I want to move on from Chrome, and Firefox's Containers have made Firefox an easy decision for me. But I am a huge fan of Chrome's aesthetic and don't want to give that up for the sake of privacy.
I am not one to do extensive tweaking to my machine, but this is important to me, so I spent an hour experimenting. And I have to say, I am pretty satisfied. Even though it isn't straightforward, Firefox actually can look nice and uncluttered.
If you're like me and want both privacy and aesthetics, here are some pointers:
- Switch to the light theme.
- Hide everything you can in the address/nav bar by clicking through the UI. Some settings are obscure, but you can get rid of a lot.
- Hide even more using userChrome.css [0], including the outdated blue bar at the top of an active tab.
I tried your changes. Your userChrome.css breaks containers though, as it hides the container color from the tabs. Your changes also breaks all the privacy controls you can get from Firefox on a per site basis. I think if someone tried your css and chose very strict privacy options they're not going to have any way to see that privacy control options may have broken a page. Those things in the address bar are vital.
I highly recommend people to not use this css unless they feel comfortable editing it to unbreak things and don't want any of the per site options. This UI change reduces the usability of Firefox to the point I would consider it broken.
If you don't like the container colors in the tabs, you can edit them to be colors you prefer.
You’re right that it removes the color bars, so I’ve commented out that line as optional. But as far as I know, this CSS doesn't hide any site-specific privacy-related controls. Which ones are you referring to?
Note on the color bars: I'd rather not have extra noise in the tabs because I determine which container I’m in through the address bar and automated domain containers. Of course, for someone who wants an overview of how many tabs are in each container, the color bars might be useful. It's a good point that this might be unexpected, even though it's noted in the CSS. So I've commented out that line and will let people enable it themselves.
I'm sorry I was mistaken on the per-site privacy controls being removed. I can't edit the comment to fix my mistake. The controls didn't appear on a page that I thought it would, but I found another and with your css it was still there. My mistake.
Clicking an icon to start an application is absolutely a part of user experience. What’s more, my comment is about how one change can indicate a deeper and more meaningful change in organization.
I don’t know that web pages would have have access to user chrome settings but I still have to ask, do any of those changes make browser fingerprinting easier?
This is a great question the honest answer is I don't know. That said, I would be incredibly surprised if web pages had access to the settings in that file.
Likely anything that changes the size of the viewport helps with fingerprinting, including tab location/size and even showing/hiding the bookmark bar. It's not just browser settings either; if you're using DisplayFusion's snap points like I do to have a border around maximised windows, fingerprinting is probably very easy.
A few other things that made the experience better for me:
- Disable "one-click search engines" (which is where the cruft in the address bar dropdown comes from)
- Move as many extensions as you can into the overflow menu
(I don't interact with them much, with the exceptions of Multi-Account Containers and maybe uBlock)
- Right click on the Bookmark star in the address bar to remove it
I am not one to do extensive tweaking to my machine, but this is important to me, so I spent an hour experimenting. And I have to say, I am pretty satisfied. Even though it isn't straightforward, Firefox actually can look nice and uncluttered.
If you're like me and want both privacy and aesthetics, here are some pointers:
My userChrome.css looks like this and works like a charm: https://gist.github.com/iamdamian/9efc271208bfb5ca52dc51572b...Now we just need Mozilla to come up with a more modern-looking logo.
[0]: https://www.userchrome.org/