Firefox To Replace Menus With Office Ribbon

Barence writes "Mozilla has announced that its plans to bring Office 2007's Ribbon interface to Firefox, as it looks to tidy up its 'dated' browser. 'Starting with Vista, and continuing with Windows 7, the menu bar is going away,' notes Mozilla in its plans for revamping the Firefox user interface. '[It will] be replaced with things like the Windows Explorer contextual strip, or the Office Ribbon, [which is] now in Paint and WordPad, too.' The change will also bring Windows' Aero Glass effects to the browser." Update: 09/24 05:01 GMT by T : It's not quite so simple, says Alexander Limi, who works on the Firefox user experience. "We are not putting the Ribbon UI on Firefox. The article PCpro quotes talks about Windows applications in general, not Firefox." So while the currently proposed direction for Firefox 3.7 involves some substantial visual updates for Windows users (including a menu bar hidden by default, and integration of Aero-styled visual elements), it's not actually a ribbon interface. Limi notes, too, that Linux and Mac versions are unaffected by the change.

Comments

Re:Eyecandy in cost of usability

[Attila Dimedici]

Great, I already have enough trouble remembering where a feature I only use on rare occasions is when I switch from Ubuntu to Windows and back, now they are going to make the disconnect greater. Maybe it is time to start looking for another browser...one that works and looks the same no matter what OS I am running.

Re:Summary of /. Reaction to Proposal

[plazman30]

I've been running Office 2007 for well over a year now. Just today I UPGRADED to Office 2003. Even after a year, I was still looking for stuff.