Firefox 89 - Another redesign, another rollercoaster

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Style Pass

2021-06-12 06:00:04

Every few years, like a celebrity well past their prime, Firefox undergoes a facelift. Version 89 brings the latest round of visual changes to the table, bundled under the name of Proton. Well, we had Australis, then Quantum came along, side by side with the massive overhaul of the extensions framework. Now, it's time for another upheaval.

I did briefly look at the Proton preview functionality in the Nightly Build some time back. I wasn't impressed. But then, most if not all of visual changes that went into Firefox in the past six or seven years have been unnecessary. Australis came with silly-shaped tabs, like Chrome. Quantum finally undid this nonsense, and for a change, it brought back some visual clarity and consistency to Firefox's design, much like Firefox used to be before version 4.X and the whole rapid-release trainwreck. Let's see what Proton does.

For a brief, golden period, Firefox did marvelously. It grabbed a huge chunk of browser market share, for the simple reason it did things well: tons of add-ons, unparalleled in this space, decent looks, decent speed, and an air of freshness, innovation, and adherence to W3C standards. Everything was swell.