More than 80% are unhappy with Firefox's Australis interface, Mozilla report states
Even though the Australis interface has been launched in the Firefox Nightly channel, it is still a work in progress. It has been worked on for a long time by Mozilla, and the plan was to continue that work while Australis moved from distribution channel to distribution channel.
Mozilla has released a feedback report that provides us with a broader insight into the minds of Firefox users. Or, more precisely, whether they like or do not like the new interface.
According to the report, more than 80% of Firefox users who commented on the interface are unhappy with it. This leaves less than 20% who like it, and while the sample size of nearly 190 feedback items is not large enough to come to a definitive verdict on that, it highlights the controversy surrounding the redesign.
It is clear that users who have a gripe with something are more likely to express their opinion about it than users who like the change. This plays certainly a role here as well.
Mozilla listed a couple of insights in the data that it collected after the launch. According to that, most users who responded in a negative fashion complained about the inability to customize the Firefox web browser like browser.
Mentioned in particular were the missing small icon mode, the forcing of tabs on top and the removal of the add-on bar.
Other users complaint about Firefox becoming too much like other browsers, which Mozilla classified as "generic anti-change", which was the second largest group followed by others, users who disliked the look of the new interface, and users who had their workflow interrupted by the changes.
It is interesting to note that the Classic Theme Restorer extension for Firefox is mentioned explicitly in the report, and a suggestion was made to promote it actively to users who prefer the old interface over the new one.
The extension, despite not being listed when you search for it, has received 29 positive reviews ever since it was released by its author Aris. Considering that it can only be installed in Firefox Nightly, and only be discovered through links, it is fair to say that this is an impressive start for the browser extension.
Closing Words
80% is a large amount, even if you take into account that it is more likely that users who feel about something in a negative way will provide feedback about it. The overall number of feedback items that Mozilla has received is rather low on the other hand, which some may interpret as the majority of users being indifferent to the change, or not opposed to it.
It is not clear where the journey will go at this point. Mozilla is collecting feedback, and considering that it did not receive a lot, it makes sense to voice your opinion now as it will count more than later when thousands or users will do the same thing.
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18 K (and still counting) opinions atm is still not enough? Now it’s actually 85% of those 18 K (15.300) comments which are clearly NEGATIVE. I for once belong to two groups: Customizability and workflow simultaneously. Went back to FF v. 28 in a matter of 10 minutes when I saw that Australis is not as customizable as the old UI.
If Mozilla wants to keep everyone happy they should give people a choice: old UI or the new one. Secondly Australis is very unstable and I have read many complaints over FF freezing during watching film, streaming videos or just plain crashing within an hour after activating. Mess, mess, mess.
As I previously said… not if I have to install an add-on for every little thing that has always been there and that now is missing. Then if firefox lags or something, first thing they tell you: you might have too many addons installed. Come on.
The 64-bit version is better. But for now you can only get it in the Nightly release channel. I have been using it since it first appeared in Nightly in December 2013.
There has been a lot of rumors about the functions Mozilla removed from that build. None of them are true. The functions weren’t removed. They simply hadn’t been added yet. Just this week the “Small Icons” function in the Customize Panel was added. Be patient, they will all be in there. You’ll have every function version 27 has and a few more.
You’ll also be able to create extra toolbars. But they aren’t necessary anymore. Put your most often used buttons on the URL bar and Bookmarks Toolbar and put the lesser used ones in the Customize Dropdown Menu. As you add more a scrollbar will appear.
If you don’t want to put your lesser used buttons in the Dropown Menu put them on the Main Menu Bar and toggle it with the ALT key.
I get way more viewport space with this build than you can get with Chrome. Plus I can customize every part of Firefox. Try that with Chrome.
There are several addons that don’t work with this build. But there are betas on the Versions page.
Example:
Download Manager Tweak doesn’t work
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/download-manager-tweak/
But the beta does. It is the one at the top of the list
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/download-manager-tweak/versions/
You say that small icons mode has already been restored, but I’m looking at the 2014-02-09 Nightly and I don’t see it.
They did add a very friendly button to the customize page for toggling on the title bar, which I appreciate. That actually reduces my customization “burden” by 1 extension and 1 userchrome tweak.
Bottom left side of Customize Panel it says “Buttons: normal and small”.
Only if you have Classic Theme Restorer installed ;)
Whatever they tell me… I’m a person who loves change, if it’s for good. I’ve tried almost every browser that exists, but I kept on coming back to Firefox because I could make the browser mine, my buttons, my bars, my everything. Then it all started. More and more addons were needed to be able to keep some things the way I liked them and not just to add the sort of features I needed. More addons have their drawbacks… don’t tell me to use an addon to have the status bar back, and another one for the menu, and another one for the toolbars… It’s not just a change of looks, it’s something deeper.
I guess those who say we’re just anti-whatever-new, also think that the millions of opera users that are about to commit suicide after Opera has been destroyed, are just change haters for you and you don’t consider them to have real point after so much has been lost with the chrome-freak metamorphosis.
The biggest problem is that Australis doesn’t comply with the Windows GUI guidelines, which means that if you run it with popular skinning programs like WindowBlinds, you get a mess. You have to turn off some of the features to make it work. The “classic theme restorer” add-on doesn’t work. The only thing that works is to deliberately run a pre-Australis version and the program then started updating itself even though I uninstalled the Mozilla Maintenance Service.
And how many more add-ons are going to take the ditch?
Here’s the take from an add-on dev date June 2012:
Unfortunately I do not have the time or the motivation to continue to support these in light of the organisation that Mozilla has become. Apparently spending 1000’s of hours promoting their products and providing add-ons to fill the gaps in their product and repair bookmarks destroyed by Firefox Sync, counts for little and does not deserve any flexibility or support from them. Whatever they may claim, add-on developers are actually second-class citizens that are seen as obstructing the development of Firefox. Surprising, as many like myself believe that add-ons are the main USP of Firefox. I’ve seen many popular and useful add-ons die as authors give up trying to keep up with their constant changes or just get hacked-off with their holier than thou treatment. The stats appear to reflect this misjudgement as the use of Firefox is in decline, no doubt driven in part by users moving away as their favourite add-ons disappear, or former add-on authors suggest alternatives to family, friends, and colleagues.
My decision was taken after a series of problems with them the last one being the final straw. I will not be answering any further emails on this matter as I do not wish to waste any more of my time on this. Also, as I no longer wish in any way to promote Mozilla’s products, I will not be hosting or providing these extensions to anyone.
Thanks for all the emails of support. Unfortunately, too many to respond to individually. Thanks also for the many positive suggestions as to where my time and effort may be more appreciated and I am already investigating several of these.
Address :
Like i posted on Mozilla thread in Reddit, Mozilla has to give support to their geeks!
I’ve introduced many IE users to Firefox over the years! These people like most, who still don’t know what a browser is! Mozilla needs geeks and add-on devs! They should have top priority before making important changes no?
Australis is a wast of time and resources. They should put much more effort into
a working replacement for flash.
That, and make it load (startup) a bit faster (just like IE or Chrome and the bunch).
First page I tried australis on showed up corrupt. I reached up to refresh/reload wth they removed that feature. Brilliant! Kudos for removing valuable features. I’ve been dealing with firefox only corrupting downloads for some time so this is just too much.
They have moved the reload button ti the address bar (end of it). You can alternatively hit F5.
I’m talking to Tyler right now in irc://moznet/firefox the man who wrote that report. He said your article is a horrible misrepresentation of data. Mozilla says they aren’t seeing that at all from what users are telling them.
It is never made clear in the report whether those 190 complaints were all from unique users, all we can ascertain from the report is that 84% of ‘feedback’ received was in negative response to a ‘specific’ aspect of the new user interface, not the user interface as a whole.
Bare in mind that the feedback that has currently been recieved in Nightly in respect to the Australis user interface only represents a small fraction of the browsers userbase, the number of users unsatisfied with certain aspects of Australis could very well be much larger than this report puts to bare.
I hope that Mozilla pays heed to user campaints as more feedback is recieved within the coming months. I would be utterly dismayed if Mozilla were to shun the core users of Firefox even if they ‘may’ only represent a minority of the total user-base.
Firefox’s main appeal over other browsers is it capacity to offer users customisability, Mozilla is taking that away from us with the Australis.
If your statement is true, that is a ridiculous assertion. Mr. Brinkmann’s article relayed the content of Mr. Downer’s “Australis User Sentiment Report, Week 1” almost verbatim. Which statements in the article, specifically, do Mr. Downer disagree with?
Well I only have the report data that they have released. I will gladly update the article with a statement and updated information.
alternatively you can use a different browser too
Up to 23 all my updates have not changed the look of my custom UI. Once you make a UI change doesn’t it stay that way, even with an update? Or will a 24 update kick me back to a default UI?
Firefox 24 is largely the same as Firefox 23. It’s the ESR version, so they can’t introduce anything major like a UI update.
I don’t even have to say anything. Just take a look at a screenshot of my Firefox window and tell me what I think of Australis.
(I used to have a background image centered in the add-on bar, but it seems to have been hidden since upgrading to 24 ESR and I haven’t had the chance to figure out how to fix it yet)
To tPenguinLTG,
Userstyles + Status-4-Evar for Australis.
I just tried Nightly to see what I could do with Australis. No, I can’t do it; it’s just too much.
I’m crying inside.
I hope that someone will have made a decent fork (i.e. one that supports all three major platforms, not just Windows) by the time support for Firefox 24 ESR gets cut.
I’m glad users are feeding back to the developers their opinions, only wish more doing that, but I’m sure the majority of users don’t even realise a change is coming until it happens, and then they just deal with it.
In my opinion FF developers should put single line questionaires on their startpage / upgrade page every now and then to test the waters, e.g.
“We are considering removing the add on bar function. Are you happy with us doing this?
Yes / No / Not sure /
little touches like that would reach a wider audience and give them some real feedback to consider. The users that understand / care about their browser functions will respond, and those that aren’t really bothered won’t.
90% of Mozilla revenues are from Google, its hard not to think that Mozilla is litterally paid by Google to downgrade Firefox to the point where all Firefox’s users will gradually migrate to Chrome.
Here was my very simple/minimalist setup.
_________
TITLE BAR
_________
MENU BAR / CUSTOMIZED BUTTONS (with spacers and separators) / ACTIVITY MONITOR
_________
TABS / NEW TAB BUTTON
_________
FORWARD/BACKWARD / ADDRESS BAR /SEARCH BAR
_________
BROWSER WINDOW
_________
STATUS BAR / ZOOM BUTTON / FULLSCREEN BUTTON
…
Somehow, Australis broke that, now NOTHING works/feels as it should. Australis is such a dumbfounding change for the worse, that it feels like sabotage.
I was using Nightly, but I won’t be, not anymore. Classic Version Restore restored square tabs and the status bar, but too many things are still out-of-place and look out-of-place. Australis broke/eliminated too many customizations options, so I’m done with Nightly and I’ll be turning off upgrades for Firefox.
If Firefox adopts this garbage, I won’t be using Firefox.
I don’t see much of a change other than the way it looks from default, but I don’t use it in it’s default state. I don’t really get to see it that much as I use custom start menu’s (SpeedDial) and like how I changed Chrome, I made Firefox the same way. Both Firefox and Chrome I customized them both so tabs are on top, and there is only one menu bar and I disallow 3rd party toolbar addon’s. All my icons and custom links and launchers all sit neatly on the same bar as the URL / Address / Search space. And having a wide screen monitor helps.
When I was using my backup 4:3 monitor a few months back when this one was in the shop, To fit everything neatly on the limited space I used an addon/extension to vertically stack the custom icons in a drop down menu in both Firefox and Chrome.
So unless the new Australis interface will block or disallow such changes, I frankly don’t care if they change it or not. Look at MS and their drastic overnight change from normal to bold and bland to match Windows 8 interface. And thanks to Martin’s Windows 8 start resolution changer a few months back my room mate no longer suffers with an over crowded and tiny resolution on Windows 8 start menu.
-Thanks Martin.
Martin, I assume you keep track of user-agent strings that visit this site? I’d be interested to know what the before and after Australis results look like.
For the record, 4 days ago I switched to Pale Moon (thanks to the many ghacks comments) and it will take a lot for me to go back to FF. Many of the tweaks I made to FF are defaults in Pale Moon. I wish there was a Mac and Linux version.
If Mozilla bundled FF with software installers like Google does with Chrome. Or placed a “Download Firefox” button 2 pixels away from “Sign In” on websites (like Google does). They’d be more popular. Chrome is like toolbars and other junkware. Most noobs just click “Next”. Including when they’re asked “would you like to make Chrome your default browser?” This is what Mozilla is competing against, more than the browser itself.
@Gonzo: – glad you are enjoying Pale Moon! :) Not seen you on posting on Pale Moon forum yet which is probably good news – but lots of good info and friendly help if you ever need it. Re: Linux – running Pale Moon 24.2.0.exe in Wine 1.6 works very well with Linux Mint 13 LTS (Maya) – see my slightly longer reply to Bobby Phoenix above.
@Richard Steven Hack and Transcontinental: Absolutely true that expert programmers are very seldom, if ever, expert GUI designers. But. Give 20 people a reasonably complex GUI and they’ll find 15 different paths to accomplishing a task. In my experience, anyway. Perhaps the reason there is no perfect GUI is that no group of humans will ever use the software the same way?
It’s an axiom in my business (industrial automation) that you will never, ever anticipate every possible mode of equipment failure. (Not only programmers, but physical engineers and operators as well fall under this rule.) Therefore the automation programmer must code for maximum flexibility and clarity in the interface, and trust that the operator will find a way to handle unanticipated events.
That’s not a perfect parallel to the task of designing a browser GUI, I think. But still the browser designer cannot anticipate every way of using the GUI. His best shot is to design for maximum clarity and flexibility, and let users do what they wish. So: are most users critiquing lack of clarity-n-flexibility in Australis, or are most critiquing the new because it is not like the old? The comments seem to me to be mixed in that regard. Interesting discussion, though.
I don’t mind change – just don’t like it when it is imposed without any ifs and buts.
If they can keep options open to have Firefox look and feel like before then fine!
You remember when IE changed its bookmarks ‘sidebar’ from left to write?
Why?
You remember when Firefox changed its addons bar (what it was called before?) from top to bottom. Why?
Give us the options to choose the way we want to configure Firefox and i’ll be happy and even consider sending a donation (as they now request).
Daniel, that’s a really good point. For me, what Firefox always was – the browser, which allows most modifications. With Australis, this is gone. It looks as if Google is trying to make all browsers look like theirs so that they could be the best (Opera, by the way, is also now based on Chromium browser).
Remember when Firefox released 1.x or 2.x? What made it so popular? Extensions!
Ya, maybe we’re going to need an OpenOffice to LibreOffice change for Mozilla.
Let’s keep Firefox open source and free from ‘dictatorships’!
The sample size is enough for it to converge to normal distribution and from that you can calculate a 95%/99% confidence interval, which would show that most users are still unhappy with Australis. :)
It’s a bias sample. Come on.
So wait, a survey of only people that have actually experienced something and can provide an informed opinion of it is biased? No wonder politics are so messed up if this is the way people think.
Only 80%(!?)
I welcome change, it’s certainly nice to try something new once in a while after having used the same old thing for so long, ‘as long as’, I’m still able to undertake the tasks that I need to in a convenient way that suits me.
Upgrades are supposed to increase efficiency and empower the user (and then some), not take away useful processes that people still have a need for.
People who like to criticise others often like to throw the highly generalised neophobia criticism at people who are opposed to changes that affect them in a practically sense, as if to say “if you’re against the new Australis user interface change then you must be against change itself!” fallacy. I often wonder whether people conflate these sorts of issues on purpose just so that they can justify lambasting other people (which isn’t justifiable what-so-ever) or whether these people are just truly lost. I don’t think we would even bother coming to a tech site like this if that were true in that general sense, the reason we come to sites like these is because we’re interested in being up-to-date with the latest in tech so that we can seek the benefits of the improved functionality and efficiency that these updates provide.
I dislike this move by Mozilla. I can’t understand WHY they want to look exactly like “the other guy”. But, no matter how many people let Mozilla know their dislike for this new style, it won’t change anything…it’s going to happen. Mozilla is just like Google and Microsoft…they NEVER listen to the end user.
I think that they do this in part to facilitate the transition for users who are interested in moving from Chrome to Firefox.
“If you ever considering leaving that other guy, don’t worry about a thing, you’re going to feel right at home with Firefox.”
I read the .pdf Mozilla released in regards to users feedback to the Australis user interface, the document immediately states “Most other negative comments come from users that have ‘an aversion to change in general’.” don’t they mean ‘an aversion to ‘the’ change? The person who wrote this is trying to paint Nightly users as being averted to change in general(?) Hummm.
[ http://tinyurl.com/qy3xzc8 ] – this is precisely what we’ve been discussing about.
“It is clear that users who have a gripe with something are more likely to express their opinion about it than users who like the change. This plays certainly a role here as well.” to quote the article.
I entirely agree, and this is true in all domains of life. But it also points out that those who are unhappy are unhappier than the happy ones may be happy . Sounds like a “revolution” :)
The panel is narrow, indeed, but I believe it will prove to be representative with a larger audience. No doubt this is a big mistake, and I consider the comment above of Richard Steven Hack to explain the reason of such a lack of reference to reality, that of users, that of design.
It may finally force Firefox to make Australis optional in future releases.
You are just like Mass Media in my country with these cheap titles..Manipulative.. And is not even about $ here…
Is just a browser UI…
A crap one for blind people.
I don’t mind the look of Australis, but I very much mind the jarring reduction of usability/customization accompanying the design. I keep reminding myself not to conflate the two.
Losing a native addon/status bar (SOME sort of dedicated horizontal space to place extension items that offer textual info instead of just a button) sucks. Losing the larger, combined (and moveable!) stop-reload button sucks. It’s an easier target for fingers on touch screens compared to the version stuck at the right edge of the location bar, so if a more touch-friendly interface was the goal, this change makes even less sense.
80% sounds fairly promising, keep this percentage up and we may even get some features back. I may sound kind of stupid now, but how do I voice my own disagreement? I’ve been pointed to the dev mailing list before, but is it really the right place to go to?
Yes, another example of how the software industry elevates developers over users, despite the fact that almost NO developer has the competence to design a user interface. These people are CODERS, nothing more, and should not be allowed to DESIGN systems.
Being a master of some programming language is a highly limited skill having nothing whatever to do with designing anything for usability, reliability or security.
Which is why software sucks universally and a big reason (if not the only one) why we have no such thing as security.
Ted Nelson said at a 1980’s West Coast Computer Faire that there is “no acceptable software on the market”. That was true then, and it’s even more true now, as another thirty years of cruft has grown on the industry…
“Which is why software sucks universally and a big reason … why we have no such thing as security.”
While I agree with the first part of that statement, the second part is patently incorrect. The reason we have no such thing as security is because PEOPLE REFUSE TO LEARN A DAMN THING ABOUT SECURITY. Users, developers, even entirely too many security “professionals” refuse to take even five seconds to type anything into a search engine to learn something new about things they don’t understand, I guess for fear that they’ll appear “stupid” if they don’t know something. Guess how you get to know something, folks? That’s right! By educating yourself about it! The other problem is morons that use “password123” (or other equally moronic password) as their password for every damn thing and refuse to change that habit no matter how often they suffer for it.
Well I like the look of it. If you don’t like it, just use PaleMoon or WaterFox and be happy
I would use PaleMoon (I did in the past), but since I’m using Ubuntu now that’s not an option. What do you suggest for Linux users?
Pale Moon is Linux compatible, just saying.
Just install Wine onto your Ubuntu and then load up the latest Pale Moon.exe version. Its not difficult and plenty of tutorials/guides/howtos to help. I’m running Linux Mint 13 LTS (Maya) MATE with latest stable Wine (1.6.x) and updated to Pale Moon 24.2.0 today – no problems – runs as well as, if not better than, the native Linux Firefox 25.0.1 supplied in Mint package manager.
BTW: I don’t think Pale Moon 24 versions will run in Wine 1.4 – the version available from the Mint 13 package manager – so if you are running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) make sure you are getting Wine 1.6 from Ubuntu’s package manager or search for the Wine 1.6 PPA from another source.
SeaMonkey
Yes, Martin, 190 is a small N for statistical purposes, and yes there’s likely to be a bias toward those who have a gripe. On the other hand, the fact that the users self-selected to become de-facto early testers by downloading the nightly also means they’re most likely to be interested in Mozilla’s innovation. Good or bad. Which makes them more likely to speak up than the general pop, and also — I suspect — more likely to have customized the current browser and, hence, have a deeper view of the GUI.
So it’s complicated. But 80% is a huge number whatever sample-bias nuances are thrown in.
Oh, and speaking as one with long experience in shepherding a workgroup toward innovation, “generic resistance to change” is a real thing. It lurks everywhere, has a long memory, and it can bite.
This is why I’ve stuck with IE. I don’t know what Firefox is thinking, but it seems this is how many people are going about things nowadays. From browsers, operating systems, games, etc. Just what are they thinking? And they don’t listen to the end-users.
The missing small icons checkbox in the Customize Panel isn’t a problem. You are no longer just stuck with 2 different sizes. You can make them any size with the Classic Toolbar Buttons extension.
I have it set up so the only buttons that are visible are back/forward, home, downloads, full screen, subscribe, and empty cache buttons. I put all of the buttons I use regularly in the “Customize And Control Firefox” menu. A scrollbar will appear when you put enough icons in there. The add-ons that seldom need tweaking I leave their buttons in the Customize Panel. I have the Menu Bar and Bookmarks Bar hidden. When I need them I use keyboard shortcuts.
Currently there is only one Tab Bar row. But Tab Mix Plus add-on has a setting that will let you set as many rows as you want. Mine is set at 3.
I absolutely hate Tabs On Top. But i can live with them if I have too.
You’ll get twice as much screen space without going into Full Screen Mode with it than with Google Chrome.
When this build first arrived in Nightly I couldn’t stop laughing long enough to set it up. I couldn’t believe they would wreck such a great browser.
But after using it for several days, I love it. I hope Mozilla doesn’t let the complainers talk them out of continuing development of Australis. :)
However, I had to stop using it today. The last update messed up the New Tabs. But I’m sure they’ll fix that soon. :)
Helpful Tip:
When you uninstall add-ons some preferences are left in the about:config panel. Go in there and search for that add-on. Right click the preferences and click on Reset. Restart Firefox and they will be removed. Unfortunately, you have to do that to each preference one-at-a-time. But it’s better than having to struggle with removing them in the preferences.js file without screwing it up.
I am curious why they chose to go with that theme in the first place, as it is very much like Chrome. But, then again, wasn’t their 4.x theme pretty much a replication of opera’s?
It would be nice if they would come up with a unique theme. I have been playing around with random web browsers, and a lot of the webkit browsers seem to have their own theme going… why not mozilla? Or even opera as well.
So true… And this is crazy, but Opera is now like Google Chrome. Firefox will also be like that… What the hell?.. I mean, if I were to like Google Chrome’s design, I would just use Google Chrome, because there’s little to a web browser nowadays apart from design. All of the major ones support the same plugins. What is the point of removing basically the only difference and then trying to compete on who fixes the same bug first?
I like the Australis interface. But guess time will tell. And I’m sure more changes will be made before full release.
And its a fact that people always resist change.
Australis looks good. It is much better than old UI, beacause it is consistent and simplified. Rare used options are hidden. New, useful options (like zoom) are fast available. Criticism of Austalis looks like witch-hunt. People “know” that new UI is bad, but they don’t know why. Mozilla should not listen to them.
Since when they told you that pure idiots like yourself are able to make generally informed statements ?
One question: where is my bookmarks sidebar button?
(NO I DO NOT WANT TO CLICK ON THE BIZARRE TWO ICON, AND CLICK THE SIDEBAR MENU EVERY TIME I WANT TO SEE OR HIDE DE SIDEBAR).
By the way, when I updated to 30 the classic addon was not showing my bookmark sidebar.
Soon it will not work anymore…
Australis is not only wrong, it is DISRESPECTFUL! Because it removes dear features from the users, offering useless garbage. I think somebody should be fired at Mozilla at once!
The few people that “defends” firefox australis is probably the same “genius” people that implemented australis.
The best option right now is to hit Ctrl-B.
Again I ask the question… If I’m going to use a browser that looks like Google Chrome, why bother with Firefox? I would just go back to using Chrome. Change strictly for the sake of change?
Because with Firefox you can easily modify how the browser looks using themes and userstyle. Check out:
https://www.ghacks.net/2013/11/19/restore-firefoxs-classic-theme-australis-update/
It doesn’t matter how many times you try to convince people about Australis looking good and being better??? than the old interface. It’s not true and it won’t be true.
How can we be wrong about what we want and what we need? I wouldn’t mind australis even if it was default if i could switch to old interface. You should realize that if it suits your needs it doesn’t mean it will be okay for everybody else. I think more choice for users would be better.
The zoom function is hardly new, you can achieve the same results but pressing the [ctrl] + [+] or [-] keyboard combo or you could annex the -/+ zoom function to the awesome bar by retrieving them from ‘customise’ tool window. Move the cursor to the space in-between the ‘open new tab’ button and the ‘minimise’ window button on the top right hand corner > right-click it and select ‘customise… > from there all you have to do is locate the -/+ button command and then drag/drop them to the awesome bar. (I’m just putting this out there to be informative for those who may need it).
Its nice that the Australis interface makes this function more readily available to users but this is hardly a new feature.
I have long time ago decided- no Asutralis for me- it is just intolerably terrible. I would use SeaMonkey, PaleMoon, Cyberfox but not the abhorrent Australis. If it happens that SeaMonkey, PaleMoon and Cyberfox adopt Australis too I will have to consider switching to a Chromium-based piece of trash. Mozilla do their best to ruin Firefox and drive users away from it, just like Opera does. I have wasted too much time to restore removed functionality with add-ons but my patience is not infinite.
They really look like a bunch of condescending know-it-alls seeing how they used “generic” anti-change instead of “general”.
Maybe they meant people who are against Firefox changing to a generic browser.