simply kidnapped the band members and make them play their albums on a loop all day.

        • yeah but tapes don't need to poop every day, keeping bunch of 75- 100kg animals has a lot of hassle.

  • I know there are a lot of reasons to choose a browser, but I've always picked Firefox because it's the most customizable - and I know I'm not alone. Removing UI options for no good reason is such a step backwards. It's like they're trying to kill off the features that Firefox users value the most.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • While they've changed their underlying extensions standard, I'd be hard pressed to tell you anything that cannot be done with the new system that was done with the old.

        How about when they killed the Description field on bookmarks? Rather than just limit it to 256 bytes or something sensible, they killed the field entirely.

        On Firefox for Android they killed some of the keyboard shortcuts so I had to sideload an old version just to get back the features they removed.

        I applaud them for reining in the software bloat many longstanding programs end up with, but they seem to remove popular features with little regard to what their core users actually use.

        And don't even ge

      • They still have the best tabs implementation

        Man I lost contact of my dealer and can't find a new one anymore. Could you please give me number of yours?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tepples ( 727027 )

        I'd be hard pressed to tell you anything that cannot be done with the new system that was done with the old. Most extensions have been ported, the few I used to use that haven't have been superseded by built in functionality.

        Keybinder was neither ported nor superseded by built-in functionality.

    • Removing UI options for no good reason is such a step backwards

      Mozilla has been removing UI options for no good reason since version 60 when they changed the underlying structure. From that point forward they wholesale remove things people might want to use.

      It's almost as if they've been infiltrated by rejects from Microsoft.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Torodung ( 31985 )

        They've also been adding ads. Sponsored Top Sites on the home page is the latest round. It's like they've been infiltrated by rejects from Google too.

      • If they bury the settings in menus or other obscure places, I'll still use it but I grumble about it. Removing the feature entirely is a deal-breaker for me. It's even more puzzling when they hide the option then remove it because they "assume" nobody is using it. Well I can think of one reason for that.

    • Re:They forgot why people choose Firefox (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Monday March 15, 2021 @08:02PM (#61163024)

      This is the new design school. The professional UX designers know what good design is, not plebes like us who merely want to use their software.

      Thus, we get more light grey on slightly lighter grey backgrounds, no borders, rounded corners, until rounded corners aren't cool anymore, then square, until we're bored with that too. More space everywhere too, because heathen like us need to see more of the design, not the content, and screw practical information density. And let's not have anybody bypassing the blessed design decisions with customizable UI schemes. And God help you if anyone actually wants a menu. So... old. I mean, practical, sure, but it's just... old... and ugly. It's much more fun to have colorless icons drop menus when you press them. Don't you love surprises? I sure do!

      *barf*

      • And let's not forget: constantly redesigning the product just as people are getting used to the previous design. Designers have to keep getting paid after all, so no design is ever optimal and must constantly be subjected to changes no one asked for.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by tokul ( 682258 )

        You forgot to mention UI scaled to look good on mobile phone, when user is using it on desktop with 24 inch 1920x1080 monitor. Half of screen covered with bloody buttons.

      • The professional UX designers know what good design is

        They have data on it and make data driven options. What your opinion is is irrelevant. You don't fit the data model.

        You did opt in to the telemetry right?

  • They're going to use the same design principles that they used for the Firefox Mobile update last year.

  • Cultural overhaul way more urgent than UI overhaul (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jensend ( 71114 ) on Monday March 15, 2021 @08:07PM (#61163034)

    Mozilla has plenty of team members and money to spend effort on bikeshedding their UI, the Firefox logo, and the Mozilla logo [slashdot.org]. From that new logo announcement: "Seven months... Thousands of emails, hundreds of meetings, dozens of concepts, and three rounds of research later, we have something to share."

    And they have plenty of money to pay their astonishingly underperforming CEO a cool $3 million per year, six times what they were paying a decade ago.

    But they had to fire all the people working on the future of their browser engine (Servo), much of their security response and QA teams, the people working on making royalty-free video work (AV1), and so on. You know, silly stuff like that. Obviously less important than the wonderful three hundredth major UI "refresh."

    I suppose the people who were actually getting things done were seen as insufficiently diverse, or had the wrong political opinions (too ideologically diverse). RIP Gerv.

    • Mozilla exists so Google doesn't get sued for browser monopoly. We must contend with that fact and try our best to avoid google, as much as we can. We need to fuck Google up as much as we did with MS. That's the only way.

      Mozilla UI disasters have a pattern if you haven't noticed - they come right after a new privacy-oriented feature is added.

      Since in the land of the free, the job of CEO is to make sure he makes money, it looks like he is doing a good job.

    • astonishingly underperforming CEO

      Underperforming in what way? Total revenue for Mozilla is at an all time high and has trended upwards for years. If you want to claim that Firefox market share is lower and trending down then do so, but that's like judging an oil company but the number of petrol stations they have rather than on production or profit.

  • Be still my beating heart... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 15, 2021 @08:12PM (#61163050)

    Oh, my. Another fucking redesign. Who would've guessed?

    Here's a great idea. How about you redesign Firefox back to the previous redesign? You know, where on mobile Firefox actually looked like a fucking browser? And not some byproduct of third rate acid trip? One of the killer Firefox features was how seamlessly bookmarks synced between desktop and mobile. Well, that worked too well. We can't have that. No way we could allow a unique, useful feature to shine.

    No, we must now fucking break it! Let's hide the desktop bookmarks in some godforsaken menu, six levels debug, and replace the home page with a bare-ass screen, with six icons that can only be set in the most suck-assed manner possible, and which don't even sync with other mobile Firefox instances?

    And just to really ream it up everyone ass, let's move the URL bar to the bottom. It's too nice and comfy up there, at the top of the screen, where it's been for THREE FUCKING DECADES! It made too much sense to have it at the top of the screen, like where every sane browser, whose UI wasn't designed by woke snowflakes, is.

    Can't fucking wait to see where the URL bar is in the next redesign. It'll probably be vertical. On the right margin. So that I have to tilt my fucking head every time I wanted to type in an URL? Mark my words, folks, that's what it's going to be.

    And let's not close tabs anymore. Tabs are too convenient. Now, let's first, as part of our master plan, get rid of the all navigation buttons, and just to really ream it up your ass: let's not actually close your tab when you back out of it, but keep it running, sucking away at your RAM. Every FUCKING tab you open will remain open, like FOREVER! Or, at least until you find the hidden option to close your tabs after 24 hours.

    Well, here's a great suggestion for your fucking redesign: how about you close my goddamn tabs when I want to close them, instead of letting them hang our and accumulate flies, like a day-old turd? How about that for a redesign idea?

    I love Firefox. I loved it ever since the very first post-Navigator release. It just pissed me off how far Firefox has gone before everything went to fucking hell.

  • Bury the feature where few will every discover it, observe that few discover it and conclude that it should be removed because of "low engagement."

    Brilliant. Exactly they sort of thinking one expects from a company that has devolved into a jobs program for social justice warriors.

  • Removing the option (with justification "not many people use it because we don't make the option prominent") does seem especially strange when they plan to increase the size of the default style, i.e. increasing the relative benefit in it what it does (save space) vs the standard. If it's possible some people didn't think the difference was enough to matter before (now), the difference will be even more noticeable. And it's not like there is any technical problem for why it can't exist, they just are being

  • >"Firefox's "Compact density" option, which reduces the size of the user interface, is set to disappear"

    Of course, because I use and like that feature. Hopefully this can be tweaked with UserChrome.css (like I have to do with other things taken away).

    >"optimizing the Normal density for displays that use 768 pixels for height, while most displays now use a higher resolution than that. "

    Amazingly, I don't run ANY apps maximized on my desktop. I actually USE the windowing concept. Please don't assume

  • > "we assume gets low engagement."

    When you assume, you make an ass out of u and me.

  • Because anything that isn't rendering HTML/CSS* is just bloat, right?


    *...only the parts you, the reader, like
  • ... focusing on the important things. /s
  • What is the point of Firefox any longer? There really isn't all the much more to recommend it beyond the fact it isn't Chromium based. Firefox has really been going down hill since 57. I thought the point of FF was to set it up how ever I like. I think Mozilla forgot that.
    I see no need to switch from Waterfox Classic. A user agent switcher is all I need for that. Newer browsers aren't that much faster and have a lot fewer customization options.
  • In Firefox Mobile, someone removed the ability to use bookmarks.
    In Thunderbird, someone wrecked the system to address emails.
    And with this, expect a consistent trashing of a great browser.

  • Art over function! Feelings over facts!

  • The one modern desktop application that actually made an attempt to please both mouse and touch users...gives up. I'm beyond pissed off.
    This one, IMO was the best *implemented* solution to try to have good UIs for both use cases. The best option would probably be to have two completely independent UIs, each optimized for one input method. Alas, that's quite costly and I'm aware of no application that actually has that.

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