I’m not one to usually diss new UI changes, but this one grinds my gears.

Firefox for Android has released a new menu design. It organizes everything a little differently, which is alright it looks fresh. But 2 things are really annoying and a continuous design trend in Firefox.

  • The option to open page in external app has been tucked away in a sub menu. I used this often and it was in the top level menu before. Companies just love hiding things in menus for no reason.
  • the option to open a private tab as a normal tab is GONE. This is how I use Firefox: someone sends me a link, I click on it and it opens in a private tab by default. If I need to sign in to see it (e.g. private Instagram links) then I open it in a normal tab. This option is now simply gone.

So yeah that’s my rant. I’ll see if I open a bug requesting the 2nd issue back.

  • sabreW4K3
    16·
    1 day ago

    I like the new menu, I don’t mind the organisation of things, but the lack of priority to opening things as a normal tab is frustrating. As far as the developers are concerned, it was only a Nightly feature and not very many people used it, so no need to ensure it’s available presently. That said, I’m not sure that’s a criticism of the new menu, which I reiterate, overall is massively positive and makes Firefox feel a lot more modern and a better fit for modern Android.

    You can follow along with the progress of open in regular tab here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1923716

    • jol@discuss.tchncs.deOP
      31·
      1 day ago

      I’m so glad to know I’m not alone in my frustration. I totally forgot I was using nightly. Thanks for the link!

      From the hug link: Seems like it was only assigned to a dev a week ago. And with all the conditions for it to acrually land in the final menu, the chances look tepid at best…

      • sabreW4K3
        3·
        1 day ago

        I’ve switched back to the old menu until they fix the bug. I use open in normal tab tens of times a day.

        Honestly, I’m kinda at fault here. Both my NextDNS and Pi-Hole block Telemetry, so they’re not getting usage numbers to support prioritising the feature.

          • sabreW4K3
            2·
            1 day ago

            There’s a means built-in to shower usage. If my network blocks that and they think no one is using the feature. That’s on me. As a Nightly user, I should support the product with bug reports and also things like letting them know which features I use and how often.

            • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.orgEnglish
              11·
              1 day ago

              I’m blocking that too, it’s even disabled in the settings. in my opinion they shouldn’t be doing this in a privacy oriented browser in an opt-out manner. look at where they host the data: GCP and AWS. that’s maybe fine for firefox sync data because it’s encrypted (probably only on a per-record level though, so it may still be useful to measure activity), but for usage data, no thanks

              As a Nightly user

              that makes some difference, but they shouldn’t count the needs of nightly users as the needs of release users. totally different userbase, to begin with

              • sabreW4K3
                2·
                1 day ago

                But your definition of privacy is different to theirs. You see all Telemetry as bad. They say that the world isn’t so binary and that there’s good telemetry and bad telemetry. Also they have data to prove that opt in doesn’t work. They shouldn’t kneecap an entire project just to keep a handful of privacy zealots happy. Of which I fall into that category given my DNS level blocks.

                As for Nightly users, they’re still users.