1914484 - default tab design violates the gui tab metaphor

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Theme, defect, P3)

Description

[[:jaborandi]]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:130.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/130.0

Steps to reproduce:

start FireFox, open more than one tab and observe how the active tab is denoted

Actual results:

ACTIVE tab is styled in a way that makes it stand out and separate from all the interface, INCLUDING the active page - i.e. the page it is the tab for.

while INACTIVE tabs styling / coloring, on the contrary, makes them visually merge with the address bar and the page below, suggesting they that the active page is rather related to any of them, than to the active tab

Expected results:

active tab should be one with the active page!
THAT is the tab metaphor:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_(interface)

current design is not just counter-intuitive, it is actively counter-intuitive, it makes the tabbed interface maximally confusing and difficult to use

Comment 1

[[:jaborandi]]

a patch for userChrome.css (not ideal, but more or less intuitive):

.tab-background:is([selected], [multiselected])
{
box-shadow: none !important;
}
.tab-background
{
border-bottom-left-radius: 0 !important;
border-bottom-right-radius: 0 !important;
margin-block: 0 !important;
}
#nav-bar-customization-target
{
padding-top: 1px;
}

Comment 2

[Sam Foster [:sfoster] (he/him)]

Possible dupe of bug 1704347? This one is more about the shape and "tab" metaphor though.

Comment 3

[Sam Foster [:sfoster] (he/him)]

This is under consideration.