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Comment by thecosmicfrog | Hacker News Reader

Is anyone else not at all bothered by the tabs "being buttons"? I feel like I'm the only one sometimes. Are they really that jarring for first-time users?

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I'm a daily FF user and I wasn't even aware this was considered an "issue". I haven't put a single thought into this until seeing these comments... and I'll go back to not thinking about it again as I find the tab bar completely usable as-is. Thanks for the thoughts though.

Tabs being buttons doesn't really bother me and if anything this is such a common alternative to tab appearance that even Windows 95's tab control has a mode to make tabs look like buttons (AFAIK it was used in the original task bar). It was also used for, e.g. switching channels/windows on mIRC since the 90s too.

However personally i do not like how these particular "tab buttons" look like and if nothing else (they remind me of those long pills that often feel hard to swallow :-P), i am used to them looking like tabs and see no reason for that change (fortunately Firefox allows you to customize its look and i have a userChrome.css that makes it look more to my liking).

It doesn't impact my use of Firefox. They are just wasting pixels putting a gap where one doesn't belong. But I think at this point I am used to insane UI decisions and just roll with whatever organisations give me, few seem interested in any form of consistency or easy discovery.

It bothers me because it's different enough from everything else with tabs that I have (not only browsers, file managers, editors etc) and I just can't jibe with it. Why throw all semantics out of the window? It looks like a button but doesn't behave like one.

> Why throw all semantics out of the window?

Almost everything nowadays is designed with mobile-first in mind approach - whether it's a smartphone or tablet, or desktop software. That throw all semantics out of the window - look what happen to e.g. Gnome over the years. What's worse I'd say, is that the lack of clear differentiation between types of interface elements made easier to hide options within GUI under various dark patterns (active element vs static information etc.) - whenever its required to do so.

As for Firefox GUI changes: Mozilla ask their users for feedback many times and the feedback was given - often strongly criticizing the upcoming changes but they ignored it and introduced changes anyway. I did submitted mine when they were about to rollout Australis but I didn't bother myself to say anything when Proton was about to be introduced because I knew that the corporate facet of Mozilla doesn't care and they'll do whatever they like.

A tab is literally a button with slightly different pixel shading. Its exactly the same thing as its always been.

I never noticed it and even after it's been pointed out it's not an issue. Seems very nitpicky by those for whom it is an issue.

I don't give a monkey if it looks like a button or not.

But I have a problem with a lot of the Firefox themes making it very difficult to quickly see which tab is the active one. I generally look for themes where this is obvious.

There's so much things going south with each update I just don't care anymore.

The overall state of UX is very sad for Firefox and also Thunderbird (I had to stop using it after their menu bar fiasco and other "improvements").

Firefox v89 was the last version I used. I just couldn't be bothered with them constantly changing and removing features for no reason. I switched to Vivaldi, which offer basic functionality like vertical tabs, and a fully customisable UI out of the box. It's far from perfect, notably being closed source which was hard for me to swallow, but it annoys me far less than Firefox ever did. I have it set up how I like it, and that setup has stayed static in the three years I've used it now. Firefox frankly feels user hostile in comparison.

Thunderbird was ruined with version 115, so I switched to Kmail. I miss calendar integration in my email client though.

What exactly about Thunderbird 115 ruined it? I run 115 and it looks mostly the same as before. I avoid the "cards" view because it has numerous problems, but the "classic" view works fine for me.

I wouldn’t say they bother me per se, but they don’t exactly feel right either. They’re incongruent without good reason.

I don't care about it at all. None of this UI criticism seems very important to me. I'd rather the Firefox team spent time making the browser less buggy and get feature parity for obvious missing features.

Why wasting space for a button lower border if it's actually a tab's title and not a button?

I can understand why someone would make a different design decision, and I would probably agree with their rationale to prefer 'connected' tabs.

But no, I don't have a problem with Firefox's tab style. It's immedaitely learnable. I've never once second guessed which was the active tab or what those things up there are.

I had exactly the same thought. I even installed the theme in question to see if I would like tabs better and honestly I prefer how Firefox does it stock.

I see constant complaints about how "garbage" the Firefox UI is, and I just don't see it. It's ... fine? I mean, it's basically Chrome's UI with a slightly different tab bar, yet here we are with a very long post about alleged fixes.

Every time someone says "button tabs are objectively wrong" I'm reminded of the fact that most normal, non technical users I know prefer Safari's button tabs. That's a feature you have to seek out and turn on, btw.

It doesn't freaking matter on hi-dpi screen. Also I've just hidden them (tabbar) and I'm using compact vertical tabs.

It is ugly, but I can live with it.

I moved on to sideberry and hide the normal tab bar completely. But if you open two identical tabs in the default layout I have no clue which one is active anymore. You can't understand that UI, you have learn it. It's infuriating.

It doesn't render the one you clicked on in a different colour? That might be a issue with the theme you use, my firefox shows the active tab in a clearly different colour from the inactive one.

It changes the color, but that color has no inherent meaning. Let's eradicate any prior knowledge of what was clicked. Let's say you make screenshot of the current state, and show that to a random person on the street, who has never used FF before.

What are the odds of that person identifying what is currently active?

If the counter is "you know because you remembered" or you "know because you learned" then any of these answers indicate a inferior and non-intuitive UI design.

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