8 ms·

Firefox 25 will get a major UI overhaul

224 points by enthdegree 13y ago

enthdegree 13y ago
They've also made a CSS mockup of the new interface: http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-designSpecs/australis-designSpecs-linux-mainWindow.html http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-design...
- panacea 13y ago
  Which doesn't work in Chrome. heh
lazugod 13y ago
I like what they're doing to signify trust here: https://wiki.mozilla.org/File:PanelMenu-i01-CustomizationMode.jpg https://wiki.mozilla.org/File:PanelMenu-i01-CustomizationMod...
IanChiles 13y ago
If you want to see the work being done done on this, http://people.mozilla.org/~jwein/ux-nightly/ http://people.mozilla.org/~jwein/ux-nightly/ has nightly builds of the Australis UX overhaul. It's still hugely WIP though
kijin 13y ago
It looks beautiful in Windows and OSX. It looks less awful than the current theme in Linux, thanks to the menu button (which usually occupies the position of the leftmost tab in Linux and isn't even orange) being moved to the same location as where Chrome has it. But there still seems to be a lot of wasted space in the titlebar of the Linux theme. I remember reading that this is because certain opendesktop UI guidelines (can't remember which one) prohibit apps from encroaching on the window chrome. But Chrome doesn't care and puts tabs at the top of the chrome anyway, and this is quite useful because you can just push the mouse to the top edge of the screen to click on a tab. With a thick titlebar occupying the edge, on the other hand, you need to aim more carefully.
- w1ntermute 13y ago
  To be honest, I really don't care about the UI on Linux so much as the terrible lag. For whatever reason, Mozilla just can't get its shit together when it comes to fixing lag on Linux. For this reason alone, I continue to use Chrome, even though I'd love to move back to Firefox and get all the customizability that it's known for.
  - hnriot 13y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean by lag, chrome has preloading, possibly that's what you're seeing (negative lag?). I use Ubuntu 12.04 and don't see any "lag". FF is snappy. I use chrome most, but mainly because I prefer it's developer tools and memory footprint, but neither of them are very economical with memory.
  - msujaws 13y ago
    Can you try "resetting Firefox"? You can go to about:support in your browser and click on the Reset Firefox button. This will fix most, if not all, lag issues you are experiencing.
  - bad_user 13y ago
    I'm on Linux and I don't have lag. Have you tried submitting a bug report?
untog 13y ago
The page itself doesn't make it sound like an overhaul at all- just a collection of minor tweaks.
loupeabody 13y ago
Here are some very detailed mockups(?) on major platforms whose links are kind of tucked into the parent link: Linux: http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-designSpecs/australis-designSpecs-linux-mainWindow.html http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-design... Windows 7: http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-designSpecs/australis-designSpecs-windows7-mainWindow.html http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-design... Windows XP: http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-designSpecs/australis-designSpecs-windowsXP-lunaBlue-mainWindow.html http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-design... OSX: http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-designSpecs/australis-designSpecs-osx-mainWindow.html http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-design... I personally think it looks nice and welcome the update. I haven't really been using Firefox all that much mainly due to how busy the interface is, so maybe leaning it out will make me a regular user again.
- tambourine_man 13y ago
  This is Chrome's definitive legitimation as the standard browser UI. I personally think it sucks (on OS X, that is). How anyone can think that a 10px window dragging area is fine is beyond me. I just hope Apple can step up its game with Safari.
- whichdan 13y ago
  FYI, these demos only work properly on Firefox.
- saratogacx 13y ago
  Why does it seem like everyone is moving to those curved tabs? They've always seemed like a waste of space and the overlapping bits make for an inconsistent tab UI.
  - thezilch 13y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean by inconsistent, but I imagine the point is to give a slight depth -- better highlight the foreground tab.
RKoutnik 13y ago
And jwz gets proven right again [0]. I don't use Firefox as my day-to-day browser but every time I drop into it, I find that I have no idea where anything is. Hopefully they'll stick with the new changes (which do seem to be mostly cosmetic, instead of location). http://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/04/why-i-use-safari-instead-of-firefox/ http://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/04/why-i-use-safari-instead-of-...
- skore 13y ago
  Firefox may be changing things, but comparing it to Safari must be sort of a joke. Just my opinion, of course, but I never found myself as lost in FF as the article describes. Conversely, every time I'm stuck with Safari I am frustrated beyond any hope of redemption by all the tiny things that are weird. It's nice to have things consistent, but to me, in Safari things just don't make any sense. (Since I'll probably be asked to qualify that, my go to example - The address and search bar. Basic search is confusing already, but typing ahead in the address bar is as if the advances of the past ten years of browser technology never happened.)
ksec 13y ago
Well, Great, how about more snappy and perf bugs land on 25 as well. Still waiting for SuperSnappy or e10s, or the new Necko work. Firefox is slow ( Comparatively ) , I hate opening Chrome from time to time keeps reminding me how fast Chrome is ( Although that have gotten slower in recent release ). Edit: And God they drop the Firefox Menu Button! Do they have to copy chrome on every god damn thing? What the heck is happening with Opera and Firefox UI design team?
- mccr8 13y ago
  Work on Electrolysis is underway again. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Content_Processes https://wiki.mozilla.org/Content_Processes
Taylorious 13y ago
Hi I'm Firefox and I'm trying to be just like Chrome. Maybe if I try hard enough I will eventually be indistinguishable from Chrome and then I can just give up and let Google push me out of the browser scene entirely.
- aluhut 13y ago
  Together with my little shy friend the Opera guy.... But no fear. Once they are out. New stuff will come up.
  - scott_karana 13y ago
    I'm sure we thought the same about Alta Vista and Yahoo. :/
- dreamdu5t 13y ago
  Except they can't seem to emulate Chrome where it counts: The snappy page loads and heavy heavy caching. Regardless of benchmarks, Chrome is noticeably faster loading existing and new pages for me. Everyone else I know has the same perception.
  - PommeDeTerre 13y ago
    I agree, this is one of the most absurd things about Mozilla's actions over the past few years. Time and time again they've gone out of their way to bring the worst of the Chrome experience to Firefox. Much of this revolves around the awful UI changes starting with Firefox 4 that have made it harder and far less efficient to use. It's pretty sad that we now have to manually enable the menu bar, and install extensions to get a status bar, for instance. Yet at the same time, they just haven't managed to implement any of the truly beneficial things that Chrome offers. Like you mention, Chrome clearly does perform significantly better than Firefox. While the Firefox supporters like to trumpet how Firefox is "comparable to Chrome" in the arewefastyet.com micro-benchmarks, this just isn't observed under real usage patterns. If the users are going to get the Chrome experience while using Firefox, but not Chrome's better performance, then what's the point of using Firefox these days? They might as well just use Chrome, and at least get some decent performance along with the rather bad UI.
jasondenizac 13y ago
You can download the UX nightly for all platforms at http://people.mozilla.org/~jwein/ux-nightly/ http://people.mozilla.org/~jwein/ux-nightly/ I'm using it now as my primary browser.
BoppreH 13y ago
Whenever I download a new browser, the first thing I do is remove as much UI as possible. This saves space, removes clutter and generally makes it more robust. My Firefox currently looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/93yRvie.png?1 http://i.imgur.com/93yRvie.png?1 A browser is the software I use most often, every UI change has great impact. Can't wait to see what they are bringing.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - BoppreH 13y ago
    Saves space, but you can't read the window titles that way. And the titles are vital when you have multiple documents open with the same program. On Ubuntu I use the default Unity taskbar and I always have problems when various instances of the same program pile up.
- lucb1e 13y ago
  Hmm, makes me think there should be a way to keep the taskbar when you press F11. Sounds like that'd be an easy solution for what you're doing. (Offtopic: Oh wait nobody wants a taskbar anyway, ain't it so Windows 8? :P)
  - smithian 13y ago
    I'm on Windows 8 right now and I have a taskbar. Perhaps you were referring to the start button?
    - lucb1e 13y ago
      No I'm referring to the app mode they're trying to get every application to use. The desktop mode is only for legacy and backwards compatibility purposes. Though they might have changed their mind on that now that Windows 8 pretty much flopped, I'm not sure.
deleted 13y ago
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kibwen 13y ago
I wouldn't hold the release target listed on a wiki page as binding. Remain skeptical until we see some aspects of Australis actually land in Nightly (which moves to version 25 on June 24).
- shritesh 13y ago
  There's a different nightly channel for Australis. http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-ux/ http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/lates...
thomasjoulin 13y ago
Yet after Lion, Mountain Lion, and in a few month the new Mac OS, they still haven't implemented the native scrollbar and bounce scrolling... Mozilla is doing a lot of stuff, but I don't see any focus.
- jlongster 13y ago
  They have implemented native scrollbars in Nightly, it must just not be in the release channel yet, so it will be out soon. It's crazy that you would say Mozilla doesn't have any focus because of a few petty features. C'mon now.
- msujaws 13y ago
  The native scrollbar style and bounce scrolling will be released with Firefox 23. It's true that we've been behind on some of our OS X integration, but we're very hard at work fixing that situation. I hope you will like our future releases better. If you want, you can test out Firefox 23 today by downloading Firefox Aurora, http://aurora.mozilla.org http://aurora.mozilla.org
- kevingadd 13y ago
  Yeah, how dare Mozilla not instantly implement the constant stream of random UI modifications Apple makes on a whim that require every developer to overhaul their UI and potentially make the UX worse? From my perspective, not making that nonsense priority #1 demonstrates Mozilla's focus on features that actually matter. Also, patches welcome, write an extension, etc etc etc.
  - rimantas 13y ago
    In this case it is not change made on a whim, it's system-wide, and UX not following your system-wide settings is worse for sure.
  - thomasjoulin 13y ago
    "Instantly" was true when Lion launched. It's been ages now. And the new design clearly is not "focus on features", but UX. Regarding patches, their have been patches for the scrollbar since day one. It's just Mozilla bureaucracy that makes it impossible to land.
zobzu 13y ago
sooo we move the main menu around in completely NON-obvious places every year, just to piss off long time users. I feel like a problem with UI designers is that once they made something they feel like they have to change it else they're useless. So they change stuff for the sake of it or something. Real changes in australis: - tabs around more round. - main menu move from far left to far right, slightly lower, and has a new icon arbitrary much? Save 3px? I can tell you, all the non-techies will be lost (there's no point even arguing tat), and many of the techies will be pissed (you can argue on that, but im pretty sure it'll be a large amount)
- orblivion 13y ago
  > I feel like a problem with UI designers is that once they made something they feel like they have to change it else they're useless. It could just as well be the growth team, experimenting with different designs to see if retention of new users picks up.
  - zobzu 13y ago
    So... if everyone goes to chrome, it means the user didn't pick it up, right? Because I'm not trying to be sarcastic here, that's what the choice is when you test on release.
- zobzu 13y ago
  In fact now that I think about it there are plenty of areas where UI could be improved. - master password mechanism - secure/insecure site dialogs (ALL the dialogs for various cert status) - RSS - Sync - search through a page (thats somewhere copying/inspiring chrome would be a pretty good idea..) etc. but no.. its always menus, tabs, and icons from the main window instead..
- wtetzner 13y ago
  > I can tell you, all the non-techies will be lost (there's no point even arguing tat) I don't know about that. The new UI looks more like Chrome, and there are plenty of non-techies that use Chrome.
bfung 13y ago
Submission not "easy" to see the new UI changes</end-of-workday-tired-rant> Detailed mockups broken for me, or perhaps I fail at grok-ing it. Here's what I found easier: https://wiki.mozilla.org/images/0/0c/Australis-i02-Tabs.jpg https://wiki.mozilla.org/images/0/0c/Australis-i02-Tabs.jpg And menus: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Desktop/Panel_Menu#Stage_2:_Design https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Desktop/Panel_Menu#Stage_2...
Malzahir 13y ago
Actually for some reason I cant prefer all that flashing buttons at all, visually its good to have some highlight of what is/will be selected, but I cant imagine messing around with the interface if the UI is like that. Just swipe over the menu, its simply to much contrasts and far away from being gently to the eyes. I also don't want to imagine that with a darker theme (if it cant be customized). And again minimalistic and ribbon like menus what was the worst feature introduced in some more or less modern applications (on windows). I want to see a menu for several reasons (perhaps a long time user habbit) but, please, dont remove that if I dont ask for that. Just noticing the min, max and closing button on the top left(?) of the main window - I really really hope that this is only for preview. In addition, will there by any chance a way to customize the colors used for general UI elements (browser textboxes, find dialog, titlebar) besides the system one? For example to allow the use of theme colors over the system ones. Changeable dialog colors would also be warmly welcomed.
baby 13y ago
Native tab on the left, please please please.
- gkoberger 13y ago
  This new layout actually breaks the tree tabs plugin. It relies on tabs-on-the-bottom (which are then pushed to the left), and the new layout drops support for it. Of course, the authors could figure out a new way to do it, but for now it breaks the add-on.
  - baby 13y ago
    God damn, this was one of the huge reason I was still sticking with Firefox...
    - gkoberger 13y ago
      It's still a few months out; I assume someone will find a workaround by then (if they haven't already).
mcmire 13y ago
Isn't this the theme update they've been working on for over a year? I seem to have heard word about this a long time ago.
Siecje 13y ago
I started using Firefox for the past couple of days. I find it slower than Chrome, not page loading but in terms of being responsive. Sometimes there is an issue when I drag a word into a new tab, I would like it to search google, but it tries to go to the site. I had to reload the page a few times to listen to the changelog today and gave up and just switched back to Chrome.
- slacka 13y ago
  Firefox will be less responsive than Chrome until the Electrolysis project makes some progress. FF runs everything in a single process, so a few heavy HTMl5 pages make the whole browser unresponsive.
DHowett 13y ago
And Firefox continues the inexorable march towards Chromeness by removing the actual title of the page from the window chrome. Don't get me wrong, I prefer Firefox. This just strikes me as wrong; the rest of the new UI is fine.
- RHSeeger 13y ago
  That's one of the things I despise about Chrome... plus the fact that it doesn't have a title bar at all. They taking exactly the things that make Chrome less usable to me and putting them in Firefox. /sigh
  - abenga 13y ago
    It's right there in the settings: (in Chrome) Settings > Appearance > "Use system title bar and borders". edit: clarified I meant Chrome.
    - OrsenPike 13y ago
      Not on Windows :/
    - narsil 13y ago
      Not on my Mac. Am I missing something?
      - serzz 13y ago
        It is available on Chromium (Linux)
      - tsm 13y ago
        What are you missing on your Mac? It has the system title bar, the system-provided x, -, and + buttons, and (on my Mountain Lion, at least), the system-provided full-screen button in the top-right. What more could there be?
        13y ago
mlex 13y ago
I'm actually kind of sad they're moving away from "square" tabs, as that was one of the design choices they've made that I always really liked. I'm hoping they'll provide an option in the new release, or at least that there will be an add-on that allows me to revert back. I'd love to be able to have my tabs in the title-bar with the current style. Current setup that I'm happy with: http://i.imgur.com/lf99vO3.png http://i.imgur.com/lf99vO3.png
- SkyMarshal 13y ago
  Same, I prefer either square tabs or trapezoidal ones with the just slightest of roundrect corners, like Chrome/ium. FF's heavily rounded ones seem to waste too much space in the in-between areas. Minor nitpick though, won't affect my use of it.
mitchi 13y ago
Still waiting for a joke on Firefox's version number.
- mmcnickle 13y ago
  You may be waiting a while. This thread is reserved for griping about change, I-use-chrome and why-aren't-they-fixing-bug-x-instead posts.
hanifvirani 13y ago
I know most people hate IE, but I like IE's UI.
cpeterso 13y ago
The UI feature I will miss most is tabs-on-bottom. I have an address bar, a bookmarks bar, and a row of tabs. Quickly scanning tab titles and switching between them with the mouse is more important than knowing the current page's URL. So the tabs should be closer to "the action", the web page my eyes and mouse are interacting with (Fitt's Law). The "Tabs on Top" menu item has been hidden since Firefox 15. The about:config pref "browser.tabs.onTop" is the only way to toggle this feature.
yxhuvud 13y ago
Yet another GUI rewamp without vertical tabs. sigh
pjmlp 13y ago
Can I please have a working bookmarks window or PgUp/PgDn keys that don't stop working randomly?!
python3 13y ago
Here's a working web demo of the new interface https://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-designSpecs/australis-designSpecs-linux-mainWindow.html https://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-desig...
smegel 13y ago
I wonder if in some deep recess of Mozilla people are giving serious thought to re-skinning Chrome like Opera have done.
zerovox 13y ago
They've had this planned out for a long time now. Thunderbird received this UI refresh in August last year(the change log said it was to "match the new Firefox UI"), so I wonder why they delayed adding this to FF for so long. Personally, I much prefer the current UI. It's very concise, no space wasted with curves, perfect for people like me who tend to have 10 tabs open at once. I would rather they update the current style with a few of the nice hover effects and bolder colours, rather than change the shape of tabs and the menu location.
- Osmose 13y ago
  The curves are only on the current tab according to the mockups, the rest are still square. Here's a comparison using the latest UX Nightly branch with two windows at the same width that have enough tabs to switch to "scrolling tab mode" (notice the arrows on either side): Old: http://cl.ly/image/221j3J1j3R2Q http://cl.ly/image/221j3J1j3R2Q New: http://cl.ly/image/1b1j1m2K2k24 http://cl.ly/image/1b1j1m2K2k24 The new one shows 12 tabs and the edge of the 13th, the new one shows 13 tabs, the last one being cut off a tiny bit. The new one looks cleaner to me what with the lack of extra noise with the boxes around the tabs. (Of course the rest of your comment may still be valid, but the curves/wasted space in the tab bar in general doesn't hold up IMO.)
narsil 13y ago
If Firefox takes away the ability for Add Ons to create several rows of tabs, I would have lost the only reason I stay with Firefox rather than use Chrome. I currently use Tab Mix Plus [1]. It's awesome. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-mix-plus/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-mix-plus/
conradfr 13y ago
I never used Chrome because I hate those tabs. I also hate them in Thunderbird but I don't use them much. The rest seems fine, although I didn't see the personal bar ?
miloshadzic 13y ago
I think it looks nice. The only thing Firefox misses for me(OSX user) is the character menu you get on a long keypress.
electrotype 13y ago
I'm always afraid when such UI changes are announced for Firefox. Thing is, I love how I currently configure Firefox and I don't want to loose the ability to do it. So wathever new defaults you choose for Firefox, please always provide a way to revert to what we prefere (even if that requires to use about:config). Here's my current Firefox setup : http://i.imgur.com/PwiPeDM.png http://i.imgur.com/PwiPeDM.png . I'd like to be able to keep it that way. I seriously don't care about round corners and stuff like that if that means I loose some control over how I can configure Firefox the way I like.
progrock 13y ago
Misleading title. Refined theme, rather than a UI overhaul.
nfoz 13y ago
Oh no, not again....
lg 13y ago
can they make it obey osx keyboard shortcut overrides like for Select Next/Previous Tab and Zoom?
mercurial 13y ago
Redesign away, as long as pentadactyl keeps working.
- ufo 13y ago
  Thae addons page says that pentadactyl does not work on FF 21. What is the deal with that? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pentadactyl/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pentadactyl/
  - mercurial 13y ago
    The addons page hasn't been updated for a while. The nightly works fine on version 19.0.2. Haven't tried with version 21 though.

224 points by enthdegree 13y ago

They've also made a CSS mockup of the new interface: http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-designSpecs/australis-designSpecs-linux-mainWindow.html http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-design...

panacea 13y ago
Which doesn't work in Chrome. heh

lazugod 13y ago

I like what they're doing to signify trust here: https://wiki.mozilla.org/File:PanelMenu-i01-CustomizationMode.jpg https://wiki.mozilla.org/File:PanelMenu-i01-CustomizationMod...

IanChiles 13y ago

If you want to see the work being done done on this, http://people.mozilla.org/~jwein/ux-nightly/ http://people.mozilla.org/~jwein/ux-nightly/ has nightly builds of the Australis UX overhaul. It's still hugely WIP though

kijin 13y ago

It looks beautiful in Windows and OSX. It looks less awful than the current theme in Linux, thanks to the menu button (which usually occupies the position of the leftmost tab in Linux and isn't even orange) being moved to the same location as where Chrome has it. But there still seems to be a lot of wasted space in the titlebar of the Linux theme. I remember reading that this is because certain opendesktop UI guidelines (can't remember which one) prohibit apps from encroaching on the window chrome. But Chrome doesn't care and puts tabs at the top of the chrome anyway, and this is quite useful because you can just push the mouse to the top edge of the screen to click on a tab. With a thick titlebar occupying the edge, on the other hand, you need to aim more carefully.

w1ntermute 13y ago
To be honest, I really don't care about the UI on Linux so much as the terrible lag. For whatever reason, Mozilla just can't get its shit together when it comes to fixing lag on Linux. For this reason alone, I continue to use Chrome, even though I'd love to move back to Firefox and get all the customizability that it's known for.
- hnriot 13y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by lag, chrome has preloading, possibly that's what you're seeing (negative lag?). I use Ubuntu 12.04 and don't see any "lag". FF is snappy. I use chrome most, but mainly because I prefer it's developer tools and memory footprint, but neither of them are very economical with memory.
- msujaws 13y ago
  Can you try "resetting Firefox"? You can go to about:support in your browser and click on the Reset Firefox button. This will fix most, if not all, lag issues you are experiencing.
- bad_user 13y ago
  I'm on Linux and I don't have lag. Have you tried submitting a bug report?

untog 13y ago

The page itself doesn't make it sound like an overhaul at all- just a collection of minor tweaks.

loupeabody 13y ago

Here are some very detailed mockups(?) on major platforms whose links are kind of tucked into the parent link: Linux: http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-designSpecs/australis-designSpecs-linux-mainWindow.html http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-design... Windows 7: http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-designSpecs/australis-designSpecs-windows7-mainWindow.html http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-design... Windows XP: http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-designSpecs/australis-designSpecs-windowsXP-lunaBlue-mainWindow.html http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-design... OSX: http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-designSpecs/australis-designSpecs-osx-mainWindow.html http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-design... I personally think it looks nice and welcome the update. I haven't really been using Firefox all that much mainly due to how busy the interface is, so maybe leaning it out will make me a regular user again.

tambourine_man 13y ago
This is Chrome's definitive legitimation as the standard browser UI. I personally think it sucks (on OS X, that is). How anyone can think that a 10px window dragging area is fine is beyond me. I just hope Apple can step up its game with Safari.
whichdan 13y ago
FYI, these demos only work properly on Firefox.
saratogacx 13y ago
Why does it seem like everyone is moving to those curved tabs? They've always seemed like a waste of space and the overlapping bits make for an inconsistent tab UI.
- thezilch 13y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by inconsistent, but I imagine the point is to give a slight depth -- better highlight the foreground tab.

RKoutnik 13y ago

And jwz gets proven right again [0]. I don't use Firefox as my day-to-day browser but every time I drop into it, I find that I have no idea where anything is. Hopefully they'll stick with the new changes (which do seem to be mostly cosmetic, instead of location). http://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/04/why-i-use-safari-instead-of-firefox/ http://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/04/why-i-use-safari-instead-of-...

skore 13y ago
Firefox may be changing things, but comparing it to Safari must be sort of a joke. Just my opinion, of course, but I never found myself as lost in FF as the article describes. Conversely, every time I'm stuck with Safari I am frustrated beyond any hope of redemption by all the tiny things that are weird. It's nice to have things consistent, but to me, in Safari things just don't make any sense. (Since I'll probably be asked to qualify that, my go to example - The address and search bar. Basic search is confusing already, but typing ahead in the address bar is as if the advances of the past ten years of browser technology never happened.)

ksec 13y ago

Well, Great, how about more snappy and perf bugs land on 25 as well. Still waiting for SuperSnappy or e10s, or the new Necko work. Firefox is slow ( Comparatively ) , I hate opening Chrome from time to time keeps reminding me how fast Chrome is ( Although that have gotten slower in recent release ). Edit: And God they drop the Firefox Menu Button! Do they have to copy chrome on every god damn thing? What the heck is happening with Opera and Firefox UI design team?

mccr8 13y ago
Work on Electrolysis is underway again. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Content_Processes https://wiki.mozilla.org/Content_Processes

Taylorious 13y ago

Hi I'm Firefox and I'm trying to be just like Chrome. Maybe if I try hard enough I will eventually be indistinguishable from Chrome and then I can just give up and let Google push me out of the browser scene entirely.

aluhut 13y ago
Together with my little shy friend the Opera guy.... But no fear. Once they are out. New stuff will come up.
- scott_karana 13y ago
  I'm sure we thought the same about Alta Vista and Yahoo. :/
dreamdu5t 13y ago
Except they can't seem to emulate Chrome where it counts: The snappy page loads and heavy heavy caching. Regardless of benchmarks, Chrome is noticeably faster loading existing and new pages for me. Everyone else I know has the same perception.
- PommeDeTerre 13y ago
  I agree, this is one of the most absurd things about Mozilla's actions over the past few years. Time and time again they've gone out of their way to bring the worst of the Chrome experience to Firefox. Much of this revolves around the awful UI changes starting with Firefox 4 that have made it harder and far less efficient to use. It's pretty sad that we now have to manually enable the menu bar, and install extensions to get a status bar, for instance. Yet at the same time, they just haven't managed to implement any of the truly beneficial things that Chrome offers. Like you mention, Chrome clearly does perform significantly better than Firefox. While the Firefox supporters like to trumpet how Firefox is "comparable to Chrome" in the arewefastyet.com micro-benchmarks, this just isn't observed under real usage patterns. If the users are going to get the Chrome experience while using Firefox, but not Chrome's better performance, then what's the point of using Firefox these days? They might as well just use Chrome, and at least get some decent performance along with the rather bad UI.

jasondenizac 13y ago

You can download the UX nightly for all platforms at http://people.mozilla.org/~jwein/ux-nightly/ http://people.mozilla.org/~jwein/ux-nightly/ I'm using it now as my primary browser.

BoppreH 13y ago

Whenever I download a new browser, the first thing I do is remove as much UI as possible. This saves space, removes clutter and generally makes it more robust. My Firefox currently looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/93yRvie.png?1 http://i.imgur.com/93yRvie.png?1 A browser is the software I use most often, every UI change has great impact. Can't wait to see what they are bringing.

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- BoppreH 13y ago
  Saves space, but you can't read the window titles that way. And the titles are vital when you have multiple documents open with the same program. On Ubuntu I use the default Unity taskbar and I always have problems when various instances of the same program pile up.
lucb1e 13y ago
Hmm, makes me think there should be a way to keep the taskbar when you press F11. Sounds like that'd be an easy solution for what you're doing. (Offtopic: Oh wait nobody wants a taskbar anyway, ain't it so Windows 8? :P)
- smithian 13y ago
  I'm on Windows 8 right now and I have a taskbar. Perhaps you were referring to the start button?
  - lucb1e 13y ago
    No I'm referring to the app mode they're trying to get every application to use. The desktop mode is only for legacy and backwards compatibility purposes. Though they might have changed their mind on that now that Windows 8 pretty much flopped, I'm not sure.

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kibwen 13y ago

I wouldn't hold the release target listed on a wiki page as binding. Remain skeptical until we see some aspects of Australis actually land in Nightly (which moves to version 25 on June 24).

shritesh 13y ago
There's a different nightly channel for Australis. http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-ux/ http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/lates...

thomasjoulin 13y ago

Yet after Lion, Mountain Lion, and in a few month the new Mac OS, they still haven't implemented the native scrollbar and bounce scrolling... Mozilla is doing a lot of stuff, but I don't see any focus.

jlongster 13y ago
They have implemented native scrollbars in Nightly, it must just not be in the release channel yet, so it will be out soon. It's crazy that you would say Mozilla doesn't have any focus because of a few petty features. C'mon now.
msujaws 13y ago
The native scrollbar style and bounce scrolling will be released with Firefox 23. It's true that we've been behind on some of our OS X integration, but we're very hard at work fixing that situation. I hope you will like our future releases better. If you want, you can test out Firefox 23 today by downloading Firefox Aurora, http://aurora.mozilla.org http://aurora.mozilla.org
kevingadd 13y ago
Yeah, how dare Mozilla not instantly implement the constant stream of random UI modifications Apple makes on a whim that require every developer to overhaul their UI and potentially make the UX worse? From my perspective, not making that nonsense priority #1 demonstrates Mozilla's focus on features that actually matter. Also, patches welcome, write an extension, etc etc etc.
- rimantas 13y ago
  In this case it is not change made on a whim, it's system-wide, and UX not following your system-wide settings is worse for sure.
- thomasjoulin 13y ago
  "Instantly" was true when Lion launched. It's been ages now. And the new design clearly is not "focus on features", but UX. Regarding patches, their have been patches for the scrollbar since day one. It's just Mozilla bureaucracy that makes it impossible to land.

zobzu 13y ago

sooo we move the main menu around in completely NON-obvious places every year, just to piss off long time users. I feel like a problem with UI designers is that once they made something they feel like they have to change it else they're useless. So they change stuff for the sake of it or something. Real changes in australis: - tabs around more round. - main menu move from far left to far right, slightly lower, and has a new icon arbitrary much? Save 3px? I can tell you, all the non-techies will be lost (there's no point even arguing tat), and many of the techies will be pissed (you can argue on that, but im pretty sure it'll be a large amount)

orblivion 13y ago
> I feel like a problem with UI designers is that once they made something they feel like they have to change it else they're useless. It could just as well be the growth team, experimenting with different designs to see if retention of new users picks up.
- zobzu 13y ago
  So... if everyone goes to chrome, it means the user didn't pick it up, right? Because I'm not trying to be sarcastic here, that's what the choice is when you test on release.
zobzu 13y ago
In fact now that I think about it there are plenty of areas where UI could be improved. - master password mechanism - secure/insecure site dialogs (ALL the dialogs for various cert status) - RSS - Sync - search through a page (thats somewhere copying/inspiring chrome would be a pretty good idea..) etc. but no.. its always menus, tabs, and icons from the main window instead..
wtetzner 13y ago
> I can tell you, all the non-techies will be lost (there's no point even arguing tat) I don't know about that. The new UI looks more like Chrome, and there are plenty of non-techies that use Chrome.

bfung 13y ago

Submission not "easy" to see the new UI changes</end-of-workday-tired-rant> Detailed mockups broken for me, or perhaps I fail at grok-ing it. Here's what I found easier: https://wiki.mozilla.org/images/0/0c/Australis-i02-Tabs.jpg https://wiki.mozilla.org/images/0/0c/Australis-i02-Tabs.jpg And menus: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Desktop/Panel_Menu#Stage_2:_Design https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Desktop/Panel_Menu#Stage_2...

Malzahir 13y ago

Actually for some reason I cant prefer all that flashing buttons at all, visually its good to have some highlight of what is/will be selected, but I cant imagine messing around with the interface if the UI is like that. Just swipe over the menu, its simply to much contrasts and far away from being gently to the eyes. I also don't want to imagine that with a darker theme (if it cant be customized). And again minimalistic and ribbon like menus what was the worst feature introduced in some more or less modern applications (on windows). I want to see a menu for several reasons (perhaps a long time user habbit) but, please, dont remove that if I dont ask for that. Just noticing the min, max and closing button on the top left(?) of the main window - I really really hope that this is only for preview. In addition, will there by any chance a way to customize the colors used for general UI elements (browser textboxes, find dialog, titlebar) besides the system one? For example to allow the use of theme colors over the system ones. Changeable dialog colors would also be warmly welcomed.

baby 13y ago

Native tab on the left, please please please.

gkoberger 13y ago
This new layout actually breaks the tree tabs plugin. It relies on tabs-on-the-bottom (which are then pushed to the left), and the new layout drops support for it. Of course, the authors could figure out a new way to do it, but for now it breaks the add-on.
- baby 13y ago
  God damn, this was one of the huge reason I was still sticking with Firefox...
  - gkoberger 13y ago
    It's still a few months out; I assume someone will find a workaround by then (if they haven't already).

mcmire 13y ago

Isn't this the theme update they've been working on for over a year? I seem to have heard word about this a long time ago.

Siecje 13y ago

I started using Firefox for the past couple of days. I find it slower than Chrome, not page loading but in terms of being responsive. Sometimes there is an issue when I drag a word into a new tab, I would like it to search google, but it tries to go to the site. I had to reload the page a few times to listen to the changelog today and gave up and just switched back to Chrome.

slacka 13y ago
Firefox will be less responsive than Chrome until the Electrolysis project makes some progress. FF runs everything in a single process, so a few heavy HTMl5 pages make the whole browser unresponsive.

DHowett 13y ago

And Firefox continues the inexorable march towards Chromeness by removing the actual title of the page from the window chrome. Don't get me wrong, I prefer Firefox. This just strikes me as wrong; the rest of the new UI is fine.

RHSeeger 13y ago
That's one of the things I despise about Chrome... plus the fact that it doesn't have a title bar at all. They taking exactly the things that make Chrome less usable to me and putting them in Firefox. /sigh
- abenga 13y ago
  It's right there in the settings: (in Chrome) Settings > Appearance > "Use system title bar and borders". edit: clarified I meant Chrome.
  - OrsenPike 13y ago
    Not on Windows :/
  - narsil 13y ago
    Not on my Mac. Am I missing something?
    - serzz 13y ago
      It is available on Chromium (Linux)
    - tsm 13y ago
      What are you missing on your Mac? It has the system title bar, the system-provided x, -, and + buttons, and (on my Mountain Lion, at least), the system-provided full-screen button in the top-right. What more could there be?
      - 13y ago

mlex 13y ago

I'm actually kind of sad they're moving away from "square" tabs, as that was one of the design choices they've made that I always really liked. I'm hoping they'll provide an option in the new release, or at least that there will be an add-on that allows me to revert back. I'd love to be able to have my tabs in the title-bar with the current style. Current setup that I'm happy with: http://i.imgur.com/lf99vO3.png http://i.imgur.com/lf99vO3.png

SkyMarshal 13y ago
Same, I prefer either square tabs or trapezoidal ones with the just slightest of roundrect corners, like Chrome/ium. FF's heavily rounded ones seem to waste too much space in the in-between areas. Minor nitpick though, won't affect my use of it.

mitchi 13y ago

Still waiting for a joke on Firefox's version number.

mmcnickle 13y ago
You may be waiting a while. This thread is reserved for griping about change, I-use-chrome and why-aren't-they-fixing-bug-x-instead posts.

hanifvirani 13y ago

I know most people hate IE, but I like IE's UI.

cpeterso 13y ago

The UI feature I will miss most is tabs-on-bottom. I have an address bar, a bookmarks bar, and a row of tabs. Quickly scanning tab titles and switching between them with the mouse is more important than knowing the current page's URL. So the tabs should be closer to "the action", the web page my eyes and mouse are interacting with (Fitt's Law). The "Tabs on Top" menu item has been hidden since Firefox 15. The about:config pref "browser.tabs.onTop" is the only way to toggle this feature.

yxhuvud 13y ago

Yet another GUI rewamp without vertical tabs. sigh

pjmlp 13y ago

Can I please have a working bookmarks window or PgUp/PgDn keys that don't stop working randomly?!

python3 13y ago

Here's a working web demo of the new interface https://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-designSpecs/australis-designSpecs-linux-mainWindow.html https://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-desig...

smegel 13y ago

I wonder if in some deep recess of Mozilla people are giving serious thought to re-skinning Chrome like Opera have done.

zerovox 13y ago

They've had this planned out for a long time now. Thunderbird received this UI refresh in August last year(the change log said it was to "match the new Firefox UI"), so I wonder why they delayed adding this to FF for so long. Personally, I much prefer the current UI. It's very concise, no space wasted with curves, perfect for people like me who tend to have 10 tabs open at once. I would rather they update the current style with a few of the nice hover effects and bolder colours, rather than change the shape of tabs and the menu location.

Osmose 13y ago
The curves are only on the current tab according to the mockups, the rest are still square. Here's a comparison using the latest UX Nightly branch with two windows at the same width that have enough tabs to switch to "scrolling tab mode" (notice the arrows on either side): Old: http://cl.ly/image/221j3J1j3R2Q http://cl.ly/image/221j3J1j3R2Q New: http://cl.ly/image/1b1j1m2K2k24 http://cl.ly/image/1b1j1m2K2k24 The new one shows 12 tabs and the edge of the 13th, the new one shows 13 tabs, the last one being cut off a tiny bit. The new one looks cleaner to me what with the lack of extra noise with the boxes around the tabs. (Of course the rest of your comment may still be valid, but the curves/wasted space in the tab bar in general doesn't hold up IMO.)

narsil 13y ago

If Firefox takes away the ability for Add Ons to create several rows of tabs, I would have lost the only reason I stay with Firefox rather than use Chrome. I currently use Tab Mix Plus [1]. It's awesome. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-mix-plus/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-mix-plus/

conradfr 13y ago

I never used Chrome because I hate those tabs. I also hate them in Thunderbird but I don't use them much. The rest seems fine, although I didn't see the personal bar ?

miloshadzic 13y ago

I think it looks nice. The only thing Firefox misses for me(OSX user) is the character menu you get on a long keypress.

electrotype 13y ago

I'm always afraid when such UI changes are announced for Firefox. Thing is, I love how I currently configure Firefox and I don't want to loose the ability to do it. So wathever new defaults you choose for Firefox, please always provide a way to revert to what we prefere (even if that requires to use about:config). Here's my current Firefox setup : http://i.imgur.com/PwiPeDM.png http://i.imgur.com/PwiPeDM.png . I'd like to be able to keep it that way. I seriously don't care about round corners and stuff like that if that means I loose some control over how I can configure Firefox the way I like.

progrock 13y ago

Misleading title. Refined theme, rather than a UI overhaul.

nfoz 13y ago

Oh no, not again....

lg 13y ago

can they make it obey osx keyboard shortcut overrides like for Select Next/Previous Tab and Zoom?

mercurial 13y ago

Redesign away, as long as pentadactyl keeps working.

ufo 13y ago
Thae addons page says that pentadactyl does not work on FF 21. What is the deal with that? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pentadactyl/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pentadactyl/
- mercurial 13y ago
  The addons page hasn't been updated for a while. The nightly works fine on version 19.0.2. Haven't tried with version 21 though.