
Firefox 75.0 - abhiminator
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/75.0/releasenotes/
======
dang
Related from a couple days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22804149](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22804149)

------
chungy
The new style of the address bar is extremely jarring, and (imo) ugly. It
breaks all kinds of UI conventions, drawing itself over other UI elements like
the tab bar and the toolbar to the left and right of it.

For this reason alone, at least I've found that setting
`browser.urlbar.update1` to false in about:config reverts to the old code--
mostly. Firefox 75 still seems to have changed the click behavior of the bar
to be totally unlike any other program too; it highlights the entire text by
default, without putting it in the selection buffer, and in general makes
handling it with the mouse a lot more tedious than it used to be.

I'm ragging on this a lot, but seriously, it's a major regression in UX.

~~~
mikro2nd
Fully agree that this change is needless, gratuitous and downright ugly. But
it gets worse...

The pref that disables the ugly behaviour is going away. Indeed, in some sense
it's already gone: ["Remove the megabar
pref"]([https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1627969](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1627969))
is already marked as `closed`.

I think the UI change is not merely ugly, but actively harmful. When the
user's attention is elsewhere, but the focus of the urlbar changes there's a
nasty UI animation that occurs _in the user 's peripheral vision_. As any real
UI designer _should know_ , human peripheral vision is primarily for motion
detection, directly tied to fight-or-flight stress reactions and triggers an
adrenal stress reaction which in this case is not merely "undesirable" but
downright harmfully misleading. The last thing the world needs is more stress
just because some delusional UI designers thought an animation upon
receiving/losing focus was a good thing to implement.

This abomination has to die, and today would not be soon enough.

~~~
coldpie
> This abomination has to die, and today would not be soon enough.

Please don't use this kind of language. It's software, and a lot of people
work hard on it. Sometimes they make decisions you disagree with. There's no
need to be rude.

~~~
stronglikedan
It's just a figure of speech. It's not meant to be taken literally. It's a
valid description of a lot of people's feelings for this user-hostile feature.

~~~
Tagbert
It may be a figure of speech but it is a ridiculous overreaction to call it an
abomination. You may not like it but it’s nowhere near enough to describe that
way. What term will you use when something truly bad comes up?

~~~
nocman
> What term will you use when something truly bad comes up?

So you are saying it would be OK to call some feature of a piece of software
"an abomination" if it were "something truly bad", then?

Well, then why should mikro2nd be prevented from calling this feature "an
abomination" if that is an accurate description of how he feels about it?

------
ubercow13
The select-all Chrome-like behaviour is so horrible. It makes the two most
useful interactions with the address bar much more difficult - putting the
address into the primary buffer (on X11) so you can paste it somewhere else
(this now requires a triple click), and putting the caret inside the address
to edit the URL (which now requires clicking twice, but not double clicking
because that is different, so you have to click with exactly the right pause
inbetween, which is a horrible interaction).

What's extra annoying is that a single click will select the whole address but
not put it in the primary buffer! Another UI convention broken.

All of this is to optimise for the most useless address bar interaction -
clicking into it with the mouse and then changing to the keyboard to type a
new URL, instead of just using ctrl+L. This is a feature made to optimise for
people using the software (IMO) incorrectly.

~~~
throwanem
This behavior long predates Chrome and has been this way on other platforms
IIRC since the browser was still called Phoenix, and probably inherited from
Netscape at that; the change here brings Firefox's behavior on Linux in line
with its behavior elsewhere.

I can understand how the people who develop Firefox think that's a good idea,
but not how they imagine anyone wanting it other than themselves...

~~~
em-bee
indeed, why do i care if firefox on my linux desktop behaves the same as
firefox on someone elses windows desktop?

sure, consistent behavior is good in many cases. (it drives me crazy that VLC
on mac is different from elsewhere) but more important that crossplatform
consistency is to follow the common UI behavior of your desktop environment.
text selection on X11 (and wayland) is inherently different than text
selection on windows. this breaks common expectations

------
pornel
I've been using nightlies for a while, and the address bar seems fine to me. I
haven't even noticed when it changed.

It's a central piece of user interface, so it makes sense to make it more
prominent than what a '90s design of a bog-standard dropdown menu allows.

It even logically makes sense to make it like a little popover window, because
when you edit the address, you're navigating to a new page, not editing a
property of the existing page.

Anyway, overall it's a small issue.

~~~
epidemian
Agreed. I like the change.

I think it's a rather small change too (I've had it on nightly for a while and
barely noticed it), so I don't understand why the top voted comments are
complaints about this :S

~~~
pera
One of the complains is that the select-all on single-click is anti-idiomatic
for Linux and *BSD users, and when text is selected in X11 it is automatically
copied. The standard way to select the whole content in a text box is to
triple-click it.

~~~
epidemian
I see. I'm also on Linux, but i guess i've mostly been doing ctrl+L to go to
the address bar, and that's been selecting the whole text since before the
change? Because i didn't notice that change...

But i understand it's frustrating to have the behavior of clicking on it
change all of a sudden. I see the point of the change too (if i click on the
address bar, i'd assume it's because i want to go to another site, or copy the
URL, so selecting all text is convenient), but UI changes will always bother
people who are used to the existing behavior.

I just don't think it's so black and white bad as some people paint it to be.
And at some point i feel that harsh criticism is not constructive at all.

~~~
pera
I also use ^L, but many times I just want to modify part of the URL (sometimes
even with text from the clipboard buffer). As a web developer this change is
going to be pretty irritating.

~~~
Epskampie
Web dev here. Simply doubleclick the part you want to change.

~~~
pera
Unfortunately that doesn't work as it selects the doubleclicked word (after
selecting the whole URL) which modifies X11 clipboard.

~~~
dan-robertson
Don’t worry. The single click behaviour is secondarily broken in that it
doesn’t save the url to your primary clipboard so you can click again (but
slowly enough for it to not be a double click) to edit the url

~~~
pera
Uhm so if I do two slow clicks I can actually edit without changing my
clipboard (even when the first click renders it selected)... and if I want to
copy the URL I have to do two slow clicks and then a quick triple-click. It's
awful but I least I still have copy paste functionality. Thanks!

By the way, is there any workaround for the Esc issue? (i.e. a way to unfocus
the new address bar)

~~~
dan-robertson
In fact you can go straight for a confusing fast triple click to select
everything and copy to clipboard. The first selects everything, second click
selects and saves the word, and the third selects and saves the whole address.

No idea about escaping from anything

------
s9w
> We’ve enlarged the address bar anytime you want to do a search and
> simplified it in a single view with larger font, shorter URLs, adjusts to
> multiple sizes and a shortcut to the most popular sites to search.

Almost every single point in that sentence is a negative change. Which is +1
for my personal pet theory: all software gets worse over time

~~~
untog
Almost every single point in that sentence is a positive for the vast majority
of users. We're power users, not the majority.

~~~
url00
But Chrome already has a stranglehold on the majority market.

In my opinion, Mozilla should put the vast majority of their energy and
resources towards targeting power users and developers - they've already lost
the other battle.

~~~
hombre_fatal
Look how hostile just one HNer is about a tiny feature change as if they are
the spokesperson of all power users. I can't think of a worse niche to target
than a bunch of hostile, opinionated power users who play Chicken Little in
comment sections around the internet because of any minor UI change they
personally dislike.

Btw, you aren't a browser power user just because you use ctrl-L to focus the
url bar. HNers like to think they're power users because they think their
opinion matters the most, but it doesn't make much sense when it comes to web
browsers imo.

(I like the new url bar, and I'm a power user if there's such a thing)

~~~
recursive
Power users press Alt-D

------
Lio
For me possibly the most interesting feature of this release is the
possibility Of good GPU support on Gnu/Linux/Wayland.

[https://mastransky.wordpress.com/2020/03/03/webgl-and-fgx-
ac...](https://mastransky.wordpress.com/2020/03/03/webgl-and-fgx-acceleration-
on-wayland/)

~~~
andrewnicolalde
I'm really struggling for reasons to care about what happens on Wayland...
because I have yet to find any decent desktop environments or window managers
for Wayland. Sway is a close contender, but the one major problem I have with
it is the fact that on high-DPI displays XWayland applications appear blurry.

Do you have any recommendations for Wayland desktop environments or window
managers?

~~~
emersion
[https://github.com/swaywm/wlroots/pull/2064](https://github.com/swaywm/wlroots/pull/2064)

~~~
andrewnicolalde
Slightly confused, is that PR ready for use right now?

------
elmalto
Interestingly (maybe not), a lot of people seem to be upset about the new
address bar. To me, this is the biggest improvement. I don’t have a lot of
custom config in Firefox, mainly use it and DuckDuckGo to no be using Google,
and find it refreshingly easy to see my search engines and have more
information available in a spot that I use all the time rather than having to
know where to look or have it hidden in the first place

~~~
midnightmonster
I love the new address bar. I'm on the developer builds, so I've been seeing
it for a while. I use both Safari and Firefox, and the new Firefox address bar
makes me want to use it more. I haven't analyzed what I like about it--I just
really like it.

~~~
iamricks
No wonder, i was trying to look for changes but i was already on them too, i
haven't felt any cons to using the new address bar

------
nanna
I've been using FFX 75.0 for a few hours and I very much like the new address
bar. When I ctrl-L my eyes fix on the address bar, where they should, because
of the blue outline and the chunky left/right margins. I like this and I wish
others here would stop calling this an objective UX fail. To the contrary, I
think the FFX devs have done a splendid job once again.

------
jonnytran
The biggest change in this release that I'm _so_ happy about is that they
finally fixed session restore to preserve which macOS Spaces your windows were
originally on! I believe the Linux equivalent with virtual desktops was also
fixed. It was an outstanding issue for years that made me loath restarting. I
typically have 50 or more windows spread across several spaces, each with a
different context, and it was a huge pain to have to move them back to their
original place.

~~~
pitaj
I wish they would do the same for Windows 10 multiple desktops

------
f055
I find it interesting that the fact so many comments mention config flags mean
not many here are actually using the same Firefox, and not even close to the
default one used by the 99% of its users.

~~~
Hamuko
Firefox comes pretty much broken out of the box if you don't use config flags.

~~~
coldpie
Hmm? The only pref I change is "image.animation_mode=none" to disable animated
GIFs and videos, and I can understand why they don't set that to the default.
What do you find is broken about Firefox's default state? Do you really think
most users feel the same way you do?

~~~
Hamuko
> _What do you find is broken about Firefox 's default state?_

Firefox uses a self-made fullscreen implementation by default on macOS, which
is buggy and causes menubar issues. Firefox has code to use the macOS native
fullscreen feature, but it's actually hidden behind "full-screen-api.macos-
native-full-screen" about:config flag. So if you're on macOS and want to
fullscreen something on another monitor (and actually have it work proper),
you need to figure out that the fix is hidden there.

~~~
coldpie
Surely you can understand that an issue in a platform-specific implementation
of a fairly obscure feature doesn't really support your assertion that it is
"broken out of the box". It's likely that config option is not set by default
because it's known to be buggy in some other way. You can read some discussion
of this setting here, which has seen some activity in the past year, so it is
being worked on:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1403085](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1403085)

~~~
Hamuko
A fairly obscure feature, what? Fullscreen is a fairly obscure feature?

------
KozmoNau7
I read this discussion before updating, and I was prepared for the worst.

And... It's fine, it's perfectly usable, it's not some gigantic world-ending
change, it works.

As someone who uses multiple browsers on multiple platforms both at work and
privately, unifying the address bar behavior across all platforms is logical,
especially considering it lets the developers clean up some crufty old legacy
code in the process.

I've been using Firefox since it was Phoenix 0.1 and not once have I felt the
user interface and experience was made _worse_. Some people may use an obscure
feature or a combination of plugins that doesn't quite work anymore, for which
the UI changes would be negative. These people have to realize that they are a
tiny niche of a niche of people, who wildly modify their software far beyond
the general user experience. They just have to realize that sometimes this
means breakage.

Sometimes you just aren't the target audience, and that's fine. The world of
general use software doesn't revolve around power user needs, and sometimes
power users have to work a bit harder to get things exactly how they want
them. Mozilla would rather the vast majority have a significantly improved
experience, and let the power user minority have to adapt a bit.

------
MikusR
This relese installs a system telemetry service that constantly sends to
Mozilla your default browser.

~~~
Silhouette
Not only have they added a new telemetry system, it is added as an active
scheduled task, without warning, _even if you 've explicitly configured
Firefox not to send data to Mozilla_.

(I have just verified that this is in fact the case on my own system shortly
after applying the update, before nuking the unauthorised scheduled task from
orbit just to be sure.)

~~~
adrian17
Sounds like there's a contradiction between this and Mozilla's quote:

> We’ll respect user configured telemetry opt-out settings by looking at the
> most recently used Firefox profile.

~~~
Silhouette
I can't confirm whether the scheduled task did or did not actually upload any
data from my system, only that it shouldn't have needed to be there at all.

------
zawaideh
I am excited by the address bar changes. It makes common tasks much faster,
makes my top sites easy to visit and overall makes the experience of using
Firefox more enjoyable to me.

I realize this is not everyone.

~~~
korm
This thread reminds me of a CTO that forced us to restructure our frontend to
allow user friendly navigation from the address bar. The UX guy protested this
but the CTO got his way.

We ran user test after user test and no matter how he tried to structure the
test, no user touched the address bar. It was a total waste of time. The only
good that came from this was doing user tests earlier in the process.

------
aganame
I let Firefox upgrade itself when .75 was and after a restart, I didn't notice
a single ux change. What on earth are you people talking about?

~~~
neilsimp1
Look at the address bar. now click inside of it and notice how it gets bigger.
I kinda hate it, but at the same time I barely notice it so whatever.

------
vvpan
I can't relate to much of the criticism but can say that the inspector has
gotten awesome. I switched all of my development to it. There are a couple of
things that _require_ chrome, like Slack calls, otherwise I'm Firefox only and
would recommend it.

------
Tomte
I'm a bit peeved that they removed browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll and
browser.urlbar.doubleClickSelectsAll.

I thought it was a bug, but in the bug tracker they told me it was
intentional.

When I suggested they notify users when they have set a setting set to
something other than the default and then this setting is removed, I was told
it's documented in the Release Notes.

Well, no, it isn't.

------
dantondwa
The address bar is awful but, most importantly, it breaks my keyboard
workflow. When I press Cmd+L, I'd expect the focus to go to the address bar
and the whole url to be selected (like it is with any other software). Now,
Firefox doesn't do this any more. The focus goes to the address bar, but the
text is not selected. I have to select it myself. It's really badly designed,
ugly and not useful.

Unfortunately, as a longtime Firefox user, I have to admit that Chrome is the
best browser. Cleanly designed and fast, it's just a better experience. Too
bad it's run by an advertisement company. This is really the only reason I'll
stick to Firefox: because I believe in the importance of a free web and I
dislike Google. But really, it's not because of any merit of Firefox.

~~~
tlamponi
This works just still fine here..

~~~
stronglikedan
Here too.

------
ianwalter
I would like Firefox to be my main browser again but a couple of times I've
run into the situation where an uncaught JavaScript error logged in Firefox's
console doesn't give me any useful information as compared to Chromium. I wish
I had a reproduction instead of just ragequitting but I'm sure it's a known
issue that exists in their bug tracker somewhere.

~~~
soulofmischief
Funnily enough, I find it to go both ways and while working on bugs sometimes
changing browsers gives me a more useful error given the context. It would be
nice if that aspect of browser functionality could be carved out and made into
a plugin so that we could pick and choose.

A more modular browser experience a la foobar2000 sounds just amazing.

------
ilmiont
Firefox succumbs to needless change for the sake of it, ruining the address
bar with this horrible giant thing.

Not really sure what alternatives there are though. I hate that Firefox seems
to be falling victim to the “hah we haven’t updated that in a while” intern
mentality yet nothing else stands out to replace it.

------
TACIXAT
I switched to Firefox for tab containers but they are seriously broken. Ctrl
shift t just opens a random tab. With this most recent update, opening
something in the current container rather than the preferred container still
opens it in the preferred container.

------
vijaybritto
Good that its available in flatpack. But the new address bar is so
unnecessarily space consuming. If I move it to a smaller window in my desktop
its taking up so much space!

~~~
uallo
You can customize its density to "compact" in the toolbar customization. Does
that help?

~~~
s9w
How? Searching for this in google results in this comment

~~~
isp
Right-click in empty space next to the URL bar

Then "Customise..."

Then at the bottom of the screen will be a "Density" drop down, with an option
for "Compact"

------
aledalgrande
Side note of Firefox 74 or 75, not sure when it started: close a tab where you
had clicked on at least a link so you have some tab history and reopen it with
cmd + shift + t: the last page you visited is lost!

Is it only me or others too? It's so annoying.

------
WCityMike
I fail to understand why Firefox takes as its lead Chrome's behavior. Let it
be different, let it distinguish itself. We constantly hear how less
configurability is easier to maintain. Unfortunately, that was Firefox's main
distinction from Chrome. This path where it simply copies Chrome's UX and
removes more and more features in the interests of something easier to
maintain ... taking that to its logical conclusion, Firefox might as well
become a Chromium fork now.

------
simion314
Does anyone know what is the keyboard shortcut in dEbugger to "Go to line" , I
am unable to find the action in the UI or by a google. I think all actions
should be put there in the context menu.

------
zzo38computer
I use an older version of Firefox with many customizations (including the
relative location bar, removal of all toolbar icons, and others), and still I
don't like what they are doing with any version of any browser. I also tried
to get rid of arrow scrollbars and implement the Xaw like scrollbars instead,
although it doesn't work as well as real Xaw scrollbars do. I just hate a lot
of the design principles of web browsers in general. So, rather, the better
way to design a web browser would be using principles such as:

\- The user is assumed to understand the computer and to know what they are
doing, and if not, to read the documentation in order to understand it.

\- Stuff coming from the server is assumed to be possibly hostile and not
necessarily a code that the user wants to execute, or having the styles that
the user wants to be displayed; this is independent of whether or not the
connection is secure, which should not control access to any features (except
those which are part of the protocol, such as certificates). The user must be
able to have complete control over it.

\- You have enough ropes to hang yourself, and also a few more just in case.
That is the better way to design anything.

\- Disable CSS transitions, and otherwise the user can customize how the CSS
is interpreted (in addition to defining their own, of any priority level, low
or high or anything in between).

\- Use keyboard controls for many things, and do not override the browser's
commands of keyboard or mouse or otherwise except if the user specifically
activates the command to do that ("application mode").

\- Support use of ARIA even for ordinary screen view and not only for speech.

\- Allow stuff to be controlled directly by the user rather than APIs used by
scripts in web pages.

\- Add a command for the user to save and recall form data using local files.

\- Allow individual scripts and other files to be overridden with the user's
own version.

\- etc.

Those who set up the services should also be encouraged to use other
protocols, such as IRC, NNTP, SMTP, Telnet, etc. Such thing can be more
suitable than web browser, less complicated and less stupid than a web
browser, and can even be usable (to some degree) without specialized software
(although having software to use specifically with these protocols certainly
improves it, it isn't entirely necessary; I think IRC was actually designed
for that purpose anyways).

And I really would like them to stop using such huge fonts (they should
respect the user's font setting).

------
thekyle
I've been using the new Flatpak in beta for a month or so. I really like it on
Fedora since it means I don't have to enable any 3rd party repos to get DRM
working.

~~~
josteink
> I really like it on Fedora since it means I don't have to enable any 3rd
> party repos to get DRM working.

I run Linux and Firefox because I like to be in control of my machine. And one
of the things I will never allow to run on it is DRM.

I’m still annoyed Firefox has no way to permanently disable all DRM
functionality and stop nagging me when sites request it.

~~~
thekyle
Each to their own. I don't have a problem with it since it's all sandboxed and
can't touch any other part of the system.

------
dzonga
biggest thing for me, this release was hardware acceleration support on Linux.
and with that I won't need to use mpv and smplayer to play youtube videos
anymore

------
hi41
The new features page says that the address bar has been enhanced to support
better search. However, after installing the new version, I still see the
search bar on the right hand side of the address bar. Why is that? I am
expecting to see just the address bar.

~~~
coldpie
The search box on the right is a separate widget. You can remove it if you
like. Right-click on the panel, click "Customize," and drag the search box out
of the panel to remove it.

~~~
hi41
Thank you so much. That worked! I have been having this question for many
years now and kept wondering why the search bar showed for me but not for
others.

------
brutal_chaos_
I saw this change in nightly a while back. The change honestly shocked me;
"woh," I said aloud. I wish Mozilla would STOP forcing changes like these.
They could have a deprecation period allowing for an easier transition. I'm
still a loyal fan, though it does seem to get harder day by day.

------
arexxbifs
Am I the only one bothered by the steadily declining performance? I bought a
cheapish laptop this summer and FF worked just fine then, but every five
versions or so it seems the performance drops just a little bit. Even old
reddit feels like glue now, especially compared to Chromium.

------
jakearmitage
That's it. I'm forking it.

~~~
kyleee
Keep us updated on how that goes. Serious

------
electrotype
Mozilla, the only reason I'm using Firefox is because it is highly
cutomizable... Not as YOU want, but as _I_ want.

------
Grue3
Anyone else got logged out of every single website after updating to this
version? Annoying as hell.

------
webjockey
What is this?

------
seumars
They actually managed to make context menus even _less_ native with this
release. All of a sudden context menus have straight corners and higher
contrast. In a few months it will actually be legal for this bug to buy booze
and do jelly shots:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34572](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34572)

~~~
saagarjha
Wow, that bug is almost as old as I am! I'm surprised it's still an issue; I
wonder if they'd take patches for it.

------
djhaskin987
Mozilla, every release: hey how do you like the new cosmetics/bells and
whistles

Me: hey how's that html5 compatibility coming

Mozilla: ...

Mozilla: hey how do you like the new cosmetics/bells and whistles

Me, after years: (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

------
barrowclift
And still no movement on finally getting Bug 1178764 out the door, despite
every other major browser supporting it. Nope, instead they'd rather faff
about with the address bar to resounding universal disgust.

[Bug 1178764]:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1178765](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1178765)

~~~
morsch
Well, evidently they implemented backdrop-filter about 8 months ago, but only
for the new WebRender stack. And apparently they don't intend to implement it
in legacy stacks.

So I guess your feature is tied to the support for WebRender. And that is
pretty much limited to some Windows environments, if this article[1] is up-to-
date. Both of the Firefox installs I checked don't seem to use it,
Linux/X11/Ubuntu and Android (where it's apparently tied to e10s aka
Electrolysis, which I could not tell if they even intend to implement for
Android any time soon).

Kind of a mess...

[1]
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/WebRender_Where](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/WebRender_Where)

~~~
barrowclift
If nothing else, I really appreciate the summary, with all the comments and
various threads on this it's a bit hard to follow exactly what the hold up is.

~~~
negativegate
It looks like you currently need to go to about:config and enable
layout.css.backdrop-filter.enabled. It worked for me without enabling web
render. Not that this does much good until it's on by default.

------
acrophobic
Besides the address bar, another issue for me is now all image is lazy-loaded
even in websites that don't use Javascript.

While I realize there are advantages to lazy-loading image, I've never liked
it because often it makes the content moved a bit, which a bit annoying.
However, in pages that uses JS to lazy-load image at least they usually put
placeholder image so I know that there will be image there.

Unfortunately, since Firefox do it even for ordinary websites, now I often
scrolling away without realizing there are images, only to find out later the
paragraph that I read suddenly jumped to bottom.

I'm worried it will be permanent, especially since right now it's a bit hard
to revert this feature.

~~~
AtroxDev
It still defaults to eager loading. You have to explicitly add the
loading="lazy" attribute for it to load lazily.

~~~
antpls
Is there a flag to force it on most images, even the ones without the loading
attribute?

