Firefox Australis: One browser interface to rule them all • Hacker News Board

Re: Firefox Australis: One browser interface to rule them all

#11

Post by aeurielesn » Wed, May 02, 2012, 12:52 PM UTC

marcusf wrote: post #6

sho_hn wrote: post #4

Web-based live demos of the new UI: Linux: http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-design... OS X: http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-design... Windows 7: http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-design...

I guess this goes without saying, but view them in Firefox. At least the OS X one looked thoroughly screwed in Chrome.

No wonder since it is full of -moz-* vendor prefixes.

Re: Firefox Australis: One browser interface to rule them all

#12

Post by stuartjmoore » Wed, May 02, 2012, 1:04 PM UTC

acabal wrote: post #5

I actually prefer when apps respect the UI guidelines of the OS they're running on. I understand the desire for one unified interface, but there's also much to be said for intra-OS UI consistency. FF has done really well in the past with that, but I guess they're jumping on the Chrome bandwagon.

It looks like they're still keeping the subtleties of each OS (eg the ICS action bar), just adding they're own styling, icons, branding, and flow on top.

Looks a lot better than apps that just port iOS apps to Android pixel-for-pixel.

Re: Firefox Australis: One browser interface to rule them all

#13

Post by superxor » Wed, May 02, 2012, 1:08 PM UTC

sho_hn wrote: post #4

Web-based live demos of the new UI: Linux: http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-design... OS X: http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-design... Windows 7: http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-design...

In these screenshots, the borders of inactive tabs disappear. This doesn't seem like a good idea. Wouldn't it be hard for users to identify them as tabs?

Re: Firefox Australis: One browser interface to rule them all

#14

Post by panacea » Wed, May 02, 2012, 1:14 PM UTC

sho_hn wrote: post #8

acabal wrote: post #5

I actually prefer when apps respect the UI guidelines of the OS they're running on. I understand the desire for one unified interface, but there's also much to be said for intra-OS UI consistency. FF has done really well in the past with that, but I guess they're jumping on the Chrome bandwagon.

Speaking as a Linux user, I don't think they have. Their use of and integration with the UI primitives of the GTK+ toolkit has been, well, primitive and unsatisfying, and Qt support is virtually non-existant (there was some porting done, but not enough to be anywhere near usable). However, even on OS X and Windows they don't use, say, native tab buttons. In fact, looking at the live demos I linked earlier, I don't th…

Speaking as a Mac user I agree. The Mac Firefox browser has always been clunky and never felt particularly 'native' to Os X. Camino was a far more native Gecko-based Mac browser.

Re: Firefox Australis: One browser interface to rule them all

#15

Post by generateui » Wed, May 02, 2012, 1:18 PM UTC

The article is showing the wrong screenshots. Here is the accurate one: http://imgur.com/NdNif

Re: Firefox Australis: One browser interface to rule them all

#16

Post by Zirro » Wed, May 02, 2012, 1:20 PM UTC

sirn wrote: post #10

I've been wondering about this for a while: what's with the large back button? Back when it was introduced, it was cool because back button was the most often-use one of all nav buttons (next, reload, stop, home) but now they're reduced to one, large back buttons just doesn't seems to make any sense anymore. Are they still doing it as a part of Firefox UI identity or is there any (recent) usability research on this?

The forward-button still appears when there actually is a link to go forward to (instead of having it greyed-out a lot of the time). My personal opinion is that it looks good, and that the round back-button has become a way of recognizing Firefox. The option to shrink it isn't that hard to find though, you just choose "Small icons" in the UI-settings.

Re: Firefox Australis: One browser interface to rule them all

#17

Post by peedy » Wed, May 02, 2012, 1:20 PM UTC

I'd still use Vimperator.

Re: Firefox Australis: One browser interface to rule them all

#18

Post by generateui » Wed, May 02, 2012, 1:23 PM UTC

acabal wrote: post #5

I actually prefer when apps respect the UI guidelines of the OS they're running on. I understand the desire for one unified interface, but there's also much to be said for intra-OS UI consistency. FF has done really well in the past with that, but I guess they're jumping on the Chrome bandwagon.

The browser is an exempli primus of an app allowed to break the OS UI guidelines. This is becase the browser is becoming the OS, and the OS becoming the browser. Said differently, the only UI on the OS is coming from the browser.

This of course is not yet the case, but soon it will be.

Re: Firefox Australis: One browser interface to rule them all

#19

Post by kibwen » Wed, May 02, 2012, 1:25 PM UTC

sho_hn wrote: post #4

Web-based live demos of the new UI: Linux: http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-design... OS X: http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-design... Windows 7: http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-design...

Note that these demos are early mockups from September 2011. Some details of the UI are bound to have changed since then.

Re: Firefox Australis: One browser interface to rule them all

#20

Post by Zirro » Wed, May 02, 2012, 1:27 PM UTC

The mock-ups of future Firefox-versions always look gorgeous but they usually start running into issues at the implementation-stage. Some things are left out, corners are cut and in the end it doesn't give the full experience the mock-ups are giving the impression of. Firefox 4 is a good example of this, where the original designs were showing much more than what actually shipped in the end.

I hope that they have learned from this during the past redesigns and assign someone responsible for making sure that the mock-ups are followed thoroughly.