I hope it’s just a joke
Hmmm, I think it needs more rounded corners and padding. - UI designer in 2026
Wtf are the symbols on the left?
- Display?
- Sparkles? (bookmark groups?)
- Star (bookmarks in the current ui)
- Time
FFS I miss drop down menus with text options instead of hieroglyphics.
Sparkles? (bookmark groups?)
Sparkles icon means stochastic parrot (already in current Firefox)
Thanks. And fuck. I guess you can remove it from the menus. So there’s that. Relegate that shit to extensions if you have to.
I’m hoping this rewrite simplifies the ui code rather. The existing userstyle system is a headache to modify with the documentation being so scattered.
I’m thoroughly convinced UI designers are under the impression we cut ourselves on sharp corners.
in a few years they will suddenly forget it and it will be all sharp corners again
Bring back more drop shadows and skeuomorphism
I hope I can live enough to see that.
I just updated my Jetbrains Rider IDE and holy border radius batman.
Old Firefox looked perfectly fine. I don’t know why they keep wasting so many resources on changing something that already worked.
Because aesthethics also change through the years. You have to make your product appealing to today’s standards.
While this may be true for commercial products and services, Firefox was never supposed to be one.
Every software application Is a commercial product itself. The more appealing, the more users and thus relevance…
the old one is fine
i don’t think the ui is your main problem, mozilla, but ok i guess.
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’m far from an expert, but Ui design as a job seems to have a huge flaw were if you eventually make the “perfect Ui” you’re suddenly out of a job.
So you’re straight up punished for doing your job well and the only way to maintain a career is to just re-invent the wheel every so often and chase the trends of others doing the same thing so your Ui designs don’t look “outdated”
You are correct. Unlike other teams design teams can be actually “done” at some point. But just like other teams design teams need to constantly produce something.
That could be an aspect too.
Definitely, after the redesign i now have to read all the labels because just about everything has changed its layout
Exactly, and I get why companies do it. They generally prioritize bringing new customers on, so they tweak things because they think it’s more trendy or appealing. But for an open source project to do these things just makes no sense at all. I get the impression people running things at Mozilla are completely disconnected from what Firefox users actually want at this point.
Well, their main problem is attention. And we are looking at a news article right now.
If they just want attention maybe buying some add would be a better way to put them forward honestly. Or even trying to go on B2B custom deal for larger companies thar want a corporate experience…
You’re right. It’s too few AI chatbots!
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.
Argh, yet another userchrome.css overhaul to do.
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.
Right. My sentiments exactly. Hopefully this won’t trickle its way into LibreWolf …
I don’t like gaps, included rounded corners. Let me use all my screen space dammit
literally just fix bugs
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
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
20252026? 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.
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.
I guarantee the programmer wasn’t the one who made the decision there lol
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
AFAIK, Thunderbird isn’t a Mozilla product anymore. They are an independent team.
Ah thx right right I forgot how it’s all laid out now exactly, it really is a similar way of handling feedback + contributions though. I’ve taken some space from those discussions since they straight up wormhole me back to a bad emotional place 🤣 I wasted so much effort on Mozilla as a kid, it was like a direct transition from video game forums + modding
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.
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
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
Its already in Firefox. Its disabled by default. They’re just showing what it looks like.
No, it’s enabled by default when you install Firefox :(
Straight to jail?
Looks identical to Opera browser theme.
Actually, I have round edges. The reason I still prefer Firefox is its squarish design looks more professional and authentic. Anyway Mozilla will never add any features that users wish to have but actively changes unnecessary things. Anyway good luck Mozilla!
This seems so out of place on every OS and DE I can think of.
bring back native styling!
I’m seeing this trend towards rounded corners in quite a few places, though. Certainly feels like early days of a larger design trend…
Yes, my first thought went to JetBrains IDEs recent “Islands” redesign, but it somehow looks better in dark mode than it does in these mockups.
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).
