When will we get the Australis Curved Tabs option back in Firefox Quantum?
Everything about Firefox Quantum is great.... EXCEPT for one legacy feature that many of us loved & STILL miss terribly. It's this horrible, blocky SQUARE TABS, that we're stuck... no, CURSED with!!! Do something, please! The curved tabs in the Australis UI design, was the feature I loved the most. Please consider giving those of us who loved it an option switch to the Curved Tabs, just like in the following link:
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-be8c6360fbb8eaacd0e4f721218c3f40
Fine, let the Square Tabs be the default, for those who prefer it. But please, please, please, give the rest of us the option to switch to the beloved & much missed, aforementioned, Curved Tabs feature. You won't know how popular it actually is unless you give people the option in the first place. Many thanks for your kind consideration.
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Mozilla-ruining-the-Firefox-tab-design
All Replies (4)
Two year old opinion thread about "ruining Firefox Tab design" ??
I doubt if Mozilla is going to offer an alternative as a standard part of Firefox. Almost everything that Mozilla has done for the last 8 or 9 years is to reduce the variables involved with UI design. Mozilla has gone so far as getting rid of full themes and lately the light-weight themes (formerly known as Personas) have lost UI features that they had in the past. Mozilla has also limited extensions such as Stylish, as far as how much in the way of modifications that an extension is able do. IMO, effectively making Stylish mostly worthless in comparison to the Legacy versions of Firefox and pre-WebExtension formats.
That said, many users are using userChrome.css code to modify the appearance and in some cases pretty extensively. While Mozilla doesn't endorse that approach they haven't banned using userChrome.css - yet.
IMO, the best source for userChrome.css code. https://www.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/
Curved tabs were removed alongside with a lot of other things like PNG (now SVG) images in an effort to speed up Firefox as much as possible and this won't come back. There is also a change from XUL code to HTML code (file extension .xhtml) for a lot of components.
@the-edmeister & cor-el Thanks guys for your informative, if depressing, news that Mozilla developers will NOT reconsider a future release that might include an option to switch the boring straight-laced Square Tabs to the, specifically, Australis style Curved, Rounded Tabs - no other variation of the latter comes even close!!! I get all the necessary limitations imposed on former UI features in the past - I expect they affected the both the speed & stability of of those legacy Firefox versions. But if the aforementioned options are in-built in a future release, this wouldn't affect the browser one little bit. I still have a favorite Persona theme installed in my browser - love it!
As for running a userChrome.css code, they may not have banned it yet, but they appear to have attempted to disable it in the recent 69 release:
https://www.userchrome.org/firefox-changes-userchrome-css.html#fx69
Have to go into 'about:config '& search for 'userprof'. Check that the toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets preference is set to 'True', before running a css stylesheet; default setting is 'False'
If 'userprof' comes up with nothing, then as far as running Stylesheets are concerned, you're done for. Coming soon to a future FF Qauntum release near you, I'm sure!!!
I'll try this 2 year old Styleshhet solution in the following link & let you guys know how I've fared - some time soon. Prediction... it won't work.
https://github.com/axydavid/FirefoxUI/blob/master/README.md
Two year old opinion???!!! ...still burning HOT. Here's a quote from someone, a year ago:
"sadesaapuu 1 year ago I'm actually so bothered by this poor choice (square tabs), that I'm thinking of abandoning Firefox completely. The new logo is nice, but these square tabs remind me of Windows 10 and Microsoft, which is a feeling I really don't want to have in my daily browsing. I understand that it is very subjective......"
Me too... bud.
JRam125 said
@the-edmeister & cor-el Thanks guys for your informative, if depressing, news that Mozilla developers will NOT reconsider a future release that might include an option to switch the boring straight-laced Square Tabs to the, specifically, Australis style Curved, Rounded Tabs - no other variation of the latter comes even close!!!
We say that now, but in two years, it could change again. ;-)
JRam125 said
I'll try this 2 year old Styleshhet solution in the following link & let you guys know how I've fared - some time soon. Prediction... it won't work. https://github.com/axydavid/FirefoxUI/blob/master/README.md
Yeah, last time I checked in Firefox 59 it needed updates back then. And now:
But you have other options:
This one is being kept up-to-date, although the top corners of the tabs aren't as pretty (make sure to select the file corresponding to your UI density setting):
https://github.com/wilfredwee/photon-australis
If you find another one you like, let me know, I can add to the list here:
https://www.userchrome.org/what-is-userchrome-css.html#curvetabs
