I use Firefox, and have used for a long time. My history with the browser has been marred with weird and frustrating changes that break the work flow, going back to when Firefox 2 completely changed how the URL bar worked.
I just want a browser that works. Why does the UI keep changing every other year? I would be very happy if it looked like Netscape. I don't care how the window looks, it's a tool, not a fashion accessory. I don't want to have to re-learn how to do things I've done for 20 years every few months. Why can't I have a menu at the top of the window like other windows do? Why can't my browser follow the same UI-conventions as other native applications?
I just don't get why they keep changing this stuff. It wasn't bad. It didn't get better. It just appears to have been changed for the sake of changing things. That's frustrating.
There's also a lot of hypocrisy that rubs me the wrong way. Mozilla talks big about privacy, but have you tried turning off Firefoxes telemetry? It's like half a dozen checkboxes you need to hunt down, and even then I'm not sure it's entirely disabled. Yeah I guess it's only bad when other people are doing it.
> It just appears to have been changed for the sake of changing things
Unfortunately it just seems to be the way things work now. People joke all the time about UI/UX designers needing to justify their salary, I guess it's not too far from the truth.
It's weird because Firefox is has a lot of fairly basic UX problems, such as imposing mobile conventions on a native desktop application instead of following native conventions.
Besides the missing top menu bar already mentioned, desktop applications don't have hamburger buttons and material design-aesthetics, looks really out of place. If you open a sub-menu in that menu, the entire menu is replaced with the submenu, that's also not how desktop menus work.
I hate the sub-menu thing as well. Because of the way it works currently, a sub-menu doesn't auto-expand when you hover over the parent menu, you have to explicitly click on it, and same thing when you have to go back. I have to access the "Reopen all tabs" function from time to time, and I can never remember where that menu item is, so I have to click around to find it, and have to explicitly click to go back to the previous menu when I make a wrong guess.
I miss being able to put a traditional menu bar next to the URL bar (and with the "Help" menu removed). I've trimmed the excessive whitespace with custom CSS, but it still wastes more vertical pixels than it used to do several years ago. There's no reason the URL bar needs to stretch all the way across the screen. Human-readable URLs are not that long, so the space could be put to better use.
I just don't want my software spying on me, and I don't care if you pinky swear it's nothing to worry about, because literally everyone is saying that.
This should be opt-in, not opt-out in multiple screens and different dialogs and two about:config-settings.
To add my anecdote to yours, I've been with Firefox for some time and I weathered the changes fine. I might not be crazy about Web in general, but Firefox has been good to me and I have not found the choices they make to break my workflows. I guess I fall within the target audience of their changes.
I would be absolutely fine if it just stayed the same. I can deal with a crappy UI, what I don't want is to have to constantly search for things in that UI.
I just want a browser that works. Why does the UI keep changing every other year? I would be very happy if it looked like Netscape. I don't care how the window looks, it's a tool, not a fashion accessory. I don't want to have to re-learn how to do things I've done for 20 years every few months. Why can't I have a menu at the top of the window like other windows do? Why can't my browser follow the same UI-conventions as other native applications?
I just don't get why they keep changing this stuff. It wasn't bad. It didn't get better. It just appears to have been changed for the sake of changing things. That's frustrating.
There's also a lot of hypocrisy that rubs me the wrong way. Mozilla talks big about privacy, but have you tried turning off Firefoxes telemetry? It's like half a dozen checkboxes you need to hunt down, and even then I'm not sure it's entirely disabled. Yeah I guess it's only bad when other people are doing it.