And Firefox continues the inexorable march towards Chromeness by removing the actual title of the page from the window chrome.
Don't get me wrong, I prefer Firefox. This just strikes me as wrong; the rest of the new UI is fine.
Don't get me wrong, I prefer Firefox. This just strikes me as wrong; the rest of the new UI is fine.
I find myself installing addons to cut or move parts of the UI back to where it was when I was used to it. Starting with the location bar ending with status bars. Additional fumbling around in the config became the normal thing to do after an major update...
I know it's nice if your are the developer and you can force stuff on your users because most of them can't do anything about it and will accept it in the end but remember one thing: you will cross a border for another part of your custormers and then somebody will come up with something new just because you forced us and then you'll lose customers.
As a matter of good design, configuration options should be used very sparingly. Yes they diversify the UX, but they also diversify the UX! Some decisions just have to be "made," like losing the title bar.
> you will cross a border for another part of your customers and then somebody will come up with something new just because you forced us and then you'll lose customers.
If the overall design is good, the customers loss are negligible vs. the customers gained. No one bothers chasing the miniscule emacs market.
But configurability is not on many consumer wish lists. Ya, power users love to have it there way, but most consumers just want a good experience out of the box.
Sure YOU say the decision to make something go MUST be done. You don't even bring a reason for it here. I don't see it. Why does it HAVE to be made? Is the title bar going to be forbidden or something? Is it banned in some countries? I don't understand. I don't understand even more why I shouldn't have the CHOICE to make such irrelevant decision by myself. Why not? Give me at least one real reason...
Most of the time (like here) I have the feeling we are in some kind of Fashion Show. Some design guru decides: this will be like that now. All the big fashin designers jump on the train. But the fact remains that people on the street won't dress like that...and sure you push it here and there through the discounters and you may reach a mass where it becomes a thing. But initaly nobody wanted that. It may be even a worse kind of clothing. It may be a shoe that hurts your leg muscels in the end but nobody is interested in that because it is Fashion.
I see it the same way here. Don't take me wrong. I appriciate changes that are useful. I appriciate it even more if there are options but I don't see any reason to force Fashion moves on me in software.
A word on Win8? Nah I guess you already know ;)
@X Windows: are you kidding me? Do you want to start a discussion about marketing methods now and then? I guess you've just missed the point on that one. I can sell you the most ugly crap software if I have the money or the right marketing strategy but it has nothing to do with the topic.
Plus numerous other customizations.
It's the circle of life!
I'd actually rather there was a simple meta key in each application, that you could use to just show you the vital data about a page. Meta data in webpages can be human readable - title, author, summary etc. How about an overlay? And how about have this for every app? Looking at an image - activate meta key, to see copyright info etc, listening to a tune, activate meta key to see tag info etc. Far better than hiding it under some menu item and distant properties tab.
Opera has an info bar, but it's not that user friendly.
That doesn't particulary address whether the title is necessary, it's great for window management, using windows instead of tabs. But you'll need a good window manager. I'd rather windows than tabs - though I fear that Opera introduced tabs as they were cheap windows more than anything else.
Settings > Appearance > "Use system title bar and borders".
edit: clarified I meant Chrome.
A full height title bar with the title of the current tab in it that I can use to drag the window around. Having to precisely aim my mouse pointer in order to drag my window is extremely annoying.
But why do you think the Firefox tab placement is better?
Chrome and Opera squeeze the tabs, but list them all, whereas Firefox forces a scroll after so many, which feels horrible. Also Opera has let's you list and switch open tabs with CTRL+TAB, or lets you reposition your tabs.
Really though managing tabs should be left to the window manager. Otherwise you just get inconsistant behaviour between applications.
That's when the title comes into it's own.
I use this tiny add-on, written by one of the main Firefox front end developers: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/custom-tab-wi...
It makes Firefox have the Chrome behavior of making tabs shrink infinitely. All it does it tweak one minor setting in the UI, so it's pretty bulletproof.
Anyway, I fail to see a significant difference between Finder and Chrome's appearance: http://i.imgur.com/sgfMXOy.png
If Chrome was full of tabs, the ~20px area to drag the window around is arguably a bit small, but it'd look ridiculous if there was a huge margin above the tabs.
Such changes include the inability to edit any of the UI except a row of buttons on the top left, shockingly just like chrome!. I'm sure these changes will help focus their design vision, or something.
So in short, no, you wont be able to configure your client to look exactly like it did before.
Just as in Sublime Text (and even with a proper titlebar), I really dislike those Chrome-y tabs. They take too much real estate for my taste.
Lion scrollbars finally landed on Aurora and I was hoping to move back to Firefox again when it would land in Beta. The move towards consistency with the platform was very welcome around Fx4. Now, striving for uniformity, they make it feel foreign again.
Here's the agenda: Firefox as a brand has to grow and make a show of itself. Indeed the Chromification goes much deeper than simply tab looks: as the OS is relegated to a platform/hypervisor, the browser becomes an OS in itself, so that Firefox OS makes sense for people. They're moving to make phones, which will soon call for services (unless they plan to rely solely on third parties such as WhatsApp). Mozilla's product may increasingly end up looking like yet another vertically integrated software platform.
It used to be possible to use Firefox on Mac OS X to do a presentation with HTML and have the web page, and only the web page, fill the whole screen. (It was an option in the "View" menu.) That feature disappeared several versions ago, and now if you want to use it, you have to switch to Chrome.
Furthermore, Firefox implements the HTML5 Fullscreen API, which gives the ability to websites themselves to request the full-screen mode, with a dialog pop-up that allows you to either deny, or to temporarily or permanently give this privilege to a website: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/DOM/Using...
So basically your full-screen HTML presentation can load in full-screen mode by itself, without the user having to make an explicit View action for it.
I find it hard to believe that you don't have it. If it's true, maybe it's a problem on OS X that will likely get fixed.
It has been this way for a couple of years, if I recall correctly, and it is only a "feature" on OS X. Nothing is being done to change it, AFAIK.
I'm using this add-on in the meantime, but it has other issues: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-lion-full...
It turns out I'm not the only one complaining. It has been a known issue since at least early 2012. Apparently, some of us think full screen should mean FULL screen. Nobody at Mozilla is working on it: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=740148
In addition I'm running the Tree Style Tabs addon, which moves all tabs to the left. While I look at a full screen Firefox I can move the mouse to the left side of the screen and the list of tabs will show up -> There's no way to get better screen estate usage, imo.
"I am not using firefox again until they reinstate the back button!"
I see this kind of stuff on reddit and slashdot all the time. Is it some sort of FUD campaign against Firefox?
Click view > Enter Fullscreen
You can also use F11, unless you set OSX to high-jack that button. You can also use the fullscreen button in the top right corner on lion versions of OSX.
The OSX fullscreen button does the same thing, leaving me with chrome up top.
On Windows Vista, 7, and 8, explorer does not have a titlebar since the location breadcrumb trail makes more sense. On OS X, iTunes and the App Store also do not have titlebars, favoring other ways to show information that makes more sense in the context of the app.
I didn't see it in the linked article, but what happens when I do Alt-V, z, r in the new UI (to pick one at random) to reset the zoom level? Will the rest of my memorized shortcuts cease working?