2058921 - Pinned tabs are smaller and more difficult to click with Nova

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[Rob Wu [:robwu]]

Attachment: Screenshot_pinned_tabs.png

Firefox: 155.0a1 buildid 20260728214328

Pinned tabs have changed as follows with Nova enabled:

• The pinned tab itself is less wide.
• The target has visually shrunk even further, from a rectangle to a circle.

Individually, but especially together, this makes the pinned tab much harder to click.

See the screenshot: The top shows the tabstrip with Nova disabled, the bottom with Nova enabled. The start of non-pinned tabs are aligned as a frame of reference, and you can see that the pinned tabs are now closer together. Furthermore, the area of the circle is MUCH smaller than the rectangle, which makes it harder to move the pointer to the pinned tab. I think that this is an accessibility issue.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco]]

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

Comment 2

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco]]

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:sthompson, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 3

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco]]

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:sthompson, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 4

[Stephen Thompson [:sthompson]]

Apologies for the delay, :robwu.

The horizontal pinned tab in Proton takes up 36x44 with 4px spacing between. Under Nova, that's 32x44 with 4px spacing. The pinned tabs under Nova are therefore 4px narrower right now, and this is in line with the UX spec https://www.figma.com/design/XT0eDYh4RtbMNWaYQi0efM/Chrome-Sidebar-UX-Specifications--Sprint-1-?node-id=10043-83850.

However, the hit box for hover/click still encompasses the whole tab even though the hover effect is clipped to a circle under Nova. It should only be harder to hover/click a Nova pinned tab because it's narrower. This is similar to how unpinned horizontal tabs are 4px shorter in Nova but have the same hover target area.

I'll mark this for accessibility review and refer to our UX team.

Comment 5

[Stephen Thompson [:sthompson]]

Closing as wontfix after UX consultation. Given the height available for tabs, the desire to keep pinned tabs square, and the desire to keep pinned tabs at the same height as unpinned tabs, there aren't a lot of options.

The touch UI density isn't fully built out for Nova; if we make the touch density increase the tab strip height like it does in Proton (grows by 5px) then that may help users who want larger hit targets.