6 ms·

Product Design at Mozilla

46 points by mbrubeck 14y ago

tferris 14y ago
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” Sorry guys, I won't believe that you will define the future of browsers in any way—significant innovations in this space have always been presented by other parties the last years.
- Erunno 14y ago
  This is probably why so many features from Mozilla end up in other browsers: -Notification bar in pretty much all browsers. -Doorhanger panels -Download pane which Safari managed to release first (unfortunately a common pattern) -HTML5 video which Mozilla implemented first -Do not track -AwesomeBar which now all other browsers emulate with different degrees of success. -Firebug which set the standard for web development tools. And so on, and so on. The other browsers also contribute great innovations to the browser space and this is a great situation for the end user, but I don't really like how Mozilla is kept getting downplayed.
  - primatology 14y ago
    Agreed that Firefox gets less credit than it deserves. But Google realized with Chrome that the biggest part of the browsing experience is not the browser chrome or features, but speed. The single greatest user experience enhancement is responsiveness. Anecdotally, there was a year or two where Chrome (and Safari, by extension) were lightening-quick. Firefox felt like it was crawling, by comparison, and gave up a good chunk of its market share. I've heard Firefox is snappy again, though I haven't seriously used it myself, but the damage is done.
    - Silhouette 14y ago
      I've heard Firefox is snappy again, though I haven't seriously used it myself, but the damage is done. Firefox still doesn't isolate separate web pages in different tabs from each other and the main browser UI. If you open a group of tabs and one of the pages is slow to load, or later you have an AJAX request going on in some tab that takes a long time to get a response, your whole browser UI will often go into a trance. In fairness, they are working to improve this, but Firefox is several years behind the curve in this area. Until this is fixed, it really hurts any benefits from otherwise useful features like having tabs and bookmark folders in the first place.
      - cpeterso 14y ago
        The biggest challenge with per-tab processes (Firefox's Electrolysis or e10s feature) is maintaining add-on compatibility. Chrome didn't have add-ons at first and didn't need to worry about backwards compatibility (at the time). Firefox is also working on per-tab event queues to improve UI responsiveness. In the meantime, I recommend Firefox users check out the experimental "Suspend Background Tabs" add-on. Written by the author of Adblock Plus, Suspend Background Tabs will pause JavaScript execution and timers for background tabs. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/suspend-background-tabs/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/suspend-backg...
      - Erunno 14y ago
        I know I start sounding like a broken record for those who read my comments regularly in these kind of threads, but I always feel inclined to point out that Chrome's much-lauded architecture has clear limitations once you start to push it too hard. I'm certainly not a typical user as I exhibit heavy tab usage. And I've used Chrome for weeks at times as my primary browser so I've come to know its advantages and disadvantages. Web pages may be given their own processes but they are not completely isolated from the browser process (containing the UI) since they have to communicate in order for the user to have something to see and interact with. And there are bottle-necks in the browser process. With too many open, active tabs the interface starts to stall badly. And the memory usage goes through the roof which causes the OS to swap pages from other applications out of memory which really hampers performance of the entire system. Chrome is optimized for the common case (very few tabs) but it doesn't scale well (i.e. at all) beyond this. Whatever Mozilla will do to lessen the impact of content on the interface, I hope that they won't go down the same disastrous path as Chrome and make the browser unusable for any use other than the browser is optimized for. Right now I can have ~100 tabs open with Firefox thanks to excellent memory usage (including suspending tabs) and an interfaces which scales well (Panorama, switch to tab, tab overflow, etc.) But I can see why Chrome is so attractive for many users. If you stay within its comfort zone the responsiveness is extremely pleasant in day-to-day usage.
        Silhouette 14y ago
        Just to be clear, I didn't say anything about Chrome in my GP post. In fact, basically every other browser is much better than Firefox in this respect, and has been for a long time now. I do take your point about using tabs heavily and the limitations of some other browsers. I too will often use many tabs if I'm researching something or just browsing social news/comment sites like HN. On the other hand, I typically load a tab group of about half a dozen such news sites a couple of times a day, and Firefox goes into a trance for quite a while every time until those pages have all finished doing their thing, so it's not exactly performing well with even a few tabs either.
  - johnchristopher 14y ago
    To chrome/chromium's credit, these are the browsers that promoted a less clutered menu (orange firefox toolbar was introduced two years later). I don't remember which vendor introduced the one-click star button to bookmark pages but it's a good idea too. I also remember that the ie7 rss/atom summary page is still more elegant than mozilla. I am sad no other mozilla software is enjoying the same success as firefox. All the "lab" experiments are in one way or another incorporated into the browsers but they never get established as perenial applications (it might not be the objective though). I still believe there is room for a easier-to-use xul application toolkit and a better "communication" hub aka thunderbird.
  - doublec 14y ago
    "-HTML5 video which Mozilla implemented first" I worked on the Mozilla HTML video implementation. Opera came up with the original proposal and presented a first experimental implementation. We started implementing this to be compatible. Apple then presented their much more complicated proposal which was integrated with the Opera one and became HTML 5 video, along with feedback from other implementers, including Mozilla. So it's a bit more complicated than "Mozilla implemented first".
    - Erunno 14y ago
      Mea culpa, I didn't want to steal the thunder from the great guys at Opera. From my end user perspective I only remember Opera supporting the <video> tag in a version which was released almost a year after Firefox 3.5 [1]. [1] http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/introduction-html5-video/ http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/introduction-html5-video/
amartya916 14y ago
Congratulations to the Product design team at Mozilla. I loved what they've done with 'Junior', the browser on the iPad. For people who want to dive into the video for the demo, go to approx. 31mins.; otherwise, here's a summary of the stand out features: a. Full screen browsing. No URL/address bar eating up screen real-estate. b. Two translucent buttons on the sides, very close to where one would grip the iPad (easy access with the thumbs). These two buttons are the "<" (back) and "+". "+" allows you to access other fullscreen sites currently active in the browser and add new ones. c. Party trick, drag on the buttons (again possible comfortably with the thumbs) mentioned above to expose "forward", "print" etc. Beautifully done, looks slick.
btipling 14y ago
That is interesting, but Mozilla needs to focus on making its browser consume less memory and CPU when idle. These are the things that are killing its marketshare and leading users to switch to alternatives. Every time I see initiatives like the password account manager, iOS apps that use web view, a browser based editor and what not I just scratch my head because Firefox marketshare is plummeting and the old refrain "just wait until the next version" was tired since 3.0. Instead the general response is to get defensive and list new features. Yeah and are those new features stopping the user drain? Nope. Firefox is a sluggish memory sucking heap of software that drains resources even when it isn't being used. I love and cherish Firefox as a product and a brand, because you have achieved a lot in your past. But now you are failing and it is depressing to see this happen.
- amartya916 14y ago
  I would love to know what version of Firefox (and what platform) you are on. Firefox's total memory usage is in my personal experience better than Chrome right now (OS X 10.7 and Windows 7). As someone mentioned below, Firefox doesn't get due credit when things improve. With Google's massive marketing muscle Chrome ate up a lot of Mozilla marketshare, but to call Firefox failing is completely unfair. If you love and cherish Firefox, contribute to the project. Contributions can be as minimal as being a test pilot.
- asadotzler 14y ago
  Firefox 13, when not overwhelmed by add-ons is the memory champion right now. Seriously, check it out. Download Firefox 13, create a new profile clean from crapware, load up a couple dozen tabs and surf around for a day. Do the same in IE and Chrome. Firefox wins. Firefox 15, just around the corner, has world-beating memory usage and it uses less RAM than any other browser, even when you've got "leaky extensions" installed because we've prevented extensions from causing Firefox leaks.
  - sohn 14y ago
    Let's say Firefox itself makes you want to overwhelm it with addons. Either way it can't do more than Chrome, and Chrome is faster, so why should I use Firefox then?
Samuel_Michon 14y ago
Great, a new browser for the iPad. Not so great: encoding the video demo in a format that doesn't work in Safari on the iPad.
- kaolinite 14y ago
  They provided it in an open format, it's not their fault if Safari doesn't support it.
  - Samuel_Michon 14y ago
    I bet this is a very effective way for them to reach their target audience, not at all a huge waste of time and money. Next, they should release some whitepapers about their new iOS browser in ODF format and a podcast in Ogg Vorbis, that will really get the word out there.
gemlog 14y ago
"What are we doing to make sure that the ones working to disrupt Mozilla’s products is Mozilla itself" Stop. Just stop it. All my users are sick of re-learning an app they've been using for years already. Every time they face relearning the FF interface means it's just that much easier to try something else -- and they do. Huge exodus to chrome(ium).

46 points by mbrubeck 14y ago

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” Sorry guys, I won't believe that you will define the future of browsers in any way—significant innovations in this space have always been presented by other parties the last years.

Erunno 14y ago
This is probably why so many features from Mozilla end up in other browsers: -Notification bar in pretty much all browsers. -Doorhanger panels -Download pane which Safari managed to release first (unfortunately a common pattern) -HTML5 video which Mozilla implemented first -Do not track -AwesomeBar which now all other browsers emulate with different degrees of success. -Firebug which set the standard for web development tools. And so on, and so on. The other browsers also contribute great innovations to the browser space and this is a great situation for the end user, but I don't really like how Mozilla is kept getting downplayed.
- primatology 14y ago
  Agreed that Firefox gets less credit than it deserves. But Google realized with Chrome that the biggest part of the browsing experience is not the browser chrome or features, but speed. The single greatest user experience enhancement is responsiveness. Anecdotally, there was a year or two where Chrome (and Safari, by extension) were lightening-quick. Firefox felt like it was crawling, by comparison, and gave up a good chunk of its market share. I've heard Firefox is snappy again, though I haven't seriously used it myself, but the damage is done.
  - Silhouette 14y ago
    I've heard Firefox is snappy again, though I haven't seriously used it myself, but the damage is done. Firefox still doesn't isolate separate web pages in different tabs from each other and the main browser UI. If you open a group of tabs and one of the pages is slow to load, or later you have an AJAX request going on in some tab that takes a long time to get a response, your whole browser UI will often go into a trance. In fairness, they are working to improve this, but Firefox is several years behind the curve in this area. Until this is fixed, it really hurts any benefits from otherwise useful features like having tabs and bookmark folders in the first place.
    - cpeterso 14y ago
      The biggest challenge with per-tab processes (Firefox's Electrolysis or e10s feature) is maintaining add-on compatibility. Chrome didn't have add-ons at first and didn't need to worry about backwards compatibility (at the time). Firefox is also working on per-tab event queues to improve UI responsiveness. In the meantime, I recommend Firefox users check out the experimental "Suspend Background Tabs" add-on. Written by the author of Adblock Plus, Suspend Background Tabs will pause JavaScript execution and timers for background tabs. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/suspend-background-tabs/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/suspend-backg...
    - Erunno 14y ago
      I know I start sounding like a broken record for those who read my comments regularly in these kind of threads, but I always feel inclined to point out that Chrome's much-lauded architecture has clear limitations once you start to push it too hard. I'm certainly not a typical user as I exhibit heavy tab usage. And I've used Chrome for weeks at times as my primary browser so I've come to know its advantages and disadvantages. Web pages may be given their own processes but they are not completely isolated from the browser process (containing the UI) since they have to communicate in order for the user to have something to see and interact with. And there are bottle-necks in the browser process. With too many open, active tabs the interface starts to stall badly. And the memory usage goes through the roof which causes the OS to swap pages from other applications out of memory which really hampers performance of the entire system. Chrome is optimized for the common case (very few tabs) but it doesn't scale well (i.e. at all) beyond this. Whatever Mozilla will do to lessen the impact of content on the interface, I hope that they won't go down the same disastrous path as Chrome and make the browser unusable for any use other than the browser is optimized for. Right now I can have ~100 tabs open with Firefox thanks to excellent memory usage (including suspending tabs) and an interfaces which scales well (Panorama, switch to tab, tab overflow, etc.) But I can see why Chrome is so attractive for many users. If you stay within its comfort zone the responsiveness is extremely pleasant in day-to-day usage.
      - Silhouette 14y ago
        Just to be clear, I didn't say anything about Chrome in my GP post. In fact, basically every other browser is much better than Firefox in this respect, and has been for a long time now. I do take your point about using tabs heavily and the limitations of some other browsers. I too will often use many tabs if I'm researching something or just browsing social news/comment sites like HN. On the other hand, I typically load a tab group of about half a dozen such news sites a couple of times a day, and Firefox goes into a trance for quite a while every time until those pages have all finished doing their thing, so it's not exactly performing well with even a few tabs either.
- johnchristopher 14y ago
  To chrome/chromium's credit, these are the browsers that promoted a less clutered menu (orange firefox toolbar was introduced two years later). I don't remember which vendor introduced the one-click star button to bookmark pages but it's a good idea too. I also remember that the ie7 rss/atom summary page is still more elegant than mozilla. I am sad no other mozilla software is enjoying the same success as firefox. All the "lab" experiments are in one way or another incorporated into the browsers but they never get established as perenial applications (it might not be the objective though). I still believe there is room for a easier-to-use xul application toolkit and a better "communication" hub aka thunderbird.
- doublec 14y ago
  "-HTML5 video which Mozilla implemented first" I worked on the Mozilla HTML video implementation. Opera came up with the original proposal and presented a first experimental implementation. We started implementing this to be compatible. Apple then presented their much more complicated proposal which was integrated with the Opera one and became HTML 5 video, along with feedback from other implementers, including Mozilla. So it's a bit more complicated than "Mozilla implemented first".
  - Erunno 14y ago
    Mea culpa, I didn't want to steal the thunder from the great guys at Opera. From my end user perspective I only remember Opera supporting the <video> tag in a version which was released almost a year after Firefox 3.5 [1]. [1] http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/introduction-html5-video/ http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/introduction-html5-video/

amartya916 14y ago

Congratulations to the Product design team at Mozilla. I loved what they've done with 'Junior', the browser on the iPad. For people who want to dive into the video for the demo, go to approx. 31mins.; otherwise, here's a summary of the stand out features: a. Full screen browsing. No URL/address bar eating up screen real-estate. b. Two translucent buttons on the sides, very close to where one would grip the iPad (easy access with the thumbs). These two buttons are the "<" (back) and "+". "+" allows you to access other fullscreen sites currently active in the browser and add new ones. c. Party trick, drag on the buttons (again possible comfortably with the thumbs) mentioned above to expose "forward", "print" etc. Beautifully done, looks slick.

btipling 14y ago

That is interesting, but Mozilla needs to focus on making its browser consume less memory and CPU when idle. These are the things that are killing its marketshare and leading users to switch to alternatives. Every time I see initiatives like the password account manager, iOS apps that use web view, a browser based editor and what not I just scratch my head because Firefox marketshare is plummeting and the old refrain "just wait until the next version" was tired since 3.0. Instead the general response is to get defensive and list new features. Yeah and are those new features stopping the user drain? Nope. Firefox is a sluggish memory sucking heap of software that drains resources even when it isn't being used. I love and cherish Firefox as a product and a brand, because you have achieved a lot in your past. But now you are failing and it is depressing to see this happen.

amartya916 14y ago
I would love to know what version of Firefox (and what platform) you are on. Firefox's total memory usage is in my personal experience better than Chrome right now (OS X 10.7 and Windows 7). As someone mentioned below, Firefox doesn't get due credit when things improve. With Google's massive marketing muscle Chrome ate up a lot of Mozilla marketshare, but to call Firefox failing is completely unfair. If you love and cherish Firefox, contribute to the project. Contributions can be as minimal as being a test pilot.
asadotzler 14y ago
Firefox 13, when not overwhelmed by add-ons is the memory champion right now. Seriously, check it out. Download Firefox 13, create a new profile clean from crapware, load up a couple dozen tabs and surf around for a day. Do the same in IE and Chrome. Firefox wins. Firefox 15, just around the corner, has world-beating memory usage and it uses less RAM than any other browser, even when you've got "leaky extensions" installed because we've prevented extensions from causing Firefox leaks.
- sohn 14y ago
  Let's say Firefox itself makes you want to overwhelm it with addons. Either way it can't do more than Chrome, and Chrome is faster, so why should I use Firefox then?

Samuel_Michon 14y ago

Great, a new browser for the iPad. Not so great: encoding the video demo in a format that doesn't work in Safari on the iPad.

kaolinite 14y ago
They provided it in an open format, it's not their fault if Safari doesn't support it.
- Samuel_Michon 14y ago
  I bet this is a very effective way for them to reach their target audience, not at all a huge waste of time and money. Next, they should release some whitepapers about their new iOS browser in ODF format and a podcast in Ogg Vorbis, that will really get the word out there.

gemlog 14y ago

"What are we doing to make sure that the ones working to disrupt Mozilla’s products is Mozilla itself" Stop. Just stop it. All my users are sick of re-learning an app they've been using for years already. Every time they face relearning the FF interface means it's just that much easier to try something else -- and they do. Huge exodus to chrome(ium).