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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."

30 of 401 comments (clear)

  1. when it's not broken, do not fix it. by allo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    when it's not broken, do not fix it.

    1. Re:when it's not broken, do not fix it. by Escape+From+NY · · Score: 3, Funny

      My philosophy has always been: "If it's not broken, fix it 'till it is." I'm glad to see I'm not alone in this.

    2. Re:when it's not broken, do not fix it. by Xest · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yes, personally I end up disabling these new UIs and putting it back to normal anyway.

      The day they don't let me disable it and set it how it always was is the day I stop using it most likely, with each and every new design ever other version I'm concerned one day they'll see classic as too legacy!

    3. Re:when it's not broken, do not fix it. by Riceballsan · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Indeed, usually the best UI is one where everything is where you expect it to be, where do I expect things to be? The same damn place it was yesterday. Even if it is going from an oddball place to a better one, it still isn't helpful if it changes every other week. First we go crazy with version numbers, now we're going crazy with UI changes just for the heck of it. What on earth is the open source community smoking these days.

  2. The Next Firefox UI by zbobet2012 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    is Chrome.

    1. 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.

    2. Re:The Next Firefox UI by PraiseBob · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You've just described how Firefox started... The next step after that is other people take over the project and start doing random changes for no reason.

  3. Don't care for it, but... by Bieeanda · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    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: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.)

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

      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.

      Please post that file. Please!

      --
      It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
    4. Re:Don't care for it, but... by JMJimmy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The impact may seem small but because title space is limited instead of companies displaying their titles like so:

      Document Title - Site Name [- Browser Name]

      Because companies want their brand name read it will most likely become:

      Site Name - Document Title [- Browser Name]

      Now put this in context of tabs, as you start to have more tabs open at once you'll see less and less of the actual document title and tabs will start looking the same until you hover over or switch tabs. This is counter productive and inefficient.

  4. Tailfins by Animats · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Tailfins by QuietLagoon · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Yup. When the Mozilla developers say, as a reason for the new Home tab capability, that they want Firefox to be different, then tail-fins can't be far behind.

      .
      It is beginning to look like the Mozilla developers are now at a loss for new things to develop in order to feed the voracious appetite of the rapid release cycle that they pushed upon users.

  5. Dear Mozilla by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Dear Mozilla by clampolo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's not just them. IE and Opera are also going the Chrome route. Personally I hate it too. The purpose of the frameworks an OS provides is to make the look and feel of all the apps look the same. And presumably since the user picked the particular OS, then they like the look and feel of that framework,

    2. Re:Dear Mozilla by Tarlus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah, the way that the traditional menu bar has been tossed aside is distressing. It was invented to create a consistent user interface between programs (as well as provide a consistent API) in order to eliminate the issue of everything being drastically different.

      But now we're seeing most of the major browsers playing follow-the-leader by clumping menu operations into a single button, putting things indifferent places, and then Microsoft's ribbon bullshit that thinks every operation should be presented to you in a big kludgey mess of buttons and symbols. At least the web browsers and Windows Explorer allow you to tap the alt key to get a temporary glimpse of the old menu, but who's to say how long before that is removed?

      --
      /* No Comment */
  6. Yeah, great by 0123456 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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?

  7. Whatever happen to UI consistency? by grumbel · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Whatever happen to UI consistency? by _xeno_ · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Whatever happen to UI consistency?

      Beats me, but when Apple decided to throw their own interface guidelines out the window and pointlessly rearrange the window icons on iTunes for whatever reason, and then again made the window icons on their App Store app center on the toolbar instead of the top of the window like every other app, it's become clear that the watchword for today is "change for the sake of change."

      Incidentally, I notice that at some point after screwing with the iTunes window buttons for absolutely no reason, they've reverted them back to be like every other window that's not the App Store. So apparently Apple is slowly learning their own lessons about interface consistency.

      --
      You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
    2. Re:Whatever happen to UI consistency? by _xeno_ · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Not quite: try pressing the green "make the window as big as it needs to be to display all the content" button.

      Oh, that's awesome. Not only does it not actually "zoom" the application, what it actually does is what the "collapse" button (the little bar on the right of certain windows) is supposed to do.

      Although the Zoom button has always effectively meant "do something random" so I've gotten in the habit of never touching it.

      I always find it hilarious when Apple shits all over their own guidelines, especially when there's a ton of research and design behind them. Microsoft can get away with crap like making the Office windows not behave like any other window in their OS, because they've never sold themselves as being "the user interface experts," but Apple?

      Come on, your HIG is enormous and generally explains why it suggests what it suggests. Why do you then ignore your own guidelines?

      Incidentally, it's worth reading the Microsoft HIG for using custom window frames for examples of Microsoft applications that ignore their own guidelines. It's nice to know that Microsoft's interface people are aware that the Gadgets window is broken, even if they can't convince anyone on the Windows team to fix it.

      --
      You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
  8. Re:Fix what isn't broken by royallthefourth · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What happened to function over form?

    Well, they've had the function working right for a while. Now they're paying lots of extra attention to the form, they just happen to be getting it wrong!

  9. Re:waruuuuuuu! by GrumpySteen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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

  10. Dear Mozilla by alostpacket · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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
  11. 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.)

  12. Can the developers take over again, please? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  13. Re:Plane'arium by hairyfeet · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.
  14. Much ado...? No by Chicken_Kickers · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  15. Re:Fix what isn't broken by Trogre · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'll believe that with Firefox 5 stops leaking memory like a sieve.

    --
    "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife