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Comment by cmelbye | Hacker News Reader

That mockup actually looks really nice. Why can't we have that same level of aesthetics in the Mac version? The main reason I don't use Firefox on my Mac is due to the really ugly user interface.

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I currently use the GrApple Crisp theme from http://www.takebacktheweb.org/

Not perfect, but makes it a bit more pleasant.

Heh, that's actually pretty cool. I like having tabs above the address bar and buttons. Thanks for the tip!

Completely with you there. Safari was my primary browser (and has been for about a year) until a friend mentioned that Firefox 3.6b5 had some major retooling with respect to perceived performance (esp. in the address bar and page compositing engine).

I'm really enjoying it so far, but had to switch to the GrApple Yummy theme at the above link. The base Firelight treatment feels so bulbous with a lot of wasted vertical space and unnecessary large rounded elements.

I love this UI concept series, though - the proposed Windows design is gorgeous. I'm jealous of how beautiful Chrome and the new Firefox 4 concepts look with Aero compared to their bulgy gray counterparts on OS X.

Never thought I'd say that :-/

You should try the Vimperator extension. It trades almost the entire UI/chrome for modal, vim-style, keyboard browsing.

Well, I still like having a user interface. I don't like having to remember commands and keyboard shortcuts for vim, so I don't know if I would like an extension like that. I will look into extensions/themes for Firefox however.

While I love vim, and I really, really don't like the Chrome-style UI, I found that addon to be irritating. I like my Gentoo box's Firefox UI just as it is, with the Tab Mix Plus addon letting me stack tabs in rows.

Fuck aesthetics. As long as it works and doesn't get in my way, I'll be content, and it'll be ahead of 99% of software.

I don't use a $1,700 Apple computer so that I can use poorly designed software ;-)

Part of "doesn't get in the way" is a consistent and pleasant user interface.

Sure.

An even bigger part of "doesn't get in the way" is not crashing or grinding to a halt for seconds at a time.

It's not that part of the comment that's getting it downvoted, it's the first bit.

That's a given. If someone is putting out software that bad, I'm not even going to think of using it, so it doesn't come into consideration. Hell, I don't even know of any modern browser that bad; I have no idea where your 99% comes from. Even IE passes that test now.

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