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Firefox 4.0 Goes Chrome, New UI In Q4 2010
sv_libertarian writes "Mozilla recently updated its product roadmap through 2010. According to the first draft, the current browser will see a minor update in Q4 2009 and another in Q2 2010. Version 4.0 is headed for an October or November 2010 release and will bring a new user interface and browser sync integration. 'There is not much information on [what] this new user interface will look like, but the first mockups that have been posted on Mozilla's website suggest that the Mozilla team favors a Google Chrome-like design that integrates Windows 7 graphics features. Overall, window elements seem to be floating over the background.' The mockup page emphatically notes that the design is not final."
Make it not crash, and I don't care what it looks like.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
If there's one thing I hate about Chrome it's the way the tabs replace the normal title bar functionality. It makes the window harder to drag, harder to maximize, and basically throws 25 years of Windows usability standards out the window. I expect something like this from Apple but not from Firefox (or Google for that matter).
A nonstandard UI is the epitome of developer arrogance. The tabs-on-bottom mockup is excellent, but the tabs-on-top concept needs to die on the drawing board.
On the flip side, if Firefox 4.0 supports some of the new Windows 7 standards like Aero Peek controls I will be very pleased!
These screen-shots have been available for months. This is old news.
Frankly, I think worrying about minor details like whether the tabs are above or below the taskbar sort of shows how far browsers have come. On the list of things I was worried about 5 or 10 years ago, it's near the bottom.
It's been a long time.
Just as a counterpoint, I decidedly don't like the tabs-on-top design, don't use Chrome in part because of that UI, and would probably switch to Opera if Firefox didn't make tabs-on-bottom an option. ;-)
Am I the only person who thinks transparency sucks? If it's too transparent, the content can be hard to pick out from the background. And if it's only a little transparent (OS X), the menu can look like it got smudged with dirt. Are we expected to use only low-contrast, muted backgrounds?
If I wanted to see a partially obscured, blurry version of what's behind my browser, I can just smear my glasses with Vaseline and minimize Firefox.
Tabs should be down the side. A monitor (even 4:3) is too wide to read comfortably all the way across, ergo, tabs and toolbars should be on the side where they are not using screen estate that can otherwise be used effectively for browsing.
Yes, I know Firefox does it with plugins, but I don't understand how this basic mistake can have stayed with us for what, 10 years+ of tabbed browsing...
"... and more and more now there are all kinds of electronic goodies available" -- Pink Floyd 1972
The problem with tabs down the side is you either get (1) vertical text or (2) tabs that are as wide as they are above the window in which case the tab list takes up a HUGE proportion of the screen real estate, virtually all wasted unless you actually have a couple dozen tabs in one window to start eating up the available rows.
Neither of these options are very good IMO; I'd rather spend a few pixels of vertical height then have to read sideways text.
(Incidentally, this is why I never liked the taskbar on the side of the screen either. Maybe I should give it another shot with Windows 7 now that the taskbar is a little more icon-based and less word-based.)
No. Tabs should be diagonal. The obvious advantages of this are so obvious that I don't need to mention them. It can be mathematically proven, too, that diagonal tabs are the most aesthetic and comfortable layout. If you weren't so educated stupid by evil educators, you would realize the power of the four-corner diagonal tab.
Please make it look like Firefox 2. I want it to look like an ordinary Windows XP application. Nothing flashy.
And if you do add something flashy, please make sure to ADD IN THE OPTION TO DISABLE IT. Options are GOOD. KEEP ADDING OPTIONS. Make the options VISIBLE.
Why keep it the same across platforms? No, seriously, do you use Firefox on multiple platforms AND are you bothered by the differences in UI between the various Firefox'en? You'll live.
The interface should be native to the platform, adhering to the platform's UI standards. The binaries location and configuration location should adhere to the platform's application development standards. Adhere to standards, they are good for you. (Note; Experts only: deviate from standards when necessary)
Programs that use non-native, non-standard UI (Quicktime on Windows) are quickly (haha) reviled. And for good reason.
Ugh, I hate UI elements that appear and disappear like that. I had the taskbar on auto-hide on my laptop (which only has a 1024x768 screen) and decided it wasn't even worth it there, even though that would have been present in every application.
Browsers have the added problem of me using ctrl-tab/ctrl-shift-tab to change between tabs a lot, but doing that non-blindly requires seeing where the tab is that you want. A hidden tab list would slow that down.
I really hate the combo button. Safari introduced this and I started running into the following problems:
1. A page is loading slowly (slow site, busy computer, DNS lookup failure, ...) and I go to click "stop", but the load finishes just before I click, the stop icon changed to a reload, and now I have to wait through it loading again.
2. A page is refreshing on a schedule. I decide I want to reload it sooner, so I go to click the reload button... just as it starts reloading, so now the automatic reload gets stopped.
Moving it to the end of the address box in the latest Safari is just an extra layer of manure on the sandwich.
That is exactly why we must meta moderate like crazy these days. Troll has a very strict explanation and believe or not, it means exactly same on slashdot.
These idiots really confuse Slashdot moderation with digg down&up while Slashdot does make a favor to them, overrated and underrated are exactly for that purpose.
There are unhappy people with every kind of browser&application out there and yes, in this age, a browser should be really fast, simple to use and stable having very good standards support. It is valid for every browser out there. It is not just Firefox who doesn't get people's concerns, I have heard first time that system's default browser can't download files. It is Safari for Snow Leopard. Way to go Apple... All of this for run a freaking in 64bit mode, hurry of release to show finger to MS. See Firefox loving moderator? Every browser these days are a bit disconnected from users actual needs and demands.
Why'd all the browser developers decide that this same model we have for browsing web pages is adequate? Considering how much time we, as a human race, are currently using the web browser, I would hope that we could make one that is a little better than this Netscape 26.0 shit we're stuck with. Apple, are you there? Can you please do for the browser what you've done for the phone? Google, we know you have like $n! dollars, can't you throw some more money at this problem? Chrome (which I am browsing from ATM) is pretty half-baked.
Shouldn't this thing read to me by now, standard? Shouldn't I have a better way to look at multiple pages than separate tabs and windows? Why does it all crash so much? Why must it be such an unelegant, awful thing to display information to from programming languages?
Long live the BSD license
One reason the triple button might not be such a good idea is that when you want to stop a page load, you might accidentally cause a refresh instead
Happened for me within minutes of installing Safari. There's no "might" about it.
If Google or Apple but their tabs in a rotating circular drum surrounding the window, you can be certain that Open Source developers would follow swiftly behind. It's disappointing to see it confirmed that Open source will never, ever have the confidence to put forth its own designs, paradigms or new innovations directly in front of users unless a glitz and glamour company has broken the mould first. The worst part is how eagerly FOSS developers ape the latest trend. A little dignity would be a lot more digestible.
By contrast, Microsoft would simply wait to see what Apple did in their next revision before implementing what was kept.
To the topic at hand, Tabs on top are an atrocious development, unfit for human consumption. They are the product of people who spend too much of their time using flashy, UI paradigm-less monstrosities like Winamp skins, Flash site and those awful OSX floating widget things, not to mention that ridiculous top bar. Inclusing that was the worst decision GNOME has ever made. Most normal people on the other hand expect applications and button that stay within their window box, that don't warp or distort when your mouse draws near, and that don't look like they just had a full body wax job done. There was very little wrong with the 1997-era user interface.
I curse the Cult of Mac and what it has wrought on my UI's over the last 10 years. I'm hoping the Order of Google will not cast its baleful eye towards what little sanity remains in modern day GUIs.
May the Maths Be with you!
I'm shocked by the stupidity in this thread!
There is no either or! That's the very point of Firefox!
You can have it as you like it! I can *right now* put the tabs on top, on the very bottom, on the right or left side, hide them and replace them by a dozen different ways of navigation, etc, etc, etc.
If you are a serious UI designer, and you first priority is not *C*H*O*I*C*E*, then you are a failure at your job and have so stop working *right now*.
(Second priority is good *defaults*. But never hard-code stuff!)
Yes, I know *exactly* what I'm talking about!
Sorry for getting angry. But I just can't stand this limited thinking. It's hurting us all!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
What is the deal today with trying to get rid of the simple menu bar??
It is so easy and straightforward for finding things you use all the time....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I think mathematically and aesthetically, tabs should be placed in a fibonacci spiral.
They seem to want to save vertical screen space, which is a valid argument with current machines (like netbooks) coming out with only 600 pixels of vertical space.
Then again, why not just use full screen mode on those?
so i hate it. where the fuck is the file menu ppl. this isnt a fucking mac.
Tabs should be diagonal.... It can be mathematically proven, too, that diagonal tabs are the most aesthetic and comfortable layout.
Just get the Cantor Diagonal Tab add-on. It lets you have more tabs then you can count.
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
I can see how diagonal tabs might seem sensible, but have we become so mired in the UI design rut that we're unable to take the concept of tabs to its logical conclusion?
What is needed is for the tabs to be split out of the application and handled by a hardware peripheral. Something with tactile feedback when you activate tabs. Mozilla International have conducted research (I lost the link but you can Bing it) that shows that people with alternating yellow and black tabs are paid 12.5% more on average.
So, yellow and black, and hardware. Caterpillar, fill this market need!
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
And to me the fact that you and he can have this little disagreement is one of the reasons I choose the Firefox over Chrome and Safari. Thanks to the easy additions of plugins and themes you can have it your way, he can have it his way, and I can have it my way. I just can't go back to the "one size fits all " UI of IE, Chrome, and Safari, as the one size fits all never fits me.
I just hope in FF4 it is as skinnable as FF3, so I don't get trapped in that bling bling nightmare or I may have to go back to one of the other Gecko based like Seamonkey or Kmeleon. It is bad enough that they screwed up dialup access in the 3.5.x branch, so now I have to keep the 3.0x and Seamonkey on my flash for my dialup customers, but if FF4 makes it too hard to change the look (and they stick with that "Chrome wannabe" look) I'll just have to go elsewhere, because frankly I hate the Chrome UI. With as much time as gets spent in a browser I want it MY way, not what some designers deems is best for me. Is that too much to ask, or is the future doomed to be dominated by browsers and OSes that have more bling than a 14 year old's cell phone?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Your post contains twelve sentences. The majority of those sentences (seven) end in exclamation points. This is in a post regarding tab placement in computer software.
You really need to switch to decaf. Seriously.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I disagree. Firefox on Ubuntu should look like it belongs on Linux. These mockups would be horribly out of place on any Linux desktop that isn't set up to look exactly like Vista/Win7.
We're working on multi-process too, and also hoping to have it in Firefox 4.
The shareholder is always right.
But a pain in the ass for tech support people over the phone who need to check browser settings... "File ?.. I don't have anything that says file..".. And then there are the off flavors of Xp, which has different locations for network settings.. bastards.
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