September 16th, 2009
Windows Theme Project (Progress Report) #4
Progress:
Yesterday I posted a new article to the Wiki. This article lays out more fully how the UX team wants to evolve Firefox for 3.7 and 4.0. It is broken in to a 3.7 section and a 4.0 section. The 3.7 section is a fairly firm proposal that is in the approval stages and the 4.0 section is in the more early brainstorming phases.
Feedback is welcome either on the Wiki Discussion page or I have created a new thread in dev.apps.firefox. Also blog commenting is available as well.
Next Steps:
Going forward I will be working on collecting feedback and refining these ideas for implementation. There is also plenty of work to be done with transitioning these proposals from Windows to Mac and Linux.
Tags: Experimental Progress Report Theme Windows
This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 at 1:19 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.
Currently I keep the bookmark bar items next to the menu bar (to save vertical space). Will this still be possible (on XP where the menu bar will not be hidden)?
Where did ‘Help Contents’ go?
Oh, and I really hope that it will still be possible to hide the tab-bar without losing significant functionality (like opening a new tab with the mouse!) … :S
[...] View post: Windows Theme Project (Progress Report) #4 « Chromatic Pixel [...]
i HATE, DETEST, cannot fathom the hiding of the main menu. It’s just counter-intuitive for any person who have ever used Firefox or any other computer application before.
PLEASE stop copying everyone else’s UI decisions and make some choices of your own! Firefox is pathetic in terms of originality and innovation. First this was exhibited in the reluctance to incorporate interesting features, even those already developed as add-ons and now this! No visual identity of it’s own! Surely now that Firefox has garnered roughly 25% of the market it’s time to reduce the UI copying based on the excuse of reducing the barriers to switching for IE users!?
How about creating something unique and giving the 60% of IE users A REASON to switch other than “it’s not as crap as IE”.
I have a question. In Firefox 3.7, the status bar will still be there, but will the status bar still contain a progress indicator? I see no reason for it to, because now there’s a progress indicator for each tab and one for the active tab under the location bar.
I think it looks really beautiful!
Some constructive feedback on 3.7:
1. I think the text buttons “Tools” and “Page” might become a l10n problem. The words in some languages will be significantly longer than in English. Icons, I think, is a better option.
2. The black and white UI might look a bit pale and seems to lack contrast. Especially in Windows XP where the background is gray (however, that might be an older revision and I’m sure color isn’t most important at this stage). What about a green (in XP) or blue (Vista/7) glyphs on hover? That might spice it up a bit!
3. Another thing I find somewhat odd is the drop shadow on the text input fields. They make the fields look more like buttons and, I believe, break the UI guidelines.
4. What happened to the close tab X’s?
5. Why aren’t the Page and Tools buttons in the same color as the other buttons on the toolbar?
Anyhow, overall, I think the new Theme is gorgeous.
@pd
umm…..the menu bar is on by default on windows xp, mac os x, and linux, it is only being hidden on widows vista and 7 where the menu bar on any other application is hidden as well. so calm down.
Hello. I sent an email, I hope it is not marked as spam.
I’d just like to say the mockups look great. Here are some questions:
- What’s happening with the toolbar buttons? Are there still going to be the different “modes”, such as “icon and text” etc.? If there is an icon and text mode, will the text be inside the buttons like the page and tools button or will they still be separate?
- Is there still going to be a sidebar? I don’t use it but I know lot’s of people do.
- Do you plan to have an option to toggle the menu bar or will it be removed entirely?
- Is the throbber going as well? When I removed it in the theme I made I got many, many complaints about the throbber despite having a progress bar available like the mockup one.
- Not a question but, YOU NEED A DOWNLOAD STATUSBAR. Sorry for caps but this would be a very useful and very welcomed addition for a great portion of the community. Chrome has a great one and so does Firefox with the help of an addon, but this is just not good enough.
Please have a look at my email. Thanks.
Man, I simply love the new theme. I hope we get something nice for Mac’s too, epecially tabs on top. I’d also like to see a combined stop/refresh/go button like in the planned Windows versions.
@C: You can already have one today.
[...] Firefox Windows Theme Project (Progress Report) #4 [...]
The proposed new page and tools menus are bloated, in my opinion.
In the page menu:
- Do we really need cut, copy, paste, select all? (I’d like to see some quantitative proof that people still use those in the current edit menu.)
- Do we really need undo, redo?
- “Find” should be renamed to “Find on page” to be more descriptive and to reduce confusion.
- “Full screen” could possibly be moved to the Zoom submenu.
- The three Print options should be combined into a click-able submenu, if you understand what I mean.
- Developer Tools??? Really?? Devs will probably know about the Alt keyboard shortcut to show the full menubar. Also, Dev Tools in the Page menu?
Tools menu:
- “Open file” — is this necessary?
- “Clear recent history” should be put in the recent history submenu
- Is “Exit” necessary?? There is a giant red close button in Vista/7 for a reason. We don’t just have to copy Google Chrome for the sake of coping Google Chrome.
I hope I don’t come off as complaining a bunch. I really do love the direction the design is going for Firefox 3.7 and 4.0 on Vista/7. Great job! Hope my suggestions help!
Thanks,
-Chris
I LOVE the idea of App Tabs. It’s perfect.
@ChrisJF
My mom still uses the cut/copy/paste menu items. Not everyone seems capable of learning keyboard shortcuts.
Hello.
It really looks good.
How about putting the reload-stop-go button on the left side?