“Much like various versions of Firefox, the overall concept here is premium and of quality, but not because its expensive. Good quality design should be accessible to masses much like our products. Our strong focus is on high quality and distinctive design in the marketplace.” Fantastic overview – quite detailed – about the UI design behind Firefox OS, from Patryk Adamczyk.
Very beautiful design they have there. Seems very much middle ground between skeumorphic ridiculousness, and Metro fierce reduction.
I love the concept of icons and colored plates.
they did the same thing before they switched firefox to the chrome gui. they copied the conclusion and wrote a justification for it.
Define “switched firefox to the chrome gui”. Tabs on top?
That’s hardly switching to chrome’s UI though I’ll agree with you on removing “http://“ from the address bar. (But they never justified that and you can turn it back on in about:config, unlike in Chrome)
Did Firefox copy Chrome’s download manager? No. …but Safari 5 was able to beat Firefox to implementing their own plans for the new Downloads Pane because the ideas were published for all to see and borrow from.
http://limi.net/articles/improving-download-behaviors-web-browsers
There is a Download Statusbar extension for Firefox which I used to use, and given how much nicer it is than Chrome’s download status bar, the Firefox guys would have come out on top if they just integrated it, but they came up with something unique and better than all competing options.
(If you want to try it, there’s an about:config toggle you can toggle to enable the version they’re still tweaking and debugging. I run with it on.)
I personally think that tabs on top is a good idea just for the fact that, if I install the “Tab Wheel Scroll” extension, maximize, and turn off Windows borders (I’m on Linux. It’s not automatic), Fitts’s law lets me slam my mouse to the top of the screen and scroll to switch tabs.
I actually had to put a lot of work into compacting Firefox’s UI down to something more compact than even Chrome and I’m running Firefox Aurora. (Firefox 17 alpha 2, which means newer than “current”)
one version of firefox looked like firefox, and then the next version looked like chrome
I wasn’t the only one to notice.
Again, what the heck are you talking about? (Find screenshots if possible.)
Whenever this change must’ve occurred, I was already using a set of extensions and Stylish Userstyle hacks to make it “more chrome than chrome” so I didn’t notice a difference beyond removing hacks for features that were announced to now be provided in the core.
Actually I feel like Firefox looked more like Opera after its redesign than Chrome.
AFAIK Firefox had the plans for the upper left Firefox menu. Opera was first to put it in a shipping product. Still the Opera menu button is still a mess compared with the Firefox menu button. I wonder when Opera will fix that.
This looks quite promising.
Wholly uninspiring.
Lots of design elements stolen from Metro,iOS,Android.
Button design is terrible.
Otherwise, I’m sure it will work fine, but it really doesn’t push any boundaries.
I wouldn’t say stolen, but it’s definitely nothing new. This could easily be a skin for Android or iOS. Really there is nothing new here at all.
In my view, this looks a lot like Holo, but with more gradients, roundedness, and WP7-style cut-off design.
Might be me, though. And not that having a familiar design is necessarily a bad thing…
https://blog.mozilla.org/ux/2012/09/mozcamp-warsaw-design-principles…
Don’t tell Apple
So is this going to be the new mobile browser layout?
The tabs button needs to be on the bottom too, the share button is rarely used so should either be an option to disable or moved to the top right where the tabs button is.
The tabs button needs to be at the bottom too since it’s a UI element that is frequently used.
Rather than replacing the entire screen when you press the tabs button, it should create preview images of the tabs with (optionally) the site names above them. Which are laid out horizontally 3 or 4 side by side taking up roughly a quarter of the screen at the bottom within easy reach of the users thumb.
The user should then be able to scroll left or right through the currently open tabs. To hint at there being more tabs to the left or right either the Android glow effect should indicate more or perhaps there should be half a tab to indicate there are more tabs.
To close a tab the user should use a flick motion, for example flick the tab with the thumb upwards to close.
Press the tabs button again to close the tabs horizontal preview. Done.
This UI/UX stuff is easy!
How can I try this out? Is there an emulator or anything similar so I can follow progress?
Here is the section for emulators:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Boot_to_Gecko/Using…
Here is the section for running a Firefox OS build on your Mac OS X or Linux desktop “natively”:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Boot_to_Gecko/Using…
I’m not sure about running B2G on Windows.
Looks decent. Not all that original. Nothing I can’t live without. All-in-all it’s not worth getting a stiffy over so I’m not sure why some people are.