cancel
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
mortal_engin3
Strollin' around
Status: New idea

Please add content alignment option like this in Firefox. This is a screenshot from the Tor Browser

Content Alignment Screenshot from 2024-11-24 21-05-07.png

 

4 Comments
Status changed to: New idea
Jon
Community Manager
Community Manager

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

dholbert
Employee
Employee

Hi! I think you're misunderstanding what that TorBrowser option actually does -- it's not something that could coherently be added to Firefox.

That "content alignment" config option isn't a standalone feature -- it a *piece of a broader anti-fingerprinting feature* that's specific to TorBrowser, which they call "letterboxing".  Basically, TorBrowser constrains the web content rendering area to be some "standard" size that's typically **smaller than your browser window**.  This necessarily means you end up with some unused dead-space in your browser window, and so TorBrowser gives you this Content Alignment option to let you decide whether you want all that dead space at the end vs. evenly-spaced.

There's a blurb in the settings in TorBrowser to explain it a bit, which I think was just-off-the-top-of-the-scrolled-area in your screenshot -- that explanation says:

> Content alignment
> Tor Browser's Letterboxing feature restricts websites to display at specific sizes, making it harder to single out users on the basis of their window or screen size. Learn more
> Choose where you want to align the website’s content.

...with "learn more" linking to https://tb-manual.torproject.org/anti-fingerprinting/#letterboxing

Firefox doesn't do this letterboxing thing, because we aim for a different place on the usability-vs.-fingerprintability spectrum.  So Firefox doesn't have any such dead-space for content to be aligned into.

dholbert
Employee
Employee

To illustrate Tor's feature a bit, here's how an extremely-plain website looks in TorBrowser with "content alignment: top" vs. "content-alignment: middle".

Top:

dholbert_0-1732579489137.png

Middle (notice that now there's a strip of purple dead-space between the URL bar and the white web-content-rendering-area)

dholbert_1-1732579543354.png

The purplish/bluish area around the side here is the "dead space" that I'm talking about, which TorBrowser is taking away from the web content rendering area (and then letting you choose whether to put the web content area top vs. center aligned in that dead space).

In Firefox, there's no such dead space; we just fill the browser window, and there's nothing to align.

dholbert_2-1732579661009.png

 

mortal_engin3
Strollin' around

@dholbertThanks a lot for Clarifying.