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this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2026
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Firefox
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Don't threaten me with a good time
So much wasted space 🤮
firefox's photon theme uses the same amount of space and that's without the menubar enabled ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But the space isn't wasted. Its used for greater legibility and generally improved accessibility and UX. But also, I dont think you're right 🤔
People have different tastes of course. Mine are dictated by a reading disability amongst other things.
i respect the need for accessibility, but i don't like not having options. if your vertical resolution is lower than 1080 going into about:config and re-enabling the deprecated compact mode is almost a necessity, and who knows how long that's going to last.
the netscape theme does use a lot of space by default, but importantly, it doesn't have to. text below icons can be turned off, icon size can be reduced, toolbars can be merged, etc. and if it's still too much, this browser a complete theme library, which was something firefox killed off years ago.
Hey. You've cut a whole extra bar off the top of the Netscape theme! 😆 Still it is interesting to me that they're pretty equivalent. Personal I'd find the tabs particularly annoying, but like I said, people have different tastes.
I wonder why compact mode was deprecated. Are there still many devices out there with a significantly less than 1080 screens? Steam Decks I guess?
i cut off the titlebar from both screenshots tbf
lots of pre-2020s devices mainly
i often use a thinkpad X230 where the resolution is a whopping 1366x768 lol
Just looking at the photo you provided, OC's words fall flat.
I know people are expected to understand the one and only design language currently in use (with its bajillion little dialects).
Even this is the same inherent lanuguage. "Home", "Back", "Forward", "Address bar", etc.
It's the same exact stuff, just displayed differently.
But whatexactly makes the Netscape UI "inaccessible"?
The fact that it has large buttons? The fact that the buttons are realistic drawings, and not abstract lines? The fact that the buttons are labeled?
If anything, the older UI is more accessible.
Someone who doesn't know how to use either UI is bound to prefer the second one. Because it is more accessible.
There are two types of accessibility I can think of when dealing with UI: accessibility to stuff like screen readers, and accesibility to new (as in never used a computer before) users.
The Netscape UI is better in both regards: it doesn't have dropdowns (which are quite comolex to model for screen readers, and are usually full of jank). The old UI also has helpful captions for the actions. You know, the things the screen reader reads to the user. In the new Firefox, they may become "Left Arrow" if accessibility is an afterthought and generic alt text is used. Modern UI designers heading the project surely won't bother with screen readers too much anyway.
So let me ask again: Which of these is more accessible, and to whom?
I'd use it if it provided blazing fast performance. For me, usability and performance beats any nice looks
do you actually use it? lol is that even possible without everything breaking?
yes and yes
it's a custom build of seamonkey (the continuation of the mozilla suite/classic netscape) using pale moon's goanna engine.
works well enough for most sites, the browser itself is super modular and useful (it has a really strong addon ecosystem courtesy of seamonkey and pale moon's addon libraries respectively), and honestly i just enjoy utilitarian retro UX
do you have a link? I'd like to try it out.
not yet (it's still a bit of a work in progress) but in the future it'll be posted here
morbidly curious abt this 👍
Living the dream
is this palemoon?
no, but it almost is
it's a custom build of seamonkey using pale moon's UXP engine
is this iceape-uxp or something? would appreciate if you share some links or info :) seamonkey seems to have a lot of compatibility issues lately, i have to use firefox for most stuff these days :(
the tab bar on the top also looks pretty interesting, i don't think i can do that on seamonkey..
it's an updated fork i'm working on. i don't have much to share yet because it's still a WIP but it'll be available here in the future