I use this feature. On a large monitor, Firefox wastes quite a lot of space with the default layout. To be honest, I wish there was an option to make it more compact than the "compact" layout. There used to be an XUL extension to do this, before XUL was killed off.
Seems like every time I see coverage about Firefox, it's Mozilla removing or crippling some feature I care about.
Why bother using FF at this point? Most sites don't work as well, and Mozilla seems actively hostile to my use case. If I'm going to use a browser that is hostile to me, I may as well get better website compatibility out of the bargain.
Not surprised their market share keeps shrinking. At this point, what's the sell?
Edit 1: worth noting, there is a lower-down comment thread[0] with relevant links - Mozilla does not care if you like this feature.
I don't get it. The wording of the bugzilla specifically says
> The "Compact" density is a feature of the "Customize toolbar" view which is currently fairly hard to discover, and we assume gets low engagement.
So not only do they not have telemetry for that, they aren't even attempting to make it more discoverable to test if there's a correlation between "hard to discover" and "low engagement"?
I would use this but never knew this could be changed.
It seems no one really read through the bugzilla ticket. Three days ago after this got attention Mozilla both added telemetry to collect usage stats [1] and plan to run an experiment with the new proton UI [2] to determine what density users prefer and make discovery easier.
This is not yet finalized/decided and a great big thanks to the Firefox devs for listening to the feedback and collecting real information before making a final decision.
I wish gecko/servo were separated enough from Firefox that we had other browser options built around it, with features like native sidebar tabs and compact mode. I've tried to stick with Firefox because I don't love Google owning the hugely dominant browser engine, but Mozilla isn't making it easy for me.
Looks increasingly nice across the pond with Edgeium, Vivaldi, Brave, etc.
Is servo even still in development? I know bits and pieces of the project have made their way into Firefox, but I'm not sure where that stands after the layoffs last year.
I use this feature as the UI takes a lot of space, and it would be bother me quite noticeably were it removed. However, I understand that maintaining features & options can incur costs, which may not be worthwhile if they're not widely used. So I'd be happy to accept the inconvenience if I knew that I was in a minority.
Stunned to see that's not the case, and completely baffled at how contradictory and indicative of incompetence this stated reasoning is.
Same here. I didn't know this was in Firefox, saw this article, went and tried it. I think I'll leave it that way (until the feature goes away) because I prefer leaving space for content. I use the keyboard to focus on the url bar anyway, so the smaller size doesn't hurt me.
I don't think Mozilla has a clear vision of what they want to achieve. They've been randomly removing features, or even plain butchering their products (eg the recent Firefox mobile update) for several years, and all they probably achieved is to lose more and more users.
Yet with their tiny market share they aren't exactly in a position to lose users.
I actually really like Firefox Mobile. The old Firefox on Android was a dumpster fire. But I'm one of those types that used to use Firefox Focus as my main mobile browser. My main concern on a mobile browser is that it's so difficult to deal with cookies and tracking etc. Firefox Focus really earned my trust there and I like that the new Firefox Mobile is continuing that.
My only real "complaint" is trivial and it isn't really their fault--it's that there are some dumb websites/apps that require a pass through Chrome to login and I haven't found a super quick way to do that (it's not difficult but it used to be super easy and obvious in Focus).
For several years now it has seemed like every notable change in Firefox has been about removing a reason to use Firefox instead of Chrome. (There are certainly reasons for the opposite case, including but not limited to the fact that every single website is certainly tested to work in Chrome.)
Now, I've been using Firefox as my primary browser since before it was called Firefox, and I'm quite used to it and unlikely to switch to anything else, but boy are they (at the Mozilla Foundation) trying hard to make me.
A side effect of using the Vimperator extension for many years was that it provided a stable interface unaffected by upstream UI tweaks, while still benefiting from other feature and security updates. I couldn't imagine switching away from Firefox for any reason, but when Vimperator was no longer supported, I realized I didn't like what remained and evaluated alternatives. Eventually, I stopped installing Firefox on my machines because I no longer open it.
I've gone from a diehard Firefox advocate to not even recommending it to friends and family for exactly this reason. The amount UX churn and functionality regressions over the past half decade is absurd and a huge turnoff.
Exactly this: recent Firefox mobile update. It is the worst happen to software I like to use and I use it on daily basis. It went bad. And I don't understand why they removed so many helpful features. It is time to (again) depart from Firefox and choose Chromium again.
I use Firefox Beta on android. One can change about:config options to improve pivacy. There is something called 'encrypted client hello', which was discussed here on HN, which lets me access many blocked sites in my country.
I use the about:config options in this guide [1] plus enable encrypted DNS and encrypted client hello in about:config (on FF Beta android).
A few days ago, there was an HN page showcasing a cool webpage which can read the position angles of your phone (whether it's flat, inclined etc in detail). That page works well on regular FF Android. But on the FF Beta with the config options enabled as above prevents the page from reading the angles. I also have telemetry upload disabled on FF Beta, but maybe a bit something is still uploaded, idk.
Edit: If one trawls through some recent past threads, one can see that FF cares about privacy. They have official extensions to isolate sites (or cookies?) to prevent tracking, on desktop. (Facebook Container and Firefox Multi-Account container). They are working on something like per site isolation by default (Project Fission [2]). Yeah Chrome has it but then they try to log you into the whole browser when you just wanna log in to gmail. And they are not doing something scammy plus impactful like AMP, FLoC [3] like Google. These AMP links are everywhere, many times it looks like it's the official site link.
Or you know, there is a bias towards the negative for some backward-ass reason and there is this much engagement over some random clickbait UI feature, and almost none about actual technical advances in the renderer and the like that happen regularly, which is kind of saddening on HN.
It would be nice if the community would have more acceptance towards the last remaining browser fighting the good fight, with the many welcome, recent (!) advancements regarding privacy.
This is a 100% failure by Mozilla foundation management.
They are non technical people who only care about own salaries and sjw issues, while ignoring their core product.
Meanwhile the developer team does whatever they want: they mostly do greenfield projects that are used to boost their CVs. Those projects get 0 users and usually are cancelled at 70% completion so nothing hard needs to be done anyway (no bugfixing which is unsexy work).
Here a developer probably does not want to code the compact option (or possibly: does not know how to do it) so they just want to remove it. Because the new firefox motto is "fuck our remaining users". Mozilla management does not care.
Then they will wonder why firefox has a 3% market share.
I have never used FF mobile, but so far no one has gone into detail about what changed about FF mobile that made it so much worse. Can you elaborate a little?
Honestly I really like the mobile update, the interface feels more intuitive and modern. The only complaint for me is the "recommended" plugin restrictions.
The main problem with discovery is that Compact Density is enabled from a toolbar at the bottom of the Customize Firefox page, which looks looks like one of those annoying floating footers that badly designed web pages use to waste your screen space. It is affected by "banner blindness" and is effectively invisible.
When I saw this article I checked the Customize Firefox page to confirm I had compact layout enabled. I did not see the toolbar. I compared the UI density with a screenshot, and it seemed I had already set it to Compact, which I vaguely remembered doing. Puzzled, I returned to Customize Firefox, and still failed to see the toolbar.
I then checked about:config (which was also sabotaged recently to make it slower and remove features), and found browser.uidensity set to 1, so I really did have Compact density enabled. I returned to Customize Firefox, and only then, on my third attempt, did I see the toolbar.
> The main problem with discovery is that Compact Density is enabled from a toolbar at the bottom of the Customize Firefox page, which looks looks like one of those annoying floating footers that badly designed web pages use to waste your screen space. It is affected by "banner blindness" and is effectively invisible.
Exactly!
I have been using Firefox since Phoenix/Firebird days and I had never seen this option until I read about this on HN today.
I then checked about:config (which was also sabotaged recently to make it slower and remove features),
For many years I've lamented the usability of about:config and wish they'd turn it into a tree structure and/or at least provide useful descriptions of the options (if something as space-constrained as a mobo BIOS can provide some descriptive help text next to each option in the setup screens...), only to find the next big change they did was that abomination of "designer-ism" (for lack of better term.) That felt like a punch to the face.
Turns out, I was using default density. I thought I was using Compact, so I suppose it isn't personally a big deal to me.
I do agree with most of the complaints, however.
It is apparent to me that there is a faction within Mozilla/Firefox that have an explicit directive to trim low-use features, no matter how passionate the users of those features are. I wish Firefox looked to the GNOME project to see how people feel about removing low-use features ideologically (hint: it sucks).
Chrome does a lot of things correctly, and it has its core competencies. Firefox should have its own, and optimize towards that. The only large group of people advocating for it anymore seem to be skilled users. Why piss them off?
Separate but related: My parents explicitly wanted off FF because it kept on changing its layout. Casual users don't like UI changes.
I've been an evangelist for FF for 15-ish years, since before Chrome existed. I teach computer science, which means my evangelism is multiplied by the hundreds of students I see every year.
Why is it that every time we interact, you're ruining something?
This removal of Compact will not be the straw that breaks my back, but it's still one more straw. Why are you playing chicken with your userbase?
I think something a lot of the comments are missing (rather than just realizing it's a well hidden setting these days) is this line:
"The upcoming Proton design refresh of the Firefox web browser could increase the default size of that interface significantly."
There is a UI redesign due in a few versions and in the previews at the moment it increases the UI size quite a bit. Compact is being removed as part of "making that new UI code simpler" so even if you think normal is fine today it's going to get larger - doubly so for those that used the compact feature on the old UI.
Well, now I'm upset because I didn't know this setting existed, and I prefer the tighter layout!
How, exactly does Mozilla measure user engagement of these features? And if they are using telemetry, how are they accounting for the users that disable telemetry out of privacy concerns? (Which, I assume is a sizable amount of FF users)
I share the same sentiment to the many others here in opposition. This is yet another datapoint on the insidious trend of dumbing down UIs and destroying user-individualism.
As a reminder of how much we've fallen, look at the appearance settings for Windows 95:
You can change the colours, fonts, and sizes of all the UI elements, and have everything looking exactly the way you want, down to the pixel size and RGB value! That was possible 25 years ago, with the technology and computing power of the time, as well as developer effort.
For fun, I decided to open the linked site in IE6 with its default theme, and compare how its UI looks. In almost exactly the same vertical space taken by "Firefox Compact Current" which shows two lines of tabs (with cut-off titles), an address bar (with cut-off URLs), and navigation buttons, IE6 manages to fit four lines: [1] A full titlebar, [2] A menubar, [3] Navigation buttons, and [4] A full URL.
With current Firefox, you only get three choices: "large", "huge", and "WTF"; and Mozilla plans to remove the already-too-large choice to make it two. No doubt sometime in the future it will become one, if this trend continues.
What's more, the UI of IE will change size, font, and colour if I change them in the system's settings, so I can have the same consistent appearance throughout. If I want a huge UI, more interesting fonts, dark mode, or whatever else, I don't have to set it per-application, unless it's an application like Firefox which draws its own UI...
What happened? When an entity like Mozilla would rather spend a lot of effort on complicated site-facing features, yet remove already-trivial yet extremely useful configurations like these, it's really hard to not see that software is going backwards and becoming more user-hostile.
Firefox has been on a steady trajectory of declining usability for a while now, and I'm left with the impression that the people responsible for these decisions either have no experience in the field or have never used Firefox.
This "compact density" drama may not be a huge issue in the grand scheme of things, but the paper cuts are adding up fast, and will only accelerate the migration to Chromium forks (and Chrome itself.)
Another disgruntled user of the compact view here. I don't understand why every design update seems to insist upon adding padding these days, but removing the option entirely feels like a real kick in the teeth.
That's awful. This is one of the reasons I use Firefox, because its UI is customisable and not massive.
Mozilla seems to be intent on taking away the power user features. I didn't even know this redesign was coming, but those screenshots look horrendous. Why are the tabs "floating" as giant blobs? The current design looks much more cohesive and less distracting.
Sad to see Firefox succumb to the "must design everything every few years" mentality.
Touchscreen laptops exist, which means those who use keyboards and mice — the overwhelming majority of desktop OS users — must suffer. Always loved this logic.
I agree with the majority here. Removing this option would be really bad.
In addition, personally I'm open to most UI changes (I really liked the FF Quantum update). But the screenshots of the Proton UI look awful. Seems very touch-centered and (background) tabs blend into each other. Please don't do it.
Thanks Mozilla. This literally just directed me to this feature. Turned it on and actually feels quite good. Now I'll have to get back to make sure I don't get too used it before its taken away again.
[+] [-] charlesdaniels|5 years ago|reply
Seems like every time I see coverage about Firefox, it's Mozilla removing or crippling some feature I care about.
Why bother using FF at this point? Most sites don't work as well, and Mozilla seems actively hostile to my use case. If I'm going to use a browser that is hostile to me, I may as well get better website compatibility out of the bargain.
Not surprised their market share keeps shrinking. At this point, what's the sell?
Edit 1: worth noting, there is a lower-down comment thread[0] with relevant links - Mozilla does not care if you like this feature.
0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26464973
[+] [-] KallDrexx|5 years ago|reply
> The "Compact" density is a feature of the "Customize toolbar" view which is currently fairly hard to discover, and we assume gets low engagement.
So not only do they not have telemetry for that, they aren't even attempting to make it more discoverable to test if there's a correlation between "hard to discover" and "low engagement"?
I would use this but never knew this could be changed.
[+] [-] JaggedJax|5 years ago|reply
This is not yet finalized/decided and a great big thanks to the Firefox devs for listening to the feedback and collecting real information before making a final decision.
[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1698100
[2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1698171
[+] [-] wlesieutre|5 years ago|reply
Looks increasingly nice across the pond with Edgeium, Vivaldi, Brave, etc.
Is servo even still in development? I know bits and pieces of the project have made their way into Firefox, but I'm not sure where that stands after the layoffs last year.
[+] [-] kevincox|5 years ago|reply
It might be a crazy idea, but maybe we could add telemetry and see if people actually use it despite it being hard to discover.
[+] [-] AlexandrB|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cout|5 years ago|reply
Same here, but since it affects both the toolbar and the tab bar, I'm inclined to keep the density set to Normal except on small screens.
[+] [-] Macha|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucideer|5 years ago|reply
Stunned to see that's not the case, and completely baffled at how contradictory and indicative of incompetence this stated reasoning is.
[+] [-] FounderBurr|5 years ago|reply
Glad I left, won’t be back.
[+] [-] mmcdermott|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danjac|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] laurent123456|5 years ago|reply
Yet with their tiny market share they aren't exactly in a position to lose users.
[+] [-] fluidcruft|5 years ago|reply
My only real "complaint" is trivial and it isn't really their fault--it's that there are some dumb websites/apps that require a pass through Chrome to login and I haven't found a super quick way to do that (it's not difficult but it used to be super easy and obvious in Focus).
[+] [-] eMSF|5 years ago|reply
Now, I've been using Firefox as my primary browser since before it was called Firefox, and I'm quite used to it and unlikely to switch to anything else, but boy are they (at the Mozilla Foundation) trying hard to make me.
[+] [-] johnvaluk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rurp|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gitowiec|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] everdrive|5 years ago|reply
This still stings. The Firefox mobile update was a huge step down in every way.
[+] [-] agilob|5 years ago|reply
Nope, they are obsessed about how tabs and [x] button look like. Is that 6th big change on the panel in 5 years?
[+] [-] throw111116|5 years ago|reply
I use the about:config options in this guide [1] plus enable encrypted DNS and encrypted client hello in about:config (on FF Beta android).
A few days ago, there was an HN page showcasing a cool webpage which can read the position angles of your phone (whether it's flat, inclined etc in detail). That page works well on regular FF Android. But on the FF Beta with the config options enabled as above prevents the page from reading the angles. I also have telemetry upload disabled on FF Beta, but maybe a bit something is still uploaded, idk.
[1] https://restoreprivacy.com/firefox-privacy/
Edit: If one trawls through some recent past threads, one can see that FF cares about privacy. They have official extensions to isolate sites (or cookies?) to prevent tracking, on desktop. (Facebook Container and Firefox Multi-Account container). They are working on something like per site isolation by default (Project Fission [2]). Yeah Chrome has it but then they try to log you into the whole browser when you just wanna log in to gmail. And they are not doing something scammy plus impactful like AMP, FLoC [3] like Google. These AMP links are everywhere, many times it looks like it's the official site link.
[2] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Project_Fission
[3] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/googles-floc-terrible-...
[+] [-] ddtaylor|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MikusR|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kaba0|5 years ago|reply
It would be nice if the community would have more acceptance towards the last remaining browser fighting the good fight, with the many welcome, recent (!) advancements regarding privacy.
[+] [-] rvba|5 years ago|reply
They are non technical people who only care about own salaries and sjw issues, while ignoring their core product.
Meanwhile the developer team does whatever they want: they mostly do greenfield projects that are used to boost their CVs. Those projects get 0 users and usually are cancelled at 70% completion so nothing hard needs to be done anyway (no bugfixing which is unsexy work).
Here a developer probably does not want to code the compact option (or possibly: does not know how to do it) so they just want to remove it. Because the new firefox motto is "fuck our remaining users". Mozilla management does not care.
Then they will wonder why firefox has a 3% market share.
[+] [-] benrbray|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wejick|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrob|5 years ago|reply
When I saw this article I checked the Customize Firefox page to confirm I had compact layout enabled. I did not see the toolbar. I compared the UI density with a screenshot, and it seemed I had already set it to Compact, which I vaguely remembered doing. Puzzled, I returned to Customize Firefox, and still failed to see the toolbar.
I then checked about:config (which was also sabotaged recently to make it slower and remove features), and found browser.uidensity set to 1, so I really did have Compact density enabled. I returned to Customize Firefox, and only then, on my third attempt, did I see the toolbar.
[+] [-] EMM_386|5 years ago|reply
Exactly!
I have been using Firefox since Phoenix/Firebird days and I had never seen this option until I read about this on HN today.
That's 20+ years!
[+] [-] hypertele-Xii|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] userbinator|5 years ago|reply
For many years I've lamented the usability of about:config and wish they'd turn it into a tree structure and/or at least provide useful descriptions of the options (if something as space-constrained as a mobo BIOS can provide some descriptive help text next to each option in the setup screens...), only to find the next big change they did was that abomination of "designer-ism" (for lack of better term.) That felt like a punch to the face.
[+] [-] asdff|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unethical_ban|5 years ago|reply
I do agree with most of the complaints, however.
It is apparent to me that there is a faction within Mozilla/Firefox that have an explicit directive to trim low-use features, no matter how passionate the users of those features are. I wish Firefox looked to the GNOME project to see how people feel about removing low-use features ideologically (hint: it sucks).
Chrome does a lot of things correctly, and it has its core competencies. Firefox should have its own, and optimize towards that. The only large group of people advocating for it anymore seem to be skilled users. Why piss them off?
Separate but related: My parents explicitly wanted off FF because it kept on changing its layout. Casual users don't like UI changes.
[+] [-] jholman|5 years ago|reply
I've been an evangelist for FF for 15-ish years, since before Chrome existed. I teach computer science, which means my evangelism is multiplied by the hundreds of students I see every year.
Why is it that every time we interact, you're ruining something?
This removal of Compact will not be the straw that breaks my back, but it's still one more straw. Why are you playing chicken with your userbase?
Yours, jholman
[+] [-] kaba0|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zamadatix|5 years ago|reply
"The upcoming Proton design refresh of the Firefox web browser could increase the default size of that interface significantly."
There is a UI redesign due in a few versions and in the previews at the moment it increases the UI size quite a bit. Compact is being removed as part of "making that new UI code simpler" so even if you think normal is fine today it's going to get larger - doubly so for those that used the compact feature on the old UI.
[+] [-] kristopolous|5 years ago|reply
You get vast seas of "NO!!" and the projects are like "well sorry, mr art school over here moved some jpegs around. This is what we're doing!"
I mean what on earth, stop this insane nonsense already. Listen to the users.
[+] [-] jasonjayr|5 years ago|reply
How, exactly does Mozilla measure user engagement of these features? And if they are using telemetry, how are they accounting for the users that disable telemetry out of privacy concerns? (Which, I assume is a sizable amount of FF users)
[+] [-] userbinator|5 years ago|reply
As a reminder of how much we've fallen, look at the appearance settings for Windows 95:
http://toastytech.com/guis/win95schemes.png
You can change the colours, fonts, and sizes of all the UI elements, and have everything looking exactly the way you want, down to the pixel size and RGB value! That was possible 25 years ago, with the technology and computing power of the time, as well as developer effort.
For fun, I decided to open the linked site in IE6 with its default theme, and compare how its UI looks. In almost exactly the same vertical space taken by "Firefox Compact Current" which shows two lines of tabs (with cut-off titles), an address bar (with cut-off URLs), and navigation buttons, IE6 manages to fit four lines: [1] A full titlebar, [2] A menubar, [3] Navigation buttons, and [4] A full URL.
With current Firefox, you only get three choices: "large", "huge", and "WTF"; and Mozilla plans to remove the already-too-large choice to make it two. No doubt sometime in the future it will become one, if this trend continues.
What's more, the UI of IE will change size, font, and colour if I change them in the system's settings, so I can have the same consistent appearance throughout. If I want a huge UI, more interesting fonts, dark mode, or whatever else, I don't have to set it per-application, unless it's an application like Firefox which draws its own UI...
What happened? When an entity like Mozilla would rather spend a lot of effort on complicated site-facing features, yet remove already-trivial yet extremely useful configurations like these, it's really hard to not see that software is going backwards and becoming more user-hostile.
[+] [-] supernes|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mariusmg|5 years ago|reply
This is how it looks with compact https://i.imgur.com/MXppXq2.png
[+] [-] gbrown_|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilmiont|5 years ago|reply
Mozilla seems to be intent on taking away the power user features. I didn't even know this redesign was coming, but those screenshots look horrendous. Why are the tabs "floating" as giant blobs? The current design looks much more cohesive and less distracting.
Sad to see Firefox succumb to the "must design everything every few years" mentality.
[+] [-] xnx|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] soapdog|5 years ago|reply
Mozilla is not reading HN threads, you want something you need to reach out through bugzilla.
[+] [-] grishka|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emaro|5 years ago|reply
In addition, personally I'm open to most UI changes (I really liked the FF Quantum update). But the screenshots of the Proton UI look awful. Seems very touch-centered and (background) tabs blend into each other. Please don't do it.
[+] [-] ancarda|5 years ago|reply
I have a small screen (1280 x 800) - I need things like compact density to make the screen more usable.
[+] [-] kokx|5 years ago|reply