The future Firefox UI • Hacker News Board

Re: The future Firefox UI

#141

Post by pbhjpbhj » Mon, Aug 01, 2011, 10:29 PM UTC

starwed wrote: post #35

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 o…

>Folk are focusing on the two changes that make this more like chrome (tabs in title bar, and apparent removal of search bar.)

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 element in HTML.

Re: The future Firefox UI

#142

Post by pbhjpbhj » Mon, Aug 01, 2011, 10:35 PM UTC

dpark wrote: post #56

tedkimble wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a dedicated search box is my big beef with every other browser.

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.)

You can use the current URL bar for search. Either by settings or by using search keywords.

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).

Re: The future Firefox UI

#143

Post by joenathan » Mon, Aug 01, 2011, 11:24 PM UTC

If you want to try the new look out right now, SoapyHamHocks has put together a theme http://soapyhamhocks.deviantart.com/#/d425ffz

Re: The future Firefox UI

#144

Post by thaumaturgy » Mon, Aug 01, 2011, 11:26 PM UTC

shapoopy wrote: post #132

dpark wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true about iCal and Address Book. I don't use either of those, so I'd forgotten what they'd done to them. I'm not an "old-timey" Mac user by any stretch of the imagination, but I can't help wondering when Macs were "full of matte gray". Are you referring to pre-OSX days, because it seems that OSX is more gray now than ever before?

I am in fact. If I remember correctly (I may very well not!) Mac OS 8 or so (maybe 8.5) was the height of the let's-never-ever-deviate-from-the-HIG days. This also included a glorious commitment to the desktop metaphor, when that phrase meant anything: you really could map your mental representation of virtual objects onto their real-life analogs and expect things to work remarkably like you expected. Now, I don't kn…

You remember correctly; in the 8/8.5 days, Apple's HIG was considered a must-read for any application programmer, and deviating from it was guaranteed to get you lots of criticism. IIRC, about the only 'non-standard' common widget in applications was the floating windoid, which started out as a hackish WDEF.

As an (at the time) longtime Mac programmer and enthusiast, my disappointment in the OS X UI was one of the reasons that I walked away from Mac programming and never went back. In fact, OS X drove me to more seriously try out Linux and learn to appreciate Windows. Now, I tolerate OS X, but still find myself pining for good ol' 8.5.

Re: The future Firefox UI

#145

Post by viraptor » Mon, Aug 01, 2011, 11:32 PM UTC

jamesteow wrote: post #11

bostonpete wrote: post #9

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.

Dramatic decisions are often criticized until people accept it and adapt. I remember reading about how consumers wouldn't be able to adapt to a touch screen phone that didn't have a keyboard option.

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.

Re: The future Firefox UI

#146

Post by carussell » Mon, Aug 01, 2011, 11:54 PM UTC

jgranby wrote: post #48

starwed wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious, since I only recently started using a mac. How does firefox not act like a native app?

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 improvement…

> 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.

Re: The future Firefox UI

#147

Post by jimbobimbo » Mon, Aug 01, 2011, 11:57 PM UTC

Silhouette wrote: post #74

blauwbilgorgel wrote: post #61

What I don't like about these Chrome UI's is that they don't respect my OS settings. I am on Windows 7 with the classic NT skin. iTunes and Chrome are one of the few programs that don't respect this skin. While in this case it is simple user preference, in other cases it could mean an accessibility concern, or even give room to malicious attacks: With all these custom browser skins, pop-ups over the HTML body (link d…

> What I don't like about these Chrome UI's is that they don't respect my OS settings Hear, hear. On our new serious workstation, we mostly run a variety of developer tools and browsers, some basic office software, various graphics/DTP/modelling stuff from companies like Adobe and Autodesk, and a bunch of tools to automate things and join the dots. On a quick look, exactly none of the major products there uses the st…

They DO have UX guidelines, but hardly anyone reads and respects them. I have hard time arguing with my managers at work, who want to make our software's UI "prettier" by putting on the skin which 1) out of place on supported Windows versions, 2) ugly.

Re: The future Firefox UI

#148

Post by pbreit » Tue, Aug 02, 2011, 12:00 AM UTC

starwed wrote: post #134

dpark wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For people who care about such things, you can customize the toolbar and enable "Small Icons".

It's always the first thing I do but unfortunately defaults matter.

Re: The future Firefox UI

#149

Post by redthrowaway » Tue, Aug 02, 2011, 12:03 AM UTC

beck5 wrote: post #54

beaumartinez wrote: post #36

The dev tools' UI[1] looks amazing . http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/devTools/devTools.html

Are they going to fully integrate firebug into firefox rather than having it as an extension?

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.

Re: The future Firefox UI

#150

Post by carussell » Tue, Aug 02, 2011, 12:10 AM UTC

cultureulterior wrote: post #14

I don't understand why no browser manufacturer integrates tree tabs. It's such a great interface innovation, and everybody is just ignoring it.

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.