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Comment by ramidarigaz | Hacker News Reader

Strongly reminiscent of Chrome, and I don't think that's a bad thing. Chrome's UI was one of the primary reasons I switched from Firefox.

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And for me the Chrome UI is the primary reason I can't stand Chrome and stay with FF.

Whatever they do to the default layout in FF doesn't bother me, just keep giving me the option to put it back the way I like it. So far, so good... other than needing a plug-in now to get a bottom status bar.

What do you use the bottom statusbar for?

Personally I just hover to see where a link goes at times, but chrome's method of showing the link at the bottom after N milliseconds is more than sufficient. It doesn't need to permanently take up pixels otherwise.

Firefox does the same, now. It's almost like Chrome's but it doesn't expand to show the "middle" of a really long link after a second.

Except that chrome's version obscures the navigation links in a lot of websites, which means you have to be quick to point and click in order to be able to navigate before the popup info tooltip blocks your click.

That doesn't happen (anymore?), because the popup will move out of the way of your cursor if you get close.

It happens to me all the time when I use Review Board on a big commit (which spans multiple pages). Just had it happen now on the latest Chrome.

I have to move the mouse around and play dodge-the-tooltip and hope I get lucky.

I use it for the standard things like hovering over URL's and watching page load progress. And I also agree that the pop-up in Chrome works reasonably well for this too... however...

FF went and added an 'Add-Ons Bar' to replace the bottom real-estate that plugins wanted to sit in lost by the status bar removal. So now, if I use the Add-on bar, AND allow the Chrome style status pop-up, I loose even more space since the URL is now outside the bottom bar, and I'm left with a ton of unused space on the Add-on bar. FF should have just made the Status label a movable element and allowed it to go back in the bottom bar if desired. Since the bar is going to be there anyhow for some people with plugins then their effort to save UI space just cost me 2x the UI space. It frustrates me that what could have been a simple and flexible change (optional, draggable status label) has turned into a hodge podge of work-arounds.

And I also agree that the pop-up in Chrome works reasonably well for this too... however...

However the Chrome pop-up has a tendency to obscure useful page content, especially on (oh, irony) Google docs.

I much prefer a devoted status bar. OTOH, I have a WUXGA screen (1920x1200) so I have less need to obsess over vertical screen space.

The rise of so-called "HD" screens is one of the tragedies of modern computing that ranks up there with Comic Sans.

We are going through a redesign for my company's web app and now we're going to have to insert a tiny bit of blank space at the bottom because Chrome's pop-up statusbar is covering a vital part of the UI! Doh!

You don't need an add-on to get the status bar back. Just enable it: View > Toolbars > Add-on Bar.

True, Status bar, no. Status label on the bottom bar, yes.

To me, it looks almost exactly the same. I do enjoy the small bar on the top of the window in Chrome, and now soon to be Firefox

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