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Comment by black7375 | Hacker News Reader

I'm the author of Lepton, a popular theme for Firefox. You can see how I made various decisions from my perspective and how I improved on some of Mozilla's less-than-stellar decisions.

I think that might explain how we improved it and made it popular.

This article is part of a series. - https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix/wiki/%5BArticle%...

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How I find Lepton? In the addons store there's nothing listed under themes for that name.

Or is Lepton a previous generation UI for Firefox that no longer exists except on old releases?

Sorry if these are stupid questions, I did read the article but I may have missed some things.

Since Mozilla does not allow it as an add-on, you must download and install it yourself.

Yes. I know it's really uncomfortable. Nevertheless, the fact that it was this popular is also proof that the existing UI was inconvenient.

https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix/wiki/Installatio...

It takes 2 minutes and the instructions are very clear. Should not be a problem.

This is the first time I've heard of Lepton. Now I've installed it I don't think I will go back. Thanks!

I don't care about the tabs being buttons though. Mainly the huge amount of space the new design uses. And the lack of icons.

Do you know how lepton would interact with the various firefox css themes (like those on the r/firefoxcss subreddit)? Some of them look really good but I'd imagine there might be conflicts and resulting instabilities. Btw thanks for posting this, I remember using lepton a long time back, I need to switch from edge soon haha

I would not usually customize too much my UIs and just try to get used to stuff instead. It's just less friction, and it's nice to be able to install something and be used to the defaults.

Your Firefox UI customization are so good and easy to setup that this is an exception. Thanks for making them. And they feel maintained, which is an important point.

I didn't know you wrote extensively on this, it looks interesting and it looks like it is well documented, I'll be sure to read this. Thanks again!

That's very interesting, specially that telemetry is being used to justify removing interface items. In my opinion the address bar is so incredibly large you could put 10 buttons in there and you would still have space, so I can't imagine a reason to bother removing things besides wanting to remove everything until there is nothing you can remove left.

You seem to be knowledgeable about UI/UX. May I ask you a question? I have a theory that monochrome icons are worse than colored icons. Do you know if there are studies about this or if there's any consensus? Thanks in advance.

In the middle of the article, there is a brief discussion about icons and colors. I also think that well-coordinated color icons are good for readability and usability.

https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix/wiki/%5BArticle%...

However, it is difficult to apply it universally to support a variety of colors. If it is similar to the background color, it is difficult to distinguish and there may be contrast issues depending on the light/dark theme. I think it's just the ease of development of a solid color icon that matches the color of the text.

Oh, I missed that. It's satisfying to see what I assumed to be true to be laid out so concretely as data points.

I just wish it was something more 3D and "skeuomorphic" instead of just making a flat gray arrow into a flat green arrow. For example, if Chrome used a yellow star instead of a white star outline, I bet a lot of people would say it looks ugly as hell and sticks out like a sore thumb, but I'd prefer it. I can barely tell these monochrome icons apart.

> the address bar is so incredibly large you could put 10 buttons in there and you would still have space, so I can't imagine a reason to bother removing things

Space isn't the only issue. Fewer options generally (very generally) yields better design - it's easier to find things, less distraction, cleaner, etc.

thank you for your work. The installation process was very easy. I would recommend though, to simply outline the steps and move the advanced section to the bottom completely.

```

1. Run script in your OS cmd line.

2. Navigate to `about:support` and click clear startup cache.

```

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