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Comment by starwed | Hacker News Reader

Folk are focusing on the two changes that make this more like chrome (tabs in title bar, and apparent removal of search bar.) There's more going on here.[1]

* Simplified, customizable graphical menus. No idea how well this will work, but it's only a mock-up at this point.

* Removal of the forward button, merging the back button with the URL bar.

* Refinement of per tab UI. In chrome you still get the browser chrome on pages like preferences or history.

* A change in browser chrome when entering fullscreen mode. (Chrome just over-lays the standard UI when you mouse to the top.)

[1] If anyone knows the context for these images, would be nice to link it!

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>Folk are focusing on the two changes that make this more like chrome (tabs in title bar, and apparent removal of search bar.)

Just FWIW, my FF (over KDE) is pretty much like this: http://i.imgur.com/RH2Ld.jpg.

I do actually keep the search box but I use it almost exclusively as a scratch pad for short notes (!) and do nearly all searching via keywords in the URL bar ("Awesome Bar").

Image also shows how not to use the <title> element in HTML.

I hope there's an option to put the forward button back in. I use it a lot.

If you think about it, the forward button is disabled about 80% of the time -- so it doesn't really need to always be there. The forward button isn't being removed completely; it'll just be hidden when it's not clickable. It will slide out when there's a "forward" URL available.

Ugh. I hate shapeshifting UIs. Muscle memory depends on stuff being fixed in space relative to other elements.

The only element that would shift is the awesome bar, and that's a pretty big target to miss.

muscle memory is less relevant when mousing. the range of starting positions is large.

I can usually mouse to within a few dozen pixels of my target without looking at the screen, thanks to a combination of muscle memory and spatial sense.

Firefox's UI has always been the most customizable of any of the major browsers. You will be able to add it back in if it is taken out by default in the future. (Disclosure: I work for Mozilla but not on the UX team.)

I do not believe that, from my experience Opera is much more configurable, at least my current Opera setup suggests that. I have added buttons to my UI that I would have to install addons for in Firefox.

Well, he said major.

The fwd button shows up if you can actually go forward, it's not totally removed, but hidden if no useful.

Do you actually use the button itself rather than a mouse/keyboard shortcut?

http://www-archive.mozilla.org/docs/end-user/moz_shortcuts.h... if you're in to that sort of thing... (some people prefer buttons, no judgement here.)

The preferences menu is also very similar to Chrome's.

Folk are focusing on the two changes that make this more like chrome (tabs in title bar, and apparent removal of search bar.)

This has been in FF since version 4. These mockups are for FF 8.

Err, no it hasn't? Certainly not on the mac -- mine has looked exactly like this(http://mozcom-cdn.mozilla.net/img/covehead/firefox/gettingst...) for a while now.

Also, I don't even think these will land for FF8, since I've been running the nightly for a while now and they haven't appeared.

Ah well. No idea about Mac. Might be different there for all I know, but the Windows-version has been like that since FF 4, at least when the window is maximized.

When not maximized it sort-of looks like in the linked screenshot. Running the latest "UX-builds", I can see that it now has the maximized-behvaiour for all Window-states, so you are right in there being some changes.

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