August 11th, 2009
Windows Theme Project (Progress Report)
The first weekly update on the status of current Firefox project work. Here is what happened last week:
Progress:
Loose Threads:
- Still working on some other things:
- Addons Extensibility/Discoverability
- Toolbar Handling in various configurations
- Menubar handling
- Keep going. Iterating on Feedback/New Ideas.
- Have everything nailed down and stable by the week of Aug. 23rd to proceed to initial implementation.
Tags: Progress Report Theme Windows
This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 at 1:55 pm and is filed under Firefox. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
Hmm where have I seen that tab bar design before?
j/k I like it.
Not sure about the “Shift Down” button, that may be better as a context menu option for right clicking on the tab bar or tab (or the window’s system menu).
I do like the Home button being in the tab bar, and the close buttons for toolbars when the customization pane is open, sorta like how IE does it but a little better I think (I think IE keeps the close buttons visible all the time…)
Please, no. FF is one of the few browsers that doesn’t mangle the established OS interface guidelines by hiding all the menus and messing with the title bar area. My first reaction to Safari 4b was ‘oh god’ and Chrome wasn’t much different.
Honestly, there’s some things that don’t need constant innovation and streamlining. This really is a case of chasing competitor’s tails for questionable gain.
Note that I mean no offense to the designers themselves with this comment, and it’s more of a general question as to why so many app developers now feel the need to dumb down established interfaces that are already simple and benefit from OS conventions. Is it that user testing revealed people have problems with a text menu bar? Is it purely to remove 30px of chrome? Will the status bar go next, ala Safari?
If this is implemented, will it still be possible to write a theme that restores the normal UI I’ve been using for nigh-on 10 years?
[...] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Sprints/Windows_Theme_Revamp https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/3.7_Windows_Theme_Mockups https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/4.0_Windows_Theme_Mockups http://blog.stephenhorlander.com/2009/08/17/menubar-and-toolbar-handling/ http://blog.stephenhorlander.com/2009/08/14/windows-theme-project-progress-report-2/ http://blog.stephenhorlander.com/2009/08/11/windows-theme-project-progress-report/ [...]