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Announcing the Firefox 4 Design Challenge – The Home Tab

39 points by abraham 17y ago

walkon 17y ago
Is there any reward besides reward besides personal satisfaction and a bit of reputation? Perhaps a lifetime supply of Firefox?
- Oompa 17y ago
  What's the reward of contributing to open source at all? Some personal satisfaction and perhaps a bit of reputation?
  - walkon 17y ago
    It is just a bit more hyped up than typical open source contributions. Using the "challenge" concept with public polling and "best in class honors" makes it sound more like a contest. I think it is fine how they are doing it. I don't expect a project like Mozilla to be handing out piles of cash for stuff like this.
  - sid0 17y ago
    And money? Lots of people get paid to work on open source (including me).
cmelbye 17y ago
That mockup actually looks really nice. Why can't we have that same level of aesthetics in the Mac version? The main reason I don't use Firefox on my Mac is due to the really ugly user interface.
- cabalamat 17y ago
  Fuck aesthetics. As long as it works and doesn't get in my way, I'll be content, and it'll be ahead of 99% of software.
  - cmelbye 17y ago
    I don't use a $1,700 Apple computer so that I can use poorly designed software ;-)
  - tdoggette 17y ago
    Part of "doesn't get in the way" is a consistent and pleasant user interface.
    - cabalamat 17y ago
      Sure. An even bigger part of "doesn't get in the way" is not crashing or grinding to a halt for seconds at a time.
      - tdoggette 17y ago
        It's not that part of the comment that's getting it downvoted, it's the first bit.
      - DougBTX 17y ago
        That's a given. If someone is putting out software that bad, I'm not even going to think of using it, so it doesn't come into consideration. Hell, I don't even know of any modern browser that bad; I have no idea where your 99% comes from. Even IE passes that test now.
- walkon 17y ago
  You should try the Vimperator extension. It trades almost the entire UI/chrome for modal, vim-style, keyboard browsing.
  - cmelbye 17y ago
    Well, I still like having a user interface. I don't like having to remember commands and keyboard shortcuts for vim, so I don't know if I would like an extension like that. I will look into extensions/themes for Firefox however.
  - Jach 17y ago
    While I love vim, and I really, really don't like the Chrome-style UI, I found that addon to be irritating. I like my Gentoo box's Firefox UI just as it is, with the Tab Mix Plus addon letting me stack tabs in rows.
- tortilla 17y ago
  I currently use the GrApple Crisp theme from http://www.takebacktheweb.org/ http://www.takebacktheweb.org/ Not perfect, but makes it a bit more pleasant.
  - cmelbye 17y ago
    Heh, that's actually pretty cool. I like having tabs above the address bar and buttons. Thanks for the tip!
  - cscotta 17y ago
    Completely with you there. Safari was my primary browser (and has been for about a year) until a friend mentioned that Firefox 3.6b5 had some major retooling with respect to perceived performance (esp. in the address bar and page compositing engine). I'm really enjoying it so far, but had to switch to the GrApple Yummy theme at the above link. The base Firelight treatment feels so bulbous with a lot of wasted vertical space and unnecessary large rounded elements. I love this UI concept series, though - the proposed Windows design is gorgeous. I'm jealous of how beautiful Chrome and the new Firefox 4 concepts look with Aero compared to their bulgy gray counterparts on OS X. Never thought I'd say that :-/
zackattack 17y ago
How about fixing the memory leaks before revamping the UI? the ui is fine.
- vilya 17y ago
  Different teams, different talents, maybe? Are you saying the user interface people should just stop working until the developers have done their bit?
  - bricestacey 17y ago
    This is a good point, but Firefox is essentially unusable in its current state unless you're a masochist and enjoy poor performance so working on any additional features is a poor decision.
    - sid0 17y ago
      I use it everyday, so it clearly isn't "unusable" -- and no, I don't enjoy poor performance. I don't see Firefox performing poorly at all.
- NathanKP 17y ago
  I totally agree. They should also work on making a true 64 bit version. As it is Firefox can not compete with 64 bit Safari running on Mac OS X. Firefox is going to fall behind unless they go 64 bit as well.
- tree_of_item 17y ago
  Working on the UI doesn't stop them from fixing memory leaks. There are different people working on different parts of the browser.
- dangrover 17y ago
  Do we know that they're definitely leaks? I thought they just had some crazy caching or something. How did that story turn out?
jmatt 17y ago
Looks like chrome to me! I had a double-take. A home tab and improved awesome bar will put some competitive pressure on Google. Those two features were the most innovative UI features to come out of chrome. They changed my browser use habits. I wonder what this design challenge will add to the mix. What does everyone want to see in the UI of FF4? EDIT: Added a sentence.
dnsworks 17y ago
Maybe they could come up with a browser that isn't more broken than IE on Windows XP, and say "the UI is good enough until we fix the more important bugs"? I know, that's crazy talk.
dmnd 17y ago
Notice that the GMail tab is just an icon. I wonder if that's a replacement for a bookmarks toolbar? Possibly, Mozilla is planning for the tabs & bookmarks toolbars to be combined in the same way that the quicklaunch & taskbar toolbars were in the transition from Vista to Windows 7. Instead of an icon to create windows/tabs, the icon is the window or tab (just like the OS X dock). I really like this idea and hope it's true. I always preferred the dock to the Windows taskbar, so the W7 taskbar was a great feature IMO.
- tree_of_item 17y ago
  I take it you haven't seen Chrome's pinned tabs? They look precisely like that. The mockup looks like a Mozilla branded Chrome to be honest. Which is a good thing.
  - nuclear_eclipse 17y ago
    How do pinned tabs work in Chrome? ie, how do I access that functionality, and how does it function?
    - mhansen 17y ago
      Right click on a tab, and select "Pin tab". It collapses the tab to just a favicon, and persists it across sessions.
      - dmnd 17y ago
        What version of Chrome are you using? I don't have this option in 3.0.195.38, which I assumed was the latest.
        nuclear_eclipse 17y ago
        I apparently have the feature on my Linux machine, but not on my Windows install, and both are reportedly up to date...
        17y ago
Raphael 17y ago
Submitted 6 days ago. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1011280 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1011280
kentosi 17y ago
I'm a little worried that the UI submissions might be very Vista/7 focused. As it stands, this website shows a Vista/7 screenshot. Isn't one of the points of the browser that it's multi-platform? There are still core UI issues they face on a mac: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=430745 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=430745
BearOfNH 17y ago
I don't get the point behind having a "home page". Maybe if I owned an active website or blog, I'd have reason to start there. Maybe. The last thing I want is additional startup latency, so I set my home page to about:blank. Am I missing something? Maybe this is fodder for Ask-HN.

39 points by abraham 17y ago

Is there any reward besides reward besides personal satisfaction and a bit of reputation? Perhaps a lifetime supply of Firefox?

Oompa 17y ago
What's the reward of contributing to open source at all? Some personal satisfaction and perhaps a bit of reputation?
- walkon 17y ago
  It is just a bit more hyped up than typical open source contributions. Using the "challenge" concept with public polling and "best in class honors" makes it sound more like a contest. I think it is fine how they are doing it. I don't expect a project like Mozilla to be handing out piles of cash for stuff like this.
- sid0 17y ago
  And money? Lots of people get paid to work on open source (including me).

cmelbye 17y ago

That mockup actually looks really nice. Why can't we have that same level of aesthetics in the Mac version? The main reason I don't use Firefox on my Mac is due to the really ugly user interface.

cabalamat 17y ago
Fuck aesthetics. As long as it works and doesn't get in my way, I'll be content, and it'll be ahead of 99% of software.
- cmelbye 17y ago
  I don't use a $1,700 Apple computer so that I can use poorly designed software ;-)
- tdoggette 17y ago
  Part of "doesn't get in the way" is a consistent and pleasant user interface.
  - cabalamat 17y ago
    Sure. An even bigger part of "doesn't get in the way" is not crashing or grinding to a halt for seconds at a time.
    - tdoggette 17y ago
      It's not that part of the comment that's getting it downvoted, it's the first bit.
    - DougBTX 17y ago
      That's a given. If someone is putting out software that bad, I'm not even going to think of using it, so it doesn't come into consideration. Hell, I don't even know of any modern browser that bad; I have no idea where your 99% comes from. Even IE passes that test now.
walkon 17y ago
You should try the Vimperator extension. It trades almost the entire UI/chrome for modal, vim-style, keyboard browsing.
- cmelbye 17y ago
  Well, I still like having a user interface. I don't like having to remember commands and keyboard shortcuts for vim, so I don't know if I would like an extension like that. I will look into extensions/themes for Firefox however.
- Jach 17y ago
  While I love vim, and I really, really don't like the Chrome-style UI, I found that addon to be irritating. I like my Gentoo box's Firefox UI just as it is, with the Tab Mix Plus addon letting me stack tabs in rows.
tortilla 17y ago
I currently use the GrApple Crisp theme from http://www.takebacktheweb.org/ http://www.takebacktheweb.org/ Not perfect, but makes it a bit more pleasant.
- cmelbye 17y ago
  Heh, that's actually pretty cool. I like having tabs above the address bar and buttons. Thanks for the tip!
- cscotta 17y ago
  Completely with you there. Safari was my primary browser (and has been for about a year) until a friend mentioned that Firefox 3.6b5 had some major retooling with respect to perceived performance (esp. in the address bar and page compositing engine). I'm really enjoying it so far, but had to switch to the GrApple Yummy theme at the above link. The base Firelight treatment feels so bulbous with a lot of wasted vertical space and unnecessary large rounded elements. I love this UI concept series, though - the proposed Windows design is gorgeous. I'm jealous of how beautiful Chrome and the new Firefox 4 concepts look with Aero compared to their bulgy gray counterparts on OS X. Never thought I'd say that :-/

zackattack 17y ago

How about fixing the memory leaks before revamping the UI? the ui is fine.

vilya 17y ago
Different teams, different talents, maybe? Are you saying the user interface people should just stop working until the developers have done their bit?
- bricestacey 17y ago
  This is a good point, but Firefox is essentially unusable in its current state unless you're a masochist and enjoy poor performance so working on any additional features is a poor decision.
  - sid0 17y ago
    I use it everyday, so it clearly isn't "unusable" -- and no, I don't enjoy poor performance. I don't see Firefox performing poorly at all.
NathanKP 17y ago
I totally agree. They should also work on making a true 64 bit version. As it is Firefox can not compete with 64 bit Safari running on Mac OS X. Firefox is going to fall behind unless they go 64 bit as well.
tree_of_item 17y ago
Working on the UI doesn't stop them from fixing memory leaks. There are different people working on different parts of the browser.
dangrover 17y ago
Do we know that they're definitely leaks? I thought they just had some crazy caching or something. How did that story turn out?

jmatt 17y ago

Looks like chrome to me! I had a double-take. A home tab and improved awesome bar will put some competitive pressure on Google. Those two features were the most innovative UI features to come out of chrome. They changed my browser use habits. I wonder what this design challenge will add to the mix. What does everyone want to see in the UI of FF4? EDIT: Added a sentence.

dnsworks 17y ago

Maybe they could come up with a browser that isn't more broken than IE on Windows XP, and say "the UI is good enough until we fix the more important bugs"? I know, that's crazy talk.

dmnd 17y ago

Notice that the GMail tab is just an icon. I wonder if that's a replacement for a bookmarks toolbar? Possibly, Mozilla is planning for the tabs & bookmarks toolbars to be combined in the same way that the quicklaunch & taskbar toolbars were in the transition from Vista to Windows 7. Instead of an icon to create windows/tabs, the icon is the window or tab (just like the OS X dock). I really like this idea and hope it's true. I always preferred the dock to the Windows taskbar, so the W7 taskbar was a great feature IMO.

tree_of_item 17y ago
I take it you haven't seen Chrome's pinned tabs? They look precisely like that. The mockup looks like a Mozilla branded Chrome to be honest. Which is a good thing.
- nuclear_eclipse 17y ago
  How do pinned tabs work in Chrome? ie, how do I access that functionality, and how does it function?
  - mhansen 17y ago
    Right click on a tab, and select "Pin tab". It collapses the tab to just a favicon, and persists it across sessions.
    - dmnd 17y ago
      What version of Chrome are you using? I don't have this option in 3.0.195.38, which I assumed was the latest.
      - nuclear_eclipse 17y ago
        I apparently have the feature on my Linux machine, but not on my Windows install, and both are reportedly up to date...
      - 17y ago

Raphael 17y ago

Submitted 6 days ago. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1011280 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1011280

kentosi 17y ago

I'm a little worried that the UI submissions might be very Vista/7 focused. As it stands, this website shows a Vista/7 screenshot. Isn't one of the points of the browser that it's multi-platform? There are still core UI issues they face on a mac: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=430745 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=430745

BearOfNH 17y ago

I don't get the point behind having a "home page". Maybe if I owned an active website or blog, I'd have reason to start there. Maybe. The last thing I want is additional startup latency, so I set my home page to about:blank. Am I missing something? Maybe this is fodder for Ask-HN.