Firefox Gets (too) Rounded, Flatpak for CLI & Dev tools, Ubuntu does tiling now - Linux Weekly News

36 comments

• defrostedLasagna49211

  I like the Nova theme better. Feels modern and smooth.

• fdnomad5

  Burn me at the stake if you must, I fucking love rounded corners

  • VanRado3

    Me too. Call me shallow, but it's one thing I miss from Gnome. I occasionally think about changing my KDE theme to have more round corners.

• SwooshBakery624 [they/them]12

  I hate the rounded corners trend. I want every corner in my system to be sharp, but instead of giving me the choice, many projects just enforce the roundness.

  • oldmonq8

    they dont want you to stub your toes against the corners.

• mrbigmouth50223

  Honestly, I'm just tired of Apple and Microsoft creating stupid new GUI design trends that everyone else feels like they have to copy.

• Serious_Me26

  For those like me who don't like the new Nova theme on Firefox.

  • Open a new tab/window
  • In the URL bar type "about:config"
  • Firefox will warn you to proceed with caution. Click to accept the risk and continue.
  • In the search bar search for "nova" we are looking for a field called "browser.nova.enabled"
  • Once located, either double click on the line for this setting, or the two way arrow on the far right to toggle it off.
  • Close the tab/window and you're done!
  • Honytawk1

    Why are you going into about:config when you can just go to Settings > Extensions and Themes. And choose a different theme?

    There are plenty to chose from and you can even install a custom one or make your own.

    • Serious_Me1

      Because that doesn't disable the nova theming. it's on top of whatever theme you pick on Extensions and Themes.

  • kbal15

    Don't expect that to last, such settings are traditionally temporary. Mozilla normally removes them a relatively short time after the big new feature is released and any related bugs have had time to get sorted out.

    • mrbigmouth5025

      I'm not 100% sure about vanilla Firefox, but in Librewolf you can still enable "compact" toolbar density by setting "browser.compactmode.show" to "true" in about:config. I'm hoping they keep the option to disable Nova too.

  • sbird9

    I personally like the Nova design, BUT I know lots of people hate it and prefer the old one, so it really sucks that it's buried in about:config. I feel like boxy vs rounded should be a toggle, you know! If they eventually drop the about:config, maybe LibreWolf or other forks will continue to have the option for the old design (?)

    • Victor4

      I like it too. I don't really understand the hate, tbh. There's barely any change. Everything is still in the same place. Everything is still where you expect it to be. It just has an ever so slightly different shape, still as great click targets like before, if not better.

      I'm always psyched for UI changes to see what the inspiration is now. Lately I feel like Chrome had been looking a little crappy. Like Chrome is the worst example of an implementation of material design, somehow. 😄🫣

      • lightnsfw1

        I don't mind a UI change if it's actually an improvement that brings something to the table. This was just annoying. Having the different graphic on the tabs was a pointless distraction that grabbed my attention unnecessarily so I turned it off.

        • Victor1

          This was just annoying.

          Very subjective, of course. I enjoyed this change. I think it made the tabs in vertical mode a lot clearer to distinguish. It became a lot easier to tell which container a tab belongs to, for one. Better contrast as well, IMO. Tons of improvements.

          So I think this simple exchange proves the fact that not every change will please everyone, but they don't do change for the sake of change. They do actually try to improve things.

          • lightnsfw1

            Yeah I didn't even know there was a vertical mode so if it makes that better, that's great. I'm just glad they left an option to turn off for those of us who only found it distracting.

      • sbird5

        I thunk the main problem is how it's forced on everyone, whether they like it or not. Rounded corners should be an option, some people like their boxier corners!

        • Hueristic_Autistic1

          I like how the boxy ones sit more flushed to the screen.

        • Victor1

          Do people have the same complaints against Chrome? I don't hang in Chrome communities much, but I see rounded design is everywhere nowadays. I get the feeling there should be an equal amount of whining there?

          • sbird3

            There are much bigger concerns for Chrome for most people I guess (removal of Manifest V2 support, Google spyware, excessive RAM usage, monopoly, etc.)

            • Victor1

              So by that logic, people whining about design changes is a pretty good grade for Firefox? There's nothing bigger to wine about? Sounds great. I'll take it.

              • sbird3

                Note that Firefox does bake in some telemetry by default, which needs to be manually disabled, but if you don't want to deal with that you have LibreWolf! (Zen is another good one if you like vertical tabs)

                And still having Manifest V2 support and not supporting a monopoly is always good!

      • Serious_Me4

        I don't hate it completely, but everything feels "smaller" compared to the original, which I find mildly annoying.

        • Victor1

          Really. I feel like the opposite.

          I did go into the settings to check out the new "Compact Mode" and I noticed my UI was set to "Automatic", and automatic for me meant compact for some reason. I changed it to be the "normal" one and it feels much more spacious now. Maybe that's why I feel like it's a nice change.

    • jumping redditor [they/them]0

      I like how nova looks with normal sized tabs, but it makes the compressed (or whatever it's called when you have too many tabs and they shrink to fit) tabs not have enough room for their titles, or at least ot feels that way.

  • mrbigmouth5025

    Librewolf has an option to disable Nova with a checkbox. It's one of the first things I did after I got the update. :D

    • kbal2

      Cool! I hadn't seen that checkbox, it must mean they intend to maintain it at least until it becomes too difficult. Back to slightly less round buttons it is, then.

  • nocteb2

    First thing I did after the update

• PokerChips7

  Automatic rounded corner design built added by browser was a big reason I quit using other browsers. Of course, not the only reason but a big contributor.

  Does ddg browser and librewolf exclude this enshitification?

  • Kairos3

    Use a user style css thing to disable it

  • squirrel6

    librewolf

    It came with the last update. There's an option to disable it in the settings.

  • hexagonwin4

    it's gonna come to most forks eventually but the advantage of desktop firefox is that you can fix it with userchrome unlike any other browsers

  • kbal4

    I'm pretty sure librewolf doesn't touch stuff like that.

    But idk — my setup has so much custom css that the only rounded corners I notice are at the bottom of the urlbar autocomplete dropdown, where they don't bother me. My tabs are still nice and square and below the url.

• esc4

  Toolpack as described sounds like a horrible idea, hopefully they will iterate on it.

  • PotatoesFall5

    What about it don't you like? I didn't read the whole thing but the idea sounds great, I've been missing something like this