7 ms·

Firefox 12 will finally have a New Tab Page and Home Tab

45 points by kennjason 15y ago

nextparadigms 15y ago
Is that WebRTC with GTalk contacts on the home page?
- AgentIcarus 15y ago
  The title of the image is "firefox-home-tab-mockup" - I don't think it represents the current state of the art.
kibwen 15y ago
I wish I could find the source for this, but I recall one of the Mozilla designers saying that the reason they were reticent to implement a speed-dial in the new tab page was because they envisioned the new tab page as a blank slate for when you're on-task, free from the distractions of your favorite websites. As someone with mild ADD, I agree with this assessment. Don't get me wrong; it's nice that this feature exists. But, personally, I'll be disabling it immediately.
- mrsebastian 15y ago
  Yep, FWIW there's a little 'X' in the top right that lets you hide the tiles.
dlevine 15y ago
It's funny how things come full circle. Circa 2004, Firefox was the browser that forced Microsoft to reinstate its browser team (which had been disbanded around 2001 after the release of IE6). It had a revolutionary interface, and did a lot of things right (although it did lack some important features that IE6 had). Firefox was pretty much static after that point, adding important features (such as contenteditable), but not pushing the envelope much in terms of interface. Then Chrome came out. It was rough around the edges, but Google released a new version every few months, and it quickly improved to the point where it was better than everything else. It represented a generational change in user interface paradigms and development cycle time. So now Firefox has been forced to play catch-up to Chrome, much as IE had to play catch-up to Firefox. To be fair, this happened when Firefox abandoned the monolithic development cycle, but the UI changes represent the full acknowledgement of this. I wonder where the next revolutionary browser will come from. My intuition is that it will be on the mobile side...
- kibwen 15y ago
  This is a bit of a long shot, but Mozilla is actually in the preliminary planning phase of building a highly-parallel browser engine in order to take better advantage of the parallel nature of future hardware, specifically in the mobile space. A presentation on it here: http://www.slideshare.net/BrendanEich/future-tense-7782010 http://www.slideshare.net/BrendanEich/future-tense-7782010 Of course, students of history will remember what happened the last time that Mozilla/Netscape tried rewriting their browser engine: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html Hopefully things will go a bit more smoothly this time. :) And of course this is all just research at this point, none of this might ever see an actual release.
  - 0xABADC0DA 15y ago
    My problem with Joel here is that he's taking a good rule, not to rewrite software unnecessarily, and trying to make it universal. Well it's not a universal rule to never scrap code. Sometimes the software is just so bad, so complicated, so wrong for the task that it must be scrapped. Large parts of Navigator, but also other things like OS 9 are examples. The original Mac OS was simply not cut out for an internet age -- like Windows 9x it couldn't be reworked to something current. Even if Mozilla fails to keep their browser relevant, the investment is sure to pay off with a new widely respected system programming language. If you follow the reception of Rust virtually everybody seems impressed with the rationality and practicality of its design choices, explained and backed by solid engineering. Compared to the nearly universally panned golang (series of arbitrary decisions) or even Dart (decisions not backed by metrics), it's hard to imagine that Rust won't have a major impact on the industry -- that alone is worth scrapping the browser engine and rewriting from scratch.
    - Supermighty 15y ago
      Mac OS9 wasn't scrapped. It ran next to OSX for many years and powered apps that hadn't converted to use the Carbon API that allowed OS9 apps to run on OSX.
    - 15y ago
lean 15y ago
clubbin baby seals?
asr 15y ago
Eh... not such a big deal to me. I would like to use Firefox--I think Google's privacy changes demonstrate why it's still important to have a non-profit in this space--but these changes are not going to lure me back to Firefox. I moved to Chrome because Chrome is faster. I know Firefox has worked on their speed, and it may be I only notice a difference because I'm on a netbook, or because the Firefox versions of my extensions are more poorly written than their Chrome counterparts. But for whatever reason, Chrome feels faster to me--both in general, and also due to other nice touches like its ability to open PDFs without launching Acrobat. The window-dressing is nice, but just as search quality is the most important thing in search engines, and auto-complete, instant search, etc. are mostly secondary, speed to render the site appropriately is the primary indicator of browser quality; new-tab windows and the like are nice-to-haves. As far as I can tell, Chrome is still winning on speed, and I hope Mozilla is devoting appropriate resources (read: 90%) to changing that. EDIT: as an aside, I know downvotes are somewhat amorphous on HN, and I shouldn't take them personally, but it bugs me that when I take some time to try to write a thoughtful (though admittedly critical) reaction to news, I get voted down to -1 (at least 5 downvotes) for my trouble. I've seen similar reactions frequently in other threads, and it saddens me that this is apparently now common HN behavior. This response is just not conducive to building a community. The responses here are great--if you think my comment is wrong, upvote those instead. Meanwhile, excuse me while I leave HN...
- whichdan 15y ago
  Just an aside, Foxit[1] is much faster than Acrobat, and I'm pretty sure FireFox can open Foxit inside a tab. [1] http://www.foxitsoftware.com/Secure_PDF_Reader/ http://www.foxitsoftware.com/Secure_PDF_Reader/
  - Deinumite 15y ago
    I don't like how foxit is distributed, I'm not a fan of any software that attempts to sneak toolbar installs with it. That aside foxit is way faster than Acrobat.
    - cagey 15y ago
ward 15y ago
Was this really that "long-awaited"? I for one quite like a clean New Tab and if I did want something like the envisioned, then I don't think 3 by 3 would quite cut it. Not to mention that if people were really that anxious for it, I would be pretty sure they could find an addon with that kind of function. Good thing that like just about everything in Firefox, you can configure it to your needs when it lands. :) Side note, for those interested of an overview of planned features in Firefox: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Release_Tracking https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Release_Tracking
zyb09 15y ago
I think it's time to switch back to Firefox, Chrome is freezing a lot for me lately (Aw, Snap!). The only thing I miss is the universal search/URL/autocomplete bar, is there an extension for this?
- gkoberger 15y ago
  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/omnibar/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/omnibar/ I can't speak to the quality of it, however. I use ctrl+l for URLs and ctrl+k for search, and am so used to it I don't even notice (especially since Firefox's AwesomeBar tends to have better results for me than Chrome's OmniBar).
- mnazim 15y ago
  Not for everybody, but if you are a vim user, Pentadactyl is the plugin to have. http://dactyl.sourceforge.net/pentadactyl/ http://dactyl.sourceforge.net/pentadactyl/ Once you are used to it, in my opinion, it puts the other address bar goodies to a shame.
ExpiredLink 15y ago
BTW, this description is mostly up to date for current FF versions: http://www.howtogeek.com/58035/how-to-make-firefox-4-look-like-firefox-3/ http://www.howtogeek.com/58035/how-to-make-firefox-4-look-li...
baby 15y ago
Am I the only one who's still waiting, version after version that they let users put the tabs on the left?
- gkoberger 15y ago
  Try this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...
figital 15y ago
They had a design challenge related to this awhile back. I think I received the lowest score of the entrants for this desktop metaphor concept: http://vimeo.com/9451028 http://vimeo.com/9451028 (pardon my rookie screencasting skills). I think in the end though those favorite sites aren't much different than active windows, "top apps" is quite similar to a quick launch bar ... and the sidebar chat window looks like ... a sidebar chat window. That's the way things will go #IMHO. Firefox 12 looks like a great gateway toward this.

45 points by kennjason 15y ago

nextparadigms 15y ago

Is that WebRTC with GTalk contacts on the home page?

AgentIcarus 15y ago
The title of the image is "firefox-home-tab-mockup" - I don't think it represents the current state of the art.

kibwen 15y ago

I wish I could find the source for this, but I recall one of the Mozilla designers saying that the reason they were reticent to implement a speed-dial in the new tab page was because they envisioned the new tab page as a blank slate for when you're on-task, free from the distractions of your favorite websites. As someone with mild ADD, I agree with this assessment. Don't get me wrong; it's nice that this feature exists. But, personally, I'll be disabling it immediately.

mrsebastian 15y ago
Yep, FWIW there's a little 'X' in the top right that lets you hide the tiles.

dlevine 15y ago

It's funny how things come full circle. Circa 2004, Firefox was the browser that forced Microsoft to reinstate its browser team (which had been disbanded around 2001 after the release of IE6). It had a revolutionary interface, and did a lot of things right (although it did lack some important features that IE6 had). Firefox was pretty much static after that point, adding important features (such as contenteditable), but not pushing the envelope much in terms of interface. Then Chrome came out. It was rough around the edges, but Google released a new version every few months, and it quickly improved to the point where it was better than everything else. It represented a generational change in user interface paradigms and development cycle time. So now Firefox has been forced to play catch-up to Chrome, much as IE had to play catch-up to Firefox. To be fair, this happened when Firefox abandoned the monolithic development cycle, but the UI changes represent the full acknowledgement of this. I wonder where the next revolutionary browser will come from. My intuition is that it will be on the mobile side...

kibwen 15y ago
This is a bit of a long shot, but Mozilla is actually in the preliminary planning phase of building a highly-parallel browser engine in order to take better advantage of the parallel nature of future hardware, specifically in the mobile space. A presentation on it here: http://www.slideshare.net/BrendanEich/future-tense-7782010 http://www.slideshare.net/BrendanEich/future-tense-7782010 Of course, students of history will remember what happened the last time that Mozilla/Netscape tried rewriting their browser engine: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html Hopefully things will go a bit more smoothly this time. :) And of course this is all just research at this point, none of this might ever see an actual release.
- 0xABADC0DA 15y ago
  My problem with Joel here is that he's taking a good rule, not to rewrite software unnecessarily, and trying to make it universal. Well it's not a universal rule to never scrap code. Sometimes the software is just so bad, so complicated, so wrong for the task that it must be scrapped. Large parts of Navigator, but also other things like OS 9 are examples. The original Mac OS was simply not cut out for an internet age -- like Windows 9x it couldn't be reworked to something current. Even if Mozilla fails to keep their browser relevant, the investment is sure to pay off with a new widely respected system programming language. If you follow the reception of Rust virtually everybody seems impressed with the rationality and practicality of its design choices, explained and backed by solid engineering. Compared to the nearly universally panned golang (series of arbitrary decisions) or even Dart (decisions not backed by metrics), it's hard to imagine that Rust won't have a major impact on the industry -- that alone is worth scrapping the browser engine and rewriting from scratch.
  - Supermighty 15y ago
    Mac OS9 wasn't scrapped. It ran next to OSX for many years and powered apps that hadn't converted to use the Carbon API that allowed OS9 apps to run on OSX.
  - 15y ago

lean 15y ago

clubbin baby seals?

asr 15y ago

Eh... not such a big deal to me. I would like to use Firefox--I think Google's privacy changes demonstrate why it's still important to have a non-profit in this space--but these changes are not going to lure me back to Firefox. I moved to Chrome because Chrome is faster. I know Firefox has worked on their speed, and it may be I only notice a difference because I'm on a netbook, or because the Firefox versions of my extensions are more poorly written than their Chrome counterparts. But for whatever reason, Chrome feels faster to me--both in general, and also due to other nice touches like its ability to open PDFs without launching Acrobat. The window-dressing is nice, but just as search quality is the most important thing in search engines, and auto-complete, instant search, etc. are mostly secondary, speed to render the site appropriately is the primary indicator of browser quality; new-tab windows and the like are nice-to-haves. As far as I can tell, Chrome is still winning on speed, and I hope Mozilla is devoting appropriate resources (read: 90%) to changing that. EDIT: as an aside, I know downvotes are somewhat amorphous on HN, and I shouldn't take them personally, but it bugs me that when I take some time to try to write a thoughtful (though admittedly critical) reaction to news, I get voted down to -1 (at least 5 downvotes) for my trouble. I've seen similar reactions frequently in other threads, and it saddens me that this is apparently now common HN behavior. This response is just not conducive to building a community. The responses here are great--if you think my comment is wrong, upvote those instead. Meanwhile, excuse me while I leave HN...

whichdan 15y ago
Just an aside, Foxit[1] is much faster than Acrobat, and I'm pretty sure FireFox can open Foxit inside a tab. [1] http://www.foxitsoftware.com/Secure_PDF_Reader/ http://www.foxitsoftware.com/Secure_PDF_Reader/
- Deinumite 15y ago
  I don't like how foxit is distributed, I'm not a fan of any software that attempts to sneak toolbar installs with it. That aside foxit is way faster than Acrobat.
  - cagey 15y ago

ward 15y ago

Was this really that "long-awaited"? I for one quite like a clean New Tab and if I did want something like the envisioned, then I don't think 3 by 3 would quite cut it. Not to mention that if people were really that anxious for it, I would be pretty sure they could find an addon with that kind of function. Good thing that like just about everything in Firefox, you can configure it to your needs when it lands. :) Side note, for those interested of an overview of planned features in Firefox: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Release_Tracking https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Release_Tracking

zyb09 15y ago

I think it's time to switch back to Firefox, Chrome is freezing a lot for me lately (Aw, Snap!). The only thing I miss is the universal search/URL/autocomplete bar, is there an extension for this?

gkoberger 15y ago
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/omnibar/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/omnibar/ I can't speak to the quality of it, however. I use ctrl+l for URLs and ctrl+k for search, and am so used to it I don't even notice (especially since Firefox's AwesomeBar tends to have better results for me than Chrome's OmniBar).
mnazim 15y ago
Not for everybody, but if you are a vim user, Pentadactyl is the plugin to have. http://dactyl.sourceforge.net/pentadactyl/ http://dactyl.sourceforge.net/pentadactyl/ Once you are used to it, in my opinion, it puts the other address bar goodies to a shame.

ExpiredLink 15y ago

BTW, this description is mostly up to date for current FF versions: http://www.howtogeek.com/58035/how-to-make-firefox-4-look-like-firefox-3/ http://www.howtogeek.com/58035/how-to-make-firefox-4-look-li...

baby 15y ago

Am I the only one who's still waiting, version after version that they let users put the tabs on the left?

gkoberger 15y ago
Try this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

figital 15y ago

They had a design challenge related to this awhile back. I think I received the lowest score of the entrants for this desktop metaphor concept: http://vimeo.com/9451028 http://vimeo.com/9451028 (pardon my rookie screencasting skills). I think in the end though those favorite sites aren't much different than active windows, "top apps" is quite similar to a quick launch bar ... and the sidebar chat window looks like ... a sidebar chat window. That's the way things will go #IMHO. Firefox 12 looks like a great gateway toward this.