Mozilla Firefox is bringing rounded bottom corners to its Linux builds.
Getting official support means you’ll no longer need to use a third-party GNOME extension to force rounded corners in the browser.
The change will help Firefox look more ‘at home’ when run windowed on Ubuntu and on other Linux distros that use GNOME and/or ship large sets of modern GTK apps.
Here’s how Firefox (stable) looks in Ubuntu 23.10:
And here’s how Firefox (nightly) looks like in Ubuntu 23.10:
The change is subtle, but look closely at the bottom corners of the browser. You’ll notice that the sharp bottom corners of the browser are not present in the nightly screenshot, and that the browser looks more in keeping with the Nautilus file manager in the latter too.
Mozilla’s Emilio Cobos Álvarez explains more about the effort on the code-hub tracking the change:
“The implementation is uglier than it needs to be. We basically need to override the GTK styles for the window decorations with the desired radius.”
”This is because of […] Adwaita on gtk3 doesn’t provide a bottom corner radius [and] even if it did we couldn’t reasonably query it. Using the titlebar radius makes sense here,” they add.
You can “see” the curvaceous lower corners in action in the latest Firefox nightly builds for Linux. Assuming the changes made to support them don’t introduce errant issues we should expect to see bottom rounded corners reach developer, beta, and eventually stable builds in due course.
Of course, an app (however esteemed) rounding its window borders isn’t a life-altering change in the grand scheme. But not everything needs to be; their introduction plugs a minor visual gap some will have noticed when using it alongside other modern GTK apps on Linux.
Thus, this change enhances consistency – and more consistency equals more polish and makes for a better overall impression. Resolving minor niggles/papercuts (especially if doing so is somewhat trivial/low hanging fruit) is very much worth it.
Also: it just looks soooooo good.
Thanks Dominic (spotted on Mastodon)