New tab UI makes discerning active tab difficult
Categories
(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)
Tracking
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People
(Reporter: adrien.monteleone, Unassigned)
Details
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/14.0.3 Safari/605.1.15
Steps to reproduce:
Open the browser and add an additional tab, adding two is even better. If you add two, select the middle one to be active, otherwise, it doesn't matter which is active.
Actual results:
Tab to the left of the active tab always appears to be the active one visually. Very likely this is because the previous UI pattern had the active tab as 'seemless' with the URL/toolbar area. Now all inactive tabs are merged with this area, and the active tab looks like a 'button' (which is a UI design flaw, because it isn't a button) The lines of the active tab make it appear as if the tab to the right or left of it are the active one based on previous UI pattern. My eyes instantly gravitate to either of them being the active tab, rather than the actual one.
Expected results:
The active tab should stand out without any confusion. A user should never have to look intently, guess, stare hard, or devote intense scrutiny to clearly see which one is active. If that is the case, it is poor design. I can't imagine this passed any sort of large-scale UI/UX testing. Not only does it take more effort to discern the active tab, the UI for the active tab breaks long standing patterns. (making it look like a button, when it isn't)
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Comment 1•3 years ago
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The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox::Tabbed Browser' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please revert this change in case you think the bot is wrong.
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Updated•3 years ago
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Reporter | |
Comment 3•3 years ago
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This should not be duped to bug 1704131 which is about the active 'window'. This bug is about the active 'tab' within a window. Please re-open.
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Comment 4•3 years ago
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oh yes, found the correct one to dupe to.
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Comment 5•3 years ago
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And I think this is somehow related: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1703789
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Comment 6•3 years ago
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(sorry wrong bug)
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Reporter | |
Comment 7•3 years ago
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This isn't from any use of a high-contrast theme that bug 1704347 talks about. This is the standard light theme in MacOS Catalina. The Dark theme is marginally better but still is difficult. Alpenglow is certainly more noticeable.
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Comment 8•3 years ago
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Your initial report didn't specify which Theme you are using. In Light, System or Alpenglow themes the contrast of the Active tab is distinct. However, with Dark theme, the Active tab is very difficult to distinguish from inactive tab. That's why this is duped this to that bug.
The 'button' appearance of active tab is intentional by new design.
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Reporter | |
Comment 9•3 years ago
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This bug is not about contrast. (though for the record, I'm using System on Catalina, which best I can tell, is similar to Light) The 'button' appearance is the bug and the problem with rapid visual recognition of which is the active tab. Tabs are a nearly ancient UI element, adopted from the non-digital world. People understand them very well, and how they operate. Browsers have used them (wasn't Firefox the first?) for a very good reason for 20 years now. If the Tab were a true tab, rather than a floating button, the contrast issues would be minimal because the tab would visually be connected to the active content. A 2-color UI would still work if the Tabs were real Tabs instead of floating buttons. Would solving the contrast issue work to solve this bug? No. I've tried various alternate themes. And the 'tabs' just look like disconnected buttons. That is the problem. There is no reason to associate a button with a tab or with content.
If you want to close this as wontfix so be it. But it is not a duplicate bug 1704347. Also, it would be nice to see a link to some documentation which describes why this 'button' metaphor replaced the 'tab' metaphor as a UI element, if it isn't too much trouble, thanks.
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Reporter | |
Comment 10•3 years ago
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Sorry, (again, no editing ability, I see) but I'm using System theme on Big Sur, presently with Nightly 93. (not Catalina) I had the Proton tab style disabled in about:config, but it seems ya'll have disabled that too now as of Nightly 91. (before fixing this)
Description
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