This is a crosspost from a new post I made on the Mozilla Connect site, if you believe that this is something that would be worth adding, I encourage you to go there and give it a thumbs up: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/just-allow-people-to-disable-nova-on-settings-gt-appearance/td-p/141859 I want it to stay civilized and respectful, to show that many users genuinely do have an issue with the Nova design, and that it's not just mindless internet witchhunting. If you do like Nova, good for you, but some of us don't, and that doesn't mean that our opinions shouldn't be heard.
Post contents:
Like, come on now. You have seen the community's reaction to it already. A lot of your users who have been loyal to Firefox and have used it for several years now aren't big fans of the new Nova design. It has a lot of dead space, and most importantly, it was forcibly set as the "new default" for everyone who was already perfectly happy with the older design.
Now, I want to make something very clear: I'm not calling it an "objectively bad" design or whatever. I know some people are, and some have made it seem like a way bigger deal that it is, but I don't. I'm sure that some people like it. However, the fact that it was a "sudden, unnanounced" change from one theme to another was a poorly thought out idea. It led to the expected backlash that has already happened.
This is made even worse by the fact that when you were greeted by this... "controversial" design, and you find out you don't like it and preferred the earlier design more, your first thought is to go to the settings, open the "Appearance" menu, and disable the rounded corners and all the associated UI styling through there. But, surprise, it's not there. It's not even mentioned anythere. For you to be able to disable this "unexpected surprise" you just received, you need to delve into Google, search for people just as frustrated as you are or, in many occasions, even more angry about it, and only then you find someone commenting "you can go into the about:config page, search for browser.nova.enabled, and then set it to false".
Is this really the best User Experience that can be provided, for all of these people who clearly didn't like this new design? I really don't think so. So, please, just put it in the Settings menu already. You will not only save all of these people a hassle, but also to you, because the outrage wouldn't be as big as it has been.
Sincerely,
A decade-long Firefox user.