Talk:Firefox/Projects/3.7 and 4.0 Theme and UI Revamp/Direction and Feedback

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Revision as of 21:30, 20 September 2009 by Illich (talk | contribs) (bookmark tab idea)
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Talk About the Direction and Feedback Page Here.

Merging the LocationBar and SearchBar

  • I don't like this for two reasons.
  • One is personal, I simply prefer organized things where search is search and entered url is entered url.
  • The second reason is security+privacy. It's quite common to use VPN-like SW to access internal web sites, usually by routing custom local IPs to VPN gate instead to ordinary internet (so you enter "http://1.2.3.4/important_system/admin/login" into Location bar, if the VPN connection is established, the VPN SW interferes and takes you trough the ciphered tunnel to desired server, if you forgot to establish VPN connection, the browser will try 1.2.3.4 at global internet and usually end with no server found)
    Now consider what happens (already with current browsers) with search bar merged. The 1.2.3.4 server is not found, so the search is contacted and the full "secret" local url is send to search service. It may then appear anywhere on search service for example in list of recent searches or in hints for other people entering search phrase. While of course exposing a single local url shouldn't allow anyone to break into your secret application, it can give smart attacker yet another hint.
    I think the location bar should never contact search service with obviously properly entered urls, even if the target server does not exist. If somebody enter "youtube" into location bar, I think calling search engine is very valid and welcome. In case "http://1.2.3.4" is entered, I think the search will be in 99% cases useless anyway, and it's bringing up privacy/security concerns.

--Ped 10:46, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure you'll be fine. If you take a look at Ubiquity (which Taskfox and this will be based on), it requires keywords such as Google or Yahoo to use commands such as search. Fmorel90 11:57, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

I still prefer the search bar to be separated from the LocationBar. Yes Of course you can type keywords in the Combined bar and it look nicer and fine as it is. However, typing a keyword to the Merged Location and search bar is a waste of time.

You should place the search bar, location bar and Omnibar all under customise toolbar, so that users can change the Firefox to the way that they want it to be. By Default, the search bar should be shown. If anyone want to hide it they can hide it. --User:Jason Twilight 05:46, 20 September 2009 (UTC)


Update to visual design

  • I think icons instead of text for the page/tools buttons will get more free space and be more identifiable, but I think you already have it but decided to post an image more understandable, am I wrong?
  • Did you think about the possibility to replace the navigation buttons with this feature?
  • Do the Home tab will have some nice functionality like most common tasks or favorite bookmarks?
  • Will we be able to remove the Home tab?

Hiding the menu bar

  • You're missing Page Style and Character Encoding (the features I use most in that menu).
  • Download and Addons should be kept up in the menu for Tools. They are the most used Tools in Firefox.
  • Do we need the "Exit" menu option? And it's dangerously close to options. I think Options might be better placed with Addons and Downloads.

Progress "Line"

  • Isn't the solution implemented in Tab Mix Plus more clear? It uses a background notification bar instead of a line.
  • Will this option be properly styled in themes? Meaning Themers will be able to change it to another kind of notification or just be tied to the small line at the top.

--DonGato 22:34, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

User Profiles

  • How exactly is this different from the existing profile framework? Are you planning on exposing more UI within the browser or making the Profile Manager a first class citizen again?

--RyanVM 00:08, 16 September 2009 (UTC)


Page / Tools menus

  • The "tools" menu is in the wrong place in Firefox 4.0 - it's under the tabs, where all the page-related (not browser-related) stuff is. Why not copy Office 2007 and place the tools menu into the firefox browser window icon? That would save space, differentiate it from IE / Chrome and (if you expanded the icon) increase the branding.
  • Couldn't you merge the "page" menu with Larry?

--chrisfj, 21:02, 16 Sep 2009 UTC

Some thoughts...

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. NisseSthlm 21:04, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Minor change to the tabbing style

I really like the way chrome handles tab grouping it some how encourages further navigation. So I would like to see that in Firefox 4.0. For those not familiar with that I'll give an example:

You have a tab lists tabs =[]

1- Lets say that you have a tab1 open 

 tabs = [tab1]

2- you open two new tabs from tab1, that would be tab2 and tab3 

 tabs = [tab1, tab2, tab3]

3- Now you visit tab2 and open a new tab4 

 tabs = [tab1, tab2, tab4, tab3]

Now there is the difference between Firefox tab grouping and chrome tab grouping.

On Firefox tab4 would be appended to the end of the tab list, so in order to see a page potentially related to tab2 you would have to scroll after tab3 to tab4. The problem becomes clearer when you have about 6-10 tabs open.

On chrome the 4th tab is inserted after tab2, so if the user hit ctrl+tab we will be taken to the tab directly related to what he was reading previously(that would be tab2).

I hope you guys do this, it would be awesome :)

Thanks for reading this.

Disappearing the status bar

One idea for where to put extensions

Like the direction, thought I'd drop you another idea about how to handle extensions: Create a widget strip in the bottom-right of the screen -- where most status-bar extensions are now -- that is hidden all the time by default. If a status bar extension wants to provide a notification then the extension strip is shown for the duration of the notification. Also, if the mouse moves "close enough" to the bottom-right then the extension strip would be displayed. This would be fairly discoverable because people -- I think -- move their mouse to the bottom-left all the time to move the scrollbar, and this would/could(/shouldn't?) pop up the extensions strip.

This does have the advantage of not cluttering up the toolbar, though, which I think could get unpleasant if that were the only place for extensions to expose their UI.

Extension of idea above I think instead of requiring people to move "close enough," it might be better to have a button beneath the scrollbar with the extension icon that would slide in the statusbar. I think it would be best to have it stay until clicked again since some extensions are made to look act (think FoxClocks/Statusbar Clock) instead of interacting at specific moments.
Fmorel90 14:54, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Progress Line/Bar

Drawbacks I can see several drawbacks in the proposed Progress Line design. First A11y, the line is too thin to be seen on small size screens. Second, it tells nothing more than approx. progress of downloading. If I want know more, e.g. exact percentage of the content downloaded or the estimated time remaining, there's no space for it.

Suggestion I'd be delighted if the progression was indicated by semi-translucent Progress Bar, superimposing the page title in the tab's ear, much the same way the Fission add-on does it. Still better, I'd like to see the percentage and/or time remaining on mouse hovering the progress bar. Better yet, the design should be customizable via styles so the "coolness" is maintained across all Personas themes.

Bookmark Tab

I like the proposed 4.0 design very much. It quite matches my current usage - I have TinyMenu installed and window manager's title bar switched off. Now the suggestion:

What about having bookmarks not as widget, but as a tab? So there would be Home Tab, Bookmark Tab and then the other tabs.

--funTomas 10:01, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

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