Slashdot Mirror
The Next Firefox UI
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."
when it's not broken, do not fix it.
is Chrome.
As long as I can still get my tabs and shit below the even-more-goddamn-awesomebar, and put a status bar addon in, I'm not going to complain. Default layouts are fine-- it's when you suddenly can't modify them any more that I start to get tetchy.
Browsers have now reached the maturity of 1950s American cars. They more or less work, still break too much, use too much fuel, and have lots of chrome and tailfins.
Please stop trying to make your browser fit on a 2" screen. I have 20"+ monitors. I can spare the pixels.
Further, burying the menu bar makes it very hard for me to support people who get confused when I say "Go to Edit and Preferences".
Innovation is not simply following Chrome's lead. Kthnx.
Another new UI that makes getting to the thing I use regularly (like, you know, bookmarks) slower and more annoying.
WTF is up with FOSS developers these days?
Who exactly is looking for all these crazy changes to the way browsers work? I am starting to think that browser design has become "art for the sake of art". What happened to function over form?
you just stick to the damn tried and true Netscape UI and stop "revolutionizing" anything we're familiar with by instinct.
Whatever happen to UI consistency? "Back in the day" UIs used to use the same toolkits, have their menus and toolbars all in the same spot and work consistently across applications. Today all those UI elements are kind of splattered around the application and there is really no consistency where you can find something anymore. There are also things in modern UIs that I really don't get, Firefox4 for example will present you different menus depending on if you click it with a mouse or if you activate it with the keyboard. What's the point in that? Didn't we figure out that changing menus where a really bad idea back when Windows tried it many years ago? Once up-on a time the menu was full of all the stuff the application could do, now its like playing hide and seek with the functions an application might have and hiding them from the user is really not helping.
My first reaction on seeing the headline was "oh, this ought to be awful." But, you know, that's just a gut reaction. I should really give them the benefit of the doubt.
(click)
OK, first thing I notice is that there's now no forward button. It shows up again later, so I guess the idea is that it vanishes if you don't need it? ...uh, OK, but I kind of like having a UI that doesn't randomly change size based on what tab I'm looking at.
These are Mac OS X screenshots, so the menu shouldn't be in the window anyway, but it appears they've moved everything to a small cog. No, wait, later there's a Windows 7 version, and the menu is still the orange Firefox thing, so I guess the cog is Mac OS X only?
They're finally merging the search and URL bars, which I'm sure some Slashdotters will scream bloody murder over, but which I can't help but think it's about time. (Really, not too hard to tell a URL from a search term, and given that the "awesome" bar is already a search feature, they might as well give me more space so that I can see the entire URL.)
Over all it doesn't look too horrible compared to their current interface. May even be an improvement.
Now the only question left is how many extensions will be required to restore the toolbar so I can keep my NoScript and Firebug icons fucking available since I frequently need to use them. You took away my status bar, please don't take away my toolbar too.
Also, I wonder what new bugs they'll introduce to Firefox under Windows Aero. Gotta love Aero Glass freaking out whenever you mouse over a link. (How did you even do that?!)
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Observation: Thud547 seems to have no problem finding his water dish and it works very well for keeping him hydrated:
Firefox developer: I'll bet he'd like it if we put his water dish at a remote location along the Amazon river! I'll bet nobody has ever thought of this, much less tried it! This is going to be so f'ing awesome!!!!!11
I understand you are designing for the lowest common denominator. It makes sense, and I can see where you are going with this design direction.
However, please be sure to allow configurability at the very least, and even better resist the urge to remove UI elements and hide them behind menus.
I dont want more buttons hidden behind more menus that require more clicks. On my desktop I have a large amount of room and like all my important options in front of me. That's why it's a great computing device for work. On my mobile phone, a sparse UI is much appreciated. But I dont really need it, nor want it, on a desktop. It doesnt make any sense in keeping with the idea of easy "discoverability" in user experience design. It also could easily confuse users even more than you think.
Most users can learn to recognize that a little "house" icon is the home screen. However, many users will not understand that setting the home page is under [alt] > Tools > options > General tab. Non-tech savvy people dont understand all of this multi layered categorization. They may not think the same way the developers and designers do, and may not put the option under the same category if they were doing the organization. They also may understand what they need, but not what the categories mean. Simple UI controls work better for most people. As an example: almost everyone understand lists and scrolling, even if they are very long lists.
It would also be nice if the bugs regarding new versions of FF corrupting profiles be looked into. And I don't know of any users that really feel the new "rapid release" stuff is worth a dime. The people who know what it means think it's silly, and the people who don't wouldn't care anyways.
Don't get me wrong, you guys have done fantastic work over the years. And the world owes you *much* gratitude. But I feel the need to speak up at some of the recent changes in direction Mozilla has been making with FF and TB. A need I have never felt before regarding either product. As a fan I wish you all the best though and hope to keep using FF and TB as I have never been that interested in Chrome or Gmail.
PocketPermissions Android Permission Guide
Just...just fuck you Mozilla. This is the last straw for me.
As much as I've made fun of Opera users throughout the years, looks like I'm joining them now...
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
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!
In that mockup, it depicts this stupid word for which I cannot pronounce the "t". WTF, Firefox?
I think that the Mozilla team just want you to keep saying "Chrome, Chrome, Chrome".
It looks to me that Mozilla's mission is to promote Google. When Google didn't have a browser, Firefox integrated Google search right into the browser. Now that Google has a browser, Mozilla seems hell bent on getting all of it's users to switch to that browser.
I'm so glad there is Opera.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
The radius of the rounding on the tabs is hideous and looks nothing like any native control on any platform, I also hate this new fashion of placing the close, minimize and zoom buttons at some random pixel offset.
This design would work just as well with native looking widgets and button placement and wouldn't invoke the "uncanny valley" effect of being almost correctly placed. Why not just put the buttons in the middle of the web page and make the tabs floating round circles that you navigate between by waving your arms if you're going to ignore platform conventions so flagrantly.
Firefox isn't my platform, I have an OS platform that has already established conventions on how things should look and where they should be placed. Until recently Firefox seemed to finallly be moving in the direction of being a good citizen on it's supported platforms, now this...
The one great strength Firefox has is its plugin system. Can the browser people please stop fucking with the interface and concentrate on the damn HTML renderer ? If I were to get hit in the head with the douche stick and suddenly wanted my Firefox to look like Chrome, I'd install a Chrome skin. If they're so obsessed with minimalist interfaces, fire the interface guy and let him release the dumb thing as a 3rd party plugin.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
On upgrade you could choose between:
I've been using OSX Firefox for a long time, and brother, right now, it is *seriously* broken. Were it my product, it'd be time to stop with the new features and FIX it before going on. It behaves pathologically when trying to answer posts on slashdot
Whoa there! Try reading slashdot on a mobile phone (and not using the old format). Then realize it is not Firefox which is broken, it is slashdot.
The last few releases of Firefox have had the UI driven by graphics designers, rather than programmers, and these have been by far the shittiest Firefox UIs ever. Each one strips away more and more useful features, and hence becomes much more difficult to use.
Can we please have the programmers come up with the UI design? At least with the earlier Firefox releases, they put together something that was usable, even if it wasn't as "pretty" as what the designers might come up with.
Frankly, I don't use Chrome because it has a shitty, stripped-down UI that intentionally hides all of the useful functionality. That's why I used to use Firefox. But if Firefox is going to imitate Chrome, why the fuck would I use Firefox? Even Konqueror is more usable than recent Firefox releases, so I'll stick with it until Firefox's UI isn't a compile cesspool.
What is sad is it is a classic case of cargo cult usability where they try to ape the looks but not what makes the Chromium based browsers great, and that is Webkit.
For example I have to support users on a wide range of hardware, from circa 2004 office P4s to first gen netbooks and nettops to the latest multicores and since 3.6.x Firefox has frankly been unsuitable for purpose on anything less than a 3GHz P4 with HT and 2Gb of RAM and even then you better close that sucker out daily to keep FF from slamming the swap. Compare this to what I've switched my customers to Comodo Dragon (Chromium based with some nice extra security features) and even on the 1.8Ghz Sempron I use as a nettop the Dragon is fast, it NEVER loses responsiveness, doesn't slam the CPU and I can leave it on for days because unlike FF when I'm not doing anything with it the memory footprint stops growing which isn't the case with FF. And this is of course while having low rights mode on Win Vista and 7 which FF still hasn't implemented.
I personally think it is Gecko. I just don't think the engine is able to take all the extras being bolted onto it like separate plugin containers. The guys at Moz can ape Chrome all they want to, it isn't gonna turn Gecko into Webkit.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
FPS level designers or something? Finding common functions requires the equivalent of an epic campaign with every release. I can't blame my parents for being completely lost these days. I have a hard time helping them out myself and wonder what the hell happened to common sense and usability.
No, we are right to be concerned. These days, whenever a large company, open source or not put up something publically or semi-publically on their website, it means that they are going to implement it. It is a cheap way of product testing or to prepare users for the coming apocalypse, I mean, change. I am now starting to look around for other browsers to use. Mozilla has become what it was fighting when it started. I also blame female users for this (no, I'm serious). Look at the UI design of consumer products now days and you realise the over-simplified, over-cutesy, over-dumbed down design is catering for women and girly men who favours looks over function.