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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

#161
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 find I sometimes need to right click my title bar on Linux, to do things like move my window to another workspace. And other window functions, I have to have it on with Chrome.

I'd actually rather there was a simple meta key in each application, that you could use to just show you the vital data about a page. Meta data in webpages can be human readable - title, author, summary etc. How about an overlay? And how about have this for every app? Looking at an image - activate meta key, to see copyright info etc, listening to a tune, activate meta key to see tag info etc. Far better than hiding it under some menu item and distant properties tab.

Opera has an info bar, but it's not that user friendly.

That doesn't particulary address whether the title is necessary, it's great for window management, using windows instead of tabs. But you'll need a good window manager. I'd rather windows than tabs - though I fear that Opera introduced tabs as they were cheap windows more than anything else.

Re: Firefox 25 will get a major UI overhaul

#162
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read about people who like their tabs on the left, because they have so many. Opera allows this AFAIK. But why do you think the Firefox tab placement is better?

If you get tab happy, tabs are really difficult to navigate in Firefox without and extension, and I've tried most of the popular tab extensions - and have yet to find anything I like (that works without some bug). Chrome and Opera squeeze the tabs, but list them all, whereas Firefox forces a scroll after so many, which feels horrible. Also Opera has let's you list and switch open tabs with CTRL+TAB, or lets you repos…

> Chrome and Opera squeeze the tabs, but list them all, whereas Firefox forces a scroll after so many, which feels horrible. Also Opera has let's you list and switch open tabs with CTRL+TAB, or lets you reposition your tabs.

I use this tiny add-on, written by one of the main Firefox front end developers: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/custom-tab-wi...

It makes Firefox have the Chrome behavior of making tabs shrink infinitely. All it does it tweak one minor setting in the UI, so it's pretty bulletproof.

Re: Firefox 25 will get a major UI overhaul

#163

They've had this planned out for a long time now. Thunderbird received this UI refresh in August last year(the change log said it was to "match the new Firefox UI"), so I wonder why they delayed adding this to FF for so long. Personally, I much prefer the current UI. It's very concise, no space wasted with curves, perfect for people like me who tend to have 10 tabs open at once. I would rather they update the current…

The curves are only on the current tab according to the mockups, the rest are still square.

Here's a comparison using the latest UX Nightly branch with two windows at the same width that have enough tabs to switch to "scrolling tab mode" (notice the arrows on either side):

Old: http://cl.ly/image/221j3J1j3R2Q New: http://cl.ly/image/1b1j1m2K2k24

The new one shows 12 tabs and the edge of the 13th, the new one shows 13 tabs, the last one being cut off a tiny bit. The new one looks cleaner to me what with the lack of extra noise with the boxes around the tabs.

(Of course the rest of your comment may still be valid, but the curves/wasted space in the tab bar in general doesn't hold up IMO.)

Re: Firefox 25 will get a major UI overhaul

#164

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…

Why does it seem like everyone is moving to those curved tabs? They've always seemed like a waste of space and the overlapping bits make for an inconsistent tab UI.

Note that only the active tab is curved; the other tabs have nothing but a line between them. Here's a comparison using the latest UX Nightly:

Old: http://cl.ly/image/221j3J1j3R2Q New: http://cl.ly/image/1b1j1m2K2k24

The old one is showing 13 tabs, the new one is showing 12 tabs and the edge of the 13th one. However, the new one is way less cluttered and easy to read IMO.

Re: Firefox 25 will get a major UI overhaul

#165

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…

Its really basic things like not lining the window management buttons with the rest of the icons that really piss me off as a designer.

Is this really too much to ask for? http://imgur.com/zD8lUYW

Re: Firefox 25 will get a major UI overhaul

#166
post #124
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's right there in the settings: (in Chrome) Settings > Appearance > "Use system title bar and borders". edit: clarified I meant Chrome.

Not on my Mac. Am I missing something?

What are you missing on your Mac? It has the system title bar, the system-provided x, -, and + buttons, and (on my Mountain Lion, at least), the system-provided full-screen button in the top-right. What more could there be?

Re: Firefox 25 will get a major UI overhaul

#167
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Firefox UI is as busy as you make it For almost all Firefox users, the UI is as busy as Mozilla makes it.

1. I don't believe Firefox UI is busy 2. We always had those kind of "busy" UI since IE, Netscape, Opera and Firefox. 3. Chrome comes around, makes a very simplistic UI and now many people assume that it's the only way. IMO Chrome is just too simplistic, It's beautiful yes but is it efficient? For example, the first thing I do when I install Firefox on a machine is to display the menu bar. And I think it's a shame th…

Beautiful! Hardly. Just de-cluttered on the face of things. Trying to select an encoding is about as difficult as pinning the tail on the donkey.

Re: Firefox 25 will get a major UI overhaul

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you get tab happy, tabs are really difficult to navigate in Firefox without and extension, and I've tried most of the popular tab extensions - and have yet to find anything I like (that works without some bug). Chrome and Opera squeeze the tabs, but list them all, whereas Firefox forces a scroll after so many, which feels horrible. Also Opera has let's you list and switch open tabs with CTRL+TAB, or lets you repos…

> Chrome and Opera squeeze the tabs, but list them all, whereas Firefox forces a scroll after so many, which feels horrible. Also Opera has let's you list and switch open tabs with CTRL+TAB, or lets you reposition your tabs. I use this tiny add-on, written by one of the main Firefox front end developers: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/custom-tab-wi... It makes Firefox have the Chrome behavior of makin…

Thanks for that! Actually it still introduces the scroller at some point, but is slightly better.

Re: Firefox 25 will get a major UI overhaul

#170
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How does having the page title in the title bar help with that, though? It only shows the full title of the currently selected tab, but can't you usually tell which tab that is from its content?

No, not if they're all the same website. Take 3 comment pages on hacker news, for example, you'd have to look around the page for context to know which was which if you had several open at once.
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