14 DAY TRIAL // Mozilla has just launched the new Firefox 29 and people usually rejoice when a new version is released, but not now. The developers have messed with the interface again and nobody is happy anymore. It's like the terrible switch from the old Firefox 3.5 all over again.
It seems that people don't deal too well with changes, especially if they are not incremental ones. Mozilla is known to make some big leaps from time to time and the users hate them for it. There are probably some users out there who are still employing the old Firefox 3.5 because “it just works” and they don't need to have some fancy new tabs and features.
That's also why Canonical has had so much trouble with Unity after they abandoned the old GNOME 2 desktop environment. To this day, there are users who want to see the return of GNOME 2 as default and they praise it as the best thing since sliced bread, whatever that means.
Microsoft is facing a similar issue. As long as they made incremental changes, people kept upgrading from one Windows version to another, but when Windows 8 came along, with its new desktop, people freaked (sometimes literally).
It's only natural that people don't really like the new Australis interface for Firefox 29. Some say that it can't be tweaked enough, that it looks too much like Google Chrome, that it's round, that it's being forced, and so on.
Unfortunately for the Firefox users on other platforms, like Windows for example, the look and feel of the application has changed a lot more than it did on Linux. On Ubuntu, for example, you can't remove the window top bar, so it still pretty much looks like you would expect. Sure, it has round tabs, but they look great and it's actually a step up from what we had so far.
To be fair, Firefox looks a little different on Linux than it does on Windows. The separators between the tabs are a lot more visible and that is probably due to the fact that users can change the desktop environment and themes.
Also, keep in mind that this is just the first version of Firefox with this new interface. More improvements will follow, and it’s likely that all the problems that are now reported will most likely get fixed in a few months, when Firefox 30 is out.
When Mozilla implemented a new look, it didn't do it because its developers were having some mood swings. Companies need to innovate and they need to reinvent their products from time to time, otherwise they get stuck in the past and it becomes a lot harder to make the changes later.
The reality is that users complain all the time, but those who are pleased with the product never go on the forums and in the comment sections to say that they like it. It may feel like Firefox with the Australis interface is not well-liked, but it might be just the opposite.
This hatred towards the new Firefox will fade, and in six months’ time nobody will care that the tabs are rounded and that you can't really place a button where you used to. This is how the Internet works.