We’ve already talked about the proposed interface changes for Firefox 3.7 (and 4.0) which are coming to the Windows platform. However, those were anything-goes sketches, and now it seems as if the team has more or less settled on what Firefox 3.7 will look like on Windows. I’ll reserve final judgement until I have used it, but my first thought was: who littered all these different widgets all over the place?
Windows?
Let’s first look at the rationale behind such a major user interface overhaul for the successful open source web browser. “Firefox feels dated and behind on Windows. Especially Vista and Windows 7,” Mozilla writes, “These issues include absence of Glass, anemic purple toolbar color on Vista, tall and bulky UI footprint, element overload, inconsistent toolbar icon usage/style, lack of a tactile look & feel and perhaps too great of a divergence between the look on XP and Vista/7.”
In order to combat these issues, the Firefox team will basically scrap the current UI, take bits and pieces from competing browsers, mash them together, and give it a dash of uniqueness. They will embrace glass and neutral tones, and in true Aero Glass style, they will hide the menubar by default (Vista/7 only). The existing menu structure will be condensed into Page and Tools buttons (see Chrome), they will combine stop and reload, and replace the home button with a home tab.
Enough with the fancy words, let’s just look at it, as it’s all pretty self-explanatory. I added a shot of Google Chrome for comparison, and also to illustrate quite strinkingly why I find the new UI for Firefox 3.7 cluttered and far too busy.
Click to make big.
When Microsoft first released Internet Explorer 7, I was flabbergasted. When I opened the application for the first time, and saw the user interface, my first thought was: oh my god, someone was carrying a bag of random widgets, tripped, spilled the widgets all over the place, and the IE team just happened to walk by. They looked at the mess, made a photo, and told the UI team: make IE look like that.
I have the exact same feeling when looking at the Firefox 3.7 user interface. Not only are there way too many widgets on the default setup, the widgets are also all differently shaped and coloured, which makes it all look very visually busy. In addition, note that because of all that glass, you’re going to see a lot of stuff peeking through from behind.
It very much pains me to say, but all this reminds me a lot of my UI arch-nemesis, Internet Explorer. While the Trident engine is often derided for being outdated and a mess, I would argue that Internet Explorer’s interface is in an even worse shape. Now, look at the below shot. See the resemblance?
Click to make big too.
I’m still thinking about what the Firefox team could do to improve the situation, but while they still accept community input, it feels as if said input is more about details than starting over from scratch. If I were cheeky, I’d simply point to Chrome and say: pretty much that, but that’s a bit oversimplified. What I mean is that a browser’s user interface should get out of my way, it shouldn’t stand there impatiently hopping up and down like an overactive child in an amusement park, begging for my attention.
This new design draws the eyes towards the user interface, while in fact, the eyes should be drawn towards the porn websites being displayed. Content is king in browsers, but with this new interface, the spotlights have clearly been shifted.
Linux? Mac…?
Okay, all well and fine, but what about all those people using Firefox on Linux and Mac OS X? Will they get the same hyperactive user interface as the Windows guys? This is currently not yet known; it seems as if the thought processes on that one are only now starting. “Going forward we are going to look into the best ways to carry these ideas over to Mac and Linux as well,” Mozilla writes.
With Camino, Safari, and Chrome (in alpha) putting a lot of effort into looking native on all platforms, the Firefox team will have to work very hard to keep up. I’m genuinely interested in what the Mac and Linux teams come up with.
Sadly, the article doesn’t mention if Firefox will have the same level of integration IE8 has with windows 7, like watching the tab previews from the taskbar or the jumplist.
Very good point. I would assume Firefox will have this feature some way or another as even Safari 4 shows tab previews in Windows 7 taskbar. But please make it so that it can be turned off like IE and not like Safari where is is always on. I prefer not seeing tab previews.
It already works in Vista with any application…Or are we talking about something different?
Regarding Firefox’s new interface, I don’t understand the author complaints…If you look closely at the screen shot, both Firefox and Chrome have the same GUI elements, they’re just laid out differently. What does Firefox GUI has that Chrome doesn’t? What widgets is the author talking about? Seriously…
As for me, I’m very pleased with the new interface, even if I would have preferred the location bar underneath the tab bar, like in Opera. The “Page” and “Tools” drop-down menus would be better if they were icons-only.
No it doesn’t. Here’s how you can tell:
Open firefox and a bunch of tabs
Open Internet Explorer 8 with a bunch of tabs
Hover your mouse over the firefox icon in your taskbar, only the active tab shows up
Hover your mouse over the ie icon in your taskbar, all tabs appear and you’re allowed to choose your tab from there.
If IE doesn’t show this, to to Internet Options -> General->Tabs Settings and check “Show previews for individual tabs in the taskbar”
-D
Looking at that “Firefox 4.0 Theme/UI Direction” sketch I feel like they are putting half the icons on one side and half on the other, “might” look pretty but it very unconfortable imho, like when you have to cross the whole screen to hit stop/refresh in Chrome… *…ugh…*
Gods, yes, I hate that layout. Unfortunately, Ben always Wontfixes bug reports on the issue. Also, it’s looking like extensions won’t be able to help, since their toolbar buttons will be grouped in a section on the right side:
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=22099
So the only hope now is for them to eventually implement general toolbar customization, which MIGHT enable button creation/reordering:
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1656
You can vote and/or comment if you have a Google or GMail account.
If anyone has any doubts that Firefox is a Windows application, this should quash them. There’s also some talk that they’ll go for Office and Windows style ribbons:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/351808/firefox-tidies-up-with-office-20…
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Sprints/Windows_Theme_Revamp/Direct…
While it’s going to be a bit of a pain and take some work to re-architect the interface for the Mac, basically because the Mac’s look and feel is a long way from what they’re proposing, it is doable. The state of Firefox on Linux is currently a very different story, and it’s difficult to see how much of the interface can be re-used if they go down this avenue.
If you want an application to be cross-platform, and Firefox clearly isn’t because they are deciding what to do about Mac and Linux afterwards, then it’s just another example of how untenable things can get when you think you can rewrite the interface for every platform.
Well, OpenOffice.Org will have a ribbon like interface, will that make it a Windows application also?
This looks familiar to you?
http://forum.kde.org/brainstorm.php#idea41437_comment60137
And let’s suppose it makes it a Windows App, what’s the problem with that? does affect the render engine or something?
Look at the wiki. They’re specifically talking about using Windows UI components to do it, as well as using things like Glass. Open Office isn’t talking about doing that, but how they’ll make it cross-platform with the kludge that they have will be most interesting.
No. It’s a posting in a forum as well as a blog post with some pictures until there is a concrete implementation, and he’s not using platform specific UI components to do it.
Nothing. It would actually make things a hell of a lot easier if they just did go that route, but Firefox is supposed to be a cross-platform application. That was kind of the point.
Look at the wiki. They’re specifically talking about using Windows UI components to do it, as well as using things like Glass. Open Office isn’t talking about doing that, but how they’ll make it cross-platform with the kludge that they have will be most interesting.
I still don’t inderstand, Chrome al uses the glass feature on vista and windows 7, so what?.
No. It’s a posting in a forum as well as a blog post with some pictures until there is a concrete implementation, and he’s not using platform specific UI components to do it.
But there is a real implementation, I just couldn’t find the link so I posted that one.
Nothing. It would actually make things a hell of a lot easier if they just did go that route, but Firefox is supposed to be a cross-platform application. That was kind of the point
Using specific element of and OS for better integration is not a sin, if they deside tomorrow to integrate with plasma or with the GNOME HIG also will it be a problem?
Cross platform is not agains OS integration you know.
Firefox has been a Windows application since I remember, but not because of trying to better integrate with one particular OS, but because of having been optimized for one particular OS. I don’t really care whether there has been actual work on getting FF to work better on Windows, but it has been always a fact that its performance on Linux was inferior. With performance I mean the perceived one, probably has to do a lot with interactivity. Those of you who still on occasion double boot on a bit slower machine will know what I mean, and even if not … I think it’s still noticeable even on faster ones. I don’t think it can be blamed on Linux, since apps like Opera don’t suffer from this problem.
Because, like most, you don’t understand cross-platform development. It’s going to make it extremely difficult to create similar user interfaces on other platforms, reuse code, make it practical and make your users equal citizens. Even the article groks that, which is why I brought it up:
Reading the article sometimes helps to get some background on a comment. Note that what they didn’t say was “We have a cross-platform development kit with a UI component that will implement this on each platform, so Mac and Linux users will feel no pain and we will do OS integration in here.”
Whatever it might happen to be (and it’s not being put anywhere yet), it will end up being cross-platform with the way KDE and Qt is developed. Firefox is developed arse backwards where multiple platforms are concerned which, again, is the point being made. It’s also clearly been optimised that way as well.
No, but it’s a question of where you do it and what is practical. If you want to do that by porting specifically to each platform, especially ones as complex and diverse as Vista’s, KDE/Plasma’s or Mac OS X’s then you’re in for a world of hurt for you and your users unless you have a sensible intermediary to handle it.
That was kind of the point.
Porting an application specifically to each platform on a case-by-case basis is not cross platform development. It follows that if you do lots of nice OS integration and optimisation specifically on one platform, the application on other platforms suffers and that’s exactly what has happened to the Mac and especially Linux ports of Firefox. It’s also happened to things like Eclipse and SWT.
Edited 2009-09-24 10:21 UTC
Oh segedunum, with your poinless discussion and with your background of always having a hiden agenda, something tells me that you are about to tosse the word “Arora” in any moment.
‘Hiev throws his usual hissy fit when he’s been shown what the *discussion* is actually about’ 🙂
That would be called your paranoia.
I don’t know where you get that idea from, but then again, you have proven yourself to be two tabs short of a full browser on many occasions.
However, now that I’ve backed up what I was actually saying I’ll leave you to draw any conclusions you want as a result. It’s always fun to see someone’s head explode when they come to a conclusion as a result of some discussion and because it’s not the conclusion they want then it must be as a result of some alterior motive.
You are right about FF being Windows-oriented; that was it’s origin anyway. There’s a huge discussion about “The Ribbon” on /. Although I’ve used FF since 0.5 or 0.7, I may be leaving; been spending more time using Opera on Linux & Win for the last few months anyway. apt-get remove –purge firefox
I really hope they leave Seamonkey alone….
Hi,
I’m sorry to say but this whole article is non-sense. Besides the fact the preferred interface looks depends on your personal liking and thus there is NO proper interface design for everybody, the differences between Firefox 3.7 and Google Chrome negligeable. Whether the buttons for the page and tools menu have text on them instead of icons doesn’t really make a difference. You can almost match all interface elements of Firefox and Chrome at the almost same places, so objectively there is hardly NO difference. And whether you like the tabs above or below the navigation, again, depends on your personal preferences.
To conclude, this article is nothing but a purely personal opinion and not something that I would consider to be NEWS (remember the name of that website?). BTW: Today Gnome 2.28 was released, did you notice that at all? It was already reported on other IT related websites 12 hours ago.
The quality of articles really have degraded recently, sorry. Come back to your roots !
Bernd
So, why didn’t you submit the news? I haven’t seen anything about it on any news website I frequent, and nobody has submitted anything about it to us. I can’t keep track of everything, you know. I’m not a machine.
It’s 0145hrs here right now, and I’m getting out of bed now specifically to post the GNOME news, because I’m pissed off at myself for not noticing it. I haven’t missed a GNOME or KDE release in the 5 years I’ve been running the show here.
Damnit.
Don’t worry about it Thom, you can’t cover everything, IT news changes hourly.
Besides, it’s not like Gnome will ever catch up to Windows 7 … or heck, even XP for that matter.
Not to mention OS X.
Well, you could have known. Because like Ubuntu, Gnome has had fixed release schedule for some time. I already knew for some time that it would be released on 9/23 and thus it was in the news on heise.de in time
. Don’t worry, sorry for stealing your sleep.
PS: I am using Chrome as well. But not for mainly for it’s UI but rather because it’s simply the fastest browser on Linux.
Not true at all. There are some objective criteria that makes the chrome UI much cleaner and more logical than the FF concept.
1. Tabs on top. The address, as well as the page controls are logically part of the page, and should within the tab rectangle. On FF, the address bar and back/forward are visually disconnected from each tab, as though they were constant across all pages, which they aren’t.
2. Single address bar. Reduces clutter (one less widget) and many non-technical users don’t know the difference between the address bar and a search bar. Many people type everything, including addresses into google. Also for advanced users it makes no sense to have two separate bars if one can do just as good of a job.
3. The Page and Tools buttons in the FF ui are completely different visual style than everything else. Consistency is a pretty fundamental aspect of UI design.
4. The frame around the tab and bookmarks bar in FF has no purpose and contributes to clutter. It also further isolates the address bar, separating it visually from the page content, even though it is actually connected to the page.
“Firefox feels dated and behind on Windows. Especially Vista and Windows 7,”
This is what happens when you let subjective judgments from a couple people drive your UI. Here’s what he really meant: “IE8 looks different, and even though it’s a godawful mess we want to copy IE as closely as possible so that people can switch more easily”.
Good thing there’s Chrome. Now I just have to port my firefox extensions over to Chrome and Firefox can be relegated to the bin, just like Netscape, Konqueror, Opera, and all the other browsers that have fallen by the wayside.
As a daily IE8 user I can tell you that the UI at least to me is pleasent to use, and why does people say the contrary? since the IE8 UI and FF 3.5 UI are almost identical.
All browsers come and go. So you might as well wait till chrome is forgotten to the next browser of the year.
Jesus, it’s just a browser. Why the hell people need to make it so complex. All you need is a URL bar, the normal buttons and tabs. No need to shuffle things to different positions every release.
And BTW, I still love Konqueror and Opera, so I don’t really have to worry too much about UI. I wish Konqueror-webkit was included with KDE4.
The proposed UI for 3.7 is just yuck! Over-crowded, messy, and confusing. There’s no symmetry to anything. It does look like someone ate a big bowl of widget stew, and then barfed on their screen, deciding to make that the UI.
The proposed UI for 4.0 is much nicer. Still feels clunky, but much much much nicer than the one for 3.7.
I find the new UI to be modern and well-considered. I’d rather have polished new UI elements ‘everywhere’ than text or ugly old icons.
Further, I’m not thrilled that the article is so opinionated against the UI – it’d be a shame if sites like OSNews pressured Firefox into adopting something not as good.
Articles should be less slanted when it comes to issues like this.
Edited 2009-09-24 00:03 UTC
So it would be a shame that *users* pressioned(?) Mozilla to make Firefox look how they actually want instead of how UI designers want it to be? Where’s feedback?
I’ve used Firefox a lot, and what I have found is that while it tends to be great on Windows, Linux and Mac users are treated as second-class citizens.
I use a Mac notebook, and I find Firefox downright hostile to battery-powered computers. For the same workload, Firefox will use several times the CPU load as Safari for the same set of pages (and with Firefox using adblock). Firefox also prevents Macs from going to sleep when you leave one idle. Apparently, this has something to do with sqlite running in the background, where it does some house-keeping when the user is idle. That makes sense, for a few minutes. But once that’s done, it should stop. Firefox just keeps on burning amp-hours and accessing the disk, no matter what the user is (not) doing.
These are known issues, with lots of users reporting, but they’re just ignored because all Firefox developers really care about is displacing IE on Windows. Other platforms are just an after-thought, tolerated rather than embraced.
The reason I switched to Firefox on the Mac is that Firefox is far superior to any other browser with regard to memory management. The same set of pages always takes half or less the memory required by Safari, for instance. Reviews I’ve read say the same relative to every other major browser. The trouble is that for every open page, Firefox uses an additional few % CPU. I don’t know what it’s doing. Polling? I block ads, avoid flash, and avoid pages with animated images. It’s not those. Firefox just uses CPU for nothing productive. Bye-bye battery life. So as a result, I end up closing tabs anyhow. I get no benefit out of the better memory management due to the higher CPU load.
As soon as Saft is ready for 64-bit Safari, I’m switching back. I’ve run the beta versions of Firefox for a long time now, and I’ve dutifully investigated and reported bugs, trying to help out to the extent that I can, but it’s really not paid off. A lot of the bugs I report appear to be Mac-specific, which the devs mostly just don’t care about.
Couldn’t agree with you more. Mac platform is a second class citizen when it comes to firefox. Looks to be the same for chrome as well…
Is Safary a first class citizen on Windows? or Lin.. oops.
Safari is opensource?
Apple follows its HIG on Windows, to show off how ‘requisite’ Mac UI design is to score converts.
They aren’t trying to embrace all platforms and show off the best the open source community is. Apple is marketing its own system via Windows ports.
And it sucks six ways from sunday because of that.
The main purpose of Camino is to provide the most mac-friendly browser based upon the Gecko engine so that users aren’t forced to be second class citizens of other windows orientated browsers… in this case it’s Firefox (though Camino has been around longer than Firefox).
That all being said, it would be good if Firefox, being open source, got more attention from developers for those platforms.
For instance, consider how high-profile Firefox is on the Mac. It may compete with Safari, but bad Firefox makes Mac OS look bad, indirectly. Apple should contribute fixes to Firefox.
Actually, I think that the Chrome interface is busy and confusing, while the FF3.7 proposed is clean and neat.
Just goes to show you that there’s no pleasing everybody.
I’ve always thought that Chrome interface looks like it was designed for OS9. It really looks out of place in Windows. I don’t even think I could come up with such a drab looking interface if I tried.
I like the proposed 3.7 changes and am glad to see that they are making better use of vista glass.
I’ve found that any browser that doesn’t have the little arrow to expand the URL bar and select an address from the last entered, well… sucks. I feel lost when I use chrome, in that regard. Also, the page button or the tools button are too counter-intuitive, for nothing.
Colour scheme aside, they (Chrome and Firefox) look almost identical…
Edited 2009-09-24 00:51 UTC
So Opera will be the only major browser with a menu and a native titlebar. I personally like this and I hope that Opera doesn’t decide to jump on the bandwagon and make some radical UI changes. My preference for a UI (on Win XP which I use) are it has to leave the titlebar native and it should have a menu although I can accept a ribbon.
+1 except for the ribbon. I think Opera’s current UI is just perfect for me. No need to start messing with it.
Looking at the screenshot comparison between Chrome and Firefox, I guess I just don’t see the massive difference that Thom does. What I can spot:
1. The address bar is combined in chrome, split in 2 on firefox. OK, that’s probably a little simpler. I think I still like it seperated, but could probably get used to Chrome’s version.
2. Firefox has the address bar/buttons row, then the bookmarks bar, then the tabs. Chrome has the tabs on top, then the address bar/buttons row, then the bookmarks bar. Contents are almost the same between all 3. Firefox does have a little more empty space at the top and the window title. I prefer that, with Chrome you have to worry about clicking on a tab when you try to move the window around.
So, big mess? I’m just not seeing it here. Is this basically an “I love Chrome” rant by Thom, or do others here agree with him?
In fairness though, I suggest you look at Firefox 4.0 mockup:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/images/f/f6/Fx-4.0-Direction-Phase-01.png
Personally they should jump straight for that instead of waiting till 4.0 to do it. or simply name the next version 4.0 and skip 3.7. In Mac OS X, I don’t know what direction they should take but the primary issues I have with it is the poor performance when it comes to snappiness and responsiveness.
We’ve (Mac users) bee continuously told that since the hiring of some Mac developers by Mozilla that we’re going to see some improvements. Here we are at 3.5.3 and the performance is just as horribly crappy as it was 2 years ago. The Windows users (and lesser extent Linux users) are experiencing performance improvements and here am I stuck in a situation with Chrome, even the Alpha state that it is, over shooting Mozilla in all areas and Safari for me has become the default browser because of Mozilla’s failure to step up and address the short comings.
IMHO IE8 is the prettiest browser on earth at the moment. It sure has loads of meaningless bloat in its default setup but get rid of that bookmarks toolbar and the extra toolbuttons and swee’eet! I even made my Windows-Firefox look like IE8 the other day. IE7 was horrible crap, that’s where I agree with you. So is the proposed new UI for Firefox, sadly.
And yes, I’m a full-day Linux user…
Edited 2009-09-24 04:49 UTC
All this complexity. These busy, busy browser interfaces with round buttons, mixed with square and rectangular buttons. And buttons that don’t really look like buttons.
Argh!
Clearly, we are headed toward that point where someone could come in with a greatly simplified interface and sweep up market share simply by *not* going out of their way to give people headaches. (And I mean “headaches” in a literal sense.)
What’s wrong with looking “dated” if “dated” is more functional and easier to use? This change for the sake of change, complexity for the sake of complexity, heralds the beginning of the end for projects which are seduced into following that path. The situation has progressed well beyond “second system syndrome”.
Edited 2009-09-24 06:36 UTC
In think Chrome is mostly seen as UI perfection because it barely has any. I if you don’t have a lot of stuff it is easy to clean up. Firefox wants to be a lot of things to a lot of people and has a lot of stuff because of this.
There is a trend in browsers to reduce the amount of stuff you see by default. Chrome is the extreme and IE8 got the wrong idea. Firefox and Opera also follow this trend. So complaining that browsers look like each other is a bit weird.
I think browser makers should show as much of the page as possible without losing the UI that you use to control browsing. But users should also be able to control how much they see of the UI.
My favorite would be:
– No title bar(like Chrome)
– Smooth animation(like Chrome)
– Smart Location bar(I like Firefox’s best, Chromes and Operas seem a lot dumber)
– auto hide status bar(like Chrome)
– no menu bar(like Chrome but I don’t like Chrome’s current Page and Config menus)
– scrolling tabs(like Firefox)
– customizable UI(like Firefox)
– smooth page scrolling(like Opera)
– move idle tabs to a low priority cpu thread or even just freeze them
What’s a scrolling tab? Never heard of those before.
If you have more tabs than your tab bar can hold the tabs won’t shrink but the tab bar will scroll to left or right to show the rest. You can even use your mousewheel to scroll through them. Love it
Edited 2009-09-25 09:21 UTC
Ah, ok, that makes sense now. I see how that could be useful, especially if you can set a minimum size for the tabs, such that they never get smaller than that.
At least on Linux and FreeBSD, mouse scroll wheel to switch between tabs already works with all browsers I’ve used (Firefox 3/3.5, Konqueror, Chromium/Chrome).
Doesn’t seem to work on Windows, though.
Well on the contrary to what many of you say, I *like* the new UI and the new 4.0 mockup (the link posted above) is even better. Yes, I agree they definitely should go with the 4.0 style.
Please don’t do that. This is one of the many, many things I hate about Opera. There’s nothing more annoying than having your mouse pointer as an hourglass, and not being able to get rid of it because the f**king stop button is in ‘refresh’ mode
Also, sometimes a page loads about halfway and you wish to stop it, but you can’t if the only button you have is refresh.
Edited 2009-09-24 13:09 UTC
Huh? When the page is loading, the button becomes a “Stop” button….and only when loading is complete does it become the “Refresh” button. So if the page only “loads halfway”, the button will be “Stop”, and will never be “Refresh” as you suggest.
I have to agree that it seems that the GUI people have gotten frustrated with being ignored and are trying to assert their importance by trashing usable interfaces.
I for one read/write English that is based on 26 characters and find menus preferable to stupid icons that are can never remember what they are for.
Glass sucks especially if you have any sight problems. The 20 somethings need to ask their parents what they can use. Subtle color changes and glass may be great for you, hip, cool, trending young people. I’m not interested in trend … here today, gone tomorrow. I need to do work and I agree that the Browser should not get in my way!!! I want as much real-estate for my web content as possible.
So, what this means is that there will be lots of people who refuse to “upgrade” because the hate the new interface. Is that what Firefox wants? Does this remind you of the number of people who have XP and run “classic” desk top and menu bar. Why is that? Because they hate the trendy stuff littering the desktop.
If you are a graphic artist, and want to add flashy trendy stuff, get out of the browser business and go build content … most of us will ignore yur site!!
there’s a special place in hell for those who came up with Glass. It’s the ugliest useless gimmick I have ever seen on any OS and that includes everything compiz can do.
I absolutely concur on the ribbon issue, and its not because Microsoft did it, its because desk top real estate should belong to the user and the applications, not the environment or infra structure.
Most modern screens are wider than tall … yet ribbons are across the top.
Who thinks of these things … 20 something graphic artists?
contrast with this UI
http://nisus.com/pro/images/tour-interface.jpg
Wow, talk about whining. I usually don’t disagree with osnews articles so much, but your rationale is flawed here. If there is a problem on Windows 7 and Vista with the UI drawing too much attention from the application content, it’s a Windows problem. Firefox with this new (very sexy) UI, is only bringing itself in line with anything else on Windows (and doing it better in a lot of ways).
The only critique I have is, that the buttons could still use some refinement (maybe make them blend in more seemlessly with the glass effect, until mouse over, where they an become that gray opaque color).
If you don’t like Aero, that’s not really the fault of Mozilla or the Firefox UX team.
It looks nice in my opinion though, is it useable is another thing though.
A way to fix these sort of UI issues would be an easy way to the avarage user to customize the UI for his/her personal preference. Like arranging icons, adding and removing toolbars and menu’s, and removing useless icons and that sort of stuff.
Though it’s a safe bet that Mozilla’s developers are not going to do that, if the other option is to basically make it look more Windowsy.
Edited 2009-09-24 15:29 UTC
I reckon it looks pretty good!
And check out the thin green progress bar along the top of the third tab.
God, I hate the fad to hide menubars, that Microsoft started.
It’s like the slowest, least liked, most uncool kid is doing self mutilation and everybody wants to mimic him.
Menubar may not be a perfect gui widget, but ribbon and the like are far worse.
I agree absolutely. Menus make things easier because it’s an outline for everything you can do with the app.
thanks for killing the best part of firefox: the UI
I’m interested how author come to this conclusion:
“With Chrome (in alpha) putting a lot of effort into looking native on all platforms”
On my Ubuntu Chrome looks nothing like native application!
But of course I don’t care. Tomorrow I make change Gnome to KDE. Sometimes I use Mac, and sometimes even Windows. I don’t care how this operating system look. What I care is what my desktop and web application look and work the same way on all operating systems.