Slashdot Mirror
Firefox 29 Beta Arrives With UI Overhaul And CSS3 Variables
An anonymous reader writes "Following the release of Firefox 28 just two days ago, Mozilla today updated its Firefox Beta channel to version 29 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. This is a massive release: Firefox Sync has been revamped and is now powered by Firefox Accounts, there's a new customization mode, and the major user interface overhaul Australis has finally arrived. Release notes are here: Desktop and Android."
Of interest to developers: Firefox 29 will feature the first implementation of CSS3 variables. Yes, variables for CSS (15 years later).
So... It looks like chrome now?
Don't get me wrong... I like the look, but it seems somehow.... unfirefoxy...
You'll still need a table to do a three column layout.
Maybe instead of complaining that menus behave unpredictably outside of tabs you could fix the problem instead of giving every tab a menu?
Been doing that in SASS since 2007, browser support not required.
sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
personally i'm signing up for firefox accounts. yah, i trust them more than google. no, not because they run around yelling "we're not evil", but because i admire their mission statement and purpose and they have stayed true to it. unixy in a way. firefox is a jewel in the free software crown and for that i will trust them with my bookmarks.
somewhere, on a Big Red Sign:
if(color==blue){speed--;}
So it's an ugly chrome with memory leaks?
yay
Looks like GEM to me :(
Firefux will crash 10x as previous version so what little use Firefux had it will have none now and it is up there with Fuckle Chrap and Internet Exploder. Stick with Lynx as it is the most stable and lightweight browser there is plus there is no way a script-kiddie can break into it since it doesn't execute code at all.
A jewel paid for mostly by google.
Classic Theme Restorer will restore your sanity
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/
If we wanted an ugly version of Chrome, we'd use Chrome!
Also recommended - Status-4-Evar extension (you need the dev version for FF 29)
Nicely said but there is no need for trust.
Firefox Sync is end-to-end encrypted so Mozilla does not see your bookmarks.
In imperative programming languages, like Java, C++ or even JavaScript, the state can be tracked through the notion of variables. Variables are symbolic names associated with a given value, that can vary with the time. In a declarative language like CSS, time-changing values are not common and the concept of variables is pretty uncommon.
Seems like people who confuse the notions of variables, mutable bindings and mutable values still haven't died out. OK, I'll wait another ten years...
Ezekiel 23:20
I wonder if the opensource Firefox equivalent iceweasel will be similarly augmented?
The purpose of existence is to make money.
Why am I thinking of Terror Australis all of a sudden?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
This isn't progress. This is a designer taking over for UX. Bad bad bad.
Or you just try Australis Slimmr, if you kind of like it but think it has too much padding. One genuinely nice thing about Australis is that it's easier to tweak the UI with CSS using a user stylesheet or something like the Sylish addon. It should become a fair bit easier to create and maintain skins and addons now.
I've been running Firefox since it was called Navigator 3.0 but for the life of me I can't understand why they cannot put the tab close button on the left like every other Mac application in the world. Seriously.
"You do not support the root but the root supports you." - Romans 11:18
Thanks, CTR is a life saver. It is sad how FF thinks they need to emulate others and remove existing features. Why does one need to spend an hour after each update trying to find extensions and tutorials, how to restore at least most of the previous functionality one had? Is FF trying to get rid of their existing customers?
Firefox 31 only just fixed a bug where CSS variables of data: images in generated content are not visible until the real (non-var) string is used
Also, they have just changed the format spec for CSS variables in the last day or two from var-foo: stringOfProperties to --foo: stringOfProperties and as a property from var(foo) to var(--foo), so the the testcase on that bug won't work once Firefox updates to the new format.
I don't care what it looks like, I'm just worried about what "rarely used" features I depend on they're going to take away this time.
The ability to hide the Navigation bar is gone along with the ability to drag the URL bar to another toolbar, the star for bookmarking a site from inside the urlbar is gone, and the desire to stick with small icons of extensions isn't satisfied (they change size depending where you drag them).
Luckily CTR also restores all this functionality too.
Fuck 'em both. There really needs to be a method for syncing to a server of one's choice instead of relying on third parties.
Self hosting FTW.
Irrelevant. One should not have to rely on a specific company on that, but it should be a well layed out mechanism that allows one to sync to a server of choice, allowing one to host it themselves instead of relying on third parties.
The Australis link crashed my plugin-stuffed Mint 16 Firefox 28 shebang twice in a row. I got a good laugh. No problems recently, until this link.
These days, interface designers think a HIG should be printed on toilet paper. Browsers now always look "alien" to whatever environment where they're run. Here's a tip, you dolts: cut this "too cool for rules" bullshit. Each system gives you standard windows, standard buttons, standard decorations, standard everything -- use them, always! Regard the HIG as a holy bible! Make the program belong with the system!
Circumcision is child abuse.
If it's just a massive release, why did they only increment the minor version number? Why not something equally massive like going from 28 to say, 11000?
Good luck finding your bookmarks with the new interface.
For the past couple of years the Mozilla developers have been hard at work removing features from Firefox and making it less and less useful. We've been able to (mostly) work around these stupid, pointless changes with the use of additional extensions. Having to add extensions to bring back features that have been removed is stupid, but it works.
Now, with the new "Australis" design they take things to a whole new level. Australis completely destroys almost everything that made Firefox popular in the first place. An enormous amount of flexibility and customizability has been removed. But not just removed. Completely ripped out in such a way that getting it back through extensions (which are just bits of Javascript and CSS) will be difficult, if not impossible. Extensions such as "Classic Theme Restorer" attempt to undo some of the damage, but are only able to do so in a very limited way.
Firefox, as we know it, will soon be gone. What a bunch of assholes.
I see stays true to the old UI, in the sense that despite having 'use system colours' off, it uses a bunch of them anyway!
I can't see shit in the new 'customisation' area! It's full of greys on marginally different greys!
I've been using this for a while, I want the forward/back as well as the stop/refresh buttons on the far left as they've always been, and Australis merged them into the URL bar. (WHY!?)
I don't mind the curves, but they use a lot more vertical space than the classic rectangles, doubly so as I use tree-style-tab as an essential extension.
Rather then a new GUI look, I would rather them put more resources into a more responsive Multiprocess Firefox. A good talk about this is at: http://billmccloskey.wordpress.com/2013/12/05/multiprocess-firefox/
They kept a dedicated search bar.
It sounds like you CAN host your own Firefox Sync server.
"As with the previous version of Firefox sync, users still have the option to take their data with them and host their own sync service using the open source server-side software."
https://github.com/mozilla/fxa...
Ctrl-B - Oh hey, there's my bookmarks.
Ctrl-Shift-B - Oh hey, there's my bookmarks.
Click the "Show your Bookmarks" button in the toolbar (or menu panel) - Oh hey, there's my bookmarks.
Show the menu bar, open the Bookmarks menu - Oh hey, there's my bookmarks.
We gotta learn EMACS to run firefox?
Please mod parent up. Self-hosting is a very important point, it was the second part of my thinking in adopting the new firefox account last month, but I forgot to mention it in my earlier post. The other cool thing about self-hosting it is that organizations can perhaps have internal social bookmarking (which could be awesome for dev teams and ops teams). You'd just have to extend the firefox accounts server with the social features which would enhance colaboration
:D I currently have all my bookmarks stored in the owncloud bookmark toolbar but until the improvs i've ordered actually get shipped I don't have a good embedded device to run my owncloud on and the raspberry pi that's currently hosting owncloud is a little slow. Firefox accounts just makes it easier, and I will be able to self host it on my improv or whatever. To the GP, can you tell me what hardware you're using to self host? I've found the raspberry pi unacceptably slow (but I need to give seafile another shot) so I'm considering buying a beagleboard if the improv never ships :( Anyone using a parallela to self-host?
Self hosting FTW
somewhere, on a Big Red Sign:
if(color==blue){speed--;}
(WHY!?)
Because the focus groups.
How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.
While you were reading the summary, Mozilla rolled out Firefox 30!
Edit: Now, Firefox 31!
Here's a list of all the new UI features I've enjoyed that have come along in browsers since I first used Netscape 2, 18 years ago:
- tabs
- URL autocomplete/history search
- built-in search box (NEXT TO the location box, thankyouverymuch)
- being able to resize a <textarea>
- download manager
... and I think that's about it.
Dear UX/UI "experts" everywhere: the next best thing to an "intuitive" UI is a FAMILIAR one. If you're working on an established product, whenever possible, simply LEAVE THINGS WHERE THE FUCK THEY ARE.
Ask yourself this: if a study was done and it found that 51% of the time that people use sinks, it was right-handed people wanting to turn on the hot water spigot, would that mean that we should start making sinks with the hot water tap on the right? NO! Because 1) we've spent a LONG ASS TIME with this convention, and 2) there would be a LONG ASS TRANSITION PERIOD where people would have to deal with BOTH systems, which would SUCK INFINITELY.
You know the old Abe Lincoln adage, "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt?" Well, it's better to leave good things alone and have people thing you're not much of a designer, than to fix it until it breaks and remove all doubt. The best designers (and this goes for many other fields, including I.T. and stage crews) are the ones you don't know are there. Shit should JUST WORK. And then CONTINUE to work.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Will it stop this "not responding" nonsense when I open a new tab?
Fuck 'em both. There really needs to be a method for syncing to a server of one's choice instead of relying on third parties.
Self hosting FTW.
Self hosting FTW for geeks, maybe. For non-geeks, not so much.
Funny non-sense with the back and forward buttons . The forward button appears or hides dynanimcally making the whole URL bar increase or decrease in length everytime you change between tabs that have forward history or not. Are these guys idiots?
There is an extension which brings back the older theme, but it does something funky to the minimum tab width which makes the whole tab bar go jitter crazy the moment you have more tabs than can fit on the screen. Seems like Firefox tries to make a scroller, and the extension keeps trying to make the thing fit.
You know the best UI out there is this theme for FIrefox called FXChrome. That theme + a couple of user styles basically makes Firefox look exactly like Chrome. The fact that it works SO well, is only indication of the fact how bad Australis really is. Mozilla could never put together a decent UX ever. Look at Thunderbird, then look at Postbox. Look at Firefox, then look at Chrome. And I am still waiting for e10n.
But beta is beta...so let's see.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
Seriously, EVERYTHING is going to shit so that "UX designers" (if ever there was a more bullshit term, I haven't heard of it) can get their rocks off and jizz their fucking pants.
Meanwhile, everything is becoming unusable. You know why it's supposed to be the user INTERFACE? Because the USER is supposed to INTERFACE with it, IT IS NOT A FUCKING "EXPERIENCE".
I'm so fucking tired of this form-over-function bullshit being fucking everywhere. Soon, we're going to have to just randomly fucking guess and flail around aimlessly just to use a computer.
Do you know why Firefox's UI peaked at around version 3? Because it did exactly what it needed to. Menu bar, toolbar, address/search, tabs, page, done. Now everything is everywhere and nothing is consistent. All of these little bullshit buttons machine gunned all over the fucking place. I'm using a mouse to click these, not a fucking sniper rifle with telescopic targeting scope. Now it's following this god awful flat, squared-off, non-isolated, who-the-fuck-knows-what-does-what, pastel UX bullshit.
We are going to design ourselves out of productivity and end up fucking around with needless bullshit all day long.
When did we stop thinking of the users and put them below some designer's precious snowflake ego?
For those few who care, FF29 is going to be the first release with the new version of "Firefox Sync" which is used to keep two different installs of firefox synced up for things like plugins, bookmarks, history, etc.
Under the current system, your profile is encrypted on your computers, mozilla only ever sees an encrypted blob.
Under the new system, Mozilla (and anyone else who gets to their servers like someone with a subpoena or hacked access or even just blackmailed/bribed the right person at mozilla) has full access to your data in the clear.
If you create a sync profile now, before FF29, then you will be able to keep using the safely encrypted version. But once FF29 is out there, the plan is to stop allowing any new encrypted sync profiles, requiring everyone to use the new, unsafe, system.
FYI, they are doing it because they want to let apps and other services get access to your sync profile data like the way google does with chrome's sync equivalent. They talk a good game about privacy, but no matter what they say, the new system is inherently insecure. In a post snowden (and Target) world, it is too bad they haven't seen fit to offer the option to do client-side encryption for the new sync system, for those of us who do not want apps and other services to get access to our profiles.
A day late and a dollar short...
Everyone who needs and has a good use for CSS variables, and other more advanced functionality has already moved to SASS or something similar (libsass is my personal favorite).. Frankly, at this point someone should probably just add a SASS flag to dump a more compressed style sheet using css variables, but beyond that I don't see a reason to even really consider raw CSS at this point.
I've spent hours getting things the way I want on Firefox: organizing buttons, customizing userChrome, killing all possible vestiges of tabs (since they stopped letting you turn that feature off through the menu)... I don't want Australis to break this and shove a Chrome-style UI down my throat. I need traditional menus (the all-in-one on Chrome sucks) and prefer a standard Netscape-style UI. Will there be an opt-out option for this new crap or is someone going to have to fork the codebase? (No, using add-ons for basic functionality is not acceptable.)
Probably not, the whole premise behind ice weasel is that they were being babies that wouldn't adhere to the rules for using the Fx trademark, as in not including unapproved patches.
Firefox 3.6 was irritating but I still used it. IE 8 loaded quicker surprisingly but of course I would not use it as my main setc.
FF 4.0 did really support HTML 5 but it was sooo horrible. It was a shitty browser. IE 9 came out at the same time in 2011 and won tomshardware.com reward. It was a better browser. Chrome soon followed.
I switched to Chrome by summer 2011 after going back and forth with IE 9 and FF 5.0.
It is time to move on. IE once was the best browser too. Remember those days? Times change and things get stale. Yes FF is supporting more standards, but underneath its rendering engine is straight out of 2007 with no multiple cpu support, no multiprocessing, no low rights mode, no freaking sandboxing. It is ANCIENT.
I want to see it come back. I do admit its memory leaks make it somewhat usable but like IE 5 before it we had to use because it was the best we had compared to alternatives. FF saved us form IE 6 but as we move into 2014 it no longers serves peoples needs.
Switch to Chrome.
http://saveie6.com/
Yet another case of somebody trying to dumb things down for newbs when the majority are just fine.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I've been a Fx user since it was Phoenix and it's astonishing to me how incompetent the changes have been. They take out features that are actually quite useful, like the ability to have smart bookmarks and AFAIK, that is only available via an extension. They changed the versioning system so that most plugins wouldn't work when they made a minor update to the browser software because Google does it.
The browser used to be good, but rather than improving what was working, they've decided they need to radically change it regularly with no particular rhyme or reason. Fx is something I used to use because it was the best, now I use it because it's the least bad option out there. If I wanted to use Chrome, I'd use Chrome.
Has it perhaps occurred to you that Google tends to suck as well? If it isn't cool then they stop working on it, it took them years of development of their calendar program and as far as I know it's still missing the ability to have recurring tasks. Something which pretty much every other option provides. No particular justification or reason, but because it wasn't cool or sexy nobody could be arsed to do it.
Firefox has a similar problem. They used to have a good product, but they're so fixated on Chrome's success that they're more interested in replicating the broken Chrome experience then improving what they were doing well.
Tired of the pace of upgrades that Mozilla (and Ubuntu) forces on you?
Well then, install the Firefox ESR on Linux, and stay for a year without changes ...
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
So I have to have an account with Mozilla to use the 'free' Firefox browser now?
No thankyou.
I don't want a new UI either.
FTR I don't have a Google account either, I get my Android apps from Amazon
yes, i use firefox 31 alpha. it is quite stable. the gui of firefox 31 looks like firefox 29's interface
Amen brother.
By the way - have you seen what they did to Opera - try it - it doesn't even have fucking bookmarks now..
it should be a well layed out mechanism that allows one to sync to a server of choice, allowing one to host it themselves instead of relying on third parties.
It's not completely trivial to set up, but not horribly difficult either:
http://docs.services.mozilla.c...
You set up your own Firefox Sync server on whatever machine you want.
Must be a nice feeling for companies knowing that you can rely on self-imposed unpaid slaves working in their free time to fix their very own screw-ups.
Yes this. Even GMAIL sucks more every year.
Best ms office. 2003.
Best gmail. 2 years ago.
Best windows. 7
Best firefox. Around 10.
Note all the underlying systems are get betting, its just the ui's sucking more.
46137
So I click the link to preview the new UI with my IE9...
Maybe Mozilla could make a preview that IE-users can see, and try to convonc me to switch?
As a matter of fact, Mozilla has very well documented their sync API, allowing for any third-party to implement their sync server. And sync servers there are, for example ownCloud comes with one and I'm using it right now to synchronise Firefox on my desktop machine with the one on my laptop. The ownCloud suite runs on my own server machine too.
Thank you for saying this!! I just posted this in the OneNote discussion and nobody seemed to get it.
If you want to synch data, use an existing protocol like FTP, SFTP, SCP, rsynch, etc. The application should prompt the user for URL + user name + password. Then it can synch to anything. One should not have to run special host software like a Firefox Sync server or Sharepoint in order to synch files.
Seriously, EVERYTHING is going to shit so that "UX designers" ... I'm so fucking tired of this form-over-function bullshit
Blame marketing, not UX designers. Some companies have UI design done by marketing, and others have it done by technical staff. Both are wrong.
A UX designer would not favor form over function. A UX designer is responsible for implementing best practices, assigning a consistent look-and-feel, and gathering data to ensure that the "user experience" is a good one. That means measuring productivity. They should be drawing from knowledge in graphic design, psychology, statistics, and engineering. Contrast that with Marketing people who want it to look cool for their brochures. They are the form-over-function people, not the designers.
My employer hired a user experience expert and it is great. Our new products have the same look-and-feel. The icons are no longer coder art. They are applying best practices like moving tabs to the bottom on touch screens so your arm isn't in the way of the screen and you don't get monkey arm. Stuff like that. Having a real UX expert is a good thing.
Don't blame the profession or the terminology for fools masquerading as experts.
Why in shit do you need a sync server? Why not any of the many protocols which Firefox already speaks? I should be able to use any FTP server to do sync.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No, a UI designer would do that. A UX designer is a marketing asshat. It's not blaming the terminology as much as it is calling it out for its bullshit.
If you really dislike the way Firefox is going with changes in the newly released beta that includes the controversial UX overall they do have a survey set up to express your opinions on the changes https://www.surveygizmo.com/s3...
It is not just marketing departments deciding things. You and I are a small minority demographic which has had influence in this field and for a short while, reasonably well designed software FOR US. But now the golden age is over. Everybody is a user today and design experts are designing software for the MAJORITY which does not include US. Just as desktops will become expensive niche products because consumers will use consumer devices and real computers will be for a minority group with nowhere near the demand of yesteryear-- also about a few years ago when desktops and laptops were beginning to decline in sales.
YES for some software the majority of users are going to be intermediate or advanced but the "UX" designers are most likely being churned out only thinking about consumers and not other demographics they may be designing for (even if they do, just out of habit they will be for popular conventions the consumers like.)
Some of this is "get off my lawn" but the majority of it is legitimate complaints, IMHO.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
cause there are nu bugs to work on or code to optimize. Why has open source software development turned to shit?
Awesome, thanks for the link!!
Too bad chrome tried to steel it.
I don't like their logic regarding functionality. "If only a small subset of our population uses that feature, then it belongs in a add-on". It makes sense to reduce as much as you can the many points of failure. Sure. But, it's kind of like the same complaint people point towards arma: they rely too much on add-ons and things like that, and the base experience turns out to be rather mediocre to a subset of people. On the bright side, since they rely so much on the community, add-ons do get made, forks exists and there is about something for everyone.
I don't care if I'm wrong. I only care about everyone obtaining something from the discussion.
I had to re-install 28. Too many of the new "features" broke the interface for me.
You know, 28 *is* the current stable release...29 is barely beta 1.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
The example shown here doesn't work for me when testing in Firefor 29:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Using_CSS_variables
The brown background colour is not appearing... Anyone knows about another example to test?
Pages become choppy or completely black out in live feeds on forums or they don't load at all in disquss. I do not like this new update at all. It is quicker and that is about it.
Later to this site
CTR's not viable. I've tried out and, sadly, it introduces other problems, including totally decimating compatibility with certain add-ins. Mozilla is breaking Firefox so badly that they're necessitating "dependency hell" with add-ins to bring the UI back to where it should be.
I'm just not feeling those tabs.. Infact the whole design looks like an amateur chrome version.. Mozilla needs to get some better designers.. I'm really not digging this look.