If Firefox 3 drops Vista look

[bryonhowley]

Does not matter much one way or the other as I never use Firefox and have no plans to every use it.

[1Frothy]

A few points:

• Paul Thurrot has no idea what he's talking about, but is trolling for exposure. It seems this is SOP for this guy.
  
• Firefox3 will have a native vista Theme
  
• By "native vista theme" I mean only Vista-like buttons.
  
• Glass in the Toolbars would be impossible.
  
• Firefox's UI is not "native". "A Native UI" means that the UI elements are drawn by Window's (or quartz or qt) API. Firefox's UI is drawn by the Gecko itself, menus, buttons, toolbars, everything. In comparison, the Gecko based K-melon web browser's UI is drawn by the Windows API. This is why it cannot be cross-platform, and has no GUI extensions, but Firefox is and does.
  
• Gecko Rendering of the UI is one reason there are so many Firefox extensions. Creating GUI for an extension isn't "much different" than creating a web page using DOM.
  
• Using glass for Firefox's toolbars would involve abandoning Gecko UI and using Windows API. This would break extensions and virtually change pretty much the whole program. A glass effect might be able to be emulated by Gecko, but I imagine this also would break too many things to be useful.
  

Point 1. Paul Thurrott is a well respected author / publisher and podcaster. If you think he's a Troll, that's fine. But who are you again?

Point 2. FX 3 will have a Vista Theme - as out of place and disgusting as it is. Sure. But it's not native, it doesn't fit the look and feel of Vista at all.

Point 3. :huh: Well then how is it 'Native' then?

Point 4. Would it? I always thought the developers at Mozilla are clever. Either you undervalue their skills or you have no programming knowledge.

Point 5. I thought you just said it was 'Native', now it isn't. Please make up your mind.

Point 6. Gecko renders the UI of FX? That's news.

Point 7. So using a native windows api set is somehow bad?

Please stop spouting. You're confusing those reading this forum and more disturbingly, yourself!

[APH-Alex]

One thing that I cannot agree with is the point that some people have made about the address bar drop down menu. I think it's the most genius thing to date! For instance, if I want to go to www.aphnetworks.com but I don't remember the website but I do remember that it has the word "unifying" in the title I just type in "unifying" and it finds it for me. It's small, yes, but it, along with the "view image" feature that isn't in IE7, are some of the many things keeping me to Fx.

[HawkMan]

mmm yeah, Gecko is just the renderer for the webpages and is inside the shell wich is that horrible XUL poweredcrap, slow and horrible on the memory usage. Frankly I'd rather see themabstracting most of the code and using native GUI engines on the different platforms.

sure it's more work, but int he end they get a more toruble free enviroment, the applications is faster and use less memory, and they'd most likely get rid of the memory bug that's been known and not fixed for three major versions now. Besides a XAML/WPF powered browser would be neat :)

[1Frothy]

^

Maybe Mozilla needs to consider the option of re-writing their browser to utilize native operating system api's; Windows Presentation Foundation for Vista, and libraries instead of sticking to their scheme. Perhaps when they decide to do this, I will revisit the idea of installing FX.

I can't believe, for such a seemingly progressive company as Mozilla is; that they are sticking to their own way of UI design. The latest Icons and theme for FX 3 is nothing more than 'makeup' for an ugly ugly face beneath. And it's getting to the point where no matter how they try to make it look good, there's only so much 'makeup' that can be applied before what lies beneath shows it's head.

[Borbus]

Gecko renders everything in Firefox, including XUL which stands for XML UI Language. As shakey_snake said, this is what makes Firefox, and its plugins, cross platform. That's what Firefox is, change that and its a different program.

It makes absolutely no sense to me why people would want their browser to look like IE7. So you have a fat chunk of glass and buttons at the top which looks arguable nice but that's reducing the space for the actual web page, which is the whole point of the program!

[LTD]

Isn't the whole point of sound HIG to have apps match the "look and feel" of the OS?

Windows apps have been far from stellar in this department, but at least with Vista there's some hope. And now this news about FF. **sigh**

[Borbus]

Maybe they shouldn't write guidelines that are so hard to follow.

[rkenshin]

So, even talking about non-internet apps ... your telling me that you would use a program more than another one (that does the exact same thing) just because the interface is "pretty"?

Yikes.

Out of all the browsers I've use, I've consistently gone back to FX, and not because of its looks. If I did that, than I'd be using IE, Flock, or Opera (although, you got to admit, Flock is a neat browser, based on FX). What is uses as its "native" skin, I could care less about. The current FX3b3 vector interface is growing on me.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

...

Point 2. FX 3 will have a Vista Theme - as out of place and disgusting as it is. Sure. But it's not native, it doesn't fit the look and feel of Vista at all.

...

Point 6. Gecko renders the UI of FX? That's news.

...

Firefox uses the native system theme via the theme API Windows exposes (and the GTK theme on Linux, and the Aqua theme on OS X via it's theme functions).

And Gecko has rendered the entire UI for a long time.

[Ayepecks]

I'll wait for confirmation of this... seems kind of odd that only he would know.

I do agree with the people saying that it'd be nice if Mozilla would find a way to use aero in the interface a la IE, too. It's not to look like IE, it's to look like Vista. IE just happens to be the best example since it is also a browser. You could just say Windows Explorer.

[shakey_snake]

Point 1. Paul Thurrott is a well respected author / publisher and podcaster. If you think he's a Troll, that's fine. But who are you again?

I'm not going to bother to continue this line, but it's obvious he's completely incorrect about Firefox dropping the vista look.

Point 2. FX 3 will have a Vista Theme - as out of place and disgusting as it is. Sure. But it's not native, it doesn't fit the look and feel of Vista at all.

The idea is to get it as native looking as possible, and still be rendered by Gecko. I agree that I wasn't completely consistent on my use of the term "native" in the above post, but when I used the phrase "native theme" I meant "native looking theme". I was misusing the term how Paul has misused the term.

Point 3. :huh: Well then how is it 'Native' then?

"native looking" aka when installed to Vista, will look like it belongs in vista, as closely as it can.

Point 4. Would it? I always thought the developers at Mozilla are clever. Either you undervalue their skills or you have no programming knowledge.

...or you don't understand how glass is implemented...

Point 5. I thought you just said it was 'Native', now it isn't. Please make up your mind.

it is "native looking" it's not native as in "rendered by windows' API".

Point 6. Gecko renders the UI of FX? That's news.

Shows how little you know, and how apt you are at critiquing someone on the subject.

Point 7. So using a native windows api set is somehow bad?

For a cross-platform app like Firefox, yes.

Please stop spouting. You're confusing those reading this forum and more disturbingly, yourself!

You've really only shown so far that you don't know what you are talking about. Edited February 17, 2008 by shakey_snake

[Xerxes]

EDIT: Nevermind.

Edited February 17, 2008 by Xerxes

[Justin-]

Will I still use it? Of course. I was VERY reluctant to switch from IE7. Now that I've made the switch (a few months after IE7 released), there is no way I'm going back any time soon. Also, it's nice to be able to use the same browser on Mac OS and Windows. :)

That said: I do hope the Vista version changes it's look to better match the OS, kind of like the FF3 nightlies are doing in Mac OS (which is, by far, the nicest looking browser I've ever seen). I'm not sure there is an "easy" way to make the browser look that great on Vista? Partly because of the disunity between application looks. IE7 looks decent, but with the themes Firefox has, FF can look much better.

[ViperAFK]

Mozilla could definitely do better with the vista look, I will judge it when the final comes out, I for one would have been fine if they kept the old icons which looked fine in vista and just put in the native menus (Crappy out of place old style menus look horrid in vista, the new ff menus look much better)

[Warboy]

But why?!?! Why bother using Firefox at all then?? Why not uninstall Firefox and use IE7 right now?!?!

lawl....

This is built-in but isn't ready yet.

PS. The 2nd picture is vista also. Just with a Modded theme...

[Internet]

Why do you care about the colors of a few buttons? I use firefox because i like the functionality, i don't really care how it looks.

If you're not going to use a browser because of a few colors, thats the girliest thing i've ever heard.... need a shoulder to cry on? It's open source and free, your lucky they even distribute it, they don't have to cater to you and your wants. Vista is junk anyway.

[FlibbyFlobby]

I like the idea of these new native looking icons, but I don't think anything we've seen in the betas has been visually impressive. Also the choice to go with Royale over Luna in XP seems dumb when you consider that most average users will be using the default Luna theme and the point of this is integration with the OS.

Personally I'd rather them get the new features done and release Firefox 3, then drop the native themes in a 3.5 release or something, than get the current beta look.

[BlueFox]

Or course I will... even though I'm not using Vista. Even if I were, there are still themes to help getting rid of the huge green orb.

...but I don't think Mozilla did really drop Vista's look.

[Calum Veteran]

Why? Because I'm a web developer and I dream about the death of IE.

Amen to that! Why can't they just make IE display pages properly! (Now IE 8 passes the Acid2 test, hopefully it will)...

The theme in that picture is FANTASTIC! It really goes with Vista VERY well and looks perfect! In fact, if Firefox had that, then I wouldn't really care too much about the glass. Also, ther new Vista icons and 'Back' and 'Forward' buttons look PERFECT with those toolbars and menubars.

However, have you got a source please to proove that that will in fact be the final Vista theme? Because I don't know whether I can beleive that - it could just be a fake theme someone has made.

Also the choice to go with Royale over Luna in XP seems dumb when you consider that most average users will be using the default Luna theme and the point of this is integration with the OS.

I agree with this too and thought it was odd when they decided to go with Royale rather than Luna... :s

[EnzoFX]

I think Firefox should define it's own look. If your complaining about it matching the os, then that's pretty ridiculous to me. WMP11 doesn't match the rest of vista. Or let me re-phrase, it should match, but not be the same as all the other windows; i.e. WMP11.

Also, why use FF over IE7? uhm, because I get immensely more out of the experience than with IE7. I can customize FF to a far greater degree. I'm not just talking about looks, it has a wider feature set. There are some simple things that IE7 just doesn't get, I'm speaking in terms of intuitive UI, hell even Safari has them.

experience wise: FF >>> (I cannot put enough of these in here) >> IE7, and yes even with a stock FF.

Edited February 17, 2008 by EnzoFX

[Warboy]

The theme in that picture is FANTASTIC! It really goes with Vista VERY well and looks perfect! In fact, if Firefox had that, then I wouldn't really care too much about the glass. Also, ther new Vista icons and 'Back' and 'Forward' buttons look PERFECT with those toolbars and menubars.

However, have you got a source please to proove that that will in fact be the final Vista theme? Because I don't know whether I can beleive that - it could just be a fake theme someone has made.

Well, I mainly had to touch it up via some lines of code that wasn't enabled normally.

Bug 416531

Bug 405605

As I said, they are not ready yet and I don't know even if you use their code they gave in those links, if you will get the dark backgrounds like i do. "toolbars and menubars" are there, but just not the color scheme right now.

[Riscon]

Guys, try this userstyle

http://userstyles.org/styles/5093

[Ronin Achilles]

Amen to that! Why can't they just make IE display pages properly! (Now IE 8 passes the Acid2 test, hopefully it will)...

The theme in that picture is FANTASTIC! It really goes with Vista VERY well and looks perfect! In fact, if Firefox had that, then I wouldn't really care too much about the glass. Also, ther new Vista icons and 'Back' and 'Forward' buttons look PERFECT with those toolbars and menubars.

I agree with this too and thought it was odd when they decided to go with Royale rather than Luna... :s

That theme is http://userstyles.org/styles/5189

[+Gary7 Subscriber²]

Every default theme for Firefox has sucked since back in the day it was called Phoenix. I have never used any default theme. And to not use a product because you don't like the default theme is well Stupid. And to not use it because it does not look like Vista! That is a good thing. If you were to look there is an Aero Theme for Firefox. It may not be ready for Beta 3 but Mozilla does not code the Themes nor extensions. There was not a fourth choice so I did not vote.