Talk:FX2 Visual Update/User Interface Design

Not Stop & Go or Stop & Refresh - Go & Refresh

Stop & Refresh are opposing actions, having a button flick between opposing actions is the last thing you want. How would you like it if your window close button switched between minimize and close at seemingly random moments.

I think the Go button should alternate with Refresh. Both load the URL in the location bar and have near enough the same action.

Tab Widths

Is it worth considering this wrt tabbed browsing & tab-widths:

Make it so tabs _don't_ resize when you close a tab by clicking on its [x] _until_ the mouse is moved out of the tabbar. So in effect whilst the mouse is in the tabbar, tab-width is constant (to allow for easy closing of multiple windows) _until_ the mouse moves out of the tabber, at which point tab widths can resize if required.

This is a half-way house between fixed tab-widths and variable tab-widths, with the best of both worlds imo. Steve England 02:49, 6 Mar 2006 (PST)

Great idea! Jeff Schiller 07:34, 10 April 2006 (PDT)

Address bar Vs. Search box

I think that, today, the search box is much more important that the address bar. Usually, y don't write addresses, I use the search box, Google, or a bookmark.

So, Why is the address bar so big and the search box so small? I think that is better a bigger search box. Savonarola 18:28, 11 Mar 2006 (PST)

Personally, I never use the search bar. I simply have a quick search associated with the "g" keyword - I type "g" followed by my query. Daniel Schierbeck 06:44, 21 Mar 2006 (PST)

That's a power-user thing though. Not many people know how to set that up compared to how many people know how to type a query in the search box. I personally agree with the sentiment that the search bar is far too small AND it eats into the space of the Address Bar. In essence, BOTH edit boxes feel much too small for me. See Bug 205011.

I think the search bar should also expand such that it fills up the remaining space on a toolbar. What about putting the search bar into the menu bar? This gives maximum space for the search and address bars and doesn't require any more vertical space... Jeff Schiller 07:31, 10 April 2006 (PDT)

What's the Page resizer

I've love the new Plan.

Here's a few suggested improvements.

Make the Find Toolbar appear below the Tab Bar and the Close Button at the right. Adding CuteMenus for every default icon (I don't know what I was thinking)

Places Menu

Why not merge History and Bookmarks into Places ?

Link Target Indicator

(E) Changing the mouse cursor was seen as a good idea

... a good idea to confuse the users? Is this really needed, when you already have link target indication in the status bar?

OTOH (as to (10)), if you prepend all links in the status bar with "Link opens in...", you make it

1. much harder to read the link at one glance and
2. more difficult to read the URL on short status bars.

I'd rather append the text - or drop it completely (since when appended, you make it more difficult to read the end of the URL - and the text might be completely invisible on short status bars).

Best would probably be to create a new status bar part for a link target indicator (even in front of the link, but so that the URL always starts at the same place) - and use an icon with a tooltip instead of text. --zeniko 05:38, 21 Mar 2006 (PST)

Unified Back-/Forward Button

Why not unify Back and Forward button into one button with only one menu (similar to what should go into the History menu)? This would allow users to better grasp where they are and what they've visited in the current tab.

One implementation of this idea can be seen in beta 2 of IE7. Another in the Unified Back-/Forward Button extension.

It would even be possible to automatically unify both buttons when they're right next to one another and keep them separated when that's not the case (as seen in Flock, although their buttons don't behave differently in both cases). --zeniko 05:44, 21 Mar 2006 (PST)

Firefox menus: move 'Page Info' from 'Tools' to 'View' menu

There is one little change I think should be made to the Firefox menus (as seen in FF 1.5.0.4): move the 'Page Info' entry from the 'Tools' menu to the 'View' menu, below and next to the 'Page Source' entry.

Why? Because that would group two current-page related functions together. In fact, these two functions are already grouped together on the right-click context menu, so grouping them in the main menus is not a far stretch.

(This can currently be accomplished via the Menu Editor extension from http://menueditor.mozdev.org/ ). --Hkazemi 15:22, 28 June 2006 (PDT)

I just found a bugzilla report for this suggestion first submitted in 2004: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=240384 And the newsgroup thread I started: http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.apps.firefox/browse_thread/thread/2f45895725d58411/ --Hkazemi 06:26, 7 July 2006 (PDT)

Opinions on the Home and Go buttons

I think the 'Home' toolbar icon should stay where it has always been...next to the 'Stop' icon. I think the 'Go' button should also be maintained as the default. Both the 'Home' and the 'Go' buttons are familiar to non-savvy users coming from IE, and in particular I've seen these level of users use the Go button instead of hitting the Enter key. The Home button proposal is something that was also discussed at http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?p=1190740 . It appears a fair number of Firefox users in that forum do use the Home button (including myself). --Hkazemi 15:22, 28 June 2006 (PDT)

Search bookmarks (6)

This is reference item 6 on the mockup.

I feel an individual search activator for bookmarks on the bookmarks tool bar is redundant. We already have a universal search box entry on the tool bar with tested UI; why not just add bookmarks as a source to this?

Yes, there are some benefits to associate the bookmarks tool bar with the search mechanism. I think this is outweighed by association with the rest of search functionality. In addition, not everyone uses the bookmarks tool bar. I, for instance, have it hidden completely, and I know several others who have little more than the default configuration on it. —auk 21:26, 20 October 2006 (PDT)