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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...
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 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)
The very existence of SASS and LESS prove CSS needs to be fixed. Introducing variables in CSS is one step in the right direction of making SASS/LESS obsolete.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
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.
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
But since we need ALL browsers to support CSS variables, in the same manner, it means we won't be able to use that before around 2024 because of Microsoft.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
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.
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.
CSS Variables are actually better described as CSS Custom Properties. They aren't just SASS-style global macros, they're far more powerful. Different elements can have different values for the same custom property, and custom property values set on an element are inherited by its descendants, respecting dynamic DOM changes etc. Custom property values can be set dynamically by scripts and those changes are of course automatically inherited.
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.
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.
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...
The very existence of SASS and LESS prove CSS needs to be fixed.
I'd rather say their creation proved that CSS needed to be fixed. They came along and fixed it reasonably well, at least in those respects where they were also evidence of a problem in the first place.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
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--;}
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.
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.
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?
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.
You need an account if you want to use Mozilla's sync service.
If you don't want to use sync, or if you want to run your own sync server instead of using Mozilla's, then you don't need an account.
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.