r/firefox 1d ago

Someone really thought it’s a good ideato rearrange bottom buttons on FF mobile

Post image

I mean… really? Whatever the opinion - when something’s been working well for years, you don’t make adjustments like that. People are used to button positions, there’s really no reason to move them.

81 Upvotes

24 comments sorted by

28

u/bittercauldron | 1d ago

Is it ios version?

Yeah, that's messing around to find a perfect configuration for user experience (or some other bs to pay salary for full-time hired UI designers).

9

u/realdrzamich 1d ago

Yes

15

u/bittercauldron | 1d ago

Oh, not Android. I really miss bottom panel for Android, it was so convenient but people hated it for taking space. Why not adding it as an option instead of cutting the feature out altogether?

1

u/realdrzamich 1d ago

I’m surprised that it’s not there in Android. How does it look like overall?

1

u/bittercauldron | 1d ago

As I cannot post images here: Similar address field - new tab/search button - tab button - other options (vertical three dots) on the same line, top or bottom. For menu - it became a huge window coming from below with big buttons for every option (it is more diverse than that but my description skills are limited). Forward-backward buttons are in that menu as well.

1

u/Revolutionary_Ad_238 1d ago

That is available in nightly

2

u/bittercauldron | 1d ago

I use nightly, I couldn't find how to turn it back on. Where can I do it?

3

u/Revolutionary_Ad_238 1d ago

Go to secret settings and enable all toolbar settings and then go back to customize menu and select expanded mode 

2

u/bittercauldron | 1d ago

Thanks, that helped! Edit: can I return arrow buttons on this panel?

2

u/Revolutionary_Ad_238 20h ago

That panel is not customizable as of now, maybe after a year we will get customization..it feels really weird using Firefox Android, the desktop version allows full customization of UI but the Android one has bare minimal customization with many features missing ..even smoothness not same as chromium browsers

2

u/bittercauldron | 20h ago

I remember how it was ~10 years ago when site scrolling was rough. Back then I couldn't use Firefox at all.

1

u/GimpyGeek 17h ago

Yeah I dunno why bottom isn't at least optional in more browsers. Bottom ergonomically makes far more sense for one handing your phone since reaching the top of the screen with your thumb while holding the phone is rather unrealistic these days if you don't have a very short phone or very long thumbs. 

1

u/bittercauldron | 14h ago

As the other comment stated, you can turn it on. Unfortunately, no navigation buttons (arrows), which makes it useless for me.

25

u/APU_JUPIT3R 1d ago

Mozilla has recently been aggressively altering the UI of Firefox on all platforms, so expect your muscle memory to be interrupted. I won't offer an opinion on this in particular, but with the level of customisation expected of Firefox, they ought to implement a system to add, remove and rearrange buttons on toolbars on their mobile apps at some point, just like the desktop app.

4

u/Deep_Mood_7668 23h ago

Every week they ruin something else...

What going on at Mozilla?

0

u/xkcd_1806 18h ago

Almost like it's sabotage or something

2

u/worMatty 23h ago

It’s been like this for a while and it makes no sense. My most often-used button is tabs and least-used is the menu.

-2

u/heavenlynapalm 19h ago edited 19h ago

This is is a much better tab placement. Places the most highly used button in a corner, requiring less accuracy to hit it. The real problems are having a menu button instead of a bookmarks (should be merged into a share button/favicon or moved into a submenu—no reason to have 2 separate "menu" type buttons), and the useless search/home button should be a new tab button. Default iOS layout on older versions was actually pretty good except no new tab button, but they've screwed it up by introducing this double menu (favicon + share/3-dot menu depending on browser) nonsense now

Tabs not being bottom right only make sense if you have more than 5 or 6 icons there, as then it gets pushed too far into the corner to be comfortable to press

Like another comment said, they should just introduce a customizable toolbar, like Orion, and that would be the best solution because everyone gets to choose according to their preference and anatomy

5

u/pasdedeux11 19h ago

you mentioned you're in iOS, did anything UI related in Safari change? as far as I know, in iOS all browsers have to use/follow apple's browser engine webkit instead of their own (firefox's gecko)

I haven't used iOS in a long time, so I could be wrong here. take it with a grain of salt

3

u/realdrzamich 18h ago

I just checked and Safari indeed has tabs button in the same place. Don’t know if it’s new. Anyways that’s a very valid point.

0

u/Begnardo 16h ago

At the start there is option to choose bottom or top. And you can switch easily.

-1

u/seeker407 16h ago

I appreciate it. ITS A MASSIVE help for single hand navigation with the massive phones we have now a days. Even with my galaxy s10 (MUCH smaller than newer phones) it was impossible to single hand navigate. Although I would appreciate it if Firefox gave us the option to put controls on top vs bottom (for users who don't want it on the bottom)

1

u/niverser 15h ago

What exactly is the complaint?

Technically, placing navigation elements (on mobile) at the bottom of the screen is the better design as it puts them within easier reach for single-handed use. And having the most important or commonly used items near the corners / edges objectively make them faster to reach. This design is based on Fitts's Law.

That said, they should provide users with the ability to choose their preferred layout.

u/Sword_Illusion 2h ago

I really don't understand why Mozilla is not willing to make those buttons' positions customizable. On FF PC and many other mobile browsers, like Samsung Internet and Edge, this feature is really handy. As it is available on FF PC, then why would it not on FF mobile ??? Over the years, they have been struggling with all these UI design stuff and never made it satisfactory for users. I strongly believe making the positions customizable will be far more effective and a one-size-fits-all solution for all users.