Firefox 2 - New GUI?

[tony-inpo]

I love the idea of having the FavIcon, Reload and Stop ALL-IN-ONE button. (I'm using Stop-Or-Reload Button extension)

I really really really don't

[nshahzad]

it looks fine the way it is..you can customize it and all that garbage.

just put some shiny new icons that load by default instead of having to get extensions for those, and itll be fine.

i think that effort can be concentrated on bettering things under the hood vs gui..

[mikeyj]

I tried doing a quick mockup using the ASCII as a base to go off of.

I think some bigger changes in the UI are needed to make these changes viable and effective. Putting icons into the location bar creates a far smaller target to click on, and in addition, the RSS button is problematic, as its appearance and disappearance will cause either a shift in the location of the UI buttons, a white gap (but no shifting of elements), or a dimmed out icon which simply takes up space (but does not go away, thus preventing a shifting of UI elements).

I think the switch to search engine title text rather than an icon is a good decision, as well as moving the search icon and dropdown to the right of the bar. Some work should be done on the menu layout, as it seems that menus are less efficient than they can be. Perhaps Mozilla should borrow some innovation from the new Office 12 interface, i.e. ribbons, to take the place of the menu bar. I think it would be a nice inventive step to turn the bookmark bar into more of a dynamic toolbar, which displays different information depending on user interaction and user behavior. It could function to display URLs of hovered links, or be a flyout system for menu functions...

I think there needs to be a change in the shape of the URL bar so that the additional buttons may be accomodated at size of around 24x24px, since that will help mitigate their small target area.

Hey, what do you know, another version of IE7...:argue:

[Julius Caro]

I don't see why everybody would love to see FF with a new UI.

I've always thought that having the search bar next to the adress bar is distracting.

And what's up with the IE7 comments? I think it was microsoft who decided to revamp IE after all the success of Firefox.

I doesnt surprise me a bit that both browsers are competing to be better. It's obvious that they will have identical features in some cases...

How so? Firefox 1.5/1.0 is a copy off IE5/6, if not anything else.

How come Firefox 1.5/1.0 is a copy of IE5/6? IE never had the adress bar next to the navigation buttons, nor it did have a search bar at all, or tabs. And the bookmarks bar has always been some netscape thing.

Now if we look at IE7, it has the adress bar next to the back-next buttons, it has a search bar, it has tabs... and I still think that's still no reason to say they've copied ff.

[Pink Floyd Veteran]

they want to make it look better but I've always wondered why they never added icons in the context menu!!

[zhangm Supervisor]

Hey, what do you know, another version of IE7...:argue:

It clearly doesn't have enough toolbars to be any version of IE... ;)

[theyarecomingforyou]

I like the first screenshot in this thread... I think the "File | Edit | View | Go | Bookmarks | Tools | Help" navigation system is unhelpful - Microsoft decided against it with the upcoming versions of Office and Windows and I'll be glad to see the back of it. Also, change from an icon to text for the search bar looks a lot better and gives you a better idea of what it's for - to a novice user it's currently not very obvious what it's for.

I await to see how well it will be implemented but it's a good route to be taking Firefox.

[FlibbyFlobby]

Heres my firefox 2 mock up of how I think the interface should look:

[Quillz]

Heres my firefox 2 mock up of how I think the interface should look:

I think this mock-up puts way too much info in the address bar. I agree with having the "Go" button, but not with the bookmarks icon, etc.

[FlibbyFlobby]

I think this mock-up puts way too much info in the address bar. I agree with having the "Go" button, but not with the bookmarks icon, etc.

Perhaps the add bookmark button could go to the left of the new tab button, but you have to remember the RSS and padlock icons would only be visible on relevant sites, not always during browsing. So for the most part there would only be the refresh/stop, go and add bookmarks button.

[Simon Veteran]

I think the add bookmark button should go in the bookmarks toolbar.

[alpha_omega]

Having tons of icons in textboxes --> bad idea

[FlibbyFlobby]

I think the add bookmark button should go in the bookmarks toolbar.

Then you have to open the toolbar to bookmark a webpage. Some people don't know that much about computers as it is, my parents still don't know how to bookmark, at least a visible button gives people like them a fighting chance.

Having tons of icons in textboxes --> bad idea

You could apply that theory to toolbars as well, but yet so many applications shove tons of buttons in a toolbar expecting novice users to just know what they mean. The text box only looks cluttered because all the possible icons are showing, and the Firefox window is only 800px wide, not to mention photoshopped. At a higher resolution the text box is hardly crowded, and the icons are in a relevant place. Hell you could even put them buttons in a seperate toolbar next to the address bar, whats important is they are level with the address bar so the user knows their relevance.

[migo]

I hope that the search bar can be removed. I prefer doing searches from the address bar with shortcuts. I'm a bit annoyed that IE doesn't allow it to be removed.

I like the Menus being part of the title bar, Orca Browser does that in compact mode and it does a good job of saving space. The only improvement over that would be sticking the tabs in the title bar and allow everything else to autohide.

[SamNeeds]

If the details explained in those links and from looking at that mock-up (the .png) it look very promising.

[iwod]

So what about the New tab button like IE 7?

[greg098]

I think you should take away the menus at the top. Why? Because it will give people bigger viewing space! This is one thing i hate about other browsers is that it looks too full