And for me the Chrome UI is the primary reason I can't stand Chrome and stay with FF.
Whatever they do to the default layout in FF doesn't bother me, just keep giving me the option to put it back the way I like it. So far, so good... other than needing a plug-in now to get a bottom status bar.
Personally I just hover to see where a link goes at times, but chrome's method of showing the link at the bottom after N milliseconds is more than sufficient. It doesn't need to permanently take up pixels otherwise.
Except that chrome's version obscures the navigation links in a lot of websites, which means you have to be quick to point and click in order to be able to navigate before the popup info tooltip blocks your click.
I use it for the standard things like hovering over URL's and watching page load progress. And I also agree that the pop-up in Chrome works reasonably well for this too... however...
FF went and added an 'Add-Ons Bar' to replace the bottom real-estate that plugins wanted to sit in lost by the status bar removal. So now, if I use the Add-on bar, AND allow the Chrome style status pop-up, I loose even more space since the URL is now outside the bottom bar, and I'm left with a ton of unused space on the Add-on bar. FF should have just made the Status label a movable element and allowed it to go back in the bottom bar if desired. Since the bar is going to be there anyhow for some people with plugins then their effort to save UI space just cost me 2x the UI space. It frustrates me that what could have been a simple and flexible change (optional, draggable status label) has turned into a hodge podge of work-arounds.
We are going through a redesign for my company's web app and now we're going to have to insert a tiny bit of blank space at the bottom because Chrome's pop-up statusbar is covering a vital part of the UI! Doh!
Very nice, if they actually manage to pull this look off it would probably make it the best looking browser. My only concern is that they wont and that it will still look like crap in linux.
I don't know, that floating button in the top left bugs me in linux. It makes sense in windows because it just blends in with the tabs next to it, but in linux it's on its own line with the tabs showing up below it. The wasted space annoys me to the point that this is one of the main reasons why I do not use Firefox anymore.
I used to have the same problem, but it turns out that you can tell compiz to hide the title bar. Takes a tiny bit of getting used to (Alt is your friend), but it's pretty nice otherwise.
nxn messed up his or her pronouns. The "it" in "its own line with the tabs showing up below it" refers to the the title bar. It's that on Windows, the tabs and button take the place of the traditional title bar. On Linux, drawing in the title bar proved too difficult for a generalized approach that worked across window managers, so the title bar remains intact, and everything is offset by it.
Seems much cleaner. They should do a comparison of how much screen space is used by the chrome vs. other browsers. Can't wait for this to high the nightly / dev builds.
I've been running the nightly, and there was a brief period where the tabs were moved into the title bar. Not sure why they backed it out, but I didn't really like it anyway. (I kind of like knowing the title of the page I'm on -- for instance, with this particular link it conveyed semantic information that was missing from the page itself.)
Wow. I really hope this isn't just speculation and something that's being put into production. Yeah, it looks like a Chrome clone, but it's been done well and with a slight twist. As a dedicated Chrome user, though, it's going to take more than just a coat of paint to get me to switch back. Can't wait to see where this ends up.
Be faster than Chrom(ium) with regards to start up speed and JS execution.
I abandoned FF after having used it since it was "Phoenix 0.1", because it had become slow and bloated, like NN had been before. Would love to switch back, but not if I can open 5 Chromium instances in the same time it takes to open one FF window.
Have you tried a new profile? A long-time user will end up with a really crufty Firefox profile. Sync will move all your data to a new profile quickly and you can see what a new profile in Firefox is like.
I don't use Firefox at all, but I just did some testing and the first time I started Firefox it took about 3 seconds to show its window. Subsequent starts got faster but always took at least a second and half. Chrome starts before I can say "one".
Sync will not move all your data. I switched to a new profile after installing an add-on that introduced problems and uninstalling didn't correct those problems. I fell back to Sync for the new profile so I could salvage my history and bookmarks from my 2-ish year old profile, but it left out something like 9 months of history, all but two of my tags, and a good chunk of my bookmarks and search keywords (including the ones I'd set up for MXR).
I'm not sure if it was buggy, or if Sync was intentionally not tracking the stuff that didn't get copied over. (cf mconnor's blog post a month or so ago about implementing Sync quota caps).
The shortlist would be: speed, standards compliance, UI, and developer support (I love that Chrome has built-in dev tools -- I know firebug exists, but compared to CDTs, again, it seems clunky).
I can't believe nobody's complaining about the missing dedicated search box. I thought that was everyone's big beef with Chrome. Then again, I haven't used Firefox in quite some time so maybe they've already dropped it.
Sometimes what actually happens is that people get used to the change and get tired of fighting against. But they still don't like it at all. It's hard to see the difference from outside.
Exactly. Someone might have their leg amputated and complain for a while, then eventually accept it and adapt. This does not mean that having a leg amputated is a good thing.
Not in every case. I want to use firefox because of some plugins. There is pretty much no alternative for them. Given that is was the best choice so far, I get to choose again between something that doesn't do stuff I need, or something that doesn't look the way I'm used to. Staying with previous versions is never an answer due to lack of bugfixes, security updates, etc.
Same mistake ubuntu does sometimes. It's the best in general, but has more and more really annoying changes in my opinion.
You cannot "just switch" in many cases. In some other you'll have to choose between two things you don't like the least. That's not a good outcome.
No, the search box is still there, and I'm pretty sure the solution to that won't be what Chrome does. I remember hearing something about the address bar becoming a little modal.
Which all of 0.0003% of people will actually turn on. It's not so much about me not knowing what is being sent, it's about anything users across the web type into the url box is sent to servers somewhere. It's not information companies need to know, anonymous or not.
I was mainly offering that to address jbk's personal concerns, and agree that as a default setting, it constitutes an unexpected information/privacy leak for most users.
If Firefox adds a single bar for search and URLs, I'd consider switching back, especially if they do a better job of history search than Chrome. (Chrome's history search sucks pretty bad in my experience.)
I prefer to use Firefox's Keyword Search bookmarks over wasting pixels for the dedicated search box. I couldn't live without my personalized search keywords for sites like Wikipedia, Amazon, Yelp, YouTube, Dictionary.com, Netflix, and more.
Because to a user that barely understands tabs as it is, it's simply not going to fly. And yes, many nontechnical users do struggle with the idea of tabs.
It's not going to happen because that would involve cutting a good chunk away from the side of the content area, standing in the way of pages' Manifest Destiny of extending from the left side of the screen to the right.
Having pages like that is a shitty way to browse; people who do it are doing themselves a disservice by reading lines at that width, and screens are wider than ever, but people love full screen windows.
Why has Firefox been so slow to slim down its UI? The back button is still way too big and the button colors not subtle enough. A browser should disappear into the background to some extent. It's just a window into the interwebs after all.
The back button is intentionally bigger as it is one of the most used buttons in a browser. In accordance with Fitt's law, the size allows a user to get to it quicker than a smaller button.
I understand the logic of the bigger back button, but I think it is a poor choice. It's rather awkward-looking, but more importantly it causes the entire toolbar to be several pixels taller. It's an amazing waste of space.
Thanks. I don't use Firefox much anymore (I keep it setup to use the corporate proxy for the few things that need that), so I'd forgotten about that option.
Sure, but many like the current default -- on a netbook, I used small icons, but everywhere else I willingly sacrifice a couple of pixels for an easier target.
I wonder whether this latest proposed redesign will finally have Firefox behaving like, y'know, a native OS X app, or whether it'll be just as shallow as all previous efforts.
The whole app feels like an imitation of a Mac app. Most obviously on 10.7, the window chrome is wrong. Other small things like incorrect and wrongly sized fonts inside controls, or the whole menu bar disappearing when you use an extension in its own window. When you add everything together, it just feels wrong, like wearing clothes that don't fit.
The way they've been updating the UI so far has seen some improvements, for sure, but it's as if they've been patching it bit by bit. I just wondered whether this signalled a change of approach.
> or the whole menu bar disappearing when you use an extension in its own window
Could someone explain to me the correct way for a developer to handle this?
I've been aware of this problem for a while, and I've newly come to own a Mac, so I've looked into it more and looked at what other apps are doing. There doesn't seem to be a correct solution.
I looked at how Safari handles the Web Inspector, and it just adds a new, dedicated Debug menu to the menu bar. This is a no-go in my case.
Suppose you're developer faced with a problem similar to the Firefox–extension problem. You have something like an app-within-an-app, or maybe A and B are actually even more closely tied together than that, but independent enough that on any other platform it would be a no-brainer: each one gets its own menu. What do you do for OS X?
You can't re-use A's menu items in B, because A's items—in, say, the Edit menu—don't serve B. You can't just augment A's menu set to include B's menus and items, because B's menus and items are so numerous and specific to B and vice versa, that there's just so much clutter from the other's menus and items.
I think the solution that Apple would suggest is to just not put an "app-within-an-app". If the feature set is far enough apart that it feels like a separate app that needs a separate menu bar, it should be a separate app.
(I actually agree: when is that ever better than a dedicated app?)
Emacs keys binding not working in some place (e.g. Ctrl+N, Ctrl+P not working on Awesome Bar). Missing contextual services menu when you right click on some text. Missing text services (e.g. Cmd+Shift+D popup dictionary), etc. etc.
I have to use a Mac at work and frankly none of the programs I use feel like Mac apps. Everything in the Adobe suite is the same as on Windows except slower (down to the 8 corner resizing), Firefox is as you say, and I have to agree with the statement I saw earlier today that Eclipse is a cross-platform Windows application.
Interestingly I have the exact same issue with Firefox on Android. The address bar isn't a native text box, it's fake! I have two non-standard things happening on text boxes, Samsung's cursor indicator and the Swype keyboard, and nothing behaves quite as it should.
These aren't design blueprints. I don't really know why the OP linked to a set of images without any commentary, but it's obvious from the URL that these were part of a presentation. Showing exactly the same changes on every OS wouldn't have been very useful in that context.
I could be an edge case, but I really dislike branded chrome skins that become a part of the window (like the Harry Potter example). Just feels tacky to me.
Folk are focusing on the two changes that make this more like chrome (tabs in title bar, and apparent removal of search bar.) There's more going on here.[1]
* Simplified, customizable graphical menus. No idea how well this will work, but it's only a mock-up at this point.
* Removal of the forward button, merging the back button with the URL bar.
* Refinement of per tab UI. In chrome you still get the browser chrome on pages like preferences or history.
* A change in browser chrome when entering fullscreen mode. (Chrome just over-lays the standard UI when you mouse to the top.)
[1] If anyone knows the context for these images, would be nice to link it!
If you think about it, the forward button is disabled about 80% of the time -- so it doesn't really need to always be there. The forward button isn't being removed completely; it'll just be hidden when it's not clickable. It will slide out when there's a "forward" URL available.
I can usually mouse to within a few dozen pixels of my target without looking at the screen, thanks to a combination of muscle memory and spatial sense.
Firefox's UI has always been the most customizable of any of the major browsers. You will be able to add it back in if it is taken out by default in the future. (Disclosure: I work for Mozilla but not on the UX team.)
I do not believe that, from my experience Opera is much more configurable, at least my current Opera setup suggests that. I have added buttons to my UI that I would have to install addons for in Firefox.
I do actually keep the search box but I use it almost exclusively as a scratch pad for short notes (!) and do nearly all searching via keywords in the URL bar ("Awesome Bar").
Image also shows how not to use the <title> element in HTML.
Ah well. No idea about Mac. Might be different there for all I know, but the Windows-version has been like that since FF 4, at least when the window is maximized.
When not maximized it sort-of looks like in the linked screenshot. Running the latest "UX-builds", I can see that it now has the maximized-behvaiour for all Window-states, so you are right in there being some changes.
As I understand it (it's still somewhat in the planning stages, and things are evolving), Firefox will ship with a set of developer tools which will cover the major use cases (inspector, console, etc). Firebug will be an extension, and will add more advanced functionality. It's being rewritten in JavaScript, and could potentially work on any browser (Firebug and Firebug Lite are going to merge).
This is how I understood it when I talked to the Firebug team a few months ago. Mozilla has since hired a ton of people for their Dev Tools team and John J Barton has left Firebug due to lack of funding from IBM -- so I have no clue if things have since changed.
PLEASE integrate these things carefully and in a sensible way. If I have to use "dev tools" for x, b, and z and firebug for a, y and c that's going to be annoying as hell.
tldr; no. Firebug is an independent (but with Mozilla's support and blessing) project and we're also building some great tools that will ship with the browser.
The vast majority of users don't need it. If they want to make it native, simply bundle it with a dev version. As useful as firebug is, more FF users would probably benefit from a button that converts a page from English to Spanish (I'm aware Chrome already does this). I think they should just put out the most focussed product possible, and allow their healthy dev community to add any functionality missing.
That said, "packages" might be a good idea. The "paranoid package" could bundle adblock, noscript, trackmenot, and foxyproxy. The "developer package" could bundle firebug and anything else that might be useful. Offering binaries with these packages pre-installed from a visible link on the main download page might not be a bad idea.
Thanks for the link, where did you find this? I just tried out FF8 and it didn't have most of this in it, but it did have the "inspect" tool. It looked beautiful, it was flashy but not in-your-face, and it was fast. In short, this ain't your mama's Firefox.
I'm glad they finally got rid of that extra search bar, it was ugly and clunky and useless. Any word on when this changes happens for real? I would love a better looking firebug delivery device.
I'm not sure what people like about Personas (or the equivalent in other browsers). It always stands out, distracts, and for me even messes up the great website I may be viewing at the time.
I'd be much more interested in a CSS extension that lets websites 'bleed' their background into the browser chrome.
I hope they allow people to keep the old current look if they'd like. I'm more tired of changing constantly then anything, and I love the UI in firefox now. Not that new ideas shouldn't be tried, just that what's not broken shouldn't be "fixed". And I personally don't like chrome because it seems to simple, so trying to turn into Chrome isn't going to win my vote. (but hey, it's about what the mass wants right?)
Firefox will always be the most customizable of any of the major browsers. If you don't like the default theme there are thousands of others to choose from, as there are today.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 244 ms ] threadWhatever they do to the default layout in FF doesn't bother me, just keep giving me the option to put it back the way I like it. So far, so good... other than needing a plug-in now to get a bottom status bar.
I have to move the mouse around and play dodge-the-tooltip and hope I get lucky.
FF went and added an 'Add-Ons Bar' to replace the bottom real-estate that plugins wanted to sit in lost by the status bar removal. So now, if I use the Add-on bar, AND allow the Chrome style status pop-up, I loose even more space since the URL is now outside the bottom bar, and I'm left with a ton of unused space on the Add-on bar. FF should have just made the Status label a movable element and allowed it to go back in the bottom bar if desired. Since the bar is going to be there anyhow for some people with plugins then their effort to save UI space just cost me 2x the UI space. It frustrates me that what could have been a simple and flexible change (optional, draggable status label) has turned into a hodge podge of work-arounds.
However the Chrome pop-up has a tendency to obscure useful page content, especially on (oh, irony) Google docs.
I much prefer a devoted status bar. OTOH, I have a WUXGA screen (1920x1200) so I have less need to obsess over vertical screen space.
The rise of so-called "HD" screens is one of the tragedies of modern computing that ranks up there with Comic Sans.
http://jaket.is-a-geek.com/blog/linux/remove-titlebar-on-max...
also, chrome gives you the option of disabling the titlebar, so it must be possible.
I abandoned FF after having used it since it was "Phoenix 0.1", because it had become slow and bloated, like NN had been before. Would love to switch back, but not if I can open 5 Chromium instances in the same time it takes to open one FF window.
I'm not sure if it was buggy, or if Sync was intentionally not tracking the stuff that didn't get copied over. (cf mconnor's blog post a month or so ago about implementing Sync quota caps).
People seem to not realize this, for some reason.
I remember reading about how consumers wouldn't be able to adapt to a touch screen phone that didn't have a keyboard option.
Often it's the vocal minority that we hear loudest.
The alternative to not having your leg amputated in given example is likely eventual spreading of a disease and death.
With consumer goods and services often no one forces you to have to accept their changes.
No one forces you to use touch screen phones: there are plenty of alternatives which do include a keyboard.
Even if you don't like one input box does all approach, you can use previous browsers or browsers which retain the standard model.
If you don't like Netflix's price hikes, you can just use another service or don't subscribe at all. Your life won't decline because of it.
Same mistake ubuntu does sometimes. It's the best in general, but has more and more really annoying changes in my opinion.
You cannot "just switch" in many cases. In some other you'll have to choose between two things you don't like the least. That's not a good outcome.
Personally, I don't like this at all, because you never know what information is getting leaked to the search engine...
For example to search on Google "g search keywords", on Wikipedia "w epr paradox", Dictionary "d prometheus". Opera and Chrome have this too IIRC.
To search history "^ page keywords", bookmarks "* page keywords", tags "# tag words" (there are others, I blogged about them http://alicious.com/fast-bookmark-and-history-search-in-fire... or see http://kb.mozillazine.org/Location_Bar_search).
https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Smart%20keywords
I would likely switch back to Firefox if they executed this.
Tree style tabs are the #1 reason I use Firefox (though many of Chrome's other advancements are mighty tempting).
Having pages like that is a shitty way to browse; people who do it are doing themselves a disservice by reading lines at that width, and screens are wider than ever, but people love full screen windows.
The way they've been updating the UI so far has seen some improvements, for sure, but it's as if they've been patching it bit by bit. I just wondered whether this signalled a change of approach.
Could someone explain to me the correct way for a developer to handle this?
I've been aware of this problem for a while, and I've newly come to own a Mac, so I've looked into it more and looked at what other apps are doing. There doesn't seem to be a correct solution.
I looked at how Safari handles the Web Inspector, and it just adds a new, dedicated Debug menu to the menu bar. This is a no-go in my case.
Suppose you're developer faced with a problem similar to the Firefox–extension problem. You have something like an app-within-an-app, or maybe A and B are actually even more closely tied together than that, but independent enough that on any other platform it would be a no-brainer: each one gets its own menu. What do you do for OS X?
You can't re-use A's menu items in B, because A's items—in, say, the Edit menu—don't serve B. You can't just augment A's menu set to include B's menus and items, because B's menus and items are so numerous and specific to B and vice versa, that there's just so much clutter from the other's menus and items.
(I actually agree: when is that ever better than a dedicated app?)
Obviously when it integrates well with a web browser. :P
> something like an app-within-an-app, or maybe A and B are actually even more closely tied together than that
Interestingly I have the exact same issue with Firefox on Android. The address bar isn't a native text box, it's fake! I have two non-standard things happening on text boxes, Samsung's cursor indicator and the Swype keyboard, and nothing behaves quite as it should.
Are developers giving up on using native widgets?
Would be great if they copied it too with regards to startup speed and JS execution speed.
* Simplified, customizable graphical menus. No idea how well this will work, but it's only a mock-up at this point.
* Removal of the forward button, merging the back button with the URL bar.
* Refinement of per tab UI. In chrome you still get the browser chrome on pages like preferences or history.
* A change in browser chrome when entering fullscreen mode. (Chrome just over-lays the standard UI when you mouse to the top.)
[1] If anyone knows the context for these images, would be nice to link it!
Just FWIW, my FF (over KDE) is pretty much like this: http://i.imgur.com/RH2Ld.jpg.
I do actually keep the search box but I use it almost exclusively as a scratch pad for short notes (!) and do nearly all searching via keywords in the URL bar ("Awesome Bar").
Image also shows how not to use the <title> element in HTML.
This has been in FF since version 4. These mockups are for FF 8.
Also, I don't even think these will land for FF8, since I've been running the nightly for a while now and they haven't appeared.
When not maximized it sort-of looks like in the linked screenshot. Running the latest "UX-builds", I can see that it now has the maximized-behvaiour for all Window-states, so you are right in there being some changes.
http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/devTools/devTools.html
This is how I understood it when I talked to the Firebug team a few months ago. Mozilla has since hired a ton of people for their Dev Tools team and John J Barton has left Firebug due to lack of funding from IBM -- so I have no clue if things have since changed.
tldr; no. Firebug is an independent (but with Mozilla's support and blessing) project and we're also building some great tools that will ship with the browser.
That said, "packages" might be a good idea. The "paranoid package" could bundle adblock, noscript, trackmenot, and foxyproxy. The "developer package" could bundle firebug and anything else that might be useful. Offering binaries with these packages pre-installed from a visible link on the main download page might not be a bad idea.
I'd be much more interested in a CSS extension that lets websites 'bleed' their background into the browser chrome.
Where can we find your blue wallpaper from the back of those mockups / screenshots ?