Nova tabs: visual boundaries no longer match actual tab areas

tibule — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 16:54:43 GMT

Hi,

Since the Nova redesign (Firefox 157+), tabs have rounded/bubble shapes with visible gaps between them.

I initially thought this reduced the clickable area — after testing, I realize the clickable zones are unchanged. So my complaint is not about functionality, but about visual honesty:

The rounded shape and the gaps between tabs suggest boundaries that don't correspond to the actual tab areas
The eye is drawn to empty-looking space that still belongs to a tab, or to rounded edges that suggest a separation that isn't there
On a small screen (Raspberry Pi 5), where precision matters, this mismatch between what you see and what you get is genuinely confusing

A tab's visual shape should reflect its actual hitbox. The current design breaks that contract for purely aesthetic reasons.

Request: Please consider restoring rectangular tabs (or at least a visual treatment where the tab's drawn boundaries match its real clickable area). An official setting to revert would also be welcome, since the browser.nova.enabled = false workaround is reportedly being removed in Nightly 161.

Environment: Firefox 157, Raspberry Pi 5, Raspberry Pi OS (Linux ARM64)

Thanks for considering.

Christophe (Paris, France)

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Nova tabs: visual boundaries no longer match actual tab areas