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Firefox 25 will get a major UI overhaul

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Re: Firefox 25 will get a major UI overhaul

#111

Post by scott_karana »

magic_haze wrote: post #78
DHowett wrote: post #66

And Firefox continues the inexorable march towards Chromeness by removing the actual title of the page from the window chrome. Don't get me wrong, I prefer Firefox. This just strikes me as wrong; the rest of the new UI is fine.

Is a title bar really necessary, though? The vast majority of the time, the exact same sentence is repeated again in the page as a h1. More prominently. With better styling. When I have the browser open, the favicon and the few characters on the tab are usually enough to figure out what the page is, and when it's minimized, the text shows up in the taskbar and alt+tab... I'm curious, what's missing?

I have three tabs open, all of which begin with the title of the site. How do I distinguish which is which?

Re: Firefox 25 will get a major UI overhaul

#112

Post by bkor »

shmerl wrote: post #68
loupeabody wrote: post #8

Here are some very detailed mockups(?) on major platforms whose links are kind of tucked into the parent link: Linux: http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-design... Windows 7: http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-design... Windows XP: http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-design... OSX: http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-design... I personally think…

I think Firefox should switch to Qt, since it allows more flexible management. For example GTK prevents it from drawing in the title bar.

That's called client side window drawing and GTK has it. Needed for Wayland. Maybe good to investigate a little bit before saying things that aren't true.

Re: Firefox 25 will get a major UI overhaul

#113

Post by scott_karana »

huhtenberg wrote: post #94
loupeabody wrote: post #8

Here are some very detailed mockups(?) on major platforms whose links are kind of tucked into the parent link: Linux: http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-design... Windows 7: http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-design... Windows XP: http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-design... OSX: http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-design... I personally think…

And the point of having curved tabs is... ?

Imitating Chrome, of course.

Re: Firefox 25 will get a major UI overhaul

#114

Post by scott_karana »

aluhut wrote: post #103
Taylorious wrote: post #13

Hi I'm Firefox and I'm trying to be just like Chrome. Maybe if I try hard enough I will eventually be indistinguishable from Chrome and then I can just give up and let Google push me out of the browser scene entirely.

Together with my little shy friend the Opera guy.... But no fear. Once they are out. New stuff will come up.

I'm sure we thought the same about Alta Vista and Yahoo. :/

Re: Firefox 25 will get a major UI overhaul

#115

Post by seanmcdirmid »

aluhut wrote: post #102
magic_haze wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is a title bar really necessary, though? The vast majority of the time, the exact same sentence is repeated again in the page as a h1. More prominently. With better styling. When I have the browser open, the favicon and the few characters on the tab are usually enough to figure out what the page is, and when it's minimized, the text shows up in the taskbar and alt+tab... I'm curious, what's missing?

How about letting the user decide? I find myself installing addons to cut or move parts of the UI back to where it was when I was used to it. Starting with the location bar ending with status bars. Additional fumbling around in the config became the normal thing to do after an major update... I know it's nice if your are the developer and you can force stuff on your users because most of them can't do anything about…

The reason why X Windows was so much more popular than Mac OS X or MS Windows was because it was so configurable, right?

As a matter of good design, configuration options should be used very sparingly. Yes they diversify the UX, but they also diversify the UX! Some decisions just have to be "made," like losing the title bar.

> you will cross a border for another part of your customers and then somebody will come up with something new just because you forced us and then you'll lose customers.

If the overall design is good, the customers loss are negligible vs. the customers gained. No one bothers chasing the miniscule emacs market.

Re: Firefox 25 will get a major UI overhaul

#117

Post by q_revert »

jvm wrote: post #36
spindritf wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I haven't really been using Firefox all that much mainly due to how busy the interface is Firefox UI is as busy as you make it[1]. It's very customizable without much effort. Not that it couldn't use a refresh but I quite like it the way it is. EDIT: The commenters below get it right. Tree Style Tab[2] add-on is responsible for the tabs and you can remove the clutter by right-clicking the refresh button for example…

Indeed, I find vimperator's interface exceedingly minimal.[1] [1] http://imgur.com/MkGwZZ5

if you enjoy vimperator I suspect you'll appreciate the tree style tabs mentioned above.. also if you `:set tabnumbers` you can easily switch between numbered tabs, which can be very useful

http://i.imgur.com/3x8nF0J.png

Re: Firefox 25 will get a major UI overhaul

#118

Post by skore »

RKoutnik wrote: post #9

And jwz gets proven right again [0]. I don't use Firefox as my day-to-day browser but every time I drop into it, I find that I have no idea where anything is. Hopefully they'll stick with the new changes (which do seem to be mostly cosmetic, instead of location). http://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/04/why-i-use-safari-instead-of-...

Firefox may be changing things, but comparing it to Safari must be sort of a joke. Just my opinion, of course, but I never found myself as lost in FF as the article describes. Conversely, every time I'm stuck with Safari I am frustrated beyond any hope of redemption by all the tiny things that are weird. It's nice to have things consistent, but to me, in Safari things just don't make any sense.

(Since I'll probably be asked to qualify that, my go to example - The address and search bar. Basic search is confusing already, but typing ahead in the address bar is as if the advances of the past ten years of browser technology never happened.)

Re: Firefox 25 will get a major UI overhaul

#119

Post by ars »

sharkweek wrote: post #89
mistermann wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, I would never consider using another browser unless they had vertical tabs. My Firefox typically crashes once per day but treestyle tabs make it worth it.

Once a day? Any idea why? For a while, mine was due to memory issues but they did some seriously awesome work fixing it somewhere in the high teen updates, ever since then it's been solid.

I had the same problem - tree style tabs would make the browser crash constantly. I eventually gave up.

Re: Firefox 25 will get a major UI overhaul

#120

Post by rtpg »

scott_karana wrote: post #111
magic_haze wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is a title bar really necessary, though? The vast majority of the time, the exact same sentence is repeated again in the page as a h1. More prominently. With better styling. When I have the browser open, the favicon and the few characters on the tab are usually enough to figure out what the page is, and when it's minimized, the text shows up in the taskbar and alt+tab... I'm curious, what's missing?

I have three tabs open, all of which begin with the title of the site. How do I distinguish which is which?

recently sites seem to be inverting the useful info to the beginning of the title, but this is still a problem. Especially considering that even when you only have a few tabs, the space given for the title is way too small (at least in Chrome, firefox is better about it)
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