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The Next Firefox UI

Posted by Soulskill on from the let-the-arguing-commence dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla has been constructing a new user interface for Firefox, and the layout seems to be revealed in new mockups that show the integrated Home Tab app and the streamlining of tabs and browsing buttons."

5 of 401 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Don't care for it, but... by Ghostworks · · Score: 3, Informative

    There's a reason my personal firefox config log is labeled "the hoops I jump through.txt". Every release they give me more of what I don't want, and break the add-ons that give me what I do want. It's getting pretty tedious stripping these things down just to build them back up again.

    I think the home tab is a good idea... for people who use a home page and also only have 1 of them and also actually revisit it multiple times in the life of a window. So long as the other 85% of us can hide it, that's fine. But there comes a time when "you can customize it" stops being a feature, and starts being an excuse to ignore user wants and do whatever the hell you want. Really, is the UI something that needs to be continually re-defined? Couldn't we spend the effort on something else? Something other than badly imitating Chrome?

  2. Re:The Next Firefox UI by GrumpySteen · · Score: 4, Informative

    They've been swiping bits from Opera for years. The most recent versions even have the right click "Paste and Go" for the address bar which was always one of my favorite obscure Opera-centric behaviors.

    I'm quite happy it's there, too, but then I'm one of those freakish Opera fans and anything that makes Firefox more like Opera is A-OK with me.

  3. Much ado... by iceaxe · · Score: 5, Informative

    Please read the comment appearing at the top of the web page, and then un-wad your knickers, folks.

    We appreciate your interest in our design experiments!
    The UI mock-ups shown on these pages were part of a meeting, and were for discussion purposes, and to explore different design directions. Some of them are already out of date.
    Mozilla works in the open, and the way to get the latest in UI improvements to Firefox is to download the UX channel build for your OS, which will auto-update every night with various design experiments we're looking at.

    --
    WALSTIB!
    1. Re:Much ado... by quixote9 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Unbunch your own knickers. Mozilla puts the stuff out there for comment. People comment. Many don't like it. That's the whole point of putting it out for comment early enough in the design process to be able to change things.

      (Now all Mozilla needs to do is actually listen to the comments, and stop trying to imitate Chrome, Mac, or cellphone UIs. But, as another commenter said, so long as I can change the default, I'm not hopelessly hot and bothered.)

  4. Re:Don't care for it, but... by EvanED · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'll be the first to admit that I was very hesitant about putting tabs on the title bar, but after letting myself get used to it for a while I see a at least a couple distinct advantages. First the obvious, you gain some vertical screen space, which is always handy on modern widescreen monitors.

    Tabs above/below the address bar I couldn't care less about, but I do not like tabs in the title bar. That comes at the cost of losing some vertical grabbing range for the mouse and no longer having a place to put the (full) page title.

    On removing the status bar I couldn't agree with you more though...

    And yet you like the extra vertical space from removing the title bar? (Not that I'm a fan of the loss of a status bar.)