Hey. You've cut a whole extra bar off the top of the Netscape theme! 😆 Still it is interesting to me that they're pretty equivalent. Personal I'd find the tabs particularly annoying, but like I said, people have different tastes.

I wonder why compact mode was deprecated. Are there still many devices out there with a significantly less than 1080 screens? Steam Decks I guess?

But the space isn't wasted. Its used for greater legibility and generally improved accessibility and UX.

Just looking at the photo you provided, OC's words fall flat.

I know people are expected to understand the one and only design language currently in use (with its bajillion little dialects).

Even this is the same inherent lanuguage. "Home", "Back", "Forward", "Address bar", etc.

It's the same exact stuff, just displayed differently.

But the space isn't wasted. Its used for greater legibility and generally improved accessibility and UX.

But whatexactly makes the Netscape UI "inaccessible"?

The fact that it has large buttons? The fact that the buttons are realistic drawings, and not abstract lines? The fact that the buttons are labeled?

If anything, the older UI is more accessible.

Someone who doesn't know how to use either UI is bound to prefer the second one. Because it is more accessible.

There are two types of accessibility I can think of when dealing with UI: accessibility to stuff like screen readers, and accesibility to new (as in never used a computer before) users.

The Netscape UI is better in both regards: it doesn't have dropdowns (which are quite comolex to model for screen readers, and are usually full of jank). The old UI also has helpful captions for the actions. You know, the things the screen reader reads to the user. In the new Firefox, they may become "Left Arrow" if accessibility is an afterthought and generic alt text is used. Modern UI designers heading the project surely won't bother with screen readers too much anyway.

So let me ask again: Which of these is more accessible, and to whom?