How to make a better default Firefox UI

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Firefox’s recent UI redesigns, especially the “Proton” look with spacious controls and button‑like tabs, are widely seen as wasting screen space, obscuring active tabs, and ignoring long‑time users’ preferences. Many commenters praise community projects like the Lepton theme and vertical‑tab setups (e.g., Sidebery, custom userChrome.css) as proof that a more compact, functional interface is both possible and popular, even if Mozilla won’t ship it by default. Underlying the debate are broader concerns about telemetry‑driven feature removals, shrinking customization options, and a trend toward mobile‑style, “modern” UIs that feel hostile to power users on traditional desktops.

Lepton theme & Firefox customization

  • Lepton (Firefox-UI-Fix) is widely praised for making Firefox denser, clearer, and more “desktop-first” while staying easy to install via userChrome, despite not being an official add‑on.
  • Users appreciate that it feels maintained, with straightforward install instructions and configurable variants (e.g., Photon-style), but some find it visually cluttered or just a matter of personal taste.
  • Several people share their own userChrome setups or alternative projects (e.g., Fireside, Safari-style, vertical-tab configs), underscoring Firefox’s strength: deep customizability.

Tabs, buttons, padding, and density

  • The “tabs as pill-shaped buttons” change is polarizing:
    • Some find it ugly, semantically confusing, or hard to see the active tab; others are indifferent or prefer it, calling the criticism nitpicky.
  • Excessive padding and large UI elements are a major recurring complaint, especially on small or low‑resolution screens.
  • Many re‑enable “compact” mode via about:config; some see the “not supported” label as a prelude to eventual removal and resent the pattern of hiding features first.

Vertical tabs & alternative tab paradigms

  • Strong advocacy for vertical and/or tree-style tabs (Sidebery, Tree Style Tab, Grasshopper, etc.) as vastly better for managing many tabs, particularly with nesting, containers, and panels/spaces.
  • Others dislike vertical tabs on narrow windows or laptops, or prefer keeping tab counts low and using bookmarks.
  • Some argue the real problem is inflexibility: tabs should be placeable on any edge, not locked to one side.

Telemetry, feature removals & UX philosophy

  • Telemetry-driven decisions to remove low-usage UI options (compact mode, URL bar behaviors) are seen by some as pragmatic maintenance; others call this user-hostile, especially given Firefox’s privacy branding and power-user audience.
  • There is debate over whether Firefox should follow other browsers for consistency vs. follow desktop conventions.
  • Some blame Firefox’s declining market share partly on frequent, unpopular UI changes; others attribute it mainly to defaults and Google’s marketing.

Other UX pain points

  • Repeated complaints about bookmarks and history UI (hard to navigate large trees, weak search/“show in folder” discoverability).
  • Criticism of Firefox’s fragmented “legacy” panels (Library window, sidebars, popups) and intrusive “what’s new” pages.
  • Similar frustration with Thunderbird’s newer UI and with constant “modernizing” redesigns in major apps.