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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...
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--;}
no... you need to learn how to use CSS
Looks like GEM to me :(
No, you don't. Setup your divs, then learn how to use CSS
#container { display: table; }
#row { display: table-row; }
#left, #right, #middle { display: table-cell; }
No tables are required for the infamous three-column layout. This isn't new. You've been able to do this everywhere for more than a decade.
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.
Because it isn't a table. It can be rendered in a single column if a browser (lynx for instance) can't do three column.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
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
And your link is still broken.
Is "Fuckle Chrap" supposed to be "Google Chrome"? Stretching it a bit too far there.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
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?
I guess the top parent never learned anything about content vs presentation.
Hint: tables are to be used for tabular data. If you'd write your data inside an Excel sheet, use a table. Otherwise, don't.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
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?
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.
. If you'd write your data inside an Excel sheet, use a table. Otherwise, don't.
Checked and raised
Someobody has to employ that new kid right out of Art School. And it seems that somebody ended up being Mozilla. I don't like the idiotified look of Windows 8 and I certainly don't want my applications to fall into this same (horrid) design hole one by one!
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...
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--;}
What about this?
http://www.w3schools.com/css/c...
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
That's what "float" is for.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Using a non-table element with table display properties is not the same as using a generic table element.
The HTML holds the semantic value, not the CSS. You use a table element when you want the HTML to be semantically labeled as a table (for, you know, tabular data). You use `display: table-cell;` for when you want the element to behave as a table cell, but you don't want the HTML to be labeled as a table (because it's not tabular data).
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
(WHY!?)
Because the focus groups.
How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.
you could tell what everything would do just by looking at it.
Or at least you could tell which UI elements were clickable and which were just informational or decorative. Those were the days.
How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.
Are you the guy that keeps polluting my markup with all the empty divs that simply have a `clear` class assigned?
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
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.
Do you also argue that you shouldn't use font-weight:bold in CSS, because <b> is non-semantic?
Because that's the idiotic equivalence you're trying to make.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
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.
I love people like this, DONT USE TABLES FOR LAYOUTS!!!! Then guess what, they use a bunch of divs as rows and cols and style it as a table, and say SEE THIS IS SO MUCH BETTER. Ok yet you used so much more css and 20 fucking nested divs to do the same thing
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?
Is that also true for "previewing" for accessibility?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Is what also true? it being a table or a div wont change how a screen reader reads the text.
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
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.
It's all about "the semantic web". If a table is used as a design, its semantics are incorrect.
-- The Internet is a too slow way of doing things, you'd never do without it.
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
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.
Screen readers have contextual commands and may behave differently in real tables. For instance http://www.freedomscientific.c...
If the user is just having it read all the text on the screen it will probably be about the same, but if he's navigating within the page it will be different.
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.'"
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
so long as the underlying content is semantically structured to allow alternate renderings to be carried out
And how often is that the case? If you want a table layout, you have to structure the underlying HTML as a table (even if you prefer to use divs instead of a table element) because CSS can't affect the presence or order of the tags. Given that you have to write the HTML with the layout in mind anyway, why not simply have a <gridlayout> tag (and <hbox> and <vbox> while we're at it) to distinguish table layouts from semantic <table>s, rather than relying on generic <div>s organized as tables—as opposed a way which would make sense semantically—but still ultimately dependent on a mass of boilerplate CSS to actually be presented as intended?
Of course, if they were actually serious about separating presentation and sematics, the top level of the page would probably look more like XUL or QML, with the main content (either embedded or pulled from separate files) written in a subset of HTML with no support for scripting, styling, or layout, just pure semantics.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
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.
Everyone who needs and has a good use for CSS variables, and other more advanced functionality has already moved to SASS or something similar
Maybe, but you're missing two things: 1) CSS variables are not semantically equivalent to SASS or LESS variables; 2) CSS variables are available for runtime JavaScript manipulation. Sure, you can run LESS (and maybe SASS) in the browser too, but it's a bit overkill.
In fact, CSS variables complement SASS/LESS nicely.
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
Such discoverability.
How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.
No, you apply the clear to the next element that has to occur on a new line. Such as the first column of the next row.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".