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Posted on July 28th, 2009 by David Bayon
Firefox 4 looks awfully familiar…
Firefox 3.5 is still fresh, but Mozilla has been busy mocking up its early concepts for the big move to version 4. Now, these images come with a great big disclaimer that “These are NOT FINAL! THEY ARE ONLY FOR BRAINSTORMING/EXPLORATION!“, but it’s interesting to see which direction Firefox could be taking. Take a look for yourself and form your own opinions, but from where I’m sitting it looks like a certain other browser seems to have had an influence on Mozilla’s designs.
The first design is fairly typical Firefox, with the tabs beneath the address bar (click to enlarge):
The Aero effect looks nice, and it’s a very clean interface, with only minor changes from the Firefox 3.7 concept images which Mozilla recently released. But there’s also a mockup with the tabs – unusually for Firefox – moved above the address bar:
I actually think it looks better that way, as the address/search bar to me is part of the tab I’m using, not a distinct element that works over all the tabs. But then I’m one of the few people who use Google Chrome as my main browser, and if you look at Chrome’s current design it’s easy to see why I like that Firefox layout.
Look familiar?
You can see more of the Firefox 4 mockups over on Mozilla’s wiki page, and there’s an interesting point near the bottom about the thinking behind some of the designs.
“I guess the idea of having a combined go/refresh button is good. It will help the users who are just switching from IE.”
I’ve been noticing for a while now that all the main browser designs seem to be converging, and this comment adds weight to that. If this is the way the designers are thinking, give it another year and Microsoft’s EU browser troubles will be irrelevant – they’ll all look the same.
Tags: browser, Chrome, firefox, Google, Mozilla
Posted in: Software
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14 Responses to “ Firefox 4 looks awfully familiar… ”
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July 28th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
[...] from: Firefox 4 looks awfully familiar… AKPC_IDS += “61260,”;Popularity: unranked [?] Comments [0]Digg [...]
July 28th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
I agree that the navigation elements should be under the tabs, because they refer to the current tab, but I’d still like to see the title bar and menu bar above the tabs.
Apple tried the Chrome method and relented at the last hurdle, before release.
To be honest, I think I prefer Safari to Chrome and Firefox, although I currently use Firefox most fo the time – when Safari or Chrome get NoScript and FlashBlock, I’d certainly consider switching.
Without those two facilities, no browser will get my vote as a day-to-day browser.
July 28th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Having the tabs above (like Chrome) is far more logical and looks much better in that mock up – it also looks like it affords more screen space for the actual page (albeit only a handful of pixels). For me, Chrome is the best browser currently available. I don’t need add on scripts, I don’t need to change the appearance. The browser I use just needs to work, quickly – and for the most part Chrome does that (some MS sites seem to have a few issues though). Unified address/search bar is certainly the way forward – drives me nuts using IE/FF and forgetting that I need to type into the dedicated search box.
July 29th, 2009 at 10:11 pm
If Firefox moves to tabs on top I may stop using the internet all together. I cannot stand this aspect of Chrome. It is NOT logical as I have been using Windows for 15 years and in that time I have learned how to completely ignore the titlebar as it contained useless information about 90% of the time. While grouping the urlbar with the tab makes some kind of sense, merging all of the OTHER aspects of the UI into the tab makes absolutely none. Stuff the urlbar into the tab in the place of the tab title if you want, but don’t make it harder for me to identify and sort through my tabs just because a handful of users enjoy the novelty of the look of Chrome. When everyone copies it, the novelty wears off and people will see if for exactly what it is… illogical and difficult to use.
July 30th, 2009 at 5:50 am
‘don’t make it harder for me to identify and sort through my tabs just because a handful of users enjoy the novelty of the look of Chrome. When everyone copies it, the novelty wears off and people will see if for exactly what it is… illogical and difficult to use.’
Hear Hear!
I have tried chrome.. can’t bear it!
I spent to long trying to work it, and that spoilt my browsing experience.
Im all for change where change equals an improvement, but where it make things harder?
No Thanks!
July 30th, 2009 at 8:49 am
Chrome works best for me, it is quick and logical. The only thing missing in it is a print preview, so I use FF for this. Combining the search and address windows is the way to go. I find the IE icons meaningless.
July 30th, 2009 at 9:11 am
Thanks for the comments. Whilst I appreciate it’s all a matter of personal preference, I really can’t see how Chrome makes anything harder. The whole point of combining everything into one bar is that – at least in my experience – it makes things vastly simpler.
I want to go to a website, I type in the bar. I want to search, I type in the bar. The fact that the bar knows within a few characters what it is that I’m attempting to find makes it all the better. Going back to Firefox now, I try to type in its ‘Awesome’ bar and find it offers me no help at all.
But that’s the beauty of the browsers right now – they are different and everyone has their own preference as to how things should work. Which is why I really do hope they don’t all end up morphing into one copycat design.
July 30th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
The one thing that turns me off to the other browsers is no RSS support like the Live Bookmarks bar in FF. If Chrome had that I would move to it in a sec, all the addon support for FF couldn’t stop me. But if Mozilla moves to the same sort of design I will stick with FF. The tabs should be above, I mean really who the heck really needs a bar that tells them what web browser they are using is….. it not only saves a bit of screen real estate it just looks nicer. I just hope they can speed it up again. Firefox seems to be getting slower and slower again with every iteration.
July 30th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Maybe ditch at least the ‘go’ button altogether – I can’t think of anyone who actually types in an address then presses ‘go’ instead of ‘enter.’
July 31st, 2009 at 12:47 am
They are all crap
The thing that turns me off browsers at the moment is that the UI takes up far too much space in itself. My browser, working from the top
1. A window top border, which has the site “name” in it, and min/max/close gadgets
2 Standard windows UI tools – File, Edit, View. History, Bookmarks, Tools, Help
3. Navigation bar ( refresh, stop, home, url, search
4. Extra bar with most visited, Getting started, Headlines, etc
5. Tabs
6 FINALLY, the browser screen proper
7 Standard windows bottom border with “done” (status messages?).
Add to that, most sites use 60-75% of the working area to shop adverts, links, navigation, etc, and often I am left with a very very small visible display area, often less than 15% of my 1600×1200 display…
What would be nice is an abillity to customise the windows UI (1pixel wide borders, for example) – although this is nto germane to the browser discussion here per se – and the abillity to truly customise every aspect of the browser UI (and any other program for that matter) to remove unwanted “bars” COMPLETELY. Secondly, to allow me the option of wherther I want the url bar above or under the tab bar. Whethr I want the extra bar at all.
And buttons that work. The number of times I pressed the stop button, in IE and FF, to no avail.
July 31st, 2009 at 8:28 am
What I’d like to see Mozilla do is build in the freedom to allow users (and extension developers) to choose where their tabs and address bars go. That’s the Firefox way. Other alternative browsers – and even IE in some respects – have caught up with many of its advantages, but its innate flexibility and development community remains its ace. Mozilla would do well to keep this in mind and build on the ways in which Firefox can be molded and transformed.
July 31st, 2009 at 8:10 pm
It’s year that this is the case on Opera – and it’s much faster to load than FF
August 17th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Step in the right direction, but still a few improvements needed.
1. Get rid of all the wasted space around the edges COMPLETELY. Why can’t I double click/drag the Firefox logo if I want to move windows?
2. Get rid of URL bar. It firstly takes up space, and secondly takes a while to move mouse up there. I’d rather middle click and type URL/search term there and then so I can keep mouse on page.
3. Back/refresh. Mouse gestures can perfectly do this job, if not, (shift)backspace and F5 does.
4. Page + tools. Better suited to right click or a small logo next to Firefox logo. 2 HUGE buttons is not needed.
5. Minimise/maximise/close. Nothing here which can’t be done on the window manager. Left click on start menu to minimise, middle click to close. REMOOOOVE.
Guess that pretty much just leaves tabs, a firefox logo for movement and a tool logo for extra options. Nice and fresh… For now.
September 10th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
I’m late to this article, but I think that FF should give you the choice to set up the interface however you want it. You want tabs on top with the address bar integrated into each one? Choose the option to do that! Like the original interface? Choose that instead. Give me a seperate UI menu with seperate plug in support to make it however you want. That would allow for total UI freedom.
Another thing I think would be good, is an option to hide the entire URL and menu bar and only make it appear whn you either start typing of move your mouse to the top of the window.