I mean, anything related to aesthetics is going to have some difference of opinion. Mozilla appears to have concluded it's the people who dislike the address bar who are a verbal minority, or they wouldn't have gone with it.
And who knows, maybe Mozilla is right—but I wonder if they've actually done large-scale feedback gathering. This isn't the sort of thing you can suss out just from looking at analytics.
You'd think .. but no: Google is the default homepage, so they type in to the search field. It's mad.
Some have Bing as their homepage, if you've ever done IT training you might know the next line. They do it differently, they type "Google", click a link to go to Google, then type "BBC" (say), and click on the link for "bbc.co.uk". It's insane.
It's just the HN effect; complain about the most minute details. Firefox simply wanted it to be more obvious that the address bar is in focus the moment you open a new tab.
Reddit was pretty annoyed too. I actually did a little real-life poll (I admittedly might care about minute details too much!), and everyone was either indifferent or negative. Indifference was more common, but, is that really a good outcome?
> Firefox simply wanted it to be more obvious that the address bar is in focus the moment you open a new tab.
Is that it? Because I'm still trying to figure this out! I'm just really surprised that this was a problem for a substantial number of users—the address bar already had a very prominent focus state with its thick blue outline.
Indifference shouldn't be surprising for a minute detail. I didn't even know about the feature until I saw this thread (clicking address bar expands it), since I normally immediately start typing once I open a new tab.
I'd even argue that indifference should be the goal when making design changes; make subtle changes over time instead of the complete overhauls that are common today.
It is possible to fix UI problems without people noticing.
Also, people quickly get used to suboptimal UI and all kinds of UI bugs. Fixing those bugs improves the experience for new users while acclimatized users will be indifferent or even hostile to the change. It's a classic dilemma for long-lived products.
I'm shocked that was the goal but I also couldn't grok the intent. The bar doesn't need to expand and look silly to make it obvious it's the selected input. We have perfectly adequate elements for that already. I assumed there were new features that they were trying to highlight in a non obvious way.
> the address bar already had a very prominent focus state with its thick blue outline.
Either I never noticed or that very prominent focus state was invisible in the theme I installed. So yes, it was definitely one of the most regular issues I had with Firefox and now it's fixed. Not in the most elegant way but it works for me.
>Indifference was more common, but, is that really a good outcome?
Indifference among people already using Firefox is a good outcome if it is viewed favorably by people new to Firefox, which is who I would guess these kinds of changes are aimed at.
If that was all it did, fine. It also does the suggestion list on focus rather than after you begin typing, obscuring the page. This makes click-and-copy to get the current URL a destructive action - you need to click outside of the address bar to see the page you were already on. The new "equivalent" is using the tiny ellipsis menu, a Fitt's Law fail.
Neither clicking on the URL nor hitting the keyboard shortcut to bring focus to the address bar is a destructive action. The URL is still in tact, and you're free to copy it immediately after either action.
And who knows, maybe Mozilla is right—but I wonder if they've actually done large-scale feedback gathering. This isn't the sort of thing you can suss out just from looking at analytics.