Firefox 57: new Photon design screenshots

Live mockups here (found via a link in Bugzilla; I don&#x27;t know how accurate they are, but S[tephen] Horlander is a Mozilla designer): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;people-mozilla.org&#x2F;~shorlander&#x2F;projects&#x2F;photon&#x2F;Mockups&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;people-mozilla.org&#x2F;~shorlander&#x2F;projects&#x2F;photon&#x2F;Mocku...</a>

IMHO, Firefox needs to focus on performance now. There&#x27;s nothing wrong with the &#x27;old&#x27; UI. It is performance that made me move to Chrome.

Where&#x27;s the search bar? I use that more than the URL bar, doesn&#x27;t mean I don&#x27;t want a URL bar too. Classic Theme Restorer will stop working when Mozilla goes web extensions only, and now this?

Mozilla needs to stop messing with the UI and removing functionality. From removing a lot of UI customization, to requiring extension signing, forcing PulseAudio on Linux and now removing the search bar. Congratulations Mozilla, it&#x27;s Chrome.<p>I&#x27;m not sure who they&#x27;re catering to anymore. People that like Chrome, but don&#x27;t want to use it?<p>Edit: it looks very different than Chrome, but I feel like they&#x27;re constantly copying (removing) functionality

Anyone know what&#x27;s going on with the icons in the top left of the first screenshot? Or on this mockup posted by abrowne below:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;people-mozilla.org&#x2F;~shorlander&#x2F;projects&#x2F;photon&#x2F;Mockups&#x2F;linux.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;people-mozilla.org&#x2F;~shorlander&#x2F;projects&#x2F;photon&#x2F;Mocku...</a><p>Would be quite useful to have an area like that for web apps. The browser could apply a heuristic similar to that used by Chrome for the &#x27;pin to home screen&#x27; (a website that fulfills the PWA guidelines, and is used repeatedly), which would then be pinned to the new tab page, and when they are open go to that area at the top left. Or something.<p>But, anyone know what it&#x27;s actually used for?

People are so worried in moving buttons around and making things blue while calling it a redesign and here I am, just wishing for native horizontal tree style tabs in Firefox.

The page constantly re-renders on mobile - worst &quot;responsive design&quot; coded in JS ever seen.<p>Firefox market share is in free fall for months. Sad, but no wonder. They don&#x27;t care about users. Support the old API as long you call your browser &quot;Firefox&quot;. Fire all your &quot;designer&quot; that mess around with the UI - they habe too many off them, they are bored and change the look way too often. I removed the update service, and use Firefox only for local development and reverted back to the old Firebug. I would be interested in Servo plus an HTML based UI from them - but I don&#x27;t wait for them, it see,s it will take 2+ more years for a useable version. I would have assumed the support the current Firefox with XUL until then, but without old API support and without XUL support, there is no reason for Firefox anymore. Chrome and Safari are far ahead.

Overall I like it but the <i></i>short<i></i> centered URL bar, unused space around it, and trimmed URL are terrible.

I&#x27;ve been loving the &quot;minimized&quot; tab theme that shipped recently (I can&#x27;t remember what it&#x27;s called - I can never find the &quot;themes&quot; stuff for Firefox... not prefs, not sure where you set it) - but one issue with it is you can&#x27;t drag the window around by clicking a tab. I see they&#x27;ve addressed that by adding a few pixels above the tab now. I think this is a good idea, but I hope it means they&#x27;ve reduced the vertical size of a tab too: otherwise all the vertical-space gain is lost.<p>People here are complaining &quot;stop changing the UI&quot;, but web browsers are our main interface to everything... and they are feeling very 90s - I welcome any efforts to do something different or updated!<p>One thing that I think would be interesting to try is to treat the browser as only the header by default: it doesn&#x27;t have a &quot;height&quot;. When you start the browser it&#x27;s 80px high, and the window only shows after you load a tab. The landing pages seem like a waste&#x2F;unnecessary to me. Annnyhooo.

The design looks great - I look forward to other improvements to follow suit (performance, plugin architecture, security, etc).

I&#x27;m still annoyed at Mozilla for killing off Jetpack. They told developers that was the long-term path. I haven&#x27;t decided whether to update my add-ons or end-of-life them. Usage has declined in proportion to Firefox usage.

For me, Firefox&#x27;s customizability is its biggest advantage. When this update rolls out and breaks many extensions and complete themes, I&#x27;m not sure what reason I&#x27;ll have to choose Firefox over Chrome.

Looks like an EDGE ripoff. Why is there space to the left of pinned tabs and to the left of URL field? Is it used for something? I have no unused space in my Firefox UI right now, so this seems wasteful.<p>The only thing I like is that they moved bookmarks star back into the awesome bar. The current &quot;joint bookmarks button&quot; is the ugliest piece of UI I&#x27;ve ever seen.

I&#x27;d prefer to see firefox attempt to disrupt the browser UI landscape somehow (in the same way tabs-in-the-browser did way back when) than see them just copy another design. Firefox decided it wanted to look like Chrome and now it&#x27;s deciding it wants to look like Edge.

it&#x27;s looking more and more like chrome<p>i&#x27;m not a fan of the wasted space around the centered but not-wide-enough url bar (urls are truncated even in the screenshots)<p>the rest seems decent though<p>it says the screenshots are mockups so i hope they improve

Someone on HN posted the spec-ulation talk by Rich Hickey recently [1]. I found it really persuasive, with the fundamental point being: when you update your software in an incompatible way, you shouldn&#x27;t bump the &quot;major version&quot; number; you should rename it.<p>I hope the firefox devs consider this approach. Firefox has great name recognition, but it will be a deficit if users learn that it is a name that means breakage.<p>1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=oyLBGkS5ICk" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=oyLBGkS5ICk</a>

I might give it another look if they finally use native scroll behaviour in Android.

They keep messing around with the UI and changing it so often while also breaking extensions.<p>If you remove those features why wouldn&#x27;t I just use chrome? It&#x27;s faster and has more consistent usability

Fucked again. No one can stop Mozilla make Firefox more like Chrome.

Not again...<p>We can&#x27;t we just summarily execute all designers? It would save so much diffuse suffering.

Tagentially, since Fx 57 will also kill legacy extensions like Htitle¹, I&#x27;m glad CSD (tabs in the titlebar) on Linux is showing some recent activity: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bugzilla.mozilla.org&#x2F;show_bug.cgi?id=1283299" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bugzilla.mozilla.org&#x2F;show_bug.cgi?id=1283299</a><p>1: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;addons.mozilla.org&#x2F;en-US&#x2F;firefox&#x2F;addon&#x2F;htitle&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;addons.mozilla.org&#x2F;en-US&#x2F;firefox&#x2F;addon&#x2F;htitle&#x2F;</a>