Firefox 157: Could bold new look be just what Mozilla needs?*

Firefox 157 is here, but this time, Mozilla is making an unusual amount of noise about this release and its new look. This release has a new theme called “Nova,” which in the release notes Mozilla calls “Firefox’s biggest visual refresh in years.” The new theme is the flagship here, and aside from that, the new features in this …

[AMBxx]

Wrexham Lager

Long time since I thought of that. Growing up in North Wales, it was the brew available at our sailing club.

Dreadful stuff, discovering bitter, then moving to Kent a great improvement.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Wrexham Lager

Have an upvote for moving to the land of Shepherd Neame, AFAIK, Britain's oldest brewer.

That said, kudos to the two actors for revitalising Wrexham FC and other things in the area. If they get tired of Wrexham, my team, Aldershot could do with you. Your presence at matches does wonders for the gate receipts.

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: Wrexham Lager

I'd wager that Badger Brewery's (Hall & Woodhouse) Brock Lager is (was) in the 80's was worse.

Tasted like pungent Badgers piss.

[Martin an gof]

Re: Wrexham Lager

Not only the brewery, now they have bought the pub.

M.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla is very good at giving the wrong answer

I used to use themes but they were really nothing but extra work come upgrade time, which happened more and more often. So it'd be nice if the thing was vaguely workable out of the box. That basically pushes savvy people back into the bucket with all the other default theme users. So of course they need a video and a dog and pony show to make you at least acquiesce the new theme because it's all you'll realistically get. But I don't think a theme is going to win back the market- and mindshare they so happily squandered.

Maybe it's time to ask "what is actually good about webbrowsers?"

The last big improvement that stands out to me was the tab. What do they have now that's on that level, rather than the usual turd polishing or tinkering for the sake of tinkering*?

And what is the footie sponsorship doing there? They're a nonprofit kept aloft in all their glorious folly by google to give the latter plausible deniability in RICO hearings. Maybe this'll count as "money laundering", so perhaps whichever police unit covers that sort of thing should look into it. Too bad there's no law against "merit washing".

* I include the entire rust project in that category. Too bad its adherents caught religion and it's infecting everything. But maybe that was deliberate, which would put Mozilla firmly in the "evil" category, along with the "bad" and "wrong" already earned.

[that one in the corner]

Re: Mozilla is very good at giving the wrong answer

> The last big improvement that stands out to me was the tab

A bleak view, that nothing since 1997 has been a big improvement. Not saying I disagree, mind, but reminding us of nigh on three decades of nothing much getting better

Come on, surely we can get some enthusiasm for the death of Internet Explorer? Too nihilistic?

I'm of to read some Chekhov to cheer myself up; Uncle Vanya's gloomy trousers and that great joke about the cherry tree in act two.

[Regomised]

Re: Mozilla is very good at giving the wrong answer

"Come on, surely we can get some enthusiasm for the death of Internet Explorer?"

Yeah, but the IE virtual-monopoly has been replaced by a Chrome virtual-monopoly! And Chrome and it's progeny (particularly Edge) are far worse at reporting back to the mothership than IE ever was.

[Philo T Farnsworth]

Firefox before: the top and side bars in version 156 are predominantly grey, and buttons are rounded rectangles.

Grey background and rounded rectangles!

I can hardly contain my excitement!

I think I might need to go back to bed again.

[ecofeco]

Quick! Bring my fainting chaise!

[KarMann]

That joke probably would have gone over better if you hadn't been quoting the part describing the old version.

[Philo T Farnsworth]

Good point.

Reading comprehension has never been my strong suit.

[Dan 55]

The change is great. Firefox's widgets don't fit in with OS widgets in a new exciting way, not that old boring way.

Leading onto the next question, what do the OS widgets look like? Nobody knows now. Every piece of software is just its own thing, even the software that comes with the OS.

[Philo T Farnsworth]

Football

Also, our editor insisted that we call it “football”, rather than “soccer” to distinguish it from the game of handegg.

Also known in medical circles as Chronic traumatic encephalopathy¹.

(To be fair, both are similarly afflicted².)

Yay, sportsball.

___________________

¹ Wikipedia: List of NFL players with chronic traumatic encephalopathy

² The Associated Press: CTE cases in soccer players raise fresh questions about safety of heading the ball

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Football

I frequently drive past somewhere with a sign for "Rugby tots". Getting the brain damage in early.

[that one in the corner]

Re: Football

It makes the game trickier: you go in for the conversion, get a great swing - then look down and the brat is clinging onto your ankle.

On the plus side, though, waving a sticky toffee sweet usually guarantees that they'll crawl out of the scrum on your side.

[Elongated Muskrat]

Re: Football

Are they like "tater tots", but covered in mud?

[Elongated Muskrat]

Re: Football

On a vaguely related note, tt grates with me every time Duolingo tries to convince me that the French translation of "football" is "football Americain". Don't get me started on all the other US-English centric translations it tries to force onto you, like what the fuck is a "plaid"? (a couverture is a blanket, buddy)

[KarMann]

Re: Football

You say that as though you'd never seen Spaceballs.

[Elongated Muskrat]

Re: Football

It has been a while, but I see your Schwartz is as big as mine; let's see how you handle it...

[Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch]

Re: Football

Handegg, to distinguish it from the game of Nilalldraw.

FTFY.

[ecofeco]

Is it?

I just updated today. Looks the same to me.

I mean, I COULD look for the changes, and the update splash pages tells me there are new shiny things, but I'm not seeing anything worth noting.

But then, I'm that weird person who does not get excited about shuffling deck chairs and never did.

[Neil Barnes]

Re: Is it?

Does it include NoScript and U-Block Origin out of the box? No? As you were, then.

[Sleep deprived]

Re: Is it?

And the ability to open about: config or install extensions of your choice under Android?

[Regomised]

Re: Is it?

"I just updated today. Looks the same to me."

You mean you haven't noticed the roundy corners on the current tab heading?!

[stiine]

Re: Is it?

Why do they think that CPU cycles don't cost anything? Surely drawing a rectangle costs less (in cpu and time) than drawing a a turd?

[lvm]

The horror can be avoided

Just turn off all options with 'nova' in them in about:config

[drankinatty]

Re: The horror can be avoided

Done! The new look is ghastly.

But it still didn't fix the problem 157 has trying to play youtube videos where it pegs one CPU core at 100% forever until firefox is killed.

Not to mention corrupting the 156 profile with irreversible changes without warning making the downgrade to 156 a pain and requiring a new profile. (though now I can watch the new BBC documentary on Dark Energy....)

ESR here I come!

[richardcox13]

Re: The horror can be avoided

But it still didn't fix the problem 157 has trying to play youtube videos where it pegs one CPU core at 100% forever until firefox is killed.

That is not inherent to Firefox (as I do not see that), so ESR may not help. I would start with a look at your GPU drivers as likely failing to do decoding in hardware.

[nick_stokie]

Re: The horror can be avoided

Yes, I don't think the 100% CPU YouTube is specific to a Firefox version as I started seeing it a day or so ago on Firefox 140ESR.

[Dan 55]

Re: The horror can be avoided

It wouldn't be the first time YouTube tried to throw a spanner in the works for non-Chrome browsers.

[The Travelling Dangleberries]

Re: The horror can be avoided

Librewolf offers a button in Settings to turn off most of the obvious changes.

You still have to root around in about:config disable the rest.

[IamAProton]

well, couldn't tell the difference on win 10, perhaps because my system theme is a sort of classic one that shows borders on windows and in FF i've changed the radius thing value so all buttons, tabs, bars etc are square.

Anyways I'm happy to see the 'compact' toolbar option back ( perhaps introduces few versions ago)

[tiggity]

Liked the reference to Betteridge headlines.

Most FF users are keener on functionality than minor UI appearance tweaks

[Paratiritis]

Design fail

The new look is simply an abomination.

I could live with the rounded tabs and controls, however the shouting multi-color gradients as well as the purple hint on every single control are a huge deviation from keeping the browser quiet, in order to focus on the content.

There is indeed the nova turn-off configuration, however this may not be available for ever.

The alternative which may last a bit longer is to make a huge amount of changes to userChrome.css and userContent.css.

[Jason Bloomberg]

Re: Design fail

Was going to post the same after updating - The 'purple hint' and gradients the most annoying thing about it for me.

Using a dark theme, I downloaded AMOLED and some 'all back' thing and both seem to have solved the colour issues for me.

I wish people would stop fixing what's not broken, deciding what I would like, or at least provide a one-click 'how it was' button.

[robinsonb5]

Re: Design fail

It's mostly fine - but the gradient in the window border has to go. (userchrome.css to the rescue).

I work with colour, so I can't have user-interface elements messing with my white-balance perception.

[Maurice Mynah]

Re: Design fail

I have varifocal glasses, that are pretty poor for chromatic aberration. So I wasn't sure if my eyes were going, or the (fairly new) monitor was going bad, until I realised non-Firefox windows weren't affected by the purple plague. Somehow I missed the Reg story, so had to go digging to find out what was going on (and revert to "Proton").

Sigh. This is the kind of thing I associate with Microsoft.

[Throatwarbler Mangrove]

New LibreWolf just dropped as well

The main difference I see so far is that the active tab is more obvious, which is nice.

[The Sprocket]

* yawn *

*yawn* Nothing much to see here. Funky purple hues in the upper region of the browser. gradually pulsating back and forth. The rest seems to look and work as before. (FYI: I've been using FF since around 2005-6) For those who abhor funky colours, you can install the Theme 'Proton' which is just pure GREY.

This will never suck users from Chrome. Sorry Firefox. I still think your browser is solid though, and is still my default.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank god I switched to Waterfox.

[MiguelC]

Change for change's sake

First thing I did after the update? Going into about.config and disabling nova ("browser.nova.enabled")

Second thing? Removing the show sidebar button from the taskbar.

[Elongated Muskrat]

Re: Change for change's sake

Good shout, I've removed that unwanted and pointless button.

[williamyf]

Activity monitor in MacOS 15.8.1 is telling me that Firefox is leaking memory like a sieve leaks water...

Just like every version of firefox I used since late 2008.

Please, remind me again ¿How many UI changes has firefox had in that 18 year peiod?

¿How many opportunities to hire less UI dessigners and programmers and use the extra money to hire more computer scientists and computer engineers to fix the leaks...

But nooooooo, the priority is the UI, that suuuuure will attract new users to the browser...

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps it's caused by the additional overheads required to keep track of all those extraneous "¿" symbols you keep using even though you clearly know enough English to understand that its punctuation doesn't work in the same way as in Spanish?

[FIA]

However, another change may irk those clinging to old ways: the option to show or hide the sidebar has been removed from the Settings screen.

Settings cog at the bottom -> Untick 'Vertical tabs', then untick 'Open tools from sidebar'.

[Albert Coates]

Yech

What a load of abysmal horrendous shite. If I wanted pulsating pink tabs and purple options I would have configured them long ago.

What on earth do you think you are doing, FF? Or should that be FFS?

[Piro]

Re: Yech

Yeah, there's nothing to like. But then I like Firefox best from before v4

[that one in the corner]

Except for a very faint violet-purple tinge

Just like the violet-purple tinge that creeps across the LCD monitor as it starts to die (or, in my case, is fired up on a cold day and is then met with a fervent prayer that a restart will clear it now everything has warmed up a bit)?

How very reassuring that is going to be.

[notyetanotherid]

... and tabs are ovals

Stadium- or pill-shapes yep, ovals not so much.

[upsidedowncreature]

Re: ... and tabs are ovals

They look oval to me, are you thinking of ellipses?

[notyetanotherid]

Re: ... and tabs are ovals

The shape that is two semicircles joined by a rectangle is a 'stadium' (sometimes also called pill-shaped). Oval, from the Latin for egg, ovum, is egg-shaped. Which is a loose definition. Circles are oval. Ellipses are oval. But when I see/hear oval I think of the classic chicken's egg shape...

[Adrian Richards]

Fanfare

I like how Browser manufactures announce each new version with a huge fanfare, seemingly unaware the their customers / users couldn't care less.

#JustBlockAdverts

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Fanfare

More likely they will care. They'll hate it.

[Phil Koenig]

New coat of paint

..same old browser.

It's quite the trend these days in the absence of real software improvements in all the major desktop and handheld platforms themselves. So why not for the applications too?

Mozilla's recently updated UI for their Android browser is also terrible IMHO, and usability is worse than what preceded it.