updates Meet the browser: Firefox Next

[remixedcat]

yeah and not to mention the very distinct "keyhole" design.

and chrome's UI looks like it's from the windows xp luna days rather then windows 7/2008 aero or mac osx aqua era

[SoapyHamHocks Member]

Just more and more ridicolous. Among all the things firefox could have copied from chrome, they took its fugly UI. very well done

To be fair it looked like that in all versions of Firefox before Firefox 4. Firefox 3 had "native" buttons with some custom back-forward ones with the keyhole design.

[remixedcat]

I prefer "native" to system design anyday. see the bug for some example I provided. if you don't wanna dig through the mess compare openoffice ('system' styled) to anything like IE9/windows live essentials, Fx, WMP, etc.....

[SoapyHamHocks Member]

I prefer "native" to system design anyday. see the bug for some example I provided. if you don't wanna dig through the mess compare openoffice to anything like IE9/windows live essentials, Fx, WMP, etc.....

Not sure what the correct term even is, but all previous versions of Firefox had that button design. I'm not sure why they would waste so much time designing and implementing all these new designs just to revert back to the old days.

Nothing in Vista/7 even uses this button design so it is really odd.

[remixedcat]

yeah the keyhole goes more with vista/7 then the "new" design.

[dnast]

Don't worry Mozilla is making Firefox ugly in an attempt to get Chrome users back.

LOL.

To be honest though, I've always found Firefox to be somewhat ugly up until Fx4, and even then it was just okay.

Even though I don't care for the resemblance to Chrome I'm just glad they're putting more resources into the UI other than just mockups.

[Kirkburn]

Some people swear blind that IE9 is the prettiest, some say Opera ... to a reasonable extent UI and UX is a personal preference. Personally, I've already applied a stylish to remove button backgrounds (except on hover), because I fail to see the need for them. It's just extra lines.

Just because Chrome does something isn't a reason *not* to do it. Following others blindly is never a good approach, but this is not evidence of that.

Also, the UX build is a testing ground, not a *if it's in here, it'll be in a future release (unchanged, or even at all)*.

[SoapyHamHocks Member]

Some people swear blind that IE9 is the prettiest, some say Opera ... to a reasonable extent UI and UX is a personal preference. Personally, I've already applied a stylish to remove button backgrounds (except on hover), because I fail to see the need for them. It's just extra lines.

Just because Chrome does something isn't a reason *not* to do it. Following others blindly is never a good approach, but this is not evidence of that.

Also, the UX build is a testing ground, not a *if it's in here, it'll be in a future release (at all, or just unchanged)*.

Some people fail to realize that Chrome didn't invent borderless buttons.

[Kirkburn]

Some people fail to realize that Chrome didn't invent borderless buttons.

Not sure if you're implying I think they did? Cause that's certainly not what I'm implying, nor would it matter. (But it's a fair point at anyone who thinks they did).

[SoapyHamHocks Member]

Not sure if you're implying I think they did? Cause that's certainly not what I'm implying, nor would it matter. (But it's a fair point at anyone who thinks they did).

That's not what I meant. I was simply agreeing with you in a way, I probably shouldn't have quoted. It seems a lot of people complain that Mozilla is using borderless buttons. All version of Firefox prior to Firefox 4 had them, then they got changed in Firefox 4, now apparently they want them back. I've read so many complaints that Firefox is copying Chrome in this aspect, but it simply isn't the case.

[Kirkburn]

...

:yes:

[SoapyHamHocks Member]

:whistle:

[grayscale]

^Not really a fan of 'curvy' tabs XD

[Brandon H Supervisor]

^

^

only chrome is allowed to pull off curved tabs like that :p

[KingCrimson]

I actually look forward to using Aurora these days.

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

SoapyHamHocks' screenshot is based on new UX mockups posted by Stephen Horlander.

Windows mockup:

OS X mockup:

[Jan Veteran]

:x That's disgusting

[Jan Veteran]

Dev tools:

[grayscale]

Looks good on Mac but I doubt I'll like those curves on windows. The transparent inactive tabs will also be unreadable on light/bright wallpapers.

[Excelsis]

I dont like the curved tabs either but the last screenshot on that website I think is REALLY sharp.

But mockups... We all know what happens with them. So many things were trashed for Fx4, including some things that actually made it in the nightlies.

I wish they would come up with one decent design and stick with it, at least for a year.

[remixedcat]

The curved tabs and overall design of that mockup bring too much attention to the browser chrome and are distracting.

[jupe]

i like the curved tabs, can anyone point me in the direction of a stylish script to accomplish that effect, i just want it to look like that but with less of a radius

[Kirkburn]

http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/ux-presentation/ux-presentation.html does look interesting.

With the massive caveat that they are mockups, and that doesn't mean Firefox will look like that ... the full screen views make a lot of sense, and the OSX menu design is fairly novel. Not sure about the 'flowing' tabs, but just because Chrome has them doesn't mean they're a bad design. Certainly to many they are more attractive than box tabs.

But mockups... We all know what happens with them. So many things were trashed for Fx4, including some things that actually made it in the nightlies.

I wish they would come up with one decent design and stick with it, at least for a year.

Product design just doesn't work like that, unfortunately. You find issues during implementation, or you find a better way to do something, or time constraints prevent you from coding it. It would be *nice*, and often the closer you can stick to mockups, the better, but it's rare to stick to a design over the course of several months of coding (especially in a rapidly changing market).

And indeed, with regular code releases, it doesn't often make sense to hold back new UI work just so you can do it all at once (for one, that would likely be a development nightmare).

[Excelsis]

^I understand changes are needed when it goes from mockups to actual implementation but at the moment it seems they're changing the design depending on their mood and they're not small changes so it can be implemented properly, either.

From the 4.0 mockups to the final release of Fx4 I thought they did a pretty good job of implementing what they set out to do and they're already scrapping most of it which I think is a shame.

[Kirkburn]

^I understand changes are needed when it goes from mockups to actual implementation but at the moment it seems they're changing the design depending on their mood and they're not small changes so it can be implemented properly, either.

From the 4.0 mockups to the final release of Fx4 I thought they did a pretty good job of implementing what they set out to do and they're already scrapping most of it which I think is a shame.

I wouldn't say they are 'scrapping' it, really - tweaking and refining it, more like. Design work is a lot of iteration, and to have gone from Fx 3.6 to the new design seen above would be far too disruptive to the code and user experiences - so what happens are steps on a long road. Fx4 did make a variety of very good changes to the UI, but even Fx4's original designs were somewhat more radical than we got (e.g. no home tab yet, and other stuff on http://areweprettyyet.com).

In any case, yeah I agree that it would be nice to settle on a single design for a long period of time ... but it'll never happen, and rarely happens in any software, especially not browsers. (I would argue Firefox's previous feeling of more stable design was born more out of slow release schedules, than intent.)