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this post was submitted on 23 May 2024
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Eh, I honestly don't notice it. There's a very small (like <5px) gap between the tab and the next bar down, and it's only noticeable when I'm looking at it, which is pretty much never. I've attached a screenshot for reference (I use the built-in dark theme, Container Tabs, and shrunk my tabs in about:config).
Aside from the fact that this is way more than just 5 pixels, it's also not just the bottom but also the top, doubling the wasted space. Followed by another gap before reaching the toolbar at the bottom, and another gap at the top above the tabs.
I use container tabs, which fills the space at the top on most of my tabs. In my screenshot, that is literally the top of my screen, there's no extra space above it. Here's a slightly bigger screenshot just above my extensions:
I used a screen measuring tool, and the black gap (the floating part) between the tab and my extensions bar is 2-3px (hard to tell exactly). The tab itself is ~30px (give or take 1-2px). So if Firefox used non-floating tabs, it would save about 2-3px. That's it.
Chrome doesn't have floating tabs, and it takes up more space than Firefox, here's a screenshot comparing the two:
Brave has floating tabs, and is also bigger, here's a screenshot comparing Brave and Firefox:
This is on my Macbook Pro, so YMMV on Windows, but it looks very similar to what I have on my Linux devices. At least for me, Firefox is plenty compact and more compact than its main competitors.
You're conveniently ignoring the huge spacing within the floating tab. lol That's about 8 pixels, plus the 3 outside the tab we're already at over 10 pixels of empty space, on both sides, making it over 20 pixels in total.
In my FF it is worse though. It's a total of 16 pixels from the icon to the top, 19 pixels to the address bar (excluding the 1 pixel border of that). It's like 85 pixels before I reach the website content area. https://i.imgur.com/0MxEcW5.png
No idea why you bring other browser into this when the comparison was with older FF designs. I really don't give a shit about any chromium browser to be honest.
I showed the other two since they're popular, and what others would be comparing against. Firefox (on my machines) is more compact than them. So it's not like Firefox is especially wasteful here. One has worse floating tabs, and the other has worse non-floating tabs. So it could be way worse.
Removing all the space would make it super cramped, and I don't think it's worth it for 10-20px. On a typical 1080p screen, that's like 1-2% of the vertical resolution.
That said, it should be configurable. You can probably get what you want with the userChrome.css or whatever it's called.
"Others do it just as bad / even worse" is just not a good argument for making your own software worse imo.
They have other things to consider as well, such as accessibility. You can't just eliminate all whitespace without consequences.
I do agree it should be easily configurable, but my point is that they're better than pretty much every competitor, so I'm satisfied.
How did floating tabs improve accessibility over the previous design?
If they go back to non-floating tabs, you'd save like 2-3px per my screenshots. You seem to want more than that, and that's where the accessibility issues come up.
I love how you didn't answer the question and instead went on a hypothetical scenario with an outcome that is a flat out lie.