Anyone know if there is support planned for Windows 7 features like tabs in taskbar like IE8?
Are there any pre-beta builds with such capabilities?

I think it's in Mozilla's hands right now.

I really hope they come up with some cool ideas! At least jump lists! Although, making use of the new taskbar API would be cool!

Yes, it is all in Mozilla's hands They can obtain the APIs so I hope they make use of them!

That's up to mozilla, considering the public beta was just released it would probably take some time. I don't know if they would be able to add it to 3.1 or not.

Unfortunately, I doubt it will be in Firefox 3.1 as well In fact, I'm almost certain it won't be as Firefox 3.1 is beta 2 already

MS have to release and document the API first, then somebody needs to code it into Firefox.

There's a bug about it though, but obviously there's no work done on it.

I thought Brandon Live said Microsoft have already released the API and documentation?

The post above yours also said that there might be a bug that's not currently being fixed in that API, which will discourage Mozilla from using it?

I meant there's a bug entry in Mozilla's bug DB about supporting it.

And if MS did release documentation I can't find it on MSDN, their search engine does suck though so that isn't surprising.

File bugs @bugzilla.mozilla.org

It isn't. I was using Fx 3.1B2 for awhile today and it isn't fixed. Windows Live Mail also would not work with it.

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/PDC08WhiteP...?ReleaseId=1797 has some documentation

mozilla still have lots of time to implement such features... it's not like firefox doesn't work in windows 7 now, it's just firefox isn't as user friendly as ie is in windows 7

For all we know, there could be a Firefox 3.2 release by the time Windows 7 is finally RTM'd.

Adding this feature to FF3.1 is out of question as they are working on beta 3 right now, and hope to get this released by end of March. With that said, FF3.2 will likely have this feature. But, 3.2 final release probably will not come until towards the end of year.

I think it is possible for someone to make an addon to achieve the same thing for the meantime.

I doubt you'll be able to do it through an addon.

Unless addons have access to the Windows API, I think you're probably right (I wouldn't know if they do or not, but I suspect not).

There is no doubt Mozilla will, but I doubt we'll see a Win7 version until at least 3.5 or even 4.0. Don't forget they already have their hands full right now, but I'm sure they'll have something by around the time of the launch of 7.

It's not on MSDN library site, but you can download the beta version of the Windows SDK that corresponds to the public beta here which seems to include the latest documentation.

The interface is ITaskbarList3 (like in this progress bar example).


And yes, both Firefox extensions and plugins have full access to the Windows API and can run any code with the same privileges as the user running Firefox. Keep that in mind if you install random ones.

That's good to know, thanks. I generally don't, but still.

hdood is correct it is the ITaskbarList3 interface that does all the magic. There is documentation from MSDN found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd378460(VS.85).aspx

If I was a coder I'd do it myself but I'm not so I'll just have to sit in the corner and wait for someone to sort it out...

There seems to be 3 usefull things that should be implemented: taskbar tab preview, progress bar indication and the Jumplists.

For the taskbar tab preview doody, it doesn't seem that it would be that much work... if I am right, FF3 would need to be told to register the tabs as they open and close using the calls in this section.

Progress Bar calls are here and the Jump list calls are here

You can follow along with Windows 7 bugs on the tracking bug here:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=474052

See the text that says "Depends on:" and then the list of links after it? Those are all bugs related to Windows 7. We use "tracking bugs" sometimes to group bugs together. In particular, one bug in that list is:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=474060 - Show download progress in app icon in Windows 7 taskbar

It seems unlikely that this will land in time for the Firefox 3.1 release, but it certainly may make the 3.2 release (if that's what it winds up being called), which is targeted for the end of 2009. Also, it's possible that we might backport the patch to a later 3.1.x release, like we did with some Vista patches in later 2.0.0.x releases.

Go to this page as well https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Windows_7_Integration, Vote for the parts of Integration you most want. There are many new things windows 7 uses that firefox has yet to use, Like Task Bar Preview and download progress.

Probably take them ages to implement anything.

How long has Vista been out and still no glass support?

Not bashing, just saying, I know bug fixes come first...

It's extremely easy to get glass in firefox with the glasser extension:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7336

With just glasser + stylish you can make fx look as good as ie7:
Click to view attachment

IE8 sucks and that's why im sure most people removed it from windows 7.

I did as well as WMP.

I know that I'm talking natively.

The sooner it's implemented into the Firefox the quicker I free up extensions that use up memory.

It requires them to re-write how they draw web pages (3.5+ support Glass windows, but you can't use web content inside those windows because it breaks)

I personally don't see the need for it in the main window, the current UI is fine IMO and fits in pretty good.

You can get glass just like ie7/chrome in 3.0/3.5 right now with one extension (glasser)....I dont see how they need a major rewrite to get it working.

Yeah, but it's hacky and breaks if you extend into web page contents (the proper method lets the entire window be glass)

Why would you need the entire window to be glass lol.

In case you want to show proper transparency with web pages. Extension might want to show a window on glass with HTML content, they can't mix it at the moment (XUL renders on Glass fine, HTML content doesn't)

I don't see a need for everything to be glass ... I don't see a need for the current UI to be changed. Using 3.5b4 and it looks fine.

Somehow I don't see Mozilla adapting Microsoft API's for the taskbar tabs, simply for the fact that Firefox is intended to be a Universal browser; available on muliple platforms. Linux and Mac OS X wouldn't be able to use such tab API's, and no sense in implamenting them for the sake of only one platform.

there's plenty of things they do only on certain platforms, I don't see why they couldn't do that for Win7

When you enable Glass in a window with HTML content, you gets bugs like this and this.

And Mozilla have no problem implementing platform specific features when it provides better integration into the base OS (on Windows, it does it's own alerts, on OS X it does them through growl, on Linux it does them through libnotify). And there's already a "progress in taskbar" patch that is nearly finished.

With 3.5 and glasser 2.0 you get complete glass even on the tabs.

Hey hardgiant, how do you get that Go button on the toolbar?

Stylish + Fx3 - Oldstyle Go Button http://userstyles.org/styles/6584

No offense but thats such an ignorant post, why not take available of an api on one platform to make the browser better? AFAIK firefox will be integrating with things on OSX that windows doesn't have either in the future.

Taking advantage of the api probably wouldn't be too difficult and wouldn't make firefox any les of a "Universal Browser" Your post makes NO sense at all.

All I'm saying is I would imagine it to be inefficent cost wise an resource wise (number of developers and programming power) to cater to each and every platform's specifics for a single program, not to mention a possible invitation to bugs or such a huge base code that it becomes bloatware.

It's not exactly a massive or very difficult feature to implement you are making it WAY bigger than it really is and blowing things completely out of proportion, and would hardly make it "bloatware"

talk about making a mountain out of molehill.

A molehill becomes a mountain when you keep adding things; some Windows 7 Aereo, a taskbar tab API here, an OS X Cocoa with a side of Aqua there, a little Linux Jetpack a dash of Microformat APIs, etc.
(Let's not even get into layers for Extentions, Java, MAPI, CCS, SSL, etc. ;Standard for Popular Web Browsers)

It's apparent that Firefox isn't as efficent as IT COULD BE


Source: http://boomswaggerboom.wordpress.com/2008/...under-the-hood/

I believe this is why Chrome is beating Firefox in terems of raw performance speed, because it doesn't implament all this crap.

chrome is not noticeably faster than fx at all on my system, and thats not why its faster. It's because chrome is built on a faster rendering engine (webkit) and their js engine (v8) is faster as well but not by a whole lot. Firefox 3.5 beta has many speed improvements and isn't much slower than chrome at all.

And chrome is pretty much featureless compared to fx imo, it's lacking a lot of basic features like smooth scrolling and proper bookmark management an extensions arent even fully implemented yet.

Your posts seem to imply that making firefox better on each platform makes it "slow" which is not true.

Also firefox is already completely cross platform on both OSX and linux while chrome is still in VERY early stages being ported to those.

Your arguments make little to no sense.

you speak like firefox on every operating system is installed from 1 installer...