There’s a new Firefox in town and it’s well, it’s just an improvement on the old Firefox design. However, in pre-production, it was referred to as “Proton.” Firefox’s Proton design has finally gone public in the 89.0 version of Firefox. The update to Firefox brings a new, cleaner interface, a few privacy features, and system-based context menus, so your right clicks are more responsive and the menus look better on macOS.
Some, including myself, haven’t been happy with all of the new features. I like the sort of button/bubble-like tabs, they look cook and make it clear that it’s easy to reorder and rearrange tabs. However, that top bar is just huge. It’s too large! Fortunately, there’s still a fix in the original customizable browser. I’ll go into details on how to fix that padding below.
I’ve switched around browsers for years. From Firefox to Safari to Chrome back to Safari, and eventually back to Firefox. I even used Opera a bit in there. On iOS, I experimented with the Dolphin browser and iCab Mobile. I’ve used so many browsers, but Firefox has been tried and true over the years. With this latest update, its appearance looks fresh, designed for the future, and it’s as secure, private, and customizable as ever.
Tabs Too Big?
The first thing I noticed was that the top of my browser was huge. On one hand, I liked the new option to only show the bookmarks bar when I open a new tab. That was a creative way to increase the usable space on my display. But the new floating tabs are g i g a n t i c .
So, to fix it, you’re going to go into Firefox’s secret settings.
- Type “about:config” in the title bar.
- Click Accept the Risk and Continue (don’t worry, we won’t be changing anything risky, unless you change the wrong thing…)
- Search “Compact” in the search bar
- Change browser.compactmode.show from false to true
- Right click on the title bar and select “Customize Toolbar.”
- At the bottom, you’ll see a drop down (drop up?) menu on the lower left side.
- Select that, then select “Compact (Not Supported)”
- Congrats! All of that padding just went away!
It would make sense for tabs to be that huge on a touchscreen, or if you have accessibility features turned on, but without them, it’s just a bunch of unnecessary padding. As for the “Not Supported” warning? That just means if you run into graphical problems with the tab bar, you shouldn’t expect Mozilla to fix them. Still, you likely won’t. This seems to only remove some padding around the tabs, but still leaves room for the same amount of text and icons.
Still Customizable
When starting, you can select whether or not you always want light mode, always dark mode, to use your system settings, or try out a colorful new design. I went with dark mode. However, I still wanted my customizations. I used Firefox Color to create my own menu bars, toolbars, and other accents. You’ll be happy to know the old add-on still works with the new version of Firefox. Just go back in and tweak the look of Firefox as much as you want.
Your old plugins will continue to work as well. In fact, your browser will still continue to feel like Firefox. It’s as powerful and useful as ever, just a bit cleaner.
Other Notable New Features
Firefox 89’s main features include the simpler toolbar, floating tabs, tab-friendly full screen, and improved context menus. They’re now using macOS native menus, which seem to load faster and look more in line with the rest of macOS. Mozilla also added a new glowing shield icon to the toolbar. When Firefox is blocking trackers on a website, it’ll show as a blue and purple color, rather than whatever you have the default set to (mine’s a kind of bright pink or cardinal color). You’ll be surprised to find that it glows on most websites. That’s because trackers are everywhere now. It’s the primary way free websites make money.
On a Mac with a trackpad, you’ll find a few more new features. This includes the “elastic” scrolling effect, the sort of “bounce” of a page when you’ve scrolled to the top or bottom of it. There’s also a new smart zoom feature. With a double tap of two fingers on the trackpad, Firefox will zoom into the content behind the cursor. This works great for small text and images on pages. In my testing, it was quick and intuitive.
You Should Switch to Firefox
If you’re using Chrome, you should definitely switch, if only for your privacy, but, also, for your RAM usage. But mostly the privacy. Safari users? Firefox has more privacy and security tools, like encrypting your DNS lookups and splitting off websites like Facebook into tab containers. Tab containers are some of the best tools to protect your privacy on the web. With them, and an add-on like Containerise, you can automatically put certain websites in containers. These are like their own separate web browsers. It makes cross-site tracking far more difficult. With Firefox’s built-in tracking protection, it’s already incredibly secure. Firefox also blocks cross-site cookies and supercookies, making it the most user friendly and private browser on the web.
Oh, and Mozilla ousted Brendan Eich (mostly) for his homophobic views, which he still hasn’t publicly apologized for or reversed course on. He went on to form Brave, so, really, you should ditch the Brave browser too. Especially if you’re also uncomfortable with their revenue model of replacing ads with their own ads or his comments about COVID-19. But, come on, it’s Pride Month, folks. Ditch Brave because its CEO still hasn’t apologized for donating to anti-LGBTQ causes.
Finally, Mozilla is a non-profit. They’re not out to make money from your data like Google. It’s fast, it’s private, it’s secure, and it’s endlessly customizable. If you haven’t tried Firefox in a while, now’s the time to give it a shot.
Sources:
- Mozilla
- Malcolm Owen, AppleInsider
- Jay Peters, The Verge
- Joe Rossignol, MacRumors