As someone who is one of those most loyal users and has been using Mozilla since they were releasing milestones of the app suite after the 1998 open-sourcing, then moving on to Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox... I can say I just don't care about this change. I run beta channel, and it was a weird jarring surprise when I first saw it a month or so ago, but within a few hours I just stopped noticing it, and stopped caring.
I just don't get why people end up in arms about such trivial changes to software. Admittedly I used to be like that, to some extent, but at some point I realized this sort of thing doesn't actually affect my life in any meaningful way and so there's no point worrying about it.
Change your mindset. This sort of thing is not worth even the tiniest raise in blood pressure. It's a waste of time and energy to even give it a second thought. Doing so provides no value to anyone, especially yourself.
Mozilla like other companies providing user-centric products must conduct focus groups to see what works and what doesn't. Relying on designers' ideas without proper validation is a recipe for disaster.
> there's no point worrying about it
So continuing that logic, people should not care about, or notice about something mozilla spent time and resources on, and made a risk on. Bad project management IMO then.
> Change your mindset
why? if it's not worth the frustration, why is it worth the change?
I'll admit, I didn't directly notice it immediately, but it felt off. What annoyed me was reading the reasoning - "Focused, clean search experience that's optimized for smaller laptop screens", yeah, I don't want that optimization. This "help you focus" crap (in general, for years) is ridiculous. I like density, but not stupid density. I didn't pay for screen real estate to get "beautiful" whitespace.
Personally I wouldn't mind a slight expansion to highlight the search bar, but the current design is crude and over the top, and it has led to usability issues.