1922556 - Firefox 131 vs 130 everything became bigger, UI text, UI icons, websites' fonts

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Widget: Gtk, defect)

Description

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

Attachment: firefox 130 UI

Steps to reproduce:

I'm curious what happened to Firefox 131 as everything in it has become a lot bigger and looking quite wrong (IMO).

How can I get Firefox 130 UI density/scaling back?

See the attached images showing absolutely the same websites with the same scaling parameters. And of course the web browser itself has become bigger (fonts, icons, etc).

Comment 1

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

Attachment: Firefox 131 UI

Comment 2

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

I'm using Fedora 40 with the official Firefox binaries ( https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/ ).

Comment 3

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

Among the changed settings I have:

font.size.systemFontScale=108
browser.uidensity=1
browser.compactmode.show=true

layout.css.devPixelsPerPx is not set, besides I've heard it has long been deprecated.
gfx.hidpi.enabled and layout.css.dpi are also not set.

In Settings Default Zoom is set to 100%. Zoom Text only is unset.

I'm using XFCE/Xorg/X11.

Comment 4

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

My 27" display resolution is 2560x1440.

In XFCE custom DPI is set to 106.

Comment 5

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

Resetting font.size.systemFontScale did nothing.

Comment 6

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

Setting ui.textScaleFactor to 0 has fixed the issue.

This is maddening as the Firefox 131 release notes contain nothing about that. Not the first time though.

I also wonder why the actual Firefox settings are so hard to find. I've spent an hour checking various Firefox related posts before I found this hidden setting.

Comment 7

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Fenix::General' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 8

[Matthijs Velsink [:velsinki]]

In XFCE custom DPI is set to 106.

The thing is, Firefox should in principle take this setting and apply it too. It used to not do that, but with my patch for https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1211547, it now does respect that setting.

I agree that this could perhaps have been mentioned in the release notes... But I don't think this is a bug, it now does the correct thing in principle.

Comment 9

[Matthijs Velsink [:velsinki]]

Setting ui.textScaleFactor to 0 has fixed the issue.

This is the same as setting it to 100 if I recall correctly. In any case, I think the reason you may believe the new behavior is incorrect is that you saw non-font UI elements also increase in size?

That is because ui.textScaleFactor is not really the correct name. It also affects sizing of images, etc. Before, your 106 custom DPI got rounded to 96 effectively, and hence the used TextScaleFactor was still 1.0. With the new change, this rounding does not happen, and 106 custom DPI gets a TextScaleFactor of ~1.104 (106/96). So, your UI elements also increased by around 10% in size. By forcing ui.textScaleFactor to 0, you reverted this new behavior.

However, the new behavior is in line with how Windows behaves, and also follows DPI settings on Linux more accurately. Why the TextScaleFactor also affects non-font UI elements has been the behavior for a very long time and is unrelated to Firefox 131.

Comment 10

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

I'm not going to argue with your reasoning, it may even be preferable for some users, it's just that this is a major announced change with no indication of how to get the old behavior back. There's no UI setting for that which further complicates things.

Also, it's not clear if ui.textScaleFactor is here to stay. Firefox has a long history of deprecating tons of hidden settings, and I wonder if this variable could also go the way of the dodo.

And some people have complained that UI has shrunk for them in version 131 which could be even worse:

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1fv2fa6/firefox_131_ui_is_much_smaller_now_on_linux/

Comment 11

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

That is because ui.textScaleFactor is not really the correct name.

Yeah, dropping text from it could be desirable for consistency. ;-)

Comment 12

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

The biggest issue with this change at least for me is that Freetype in Linux has a different threshold for boldness depending on the font size.

Where in Windows fonts up to 17pt look "normal", in Linux 15pt fonts are already "bold". This breaks rendering, this breaks how pages look and it makes everything look sloppy IMO.

Comment 13

[Matthijs Velsink [:velsinki]]

See also discussion in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1916732, which was considered WONTFIX.

Comment 14

[Matthijs Velsink [:velsinki]]

Apologies, I tagged the wrong Emilio I think...

Comment 15

[Emilio Cobos Álvarez [:emilio]]

Correct, so this is a change from https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D219821. If you had a DPI of 106. Due to how our code behaved, we were ignoring it and treating as 96, now we do honor it.

Setting ui.textScaleFactor basically overrides the system setting, which is why it restores behavior here to what you were used to.

I guess the main question is, do other apps not honor that setting somehow? Or do they apply it only to fonts? If the later, changing browser.display.os-zoom-behavior might be what you want to do. But Firefox has always historically treated it as a general scale.

Comment 16

[Matthijs Velsink [:velsinki]]

At least for GTK3/4, they only apply DPI settings to fonts, and some icons I think. You need actual (fractional or integer) monitor scaling to scale non-font things. Don't know what QT does with DPI.

Comment 17

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

Firefox ignored system DPI for over two decades, now you've decided to honor it, that's the problem.

Nothing in the release notes, nothing in the preferences.

And since many people have grown accustomed to Firefox looking out of whack, this change is jarring to them.

Maybe you could consider exposing ui.textScaleFactor as a visible UI setting.

Comment 18

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

:jhorak, since you are the author of the regressor, bug 1211547, could you take a look?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 19

[Emilio Cobos Álvarez [:emilio]]

(In reply to Artem S. Tashkinov from comment #17)

Firefox ignored system DPI for over two decades, now you've decided to honor it, that's the problem.

We already honored if it was >= 120 fwiw.

Comment 20

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

(In reply to Emilio Cobos Álvarez (:emilio) from comment #19)

We already honored if it was >= 120 fwiw.

You're absolutely right, I've just realized that on my laptop where I use DPI=144 Firefox 131 looks and behaves exactly the same as version 130.

So, TBO there's no bug here, just a request for proper documentation or a changelog entry mentioning the variable.

Feel free to close it.

Comment 21

[Emilio Cobos Álvarez [:emilio]]

Ok, Sylvestre added a relnote request for the other bug. Sounds good, thanks!