Firefox Nova - Allow islands to be disabled/collapsed

[Toaster]

(Note, the screenshots in this idea are from the Sören Hentzschel article giving a first look at the Firefox "Nova" redesign. They are not officially featured by Mozilla. Development on Nova is still early and things may change from the posting of this idea)

Mozilla is currently working on a Firefox UI redesign, internally named "Nova". Nova features a rounded appearance where elements are nested inside floating island UI elements.

Firefox Nova Redesign Screenshot

I have a couple of concerns with the current redesign stemming from the space between islands attached to the main content area. They are are:

1. The additional padding makes the main content area smaller
2. Visual clash when using a light browser theme and visiting a dark only website (or vice versa)

A potential solution would be to allow the space between islands to be collapsed. I have included a mockup demonstrating what a collapsed version could look like:

It is possible that these issues may be solved in the future with a custom userChrome.css, but since there is currently no public release with the Nova redesign I cannot say how feasible that is. Because of how core islands appear to look to the Nova redesign I am worried that approach may be more difficult than usual.

[Jon]

Thanks for submitting an idea to the Mozilla Connect community! Your idea is now open to votes (aka kudos) and comments.

[Arcane]

I would just like to say that I fully support the idea to "collapse" or preferably disable the floating modular UI elements entirely.

The padding creates is an eyesore. I just tried Nova on Firefox Nightly, and the padding with the floating elements is unbearable. The rounded corners are fine, but the floating UI elements has to be disabled. 

At the very least, make these UI changes optional with easy ways to toggle them on/off.  

[Arcane]

I just tried Nova on Firefox Nightly, and the floating modular UI elements are terrible. It just makes the entire browser bloated and disconnected. I fully support a way to collapse, or preferably disable them. 

[Jon]

Thanks for the feedback!

The User Research team is actually running a study right now to gather more feedback on the new Firefox redesign. 

To participate, please follow one of the links below to explore the prototype and share your feedback. (We will be using the usertesting.com platform to collect feedback.)

There are two versions of the prototype available. Please choose the version that best matches the device you use most often:

Firefox Redesign User Test – PC version
Firefox Redesign User Test – Mac version

Thanks so much! 

[mcnew]

Why is the active page title in a rounded tab that just floats in mid-air in the tab strip and has such a heavy accent?
Why is the tab grouping in such a weirdly shaped element?
Why is the entire UI built on floating, detached elements that really break up the interface and waste space? Yeah, supposedly a compact mode is planned to bring things back to how they are now, but what's even the point of making these changes in the first place?
Why do you need everything to be rounded?
Why does every element have to get bigger? Just look at what you've already done to the navigation bar on Android; compare its height in FF vs Chromium browsers.
Why does the new settings page require more clicks, while everything has gotten even larger in size?