Firefox 4.0: New Design Changes Revealed | Hacker News Reader

Firefox 4.0: New Design Changes Revealed

mashable.com

24 pointsiiijjjiii33 comments

Non-linkjacked: http://blog.stephenhorlander.com/2009/12/21/windows-themeui-... (which I submitted earlier: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1007484)

Mashable doesn't seem to enjoy giving others credit. The only link to the author is just a tiny link with the word "share". Even the name isn't mentioned. The original author deserves more than that.

I'm sorry about that. I've added a [via] tag at the bottom and expanded the link text to make sure credit is given where it is due.

- Ben (Co-Editor)

Thanks for this. I was about to write a comment dissing Mashable for this.

Also, please consider doing it more often. Mashable rarely links to the original source (if at all), many times I have to Google to get more information; an extra step that can be easily avoided. Its in good form to link the original source.

We link regularly to the original source, I'm sorry if it's not as visible, but I assure you we do regularly. The exception are ones coming in the form of company announcements, but even then we often link back to their blog posts.

I'll try to make it more visible in the future.

OK, I should have said "from my experience". That was my experience most of the time when I was subscribed to mashable RSS, most of the time posts were deep linked to more mashable posts, instead of original source. It was a quite bit frustrating.

Anyways, I just checked the last couple of post you guys had they all seem to link to the source. The fact that you come here to reply to readers opinions, clearly means you guys care. That's good enough for me.

Thanks.

In your last image "Comparison of Firefox 4.0 and Firefox 3.5" – the screenshot of 3.5 has a bookmarks bar and multiple tabs, while the grab from 4.0 has not.

You are making it look like 4.0 gives way more room to browse, when the change is marginal.

We took the screen directly from the source - we didn't do the actual comparison.

Do you remember in the comics of chrome, they said they were doing it to help other browsers. They also said they'd really like to have their ideas borrowed to make the web a better place.

Indeed. It would be even better (and noble) if they mentioned Chrome by name somewhere.

That's absurd. Why would anyone publish a list of upcoming features and then mention which competitor they're borrowing them from?

It's certainly not unheard of in the open source world to say that you've been inspired by another project.

I recently watched an official video by Googlers about the Chrome extensions, and they mention Firefox by name many times.

Yup, even on chrome blog, on recent videos they have mentioned webkit/safari/apple contributions several times.

That's not an accurate comparison. That's an improvement to the rendering engine that's shared between them. They all have the feature. It's a different story when you're talking about a feature you're planning to implement and then mention the competitor who already has it. It's just plain stupid.

Yes, but, unlike some open source projects, Mozilla is out to make money from the project and their income is generated almost exclusively through a search deal with this particular competitor.

which parts are so Chromish?

the new Firefox button comes from Microsoft Office.

the space between tabs comes from either Opera or Microsoft Office.

the tabs on top, which is only a possibility at this point, comes from Opera first, but was implemented by Google Chrome down the line.

the use of so much transparency in the menu may come from Microsoft Office or Chrome.

the non-flat buttons can come from Opera or Chrome.

the use of only three buttons on the left, however, comes from Chrome. it should be mentioned that Firefox is playing with the idea of getting rid of a refresh button on the left by building it into the location bar. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Projects/3.7_and_4.0_Theme_...

just want to give credit where credit is due.

Have you used chrome recently? While they might have borrowed ideas from other UI designs, never before did Firefox look more like chrome.

Not that its a bad thing. Throughout its history FF have taken design ideas from IE, Opera extensively. For all we know, FF most likely wouldn't even consider such a drastic UI change if chrome wasn't in the picture. FF UI changes has always been incremental and subtle.

Very Chromish. I'm glad they're not too proud to borrow good ideas when they see them. Now if they can just improve stability and speed I may switch back from Chromium.

The Firefox menu in the top-left corner looks remarkably similar to the O menu that's appeared in the latest Opera alpha (http://goo.gl/Chfb).

I like the way a lot of the cruft from 1990s Windows applications is starting to disappear from programmes that really don't need it like modern browsers.

Out of curiosity, why did you post a shortened link here instead of the canonical one? Does goo.gl give you some kind of clickthrough monitoring, or was there another reason?

And those menus look a lot like the Office 2007 menus or MS Paint in Windows 7. ;-)

This makes me very, very happy. I use Chrome on my netbook for two reasons: it's faster, and it takes up significantly less screen space. It's nice to see Firefox beginning to compete in at least one of those two areas.

If you need to maximize usable window space, try vimperator for Firefox. Works wonders on my netbook.

do you know of a way to set certain UI elements to load on every launch so that i don't have to type in 'set guioptions' every time i launch the browser?

create a ~/.vimperatorrc file with your specific settings

It's odd. The UI of Chrome is precisely one of the reasons I don't use it - in particular, the lack of a menu bar and especially the Bookmarks menu.

How is this saving space? How is this Chrome-ish?

Chrome saved space by getting rid of the title bar (a bar that would just say "Chrome"). From these pictures, Firefox still has a whole bar that just says "Firefox." Why?

Mozilla, please allow us to place tabs on the Title bar!

And if you really want to blow Chrome out of the water, explore innovative vertical tab options. Tree style tabs is an immensely popular extension for a reason.

All I ever wanted from Firefox 4.0 is the user interface latency (or rather, lack thereof) of Chromium and the process-per-tab / process-per-plugin model. The latter would probably help a lot with the former.

The screenshot mockups don't tell.

I wish they'd optimize for vertical space instead of eye candy. Most applications use way too much vertically stacked menubars, toolbars, bookmarks bars etc..., nibbling away precious display space from the document.

Some of the sample back/forward button mockups are quite nice and subtle but the one they use in the final 4.0/3.5 comparison image is terribly chunky.

For those people that said it was pointless for google to enter the browser market, here's why.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. Chrome showcased multiple innovations in browser technology. Things like a single process per tab, a much tighter security model, and proof that javascript implementations could be much faster.

By doing this they have set trends in how browser technologies should progress and thus had an influence on their ability to implement "html 5" webapps in the future that work cross browser. It was much more than "check it out we put tabs in the title bar guys".

Hey, that's just like Opera!

Again.

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