To the Web: Mozilla Firefox (Premium)

Written off for its shrinking usage share and its recent deprecation of PWA functionality, Mozilla Firefox may nonetheless be the ultimate browser for Windows 11 users.

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Note: Recently, I’ve been thinking about a way to present a series of web-focused articles over a long period of time. And while this will likely evolve as we go, I wanted this to be less structured and finite than my “Living with…” series of articles. Something that touches on a lot of topics, some big, some small, some specific, and some high-minded. And this was very much not the way I wanted to start this series. But what the heck. This topic presented itself to me organically, and that is, perhaps, the best excuse of all to just kick it off. So here we go.

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It’s an exciting year for Windows fans. Microsoft is finally giving the 1.3 billion users of Windows 10 a major visual and user experience update, called Windows 11, that adds consistency and calmness while preserving familiarity. That’s a tough mandate to follow, and it remains to be seen whether Microsoft can withstand what is already a bewildering backlash against some of its refinements, which at a high level involve removing some superfluous capabilities that mainstream users ignore but its most sophisticated users rely on.

But there is one key component of Windows 11 that is escaping the UX chopping block, and, no, I’m not referring to Control Panel or whatever Windows 95-era fonts that some are still so upset about for some reason. I’m referring, instead, to Microsoft Edge. Which, when you think about it, is another semi-recent example of Microsoft giving a complete makeover to a legacy product in a bid to make it more likable and thus successful.

Today, Windows 11 and Microsoft Edge don’t align at all, not from a user experience standpoint. Where Microsoft is aggressively trimming away excess UI in Windows 11, it is just as aggressively adding excessive UI, every month, to Microsoft Edge. This excess arrives in the form of new features, many of which are unnecessary for most users and should perhaps be made available in the form of extensions. And while some of the new UI can be toggled off for a more minimalist look, those changes don’t sync to future installs of Edge on other PCs. So it is once again up to the user to not just configure the product the way they prefer but to do so over and over again.

On the Mac, users who care about both aesthetics and functionality can, of course, turn to Safari. And in the upcoming macOS Monterrey, Apple is further streamlining Safari to, using long-dead Microsoft language, “get out of the way and let the content you’re viewing take center stage.” The new Safari features a “streamlined” tab bar that “takes up less space … and takes on the color of the site you’re on, extending the web page to the edge of the window.” It has “redesigned, floating tabs” and more customization functionality. And, of cour...