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Григорий Клюшников

Bradley, why is there need for it to be "modern"? What does it give me, as an end user? Desktop UIs hit their peak around the end of the 00s. Then touchscreen laptops happened and it all went off the cliff.

— sent from my ActivityPub server that has the UI from 2010

15 comments
Bradley :smugcat:

@grishka Why don't cars look the same as they did in 1950?

Григорий Клюшников

Bradley, to be honest, modern cars are all very same-looking and generally uninteresting. 1950 cars look cooler than modern ones. In the specific case of cars, however, I'd imagine there are way too many design decisions dictated by safety requirements. Steering wheels in particular are all ugly, but that's because they're now required to contain an airbag. But that's an okay tradeoff to make — I, for one, enjoy being alive more than anything else.

UIs however? What has changed since 1999? People still use a keyboard and a precise pointing device to interact with their computers. Screens are no longer CRTs and can be bigger and with more densely packed pixels thanks to technological advancements. Yet none of this calls for UI changes. When someone has bought a 27" monitor, they didn't do so to look at all your fonts that are readable across a room, glorious whitespace and unnecessary shadows. They did so to be able to fit more information on the screen. And those touchscreen laptops? No one uses the touchscreen with any kind of seriousness anyway. It's a marketing gimmick. It's definitely not something to redesign your UIs for.

Bradley, to be honest, modern cars are all very same-looking and generally uninteresting. 1950 cars look cooler than modern ones. In the specific case of cars, however, I'd imagine there are way too many design decisions dictated by safety requirements. Steering wheels in particular are all ugly, but that's because they're now required to contain an airbag. But that's an okay tradeoff to make — I, for one, enjoy being alive more than anything else.

Down10

@grishka @Bradley_JF @Gargron This is a hilariously tone deaf rant on UX. Bless your heart.

Григорий Клюшников

Down10, UX is how it works. UI is mostly about how it looks. Modern gigantic, overly spacious UIs work mostly the same as the older ones. They just look more terrible. The Firefox redesign in particular improved literally nothing. It's purely change for the sake of change.

Down10

@grishka @Gargron I think it looks good. Things do not need to look the same all the time forever, that includes user interfaces.

Григорий Клюшников

Down10, the old one looked good, too. It also got the job done perfectly fine. I'll ask it more straightforward: what was the exact problem Mozilla was trying to solve with this particular redesign?

Григорий Клюшников

Down10, "We’ve redesigned and modernized the core experience to be cleaner, more inviting, and easier to use."

That's very much subjective and doesn't look like a real problem needing a solution nearly as drastic as making a new UI from scratch. I'm pretty sure the old UI was "easy to use" enough. I mean it's a web browser. Everyone knows how to use one. "Cleaner" is the plague that has infected many UIs these days. Yeah sure just hide everything 10 levels deep into menus, it'll be fine. Then remove those features altogether because "no one was using them". "More inviting" is straight up marketing bullshit.

Down10, "We’ve redesigned and modernized the core experience to be cleaner, more inviting, and easier to use."

That's very much subjective and doesn't look like a real problem needing a solution nearly as drastic as making a new UI from scratch. I'm pretty sure the old UI was "easy to use" enough. I mean it's a web browser. Everyone knows how to use one. "Cleaner" is the plague that has infected many UIs these days. Yeah sure just hide everything 10 levels deep into menus, it'll be fine. Then remove...

Bradley :smugcat: replied to Down10

@Down10 @grishka @Gargron

Let me put it another way, Grishka. A more direct way.

They redesigned Firefox to be in line with modern aesthetics to be appealing to the vast majority of the existing and potential user base, not fringe weirdos like you.

Bradley :smugcat: replied to Eugen

@Gargron @Down10 @grishka

You're right. There's no reason for me to be rude.

But Grishka expecting time to stand still just to suit his non-mainstream tastes is unrealistic.

That being said, Grishka could just continue to use the old version or fork it and update it himself. That's more likely than having a mainstream product never get a visual makeover.

Григорий Клюшников replied to Bradley

Bradley, I myself use Vivaldi, one of the reasons being that it simply never changes. Updates only update the engine, add new features and fix bugs. There haven't been any significant UI redesigns ever since the first stable release.

I don't "expect time to stand still". I just hate this kind of unnecessary churn, and fashion, in general. UIs don't have expiration dates on them. They don't perish if you don't change them every X years. If something works, leave it alone unless your changes are going to result in a noticeable improvement for the user.

Bradley, I myself use Vivaldi, one of the reasons being that it simply never changes. Updates only update the engine, add new features and fix bugs. There haven't been any significant UI redesigns ever since the first stable release.

I don't "expect time to stand still". I just hate this kind of unnecessary churn, and fashion, in general. UIs don't have expiration dates on them. They don't perish if you don't change them every X years. If something works, leave it alone unless your changes are going...

Григорий Клюшников replied to Bradley

Bradley, "modern aesthetics" is like fashion. It brings no practical benefits whatsoever — it's change for the sake of change in its purest form.

Atridad Lahiji

@grishka @Bradley_JF big tech has an obsession with making aesthetic changes nobody asked for to be more modern. It actually tends to become less functional.

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