7 ms·

The forward button is now hidden until you navigate back. The cost of inconsistency and confusion is not worth the 40px of extra address bar space.

starwed 15y ago
I've been using the Firefox nightly channel for a while, and I had never even noticed this change til it was pointed out to me. I think you're overestimating the opportunity for confusion, here... :) -edit- I'm using OS X, perhaps the change is somehow more obvious on other systems?
- skeletonjelly 15y ago
  > the opportunity for confusion I like this phrase. It makes me aware of bad practices. Studying anti-design patterns.
  - soapdog 15y ago
    I think that "Studing Anti-Design Patterns" is a great name for a band... =)
Zirro 15y ago
On OS X at least, this looks really good and I haven't found it a bother at all. Then again, I'm probably not the average computer user. As it is only hidden when there is no forward-history, and the user wouldn't be looking for it at that time, I still believe it's a good change.
- kijin 15y ago
  when there is no forward-history, the user wouldn't be looking for it The only way I can tell whether or not I have any forward-history is by checking whether or not the forward button is disabled. If the button is altogether missing, I'm going to wonder for a split second if I did something wrong the last time I tried to customize my toolbar. Well, I guess I'll get used to it after a few days. Still, I wonder if there's some usability testing data comparing the lack of a button with a disabled button. A disabled button conveys different information from the lack of a button. Every web browser is trying to be minimalistic these days, but there's got to be a point where any further minimalization hurts usability rather than helping it.
  - starwed 15y ago
    They did some user studies and found that a fair number of folk never use the forward button at all. Here's one study, not sure if it is the most recent: https://heatmap.mozillalabs.com/ https://heatmap.mozillalabs.com/ 40% of users never touched the forward button even once. And those who did use it, didn't use it very often. Several of the very low% UI elements (like RSS or Go) were removed completely from the default setup.
    - kijin 15y ago
      40% of users never touched the forward button even once. Another way to interpret that data would be "60% of users at least sometimes use the forward button." The back-forward pair of arrows conveys a very intuitive idea for most people. In the absence of a "forward" button, I wonder how many FF10 users will accidentally click "refresh" thinking that it's the "forward" button. After all, the arrow in the "refresh" button points in the opposite direction of the arrow in the "back" button, and now the two buttons are side by side. It's not difficult to imagine them as a pair. Yeah, one arrow is straight and the other one is curly, but I often think of "forward" as "undo back", and many programs represent undo/redo with curly arrows.
      - JoshTriplett 15y ago
        The refresh button has moved since that diagram. It, along with the stop button, now lives on the right edge of the location bar, far away from the back button.
        kijin 15y ago
        Ah, I'd forgotten that. That would invalidate my last point. IIRC, I moved the refresh button right back to its original location as soon as the change happened, a couple of versions ago.
      - starwed 15y ago
        Sure, but the forward button hasn't been removed -- you can still use it, but only when there's actually a forward stack. I think the ratio of back to forward button uses was something like 100:3 in that study. (I rarely use either button -- I used to use keyboard shortcuts, and now use a trackpad swipe.)
Silhouette 15y ago
Yes. This constant urge to remove any browser chrome possible is getting more and more irritating. It's basically a textbook UI anti-pattern that some fool thinks is a good idea and some other fools are copying. I have a nice, large monitor that runs at a nice, high resolution. In fact, I have several. Not even my laptops are short of screen space these days. Some of this is high-end kit, but entry-level monitors are widescreen and run at decent resolutions these days too. Space for an extra icon in a consistent position is nothing in this context. However, the irritation from having UI elements or page content move around under-cursor is significant, and the irritation from having to click multiple times or click-and-hold to access functions that used to be one-click is also great, particularly if you first have to guess which of the entirely meaningless icon thingies might hide the secret menu with the item you're looking for, or remember which browser you're using so you know whether the icon you want is on the left or the right of the other unlabelled random icon thingies and whichever text box bar thingies we're drawing this week. I'm all for innovation, but we have platform UI standards for a reason. Breaking them because you think your software is more important than everyone else's isn't clever. Being the company that also makes the OS and wrote the platform UI standards is no excuse, either.
- kijin 15y ago
  I think we have two groups of people to blame for this phenomenon: (A) "Novices" who get confused when presented with more than a handful of buttons, because they never bother to figure out what those buttons do. BTW, what's a browser? You mean Google? No, I use Bing. (B) "Experts" who don't care whether or not there are buttons in the UI, because they know where everything is hidden, and they use keyboard shortcuts anyway. Meanwhile, everything Apple does must be the One True Way. When Group B makes software for Group A, you get the results you're describing. Caught in the middle are a large number of moderately proficient users who rely on explicit visual cues (buttons, arrows, menus) to perform tasks.
hobin 15y ago
<.< >.> People actually use those buttons?
smosher 15y ago
This is an odd thing to complain about. Sure it's a UI faux pas, but it's nothing compared the the creative placement of cancel buttons that's been introduced in 4+. It took me a full day to figure out why 90% of the files I downloaded were nowhere to be found.
ck2 15y ago
I fixed it with this https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-3-theme-for-firefox/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-3-the... and this https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/backforward-dropmarker/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/backforward-d... And now I am happily back in Firefox 3 / 4 days. Looks perfect.
- kijin 15y ago
  In recent versions of Firefox, the back-forward dropdown menu can be activated with a right click over the back-forward buttons. No need for an add-on for that.
w1ntermute 15y ago
I think it's wonderful. I'd been doing this since the days of Firefox 2.x, using a custom userChrome.css file that hid the back and forward buttons, and combined the stop and reload buttons. But ever since I discovered Vimperator (I've now moved on to Pentadactyl), I've hidden all the chrome buttons, since they're entirely unnecessary.
- tabaflaba 15y ago
  What's the difference between Pentadactyl and Vimperator?
  - pavelludiq 15y ago
    Pentadactyl -> Vimperator <=> XEmacs -> GNU Emacs. Its a political fork and PD maintainers claim its more actively maintained and developed.
    - chousuke 15y ago
      In my experience, Pentadactyl is more actively developed. The people who started PD were the two most active developers of Vimperator before the fork. PD has since diverged enough from Vimperator that the code bases are almost entirely incompatible.
dave5104 15y ago
For what it's worth, Nielsen just released an alertbox today about "chrome" and the user experience. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ui-chrome.html http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ui-chrome.html The general gist is that /too much/ chrome is bad, and a good way to fix it could be to temporarily hide parts of the chrome, as long as it's consistent in how to find it again and that there is a simple and reliable way to re-enable it. It seems that Mozilla nailed the consistency (in this case, the forward button will always come back when the user goes back), but I'm wary of the "simple and reliable" method of re-enabling it. From what I understand, you technically can't make the forward button show up until you go back, correct? You can't always reliably go "back", especially if you're on the first page when opening a new tab. I'd say that Firefox is violating design guidelines (or whatever you'd want to call the research just put out by Nielsen today).
serge2k 15y ago
yeah, but they seem to love that type of thing. Lets hide the http:// http:// prefix... but we have to show it on https connections so really we have accomplished nothing.

starwed 15y ago

I've been using the Firefox nightly channel for a while, and I had never even noticed this change til it was pointed out to me. I think you're overestimating the opportunity for confusion, here... :) -edit- I'm using OS X, perhaps the change is somehow more obvious on other systems?

skeletonjelly 15y ago
> the opportunity for confusion I like this phrase. It makes me aware of bad practices. Studying anti-design patterns.
- soapdog 15y ago
  I think that "Studing Anti-Design Patterns" is a great name for a band... =)

Zirro 15y ago

On OS X at least, this looks really good and I haven't found it a bother at all. Then again, I'm probably not the average computer user. As it is only hidden when there is no forward-history, and the user wouldn't be looking for it at that time, I still believe it's a good change.

kijin 15y ago
when there is no forward-history, the user wouldn't be looking for it The only way I can tell whether or not I have any forward-history is by checking whether or not the forward button is disabled. If the button is altogether missing, I'm going to wonder for a split second if I did something wrong the last time I tried to customize my toolbar. Well, I guess I'll get used to it after a few days. Still, I wonder if there's some usability testing data comparing the lack of a button with a disabled button. A disabled button conveys different information from the lack of a button. Every web browser is trying to be minimalistic these days, but there's got to be a point where any further minimalization hurts usability rather than helping it.
- starwed 15y ago
  They did some user studies and found that a fair number of folk never use the forward button at all. Here's one study, not sure if it is the most recent: https://heatmap.mozillalabs.com/ https://heatmap.mozillalabs.com/ 40% of users never touched the forward button even once. And those who did use it, didn't use it very often. Several of the very low% UI elements (like RSS or Go) were removed completely from the default setup.
  - kijin 15y ago
    40% of users never touched the forward button even once. Another way to interpret that data would be "60% of users at least sometimes use the forward button." The back-forward pair of arrows conveys a very intuitive idea for most people. In the absence of a "forward" button, I wonder how many FF10 users will accidentally click "refresh" thinking that it's the "forward" button. After all, the arrow in the "refresh" button points in the opposite direction of the arrow in the "back" button, and now the two buttons are side by side. It's not difficult to imagine them as a pair. Yeah, one arrow is straight and the other one is curly, but I often think of "forward" as "undo back", and many programs represent undo/redo with curly arrows.
    - JoshTriplett 15y ago
      The refresh button has moved since that diagram. It, along with the stop button, now lives on the right edge of the location bar, far away from the back button.
      - kijin 15y ago
        Ah, I'd forgotten that. That would invalidate my last point. IIRC, I moved the refresh button right back to its original location as soon as the change happened, a couple of versions ago.
    - starwed 15y ago
      Sure, but the forward button hasn't been removed -- you can still use it, but only when there's actually a forward stack. I think the ratio of back to forward button uses was something like 100:3 in that study. (I rarely use either button -- I used to use keyboard shortcuts, and now use a trackpad swipe.)

Silhouette 15y ago

Yes. This constant urge to remove any browser chrome possible is getting more and more irritating. It's basically a textbook UI anti-pattern that some fool thinks is a good idea and some other fools are copying. I have a nice, large monitor that runs at a nice, high resolution. In fact, I have several. Not even my laptops are short of screen space these days. Some of this is high-end kit, but entry-level monitors are widescreen and run at decent resolutions these days too. Space for an extra icon in a consistent position is nothing in this context. However, the irritation from having UI elements or page content move around under-cursor is significant, and the irritation from having to click multiple times or click-and-hold to access functions that used to be one-click is also great, particularly if you first have to guess which of the entirely meaningless icon thingies might hide the secret menu with the item you're looking for, or remember which browser you're using so you know whether the icon you want is on the left or the right of the other unlabelled random icon thingies and whichever text box bar thingies we're drawing this week. I'm all for innovation, but we have platform UI standards for a reason. Breaking them because you think your software is more important than everyone else's isn't clever. Being the company that also makes the OS and wrote the platform UI standards is no excuse, either.

kijin 15y ago
I think we have two groups of people to blame for this phenomenon: (A) "Novices" who get confused when presented with more than a handful of buttons, because they never bother to figure out what those buttons do. BTW, what's a browser? You mean Google? No, I use Bing. (B) "Experts" who don't care whether or not there are buttons in the UI, because they know where everything is hidden, and they use keyboard shortcuts anyway. Meanwhile, everything Apple does must be the One True Way. When Group B makes software for Group A, you get the results you're describing. Caught in the middle are a large number of moderately proficient users who rely on explicit visual cues (buttons, arrows, menus) to perform tasks.

hobin 15y ago

<.< >.> People actually use those buttons?

smosher 15y ago

This is an odd thing to complain about. Sure it's a UI faux pas, but it's nothing compared the the creative placement of cancel buttons that's been introduced in 4+. It took me a full day to figure out why 90% of the files I downloaded were nowhere to be found.

ck2 15y ago

I fixed it with this https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-3-theme-for-firefox/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-3-the... and this https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/backforward-dropmarker/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/backforward-d... And now I am happily back in Firefox 3 / 4 days. Looks perfect.

kijin 15y ago
In recent versions of Firefox, the back-forward dropdown menu can be activated with a right click over the back-forward buttons. No need for an add-on for that.

w1ntermute 15y ago

I think it's wonderful. I'd been doing this since the days of Firefox 2.x, using a custom userChrome.css file that hid the back and forward buttons, and combined the stop and reload buttons. But ever since I discovered Vimperator (I've now moved on to Pentadactyl), I've hidden all the chrome buttons, since they're entirely unnecessary.

tabaflaba 15y ago
What's the difference between Pentadactyl and Vimperator?
- pavelludiq 15y ago
  Pentadactyl -> Vimperator <=> XEmacs -> GNU Emacs. Its a political fork and PD maintainers claim its more actively maintained and developed.
  - chousuke 15y ago
    In my experience, Pentadactyl is more actively developed. The people who started PD were the two most active developers of Vimperator before the fork. PD has since diverged enough from Vimperator that the code bases are almost entirely incompatible.

dave5104 15y ago

For what it's worth, Nielsen just released an alertbox today about "chrome" and the user experience. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ui-chrome.html http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ui-chrome.html The general gist is that /too much/ chrome is bad, and a good way to fix it could be to temporarily hide parts of the chrome, as long as it's consistent in how to find it again and that there is a simple and reliable way to re-enable it. It seems that Mozilla nailed the consistency (in this case, the forward button will always come back when the user goes back), but I'm wary of the "simple and reliable" method of re-enabling it. From what I understand, you technically can't make the forward button show up until you go back, correct? You can't always reliably go "back", especially if you're on the first page when opening a new tab. I'd say that Firefox is violating design guidelines (or whatever you'd want to call the research just put out by Nielsen today).

serge2k 15y ago

yeah, but they seem to love that type of thing. Lets hide the http:// http:// prefix... but we have to show it on https connections so really we have accomplished nothing.