Mozilla Ponders Major Firefox UI Refresh 282
CWmike writes "Mozilla is working on a revamp of Firefox to synchronize its various versions — desktop, tablet, phone and Windows 8 Metro — into a single visual style, according to documents posted by members of its user interface (UI) design team. The project, which does not have a name, and the earlier blending of Mozilla's mobile and desktop design groups, is meant to bring more coherence to the various versions of the open-source browser. 'One of our major goals for the year [is] getting Firefox to feel more like one product — more 'Firefoxy' — across all our platforms, desktop to tablet to phone,' Madhava Enro of the Mozilla UI design team, said in a post to his personal blog on Tuesday. Enro posted a slideshow he and others used the week before to present their proposals at a company get-together. According to the presentation, some UI elements will be shared across all Firefox editions, among them a lean toward 'softer texture' and smoother curves in the design."
No. Please Continue (Score:2, Interesting)
I blame the influence of smartphones and similar touch oriented devices.
There's a pretty big reason why all these changes are being implemented; that's where a large portion of the users are at, and these devices are getting more popular. It only makes sense that people using your software across devices will at least want a consistent UI, and it should be accessible no matter what type of device you are using.
That being said, looking over the Firefox designs, I see nothing that looks substantially different (or difficult) about how the new UI will be used.
Stop turning my computer programs into children's toys.
Conversely, I could say the old style of fiddly menus and unnecessary buttons and icons everywhere is more toylike than what we are moving towards, because those are all a big distraction and just make the software more difficult to use 95% of the time than it needs to be.
Re:DoNotWant (Score:4, Interesting)
That's exactly what they're proposing. They have different layouts and designs for different environments. From the slideshow the different layouts seem quite distinct, but have a couple of things in common (new tab button, shape of tabs) to make them all recognisable as variations of the same product. The desktop UI is called Australis and it's fairly similar to what we've had since FF4 but with some changes I like and a few I don't. The only Metro-ized one is the Metro version, but I can't comment on that because my eyes refused to focus when I looked at it.
Re:The beauty of Open Source. (Score:5, Interesting)
What about Iceweasel? It's not a fork, it's Firefox with the trademarkes replaced. Where Firefox goes, so goes Iceweasel.
What Firefox should do is go UI agnostic. Just focus on rendering HTML, and publish an API for front end designers. That way anyone could make Firefox look however they want without giving up features.
Re:The beauty of Open Source. (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope their new, single visual style will be "whatever the rest of the current host OS looks like".
Re:Noooo... (Score:5, Interesting)
I would rather have my forward/back/URL/search fields on the title bar with the window control buttons, and my tabs, capable of being sorted into more than one row, sideways up the left side of the window. Or, allow me to do the opposite. Also, allow the notifier that switches sides at the bottom be able to be vertical, as it's annoying when it blocks part of the text of a webpage.
Re:The beauty of Open Source. (Score:1, Interesting)
That has always been one of my arguments against OpenOffice and now LibreOffice. They continue to attempt to match the look, feel and usefulness and robustness of MS Office, yet have barely managed to equal Office-97. Considering that they have a fully functioning example of what they are trying to improve on, yet cannot even manage to create something vague equal to is really scary.