37 ms·

Firefox 3.7 Windows Theme Mockups

36 points by PeterRosdahl 17y ago

nopassrecover 17y ago
The buttons look nice. Can't say I know why "Tools" has become so important or what happens when I click the "Page" drop-down but I'm sure it's all very cool. Unsure why there are two stars for bookmarking but I'm sure there's a reason too. I better be able to enable a fixed "close tab" button as an option or plugin. Finally, where's my toolbar and home button?
- cake 17y ago
  I would say "Tools" is important to access the download manager and the addons (preferences...), they would justify a prominent "Tools" button.
  - nopassrecover 17y ago
    Good point. In a related note I really wish the download manager was implemented differently anyway. Having it as a seperate window is a nuisance and all of the addons that try and solve this seem to be buggier than a native solution. Particuarly on Windows 7, getting to that Downloads window seems tedious (forever hitting ctrl-j). Secondly, do people need to customise their addons often enough that tools is given such visual importance?
    - DougBTX 17y ago
      I suppose it has to go somewhere, since there is no menu bar. The tools button could be toned down, like the XP mock-ups, but still, it is quite nice.
ErrantX 17y ago
Looks very Chrome inspired ;)
- krakensden 17y ago
  Really? To me it looks very Cocoa inspired- it looks like they're moving lots of the elements of their OS X theme over to Windows.
  - johns 17y ago
    I can see both actually. The dual icons in the top right started with Chrome, and then showed up in Safari. It's much better than the original poorly-implemented IE 7/8 top right icon bar. In the second shot there are two icons that use stars, and neither is immediately apparent what they are. I'm assuming its for bookmarks, but they're both too far from the URL. I don't know why they're using separate buttons for Stop/Refresh either. Safari ditched the two buttons a long time ago, IE 8 has them (again poorly implemented) and Chrome has a single button. Two buttons may help learnability, but not day-to-day usability. Lastly, too many dropshadows.
    - roryokane 17y ago
      Separate Stop and Refresh buttons prevent the mistake of clicking Stop right at the moment a page finished loading, causing it to refresh instead. This can be a problem if you clicked stop because the page was loading too slow so you just wanted to look at what had already downloaded, but you end up discarding all of that progress to redownload the page.
      - imd 17y ago
        You could make the button unclickable for a quarter-second after the page stops loading.
  - ErrantX 17y ago
    I was thinking mostly about the Page drop down - but now you mention it I can see Cocoa too.
AaronMT 17y ago
This mockup look's decent. What happened to the home button?
- johns 17y ago
  As a point of reference, Safari and Chrome have no Home button by default. This seems heavily inspired by those two.
  - zimbabwe 17y ago
    This upcoming design really excites me - this and the experimental stuff they've got Aza Raskin doing. I've spent the last two years really being annoyed at Firefox for being a subpar browser beyond plugins/being open source, and I think it's uglier even than Internet Explorer. Now they seem to be making a concerted effort to look prettier. I only hope they fix the ugly Mac functionality.
cake 17y ago
Nice nice, they removed the menu bar, it's a great thing (for the screen estate freaks like me). I'm not sure how well it's received by the non technical people, Microsoft already did that with IE7 but I haven't read anything revelent about it. Speaking of them, a print button is going to be missing : they just love to print stuff.
- anigbrowl 17y ago
  Actually, I've got quite used to Chrome not having a title bar and saving me that extra bit of space too, although it took a while.
Oompa 17y ago
How about a OS X version that looks and acts like an OS X app?
- rbanffy 17y ago
  Come on... It's not so bad.
  - Oompa 17y ago
    It's not, but I think the efforts should be focused on making the OS X version feel like an OS X version, rather than making the Windows version, which already feels at home, better.
    - sayrer 17y ago
      hi. disclosure: I work for Mozilla. What do you dislike about it?
      - Zev 17y ago
        For starters, https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=472271 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=472271 To continue, how FF never looks like its in the background (the tab bar color never changes, for example) — actually, scratch that, the app itself doesn't look or act like it belongs, period. But, thats what you get for using XUL instead of Cocoa. Even more, how it takes 2-3x longer than Safari to launch and feels sluggish to use (because it is, compared to Safari, which I can use without any effort on my part), how it continues to eat up memory, despite having the problem (apparently) fixed on windows and linux, etc. Take a look through the most duped bugs for FF/Mac. Then fix them, instead of ignoring them for years. Oh, and the "you are using free software" thing on first launch (if thats still there) and the hilariously inaccurate chart comparing FF to Safari when downloading — it feels incredibly condescending to read.
        rbanffy 17y ago
        I really can't understand the sense of entitlement people feel towards free software other people write. If you don't like something, report it. If the maintainer decides something else is more important, you have three options: 1- you live with it 2- you stop using said software 3- you fix it
mhansen 17y ago
The file menu is gone? Finally! Another win for my small laptop screen. Even IE has removed it.
- pbhjpbhj 17y ago
  and yet they have so much whitespace in the chrome that they could have easily fitted a compact file menu in. Sure, make it look as good as you can, but whitespace is not as important as screen real-estate in browser chrome. I'm guessing these are designers not engineers - the same sort that go for unreadably small fonts to make things look slicker.
nazgulnarsil 17y ago
still uses windows 95 theme waves cane at children on lawn
- GeneralMaximus 17y ago
  Nothing wrong with that. I, for one, get extremely nauseous when I have to use WinVista with Aero. I'm used to the neutral monochrome of OS X and the warm brown of Ubuntu Human, and any interface with too many wild colors makes me feel tired after a few minutes of use. If ever I have to use Windows, I always change the theme to Windows Classic. Win7 is much better in this regard.
firefoxman1 17y ago
I'm loving the Aero-Glass mockup. It reminds me of the "All-Glass Firefox" extension.

36 points by PeterRosdahl 17y ago

The buttons look nice. Can't say I know why "Tools" has become so important or what happens when I click the "Page" drop-down but I'm sure it's all very cool. Unsure why there are two stars for bookmarking but I'm sure there's a reason too. I better be able to enable a fixed "close tab" button as an option or plugin. Finally, where's my toolbar and home button?

cake 17y ago
I would say "Tools" is important to access the download manager and the addons (preferences...), they would justify a prominent "Tools" button.
- nopassrecover 17y ago
  Good point. In a related note I really wish the download manager was implemented differently anyway. Having it as a seperate window is a nuisance and all of the addons that try and solve this seem to be buggier than a native solution. Particuarly on Windows 7, getting to that Downloads window seems tedious (forever hitting ctrl-j). Secondly, do people need to customise their addons often enough that tools is given such visual importance?
  - DougBTX 17y ago
    I suppose it has to go somewhere, since there is no menu bar. The tools button could be toned down, like the XP mock-ups, but still, it is quite nice.

ErrantX 17y ago

Looks very Chrome inspired ;)

krakensden 17y ago
Really? To me it looks very Cocoa inspired- it looks like they're moving lots of the elements of their OS X theme over to Windows.
- johns 17y ago
  I can see both actually. The dual icons in the top right started with Chrome, and then showed up in Safari. It's much better than the original poorly-implemented IE 7/8 top right icon bar. In the second shot there are two icons that use stars, and neither is immediately apparent what they are. I'm assuming its for bookmarks, but they're both too far from the URL. I don't know why they're using separate buttons for Stop/Refresh either. Safari ditched the two buttons a long time ago, IE 8 has them (again poorly implemented) and Chrome has a single button. Two buttons may help learnability, but not day-to-day usability. Lastly, too many dropshadows.
  - roryokane 17y ago
    Separate Stop and Refresh buttons prevent the mistake of clicking Stop right at the moment a page finished loading, causing it to refresh instead. This can be a problem if you clicked stop because the page was loading too slow so you just wanted to look at what had already downloaded, but you end up discarding all of that progress to redownload the page.
    - imd 17y ago
      You could make the button unclickable for a quarter-second after the page stops loading.
- ErrantX 17y ago
  I was thinking mostly about the Page drop down - but now you mention it I can see Cocoa too.

AaronMT 17y ago

This mockup look's decent. What happened to the home button?

johns 17y ago
As a point of reference, Safari and Chrome have no Home button by default. This seems heavily inspired by those two.
- zimbabwe 17y ago
  This upcoming design really excites me - this and the experimental stuff they've got Aza Raskin doing. I've spent the last two years really being annoyed at Firefox for being a subpar browser beyond plugins/being open source, and I think it's uglier even than Internet Explorer. Now they seem to be making a concerted effort to look prettier. I only hope they fix the ugly Mac functionality.

cake 17y ago

Nice nice, they removed the menu bar, it's a great thing (for the screen estate freaks like me). I'm not sure how well it's received by the non technical people, Microsoft already did that with IE7 but I haven't read anything revelent about it. Speaking of them, a print button is going to be missing : they just love to print stuff.

anigbrowl 17y ago
Actually, I've got quite used to Chrome not having a title bar and saving me that extra bit of space too, although it took a while.

Oompa 17y ago

How about a OS X version that looks and acts like an OS X app?

rbanffy 17y ago
Come on... It's not so bad.
- Oompa 17y ago
  It's not, but I think the efforts should be focused on making the OS X version feel like an OS X version, rather than making the Windows version, which already feels at home, better.
  - sayrer 17y ago
    hi. disclosure: I work for Mozilla. What do you dislike about it?
    - Zev 17y ago
      For starters, https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=472271 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=472271 To continue, how FF never looks like its in the background (the tab bar color never changes, for example) — actually, scratch that, the app itself doesn't look or act like it belongs, period. But, thats what you get for using XUL instead of Cocoa. Even more, how it takes 2-3x longer than Safari to launch and feels sluggish to use (because it is, compared to Safari, which I can use without any effort on my part), how it continues to eat up memory, despite having the problem (apparently) fixed on windows and linux, etc. Take a look through the most duped bugs for FF/Mac. Then fix them, instead of ignoring them for years. Oh, and the "you are using free software" thing on first launch (if thats still there) and the hilariously inaccurate chart comparing FF to Safari when downloading — it feels incredibly condescending to read.
      - rbanffy 17y ago
        I really can't understand the sense of entitlement people feel towards free software other people write. If you don't like something, report it. If the maintainer decides something else is more important, you have three options: 1- you live with it 2- you stop using said software 3- you fix it

mhansen 17y ago

The file menu is gone? Finally! Another win for my small laptop screen. Even IE has removed it.

pbhjpbhj 17y ago
and yet they have so much whitespace in the chrome that they could have easily fitted a compact file menu in. Sure, make it look as good as you can, but whitespace is not as important as screen real-estate in browser chrome. I'm guessing these are designers not engineers - the same sort that go for unreadably small fonts to make things look slicker.

nazgulnarsil 17y ago

still uses windows 95 theme waves cane at children on lawn

GeneralMaximus 17y ago
Nothing wrong with that. I, for one, get extremely nauseous when I have to use WinVista with Aero. I'm used to the neutral monochrome of OS X and the warm brown of Ubuntu Human, and any interface with too many wild colors makes me feel tired after a few minutes of use. If ever I have to use Windows, I always change the theme to Windows Classic. Win7 is much better in this regard.

firefoxman1 17y ago

I'm loving the Aero-Glass mockup. It reminds me of the "All-Glass Firefox" extension.