New update changed tab shape

I’ve opened the following issue on Github. If you feel passionately about this issue — which you all seem to — please comment (nicely) on the Github issue and let the devs know you’d like to see this issue fixed:

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Thanks for opening that. I know design is subjective, but I’m on my laptop today which doesn’t have the update yet and look at this… it’s elegant and works great. I don’t understand why anyone would think this needs changing, or that “tab groups didn’t work well with the old design”.

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I’m just leaving this comment here so I can follow the resolution of this horrible design implementation.

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Just leaving comment here to keep informed until its fixed. This is really annoying

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Waiting for updates.

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It is not all subjective, there are several objectively correct usability principles that must be followed in interface design. The new update violates one such principle by demanding higher click precision from the user, whereas simply flicking the pointer to the top of the screen is undoubtedly easier.

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Thank you for raising the issue. I’m interested to see where this goes.

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Exactly. It is absolutely incomprehensible to me how this is not seen as an obvious design flaw and how there is still a pointless discussion about something that is so obvious.

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Just commenting to see when this will be fixed. Also, +100 to making the tabs as they used to be, this design is just infuriating. Do not fix something that’s not broken!

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This new fat tab design change was why I switched AWAY from Chrome recently. Now that Brave is inheriting the same stupid change and I can’t use the horizontal tabs flag to have a minimal square tab design I feel like I have to look for another main browser again.

Please give us some options for customizing this behavior.

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Looks like this is an intentional regression: The space at the top of the tabs after the new update on Brave Nightly is mad annoying

Some A/B test probably proved that this makes people stay on the web longer, so ad revenue would increase.

I hate the world.

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Brave is based on Chromium, so they are not able to add much customization to this unless Chromium does

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I also want to remind everyone that a Github was created and referenced by Mattches earlier in this topic. For anyone disliking recent change, it was suggested to politely comment on it to make voice known to the developers.

While Brave tends to inherit much from Chromium, they can and do make changes. It just often comes down to demand and amount of effort (time and money) is needed for the change. Obviously more attention goes to more vital issues, but they have added lots of deviation after user requests. Such as vertical tabs, the new split window that’s currently in Nightly, etc

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Oh, and shoot. Let me make sure everyone knows…while it still maintains a “rounded” appearance, I do want to point out that they improved on things. If you go to Nightly you’ll see they added Compact horizontal tabs design. On that it changes from something like
image

and becomes:

image

It’s slimmed down a bit but also has a better click range.

@Zerium4 @imdrogon @DUMBHA and everyone else. I’m kind of curious if you grab Nightly and test, what do you think of it?

The flag needed changed in brave://flags would be as mentioned, Compact horizontal tabs design

As things go, it should eventually make its way to the Release version. I’m just wondering if people will think well of it overall or how you think it progresses toward resolving any issues/complaints.

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Just a note for macOS users: Compact tabs will require more precise navigation when hovering over tabs, as moving the cursor to the top edge will trigger the macOS toolbar to slide down in Full Screen mode.

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Chromium is open source, Brave and all other Chromium-based browsers can change anything if they wanted to. Part of the draw of using non-Chrome browsers for many is that they don’t have to follow the random Chrome UX downgrades forced upon us. Proof for this case is that the dead pixel issue is fixed in the Nightly build. :smiley:

They’ve also added a “compact horizontal tabs” flag to slim down the tab bar for people that don’t have “Updated horizontal tabs design” set to off.

Left: Nightly with compact tabs. Right: Current design.

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As pointed out in New update changed tab shape - #19 by m6f0h91p, the disconnected tab design is not present in Chromium.

Personally, I have no issue Chrome’s new rounded tabs, but the changes the Brave build has made to the new design has made it much less usable, whilst breaking the flag that allowed users to turn it off.

Brave’s new tab design is also an accessibility nightmare because the Active and Hover states can only be differentiated by a slightly different shade of grey. It’s much clearer in Chrome to determine which tab is Active based on the shape of the tab.

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Dear Dev Team, you’re doing a fantastic job, and Brave continues to be my favorite and main driver. I’m not personally familiar with the dead zone / 1-pixel issue, having not experienced it myself (I use vertical tabs), but I encourage you to take these complaints about tab shape design (rounded , square, etc.) with a grain of salt.

Perhaps make it customizable for those users who care, as personally, I care very little about UI, as UX is FAR more important to me, particularly as someone who LITERALLY has over 1,000 tabs open at the moment. :sweat_smile:

That said, the ability to name, save, close, reopen, and (optionally) sync grouped tabs at my discretion is crucial to me. More to the point, “Tabs Outliner” (by Vladyslav Volovyk :clap:t4:) is my personal pick for Extension MVP, but has long since become defunct and riddled with bugs. Were the features I listed above adequately implemented for managing my Windows and Tabs in a similar manner, I could possibly lay that beloved extension to rest.

Vivaldi is Chromium-based as well, yet you can customize it as you please.

Its finally fixed for me! I just made a Update to [
Version 1.69.153 Chromium: 128.0.6613.85.
Now its all fine! Oh thanks Lord.