The reasons that I do not like the Firefox 3.7 mock-ups are described in this article.
All images of toolbars shown on this page are actual size for the width
of the window depicted. My examples are displayed is a slightly narrower
window than the Firefox 3.7 mock-ups, but the concern is mainly on vertical
space and that will be ths same regardless of window size. If displayed
in a wider window the search bar and location bars will be very noticeably
larger, and will likely show almost all of what was last entered there.
Toolbars
Mozilla proposal for Firefox 3.7
This is the mock-up for Firefox 3.7 as seen in
Firefox/Sprints/Windows Theme Revamp/Direction and Feedback - MozillaWiki (on 2009-09-25)
Reality Check
Image above is a full size mock-up for proposed Firefox 3.7 toolbars of a window 798 pixels wide, the examples below are also full scale and are from a window width of 709 pixels wide.
A more reasonable solution without mucking up Firefox (immediately below)
The following are strictly with Firefox 3 and some styling changes to the chrome,
no menus have been harmed. The blue text items on bookmarks menu are folders, and the red items are individual bookmarks (actually bookmarklets). The colors under tabs are red for active, blue for visited, green for unvisited tab. The light violet background color on the menu bar is included to help distinguish the browser window and dialogs associated with the profiles used with different versions of Firefox being tested.
This is what 16 tabs looks like with a Window width of 709 pixels.
About same spacing that 24 tabs would appear on a window 1024 pixels wide.
and this is what 34 tabs looks like with a Window width of 709 pixels.
About same spacing that 49 tabs would appear on a window 1024 pixels wide.
The tabs would still be very recognizable with 60 tabs in the same narrow window
(approx 86 tabs on a window 1024 pixels wide)
especially since you can compare the tabs dropdown listed in the same order showing favicons and webpage titles. With a monitor at set to 1280 x 720, you'd have no problem with 108 tabs. (Click on the image seen in the above link to see image full-size) The point being that you do not need multiple rows for tabs. (The examples on this page can be recreated with the toolbars60.htm write-up)
Problems with 3.7 mock-up
- Replacement of menus and no real savings in space, since replacements
is 32mm across, and the actual menus including a split menu are 72mm across, and
for that you have to drill down a lot more to get to where you want to go.
- There is no regard to extensions that add items to menus, that have to
be near other related menu items.
- Still maintains a lot of wasted space, and a grotesque back/forward button.
- Many of the mock-ups had superficially removed the bookmarks toolbar if there were no user changes, the mock-up shown here does show the bookmarks toolbar, but still shows
unnecessary folder and bookmark icons.
- Unwanted features on Tabs bar, are wasting really valuable space needed to
tabs. Home page button and botched new tab buttons waste some of the most valuable screen real estate on the tabs bar. There are many ways of getting to the home page, and of creating a new tab and these are the worst. The loading bar belongs on the status bar, it is useless on the tabs if each tab is just a few millimeters wide. I suppose you could change the throbber on each tab to show a circular graph while loading but that would be a waste of CPU time.
- Don't want Vista Aero Glass,and don't want to see it in Firefox, the blended
toolbars to background is very distracting and results in slower displays. It is a waste of time including features that I think most Firefox users don't want to see, especially once they see their machine chugging along much slower. Waste of development work to be making Firefox on Vista look a lot different from Firefox on other operating systems. May adversely affect "Perma Tabs Mod" extension. But using
camouflage does not make for ease of use.
Extreme amount of wasted space in Toolbars
The extreme waste of space is a problem with Firefox 3.5.*, the following shows some actual modifications to toolbars but no chrome changes. (with large icons)
Same customization of content (with small icons)
Whether large of small icons a lot of wasted space on the toolbars is due to the navigation toolbar.
Better Approach than 3.7 mock-ups is to remove wasted space
These are my actual toolbars and statusbar for Firefox 3
The Windows title bar can not be reduce vertically, it wastes 2mm at the top, unless
you are in full screen mode.
Larger location bar for presentations
A slightly larger location bar can be used for presentation or normal use.
BIG location bar for presentations
A much larger location bar can be used for presentations, so audience can easily see the url in the location bar. With a full-width window there would not be much truncation of displayed urls.
Changes that would be appreciated
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- Maintain the drop-down listing of tabs (no useless showcase pictures of tabs),
but have an option there to expand the list or individual tab(s) into a tree view
indented title below. Example at right shows 4 open tabs, and 4 hidden entries.
- All menus, and drop-downs should have vertical scrollbars when needed. There are a couple of stles that do that. No reason why they should not be in Firefox itself.
- Scrollbar Context Menu | userstyles.org
(style 54)
- Scrollbar Bookmarks Menu | userstyles.org (style 56)
Styles - used with Stylish Extension affecting toolbars above
Extensions directly involved with toolbars and drop-downs
When you have close to 100 extensions there are lots of additions to toolbars and menus. Some extensions to help manage toolbars and menus.
A list of extensions that I use or have used can be found in
Extensions Table which is part of my
webpage Firefox Customizations (Notes).
Extensions actually in use can be found in my InfoLister listing. Some suggestions for users new to Firefox are in
Firefox 3 Introduction (Presentation Outline)
