Firefox and Flux: A New, Beautiful Browser is Coming

http://www.donotlick.com/firefox-and-flux-a-new-beautiful-browser-is-coming/

by Boriss • 12 years ago

246 288 12 years ago

Ortsac2• 12 years ago

I like it, but I'm seeing some serious similarities to chrome. If I had not seen this announcement and I quickly glanced at those screenshots, I would not think it was Firefox.

lingben• 12 years ago

yes but believe it or not, the new firefox UI/UX has been in the works for so long and chrome's development so quick that it seems like firefox was inspired by chrome when in fact that didn't happen

sigmar• 12 years ago

has this new firefox UI been "in the works" since 2008?

because several features of those images are even similar to the first version of chrome

mbrubeck• 12 years ago

I'm a Firefox developer and I don't think this is true. As far as I know, most of the key elements of the Firefox 29 theme redesign emerged after the last major UI redesign (Firefox 4) was released in 2011.

arcameron• 12 years ago

Does it matter?

Ortsac2• 12 years ago

Not really. I do think it makes sense as a design. I'm just saying it looks like chrome to me and I think a lot of other users will think similarly.

lnlyplnt• 12 years ago

looks good, I'll have to try it out. Chrome has been acting up for me lately.

Garbage• 12 years ago

Have been using most of these things in Nightly. It's a pleasant experience. :)

webwanderings• 12 years ago

As long as it is faster than Chrome (in every possible way), I'll switch back to it. Every second counts when people are on not-so-fast wires.

Cameron_D• 12 years ago

I find a clean install of Firefox to be almost as fast as Chrome, and in some places more responsive - particularly when opening the browser. Chrome will get the basic UI up on the screen very fast but take a moment before you can interact with it, Firefox is usable the moment it is on screen, even though that time is slightly longer).

Chrome does have preloading of certain things which make loading some things faster although there are addons that can replicate that on Firefox.

yati3• 12 years ago

These people behind Australis are brave, competent and passionate. It shows in the remarkable experience they've built. I am a nightly user and I got to see these changes land one at a time. Hugs and cheers:)

IvyMike2• 12 years ago

brave

I am not trying to be snarky, but to me a lot of the new UI is "oh, they made it look more like Chrome". I am kind of surprised to hear the word "brave" to describe that.

yati3• 12 years ago

There are a lot of people who initially did not like the curved tabs and other visual design changes (e.g., the bookmark star is no longer in the 'awesome bar'). It is IMO brave for the designers to take a stand for the users when redesigning a widely used product. I have the same feelings for the GNOME project.

seba_dos14• 12 years ago

Work on this UI started long before Chrome. That's Chrome that looks like Firefox mockups, not the other way.

brazzy• 12 years ago

They are useless idiots whom I hate with a passion for their user-hostile self-gratification.

The design was just fine, so leave it the fuck alone!

yati3• 12 years ago

You are not bringing anything to the table with remarks like that. You may not like the design, but many do. What was "fine" for you was "clunky" for many. Remember that Mozilla projects revolve around the community which you are free to join and make a difference. If you don't, at least don't flame people who worked their butts off to build something. Criticize work, not people.

rectangletangle4• 12 years ago

The new UI looks really solid to me. FF's current UI has felt dated for quite some time now, and this is the overhaul it needed.

damian2000• 12 years ago

Cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

nwh3• 12 years ago

http://archive.today/4ZGpR

Fully rendered cache with images.

Boriss7• 12 years ago

Thanks, Damian! Posting to my own Wordpress and then going to sleep was, retrospectively, a poor choice.

grumblestumble• 12 years ago

Is the lack of a unified search/address bar a deliberate choice or the result of some weird IP/patent thing? Every time I switch back to Firefox, it trips me up. AFAIR, it's the only major browser that still does this, right?

bitsoda• 12 years ago

Some users are skittish of Chrome's autocomplete since it could potentially send anything you type into the address bar to Google's servers. Mozilla also makes money from selling 'search box real estate' to different providers. So it's more discoverable when the search is in its own designated box.

1111123itsme• 12 years ago

It's also what some of us frickin' want. I like having a separate search bar, because I can easily control which engine I'm using, and I from the URLbar I can search my history/bookmarks without irrelevant auto-complete results junking it up.

Osmose2• 12 years ago

There might be other reasons, but a big one is that having search and address bar in one box means that normal URLs you type into the address bar will get sent to the search engine for autocomplete by default. Since that's a major privacy violation, they're kept separate.

I've removed the search box myself. If DNS doesn't return anything or if what you type looks like a search query, it does a search anyway, so the only thing I'm missing is search autocomplete (there's an addon if you really want that anyway: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/instantfox/).

Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0• 12 years ago

The privacy reason honestly seems like a post-hoc justification... you can easily turn off auto search in Chrome. If you were really anal, you could do what IE does and actually _ask_ the user for permission before hitting the search engine. There is really no reason why the search bar has to be kept separate, other than user comfort. And that is not a bad thing: there is no need to start making up excuses for it.

ubernostrum• 12 years ago

Agreeing with bitsoda, so far as I'm aware the rationale is privacy protection -- either box can actually search, but having a box that automatically queries a search engine as soon as you start typing (rather than when you hit Enter) has privacy implications.

mweibel• 12 years ago

I actually like it this way, although i'm probably in the minority. I know when i want to search and it's just a cmd+k away (or ctrl+k in non-osx os')

zobzu8• 12 years ago

note that you can change that quite easily. I sort of like the separate search personally.

GrinningFool3• 12 years ago

Just remove the search bar. The address bar is unified search/address.

JasonFruit2• 12 years ago

It's still a browser from the people who allowed a mob to push Brendan Eich out because he donated money to support a political cause that was and is not only legal but reflective of the views of a large minority of Americans. It's pretty, but I think I'll pass.

RodericDay• 12 years ago

I believe exactly the opposite of this. I use Firefox in no small part due to ideological reasons (ie: I would use it even if it wasn't the best, just because I like the values they allege to stand for), and if they had let the CEO get a pass I would have literally uninstalled it and looked for something else.

JasonFruit2• 12 years ago

I'm not surprised to find that there are people who disagree with me. I'm pleased, however, to hear that you would have acted on your convictions.

foxylad• 12 years ago

Wow, this storm in a teacup would be amusing if it wasn't so sad for a generally well-regarded outfit (Mozilla). They can't win - people with either your concerns or the opposite will dump Firefox.

Meanwhile both sides will continue to use Microsoft products, despite their history of extremely un-ethical business practises; and stand by while their country (pardon my assumption that they are USians) murders people in other countries with drones every day.

It would be nice to see outrage at outrageous things.

agildehaus• 12 years ago

Why is it that anti-gay marriage supporters all can't get it through their heads that the man stepped down, and there's no evidence whatsoever Mozilla pressured him to do so? If you want to blame someone, blame the tech community at large, who find such views abhorrent and did the pressuring.

Also, choosing software based on political drama instead of technical merit is amusing.

wwweston2• 12 years ago

Also, choosing software based on political drama instead of technical merit is amusing.

Wish that Eich's vocal detractors had seen it that way, but then again, it's pretty clear that many of them didn't care the least bit about the software or open web side of things anyway. What would one have expected from people to whom Mozilla was only relevant as it touched their social agenda?

In any case, good for anyone who won't be following their example and will be supporting Mozilla in spite of what happened.

kondro• 12 years ago

Just restarted FireFox and it seems to be here now. I don't think I like the UI of inactive tabs, but the rest is fine.

tkmcc• 12 years ago

I agree, the inactive tabs are not very distinguishable or readable and starkly contrast the active tab's light grey when using a darker color theme on Windows 8.1. Everything else seems great so far, though.

cpeterso2• 12 years ago

Regarding incremental UI changes, I recall reading that Google staged Chrome's tab style and color redesigns over multiple releases, presumably to avoid upset users. I'm not sure whether to admire their concern for user confusion or to feel like the dupe of some magician's sleight of hand. :)

Unfortunately, I can find that page now.

Silhouette4• 12 years ago

Edit: Remove unnecessary snark.

It is still frustrating that a bunch of plug-ins appear to have been disrupted because of removing the add-on/status bar, though. Not everything has moved to the new location automatically, and it's not immediately obvious how to get some of them back.

simonster• 12 years ago

I develop a Firefox add-on. In our experience, the transition to Australis was pretty smooth. Our add-on bar icon was automatically moved to the toolbar without any changes on our part, although we ended up changing the icon to better match the Australis UI. The transition might not be perfect for all methods of overlaying the add-on bar, but I think the folks at Mozilla are doing the best they can.

I don't think Mozilla should be holding back functionality to avoid breaking extensions. If an add-on is actively maintained, then the developer will update it, and if the add-on is not actively maintained, then it's going to have to break someday.

Silhouette4• 12 years ago

I don't think Mozilla should be holding back functionality to avoid breaking extensions.

I respectfully disagree. Extensions are the USP for Firefox, and IMHO breaking compatibility should be considered a serious issue and not something to be done lightly. (See also: all the hate when they switched to doing six-weekly updates and it kept disabling extensions every time for months afterwards.)

In any case, there was no pressing need to remove the add-on/status bar. Arbitrary rearrangement of UIs is generally bad for usability. Ditto for major things like moving tabs (for anyone who isn't using an enhanced tab plug-in anyway) and the burger menu (which is now a tiny area right underneath the close window button, and appears to be completely inaccessible by keyboard).

Osmose2• 12 years ago

I just installed JS Switch on Nightly and clicked the Menu(burger) icon, then Customize, and was able to drag the JS Switch button into my toolbar.

(This does not address that it's crappy that icons that were in the addon bar don't, say, automatically get put into the toolbar or trigger a message notifying you how to get them back or anything, but oh well. EDIT: According to another reply this may not be the case with all addons, seems like some automagically get moved.)

Silhouette4• 12 years ago

Thank you, that did work for me as well.

Nux2• 12 years ago

What's the new location?

Where is all this stuff going to be displayed? http://img.nux.ro/4RJ-Selection_065.png

Silhouette4• 12 years ago

Some things seem to have moved automatically up to the toolbar. If that's happened, you'll now find them at the top-right of your window, between the search box and the burger menu.

I'm not sure what is supposed to happen with plug-ins that actually used the status bar for more comprehensive status information, such as the system you illustrated. You could check whether your (Burger)->Customize screen gives you anything you can dump on a toolbar somewhere as 'Osmose suggested, but since it appears you can only have one row of toolbar contents, the new model just seems to be broken for your purposes. :-(

frozenport• 12 years ago

Looks like Opera!

tambourine_man4• 12 years ago

Why have reverse tabs won? Has anyone done any usability test on them? On OS X, with a space left for the hit area of only 10px tall, it's really hard to drag a window that uses them. For context, 10px is about half the cursor's height.

I can see a reason for them on Win/Linux, but I find them completely unfit for the Mac. I guess people just maximize the window and leave it at that.

On the other hand, I'm glad there's still a distinction between the search box and the address bar. The annoyance of omnibar mistaking a url for a search query and vice-versa, even admitting it's a rare event, is not worth the trouble to me. Besides, educating the user on such difference seems important to me.

ggchappell• 12 years ago

Why have reverse tabs won?

What are "reverse tabs"?

hayksaakian• 12 years ago

The parent is implying that safari style tabs are the proper version, and that chrome, Firefox, and IE are using 'reverse tabs'

blueskin_23• 12 years ago

Tabs on top like chrome.

I don't care where the tabs go by default, as long as we have an option to move them if we want. Unfortunately, as Mozilla are turning into google, they have decided choice is evil and bad.

NamTaf2• 12 years ago

I thought about it a bit and decided I prefer reverse tabs (tabs above the address bar, not below) because I see the address bar as part of the page I'm visiting - as I change tabs, the address and page display changes to, so having both of these together on the screen makes sense to me.

To me, as I read the brower window top-down, I have the firefox menu and minimise/maximise/close buttons -> the tabs -> the address bar and back/forward buttons. That follows the logic of application -> 'threads' within application -> status of that thread and forms the more logical tree from general to detailed in my mind.

That's not to say it's better or worse than the alternative, it's just different and makes more sense to me.

tambourine_man4• 12 years ago

And you don't see a problem trying to hit a target 10px tall in order to drag a window (OS X)?

AliAdams• 12 years ago

Because the address bar and other navigation options are all functions for inside a tab (changing the tab) so should be contained by it in the design.

Grue32• 12 years ago

Because Chrome. There's no other reason. It's obviously less efficient due to Fitt's law and the comparative distances the mouse pointer must travel, but you'd hear the designers justify it how "conceptually" the address bar should be inside a tab. Not if it hampers productivity it shouldn't.

yason• 12 years ago

The killer feature in Chrome was and is the multiprocess implementation. I use Firefox for intranet browsing at work and Chrome for personal browsing: the former is a sloth compared to the latter, and hangs even for seconds when loading a big page whereas Chrome will happily use as many of my 12 cores as it likes and it just doesn't even slow down.

Firefox has had their comparable hack (Electrolysis?) in some prototype stage for a long time but the thing is Chrome actually delivered it... years ago. This turned the roles into a catch-up game where Firefox tries to match Chrome instead of other browsers trying to match Firefox, and the setting has remained as such since then.

The difference is still astronomical and I'm not at all convinced that a new user interface could have much effect there. The browser UI has pretty much standardized 15 years ago.

batiudrami8• 12 years ago

I tried using Chrome (from a decade+ of using Firefox) and while it is definitely faster in some instances, it is also laggier in others. Tab switching is noticably slower for me, for instance. I also found it frustrating that it would draw an unusable interface before it was done loading, which 'felt' faster, right up until I wanted to actually use it.

Chrome has some good points though - its scrolling feels much better, one tab (flash) crashing doesn't take out the entire browser and I can just switch to another tab until it recovers and (obviously) Google products have much better performance. Ultimately though, its slowness in other areas, plus its inherrently broken mouse gestures, meant that I switched back to Firefox.

I do wish Firefox was a bit faster moving. I know there are difficulties in dealing with a huge, old codebase, but I just wish features that Chrome has had for years, like chromeless app windows and multiprocess would just hurry up. Features like window-based private browsing took years to migrate from Chrome, and it's frustrating as you said to be perpetually caught in a game of catch up.

id2• 12 years ago

You can disable smooth scrolling in Firefox.

tools > options > advanced > general

blueskin_23• 12 years ago

Wait, you think Chrome's scrolling is better?

It's not as horrible as it was at launch; I'll give it that, but it still just feels wrong compared to Firefox's.

epsylon• 12 years ago

one tab (flash) crashing doesn't take out the entire browser

It hasn't been the case for years. Plugins are sandboxed. (plugin-container.exe)

The broken mouse gestures on Chrome are the single most important dealbreaker for me. I will never go back to a browser without good mouse support (which Chrome isn't).

veeti5• 12 years ago

Electrolysis is in active development and can be tried in the nightlies.

cpeterso2• 12 years ago

In the Firefox Nightly channel, you can test Electrolysis (e10s) using the "File > Open e10s Window" menu. Addon compatibility is still a work in progress, but many popular addons like Adblock Plus mostly work today.

HeavenFox• 12 years ago

In case you want to use Chrome for both, Chrome actually has a built-in multi-user system, so you can have two cookie jars. If your company uses Google Apps this would make even more sense.

pcwalton2• 12 years ago

Chrome will happily use as many of my 12 cores as it likes and it just doesn't even slow down.

I spend a lot of time profiling browsers and I don't see a lot of multicore usage when browsing in current engines. Usually layout and painting is happening for one page at the time—the tab you're looking on—and multicore performance for them is really poor in current engines.

I have not seen browsers saturate 12 cores. For example, go to [1] in your browser: no browser engine saturates maybe more than a core and a half as it chugs along struggling to reflow.

I think that Chrome- (and IE-)style per-domain process-based parallelism provides some benefits, but mainly in getting stuff like Gmail and Facebook notifications off the main thread, not really in improving throughput.

[1] http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/single-page.htm...

rcthompson3• 12 years ago

I think the main benefit of the multiprocess model is not increased performance on any one website. It is that when a website in one tab decides to calculate pi to a trillion digits, it doesn't bring down the whole browser and all the other tabs along with it.

bshimmin• 12 years ago

Rather wondrous that the HTML 5 spec itself has grown so gargantuan that it actually provides quite a good stress test for browser rendering.

rplnt• 12 years ago

This is not an issue of the design. Opera (<=12), a single process browser, had much better performance than Firefox.

Biggest problem with Chrome I see (performance-wise) is that tabs that weren't in use for a while take quite some time to load. My guess would be their memory gets swapped out. I don't know how Opera did it, but switch to any of ~hundred opened tabs is instantaneous.

taspeotis• 12 years ago

Whether Opera does it or not I don't know, but in Windows at least you can lock pages in physical memory [1]. It's not really a good general purpose technique, however.

[1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa36...

chacham15• 12 years ago

Am I the only one that doesnt like this "feature"? The reason I dont like it is because now, instead of being limited to 25% of my total CPU usage, at times Chrome happily pins all four of my cores. Granted that this is probably a result of poor plugin/webpage interaction (although, I havent been able to determine what combination...being a heisenbug and all), in Firefox, the worst case is still 25% maximum CPU usage.

vesinisa• 12 years ago

If you have four cores and really want so that Chrome can only use one of them at a time you can just start it with

  taskset -c 0 google-chrome

or maybe better

  taskset -c 0-2 google-chrome

which will allocate cores 0-2 to Chrome, dedicating one core for your other work.

blueskin_23• 12 years ago

Nice it or pin it to a specific set of cores.

I have to agree, I hate it when a fscking browser decides to grab all the system resources it can, messing with anything else I'm running.

exodust7• 12 years ago

You're not the only one. I can't remember the last time Firefox crashed on me. I fill those tabs up real good. It does a fine job on both my medium-spec work computer and high spec home gaming PC!

Chrome isn't for me, it's one-core-per-tab thing is not something I need or want. I hate the idea of the browser using too much system resources, I prefer how Firefox does it.

zobzu8• 12 years ago

I'm very suspicious about this astronomical performance difference you're talking about.

Like many I run both firefox and chrome all day long.

I literally cannot tell which one is faster.

Firefox does use all the cores like Chrome does btw - it's called multithreading - and both of them seem to do approximately an equal okay-ish job at it (maybe servo does a much better job but thats not useable yet).

The only times where as a user i can see chrome multiprocess model shines is:

- sec vulns where chrome sandbox is not bypassed

- stuff actually crashing or hanging

Needless to say both cases are quite rare on either browser (and when flash hangs in firefox, it does for a few seconds before firefox proposes to kill it - while in chrome it only hangs the current tab)

Note also that:

- electrolysis can be enabled right now by an about:config option

- i run firefox and chromium on linux - i guess your mileage may vary on other platforms (?)

fragmede• 12 years ago

Curious - do you run ad-block or any other blocking-type add-ons?

On my system, there's a noticeable speed difference between Firefox and Chrome, especially if I disable ad-block in Firefox. (Also on Linux.)

itry3• 12 years ago

When I do calculations in the browser, opening a second window halves the performance in the first window in FF. In Chrome the performance stays the same.

tn13• 12 years ago

I do not think there is such difference in FF and CR performance. Both browsers are relatively close. Firefox however hangs in some common cases where as Chrome handles general cases better.

CR however is worse when it comes to multi-tab browsing with over 20 tabs!

slacka• 12 years ago

Yes, with just a few tabs open Chrome's multi-process architecture shines at cost of being a memory hog. As a result Chrome starts thrashing long before FF.

FF 8-13 really shined in memory usage. Unfortunately even by their own internal benchmarks, it's gone downhill since since 13.

https://areweslimyet.com/

blueskin_23• 12 years ago

Killer feature in that it kills your free RAM?

Firefox with 200 tabs can be 1GB or so; chrome with the same load is about 4GB.

runeks3• 12 years ago

4 GB RAM is like $35. To me, this trade-off (memory for speed) seems like the logical one.

herokusaki2• 12 years ago

I run Firefox and last I tried Chrome it did use more RAM for the same content. However, I wonder: since Chrome runs its tabs as a collection of processes does that mean individual tabs could be swapped out by the OS without affecting the rest?

davidgerard2• 12 years ago

Big problem with Firefox: it doesn't vacuum places.sqlite.

You can work around this (a) vacuuming it by hand or (b) just deleting it (losing all your visited links).

I did this and Firefox is suddenly as fast as Chromium. (Xubuntu 14.04, 4GB RAM.)

Excavator4• 12 years ago

You're using a 4+ years old version of Firefox?

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=512854

dblohm7• 12 years ago

It's a lot easier to implement multiprocess when you're building a brand new product without a decade-plus old add-on and plugin ecosystem that you need to support.

johnpowell4• 12 years ago

Has anyone figured out how to get the tabs below the address bar again? This is horrible. I'm not really sure how to describe my hatred of this but it is there. I love FF but if the tab bar can't be moved I think I might have to switch to Safari.

acomjean• 12 years ago

FWIW I use a plug in called "tree style tabs". It puts the tabs in a hierarchy on the left side of the screen. One of the main reasons I like firebox better than other browsers is this feature. It also allows you to move the tabs to top/bottom/right of the window, although I think top is just the default.

interpol_p• 12 years ago

I think I'm in the minority, but I really like Safari. It doesn't use reverse tabs, I find it to be easily as fast as Chrome (and it tends to use a lot less resources: battery, cpu on Mac OS X), and I almost always use the "Reader" and Reading List features.

Sir_Cmpwn• 12 years ago

It's probably not exactly what you're looking for, but I can do this: https://mediacru.sh/9q7nBA92chf8

johnpowell4• 12 years ago

Thanks for the try. But that doesn't seem to work on OS X. For now I will go back to 28.0 and hope someone comes out with a work-around in the next few weeks.

johnpowell4• 12 years ago

To reply to my own comment. I thought about it for a bit and bounced back between tabs on top and tabs below. I think my gripe is that the tabs feel detached from the page they represent.

id2• 12 years ago

Is there a browser.tabs.onTop preference in your about:config? Should be set to false.

johnpowell4• 12 years ago

Checked it and on false. Tabs still on the top.

agapos2• 12 years ago

Even if it is there, it no longer works. Australis is tabs-on -top only.

blueskin_23• 12 years ago

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemer...

timdiggerm• 12 years ago

Given that your address bar changes when you change tabs, having the tabs above it makes sense.

nikbackm2• 12 years ago

Are there any functional changes other than moving some buttons and menus around a little?

I like Firefox and will continue to use it, but I just don't see what good this update is supposed to accomplish.

batiudrami8• 12 years ago

Almost no new features, other than some flexilibility with the new Firefox menu (you can add extension buttons to it, for instance).

Lots of customisation options have been removed (with the justification that it prevents inexperienced users from 'breaking' the browser), like the navigation buttons being locked to the address bar, the inability ability to move the refresh button (urgh) and the addon bar. Most can be restored though the Classic Theme Restorer addon, though it broke another of my addons last time I tried it.

nikbackm2• 12 years ago

True, the new Firefox menu is much improved, but there still seems to be no way to access it via the keyboard so it will probably remained largely unused by me.

I like the new placement of the real menu bar (when enabled), much better than in the previous versions.

JetSpiegel• 12 years ago

Or you can use Personal Menu [1]. I have the history in there.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/3895/

dingaling• 12 years ago

There seems to be quite a lot of wasted space in this new design. For example:

http://www.donotlick.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/tab-shap...

1. The curves of the 'aerodynamic' tabs sacrifice pixels in the horizontal ramp-off / -on whereas old 'ugly' rectangular tabs can abutt.

2. A vertical void above the tabs, too shallow into which to put icons.

I'll have no choice but to become accustomed to it but I fear my little 12" screen will become even less efficient.

batiudrami8• 12 years ago

I believe that for (1), the tabs overlap so that they take the same amount of space as the old tabs. It's an illusion that they're larger (which I initially fell for also, until I was corrected).

(2) is the same as Chrome and older Firefox versions - to ensure that there is still some draggable area in the window when it is filled with tabs, and it disappears when the window is maximised.

PetitPrince2• 12 years ago

You're right about (1), I took a before/after screenshot (top: FF28; bottom: FF29): http://i.imgur.com/AJlgeBZ.png

Please note that I normally use tree style tabs (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...) to put the tabs in a sidebar. It may have messed up the layout a bit. (also, the non-standard colour comes from ColourfulTabs)

Boriss7• 12 years ago

Absolutely right on same space but illusion of more. It's amazing how much small tweaks can make a difference in perception of visual space and faster action: bigger targets, whether actually bigger or seemingly bigger, make users faster in hitting them.

cubancigar11• 12 years ago

They have removed the option to 'use small icons' which used to shave off some pixels from the crucial vertical real-estate.

bohrshaw• 12 years ago

That's the first regret when I upgrade.

zobzu8• 12 years ago

the tabs that arent in the foreground (ie all other tabs except the front tab) are actually square. im pretty sure the overall layout of tabs and buttons is actually more space efficient

rasz_pl• 12 years ago

Its hilariously sad how new UI skin is touted as reimagining the whole browser.

Opera had fully customizable UI 12 years ago? And look at us now, somehow we moved back in functionality, even Opera nowadays is nothing more than a bad non-customizable Chrome skin :(

I dread the day most of the web stops working on Opera 12.16. I wont be even able to tune Chromium to my specific needs, after all it requires 16GB of ram to compile now (and that number will probably grow).

z3phyr• 12 years ago

I thought that they are switching to servo, but it turns out that they have redesigned the interface?

robin_reala• 12 years ago

Servo’s progressing well (it can render Acid2 now without problems) but it’s missing a bunch of features that are pretty essential for a modern browser. It’s absolutely still at ‘research project’ stage.

rcthompson3• 12 years ago

So, is Flux the new name for what they've been calling Australis?

myrdev• 12 years ago

Either or that, or just meaning 'firefox and change'.

I read that as F.lux being incorporated somehow, and was very confused :P

reubenmorais• 12 years ago

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/flux

The capital F is just the style for titles in English text.

Boriss7• 12 years ago

Nah, just Firefox 29. I was channeling Heraclitus.

childoftv• 12 years ago

Cached version here: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3QAbOyV...

Boriss7• 12 years ago

Thank you!

lonelycrypto• 12 years ago

Already used these features in Nightly build

wwweston2• 12 years ago

"The Firefox UI is a moving target. It is under constant 'improvement', which means 'change' which means every few months I'm forced to upgrade it and shit has moved around and I need to re-learn how to do a task that I was happily doing before. This does not often happen with Safari. Their UI has been remarkably stable for many, many years."

http://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/04/why-i-use-safari-instead-of-...

batiudrami8• 12 years ago

That's not entirely fair - the last major Firefox design change was with Firefox 4.0 - back in March 2011.

xyos• 12 years ago

does anyone know how to hide the navigation bar? (for vimperator users) apparently they removed the option to hide it.

scriptdevil• 12 years ago

https://code.google.com/p/vimperator-labs/issues/detail?id=9...

Further, I have removed the tab-bar and use "b" exclusively for switching tabs.

q_revert• 12 years ago

http://i.imgur.com/Ueqq29i.png is what my current vimperator browsing window looks like (ff27), the new changes make this very difficult to replicate via changes to userChrome.css, but hopefully, as it gets more exposure, these things will get ironed out

wila• 12 years ago

Well if you don't like the beautiful browser there's a way to get the old layout back.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemer...

Actually more precisely it lets you completely customize the look.

Want to have square tabs? Can do, can even have the round tabs.

Want to have the url bar at the top? no problem

snorrah• 12 years ago

Thanks - this let me reset the look to exactly how I wanted - I still prefer the square tabs personally in particular. While I appreciate the effort spent making a new UI, it's always good to have a way back to a more familiar feel if required.

pidg• 12 years ago

I don't want a beautiful browser, I want a functional browser - I generally want to focus on the site I'm visiting, not the gorgeous UI.

The fun part now is wondering how long Classic Theme Restorer will be maintained. I give it 2 versions before it falls by the wayside.

spingsprong• 12 years ago

Please don't take this the wrong way, but what are you doing with your browser?

Up until a few years ago, I used an oldish single core processor and I never had any problems with the performance of a browser.

For the past few years I've had a dual core processor, and I still have never had any performance problems, despite being on the internet for hours each day.

The only times it's even remotely a problem, is when I try out some HTML5 demo that runs the Unreal Engine through my browser, or something like that.

Semaphor• 12 years ago

Rapidly (manually) opening, switching between sometimes 20 tabs always brought FF to a crawl for me and is the reason why I always switched back to Chrome after giving a new FF version a try for a week.

gilgoomesh• 12 years ago

Claims to be detail obsessed but the Mac version has the close/shrink/zoom buttons floating at the wrong height (like iTunes 10 briefly had until it recanted) and a title bar gradient with non-standard color and height (too short for integrated toolbar height and too tall for basic window title bar and too light in color for either) above a toolbar with the same weird gradient used again.

Windows and Ubuntu versions look much better; the Mac version should be fixed.

rectangletangle4• 12 years ago

I think they lowered the close/shrink/zoom buttons so that they'd be roughly centered relative to the height of the tab container. If they didn't do this, it'd look weird and unpolished. As for the other things IDK. I still think it looks really good.

pjzedalis• 12 years ago

The only reason I use Safari is the beautiful smooth as butter pinch to zoom.

apunic• 12 years ago

Gone are the bulky angles and edges of tabs and menus. In Firefox 29, you’ll see streamlined, almost aerodynamic, curves giving emphasis to your current tab and subtly understating the rest.

5 years after Google Chrome introduced them [rounded tabs]

subsection1h• 12 years ago

Horizontal tabs are so 2007. ;-) I'm still waiting for Chrome to have a vertical tabs solution that's as good as Tree Style Tab for Firefox. Tabs Outliner and other Chrome extensions are inadequate.

blueskin_23• 12 years ago

Again, firefox shows the state of its decay.

1. Aping chrome 2. Not having any option to restore sensible tab styles without an addon 3. The general 'fuck the users' mentality they have developer recently 4. Hostility to undoing the damage via removing as many customisable elements as they can.

ggreer• 12 years ago

I really don't want to be negative, but every browser update in the past year feels like a step back. This is true for Chrome and Firefox. Each update contains more "Sign in to your browser" stuff plastered everywhere. Eye candy is added. Useful configuration options are removed.[1] Many of these changes seem to be made with the goal of increasing revenue, not improving user experience.

Rule #0 of business is: Listen to your users. For browsers, one straightforward way to do this is to look at what extensions and addons users install. By far, the winner is adblock. Almost everyone who knows how to block ads does so. Therefore, if you are making a browser and you care about user experience above everything else, you will have ad blocking by default. That no major browser does tells us what their priorities really are.

Again, apologies for the negativity. This has frustrated me for some time.

Edit: I realize that if everyone suddenly started blocking ads, there would be darkness and chaos. But the current situation is only tenable because a small fraction of users have the know-how to get what they want. You can avoid ads if you are technically proficient or know someone who is. Everyone else has to put up with ads. Advertisers annoy millions if not billions of people, effectively subsidizing the usage of those with ad blockers. That doesn't seem fair to me.

1. Such as the old new tab page in Chrome: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=326788

DCKing• 12 years ago

Maybe it's exactly rule #0 they're upholding, but maybe most users want something different than you?

andreasklinger• 12 years ago

With all love to focus on what users want…

Currently online ads are one of the few standard business models that finance the internet ecosystem.

It would be a step back to remove them without a replacement.

VMG• 12 years ago

I vividly remember the anger over omnicomplete and people vowing to switch to Opera, which didn't have that feature. I gave it a shot and found omnicomplete quite comfortable after a while.

Status quo bias is a powerful thing.

blueskin_23• 12 years ago

I gave Opera a shot, found it weird (and much harder to customise), then went back to firefox with https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-location-... .

itry3• 12 years ago

one straightforward way to do this is to look at what extensions and addons users install

Oh God No! I do not use adblock. I use noscript and im happy with it. I also do not use "Video DownloadHelper" which is the second most used addon. And neither do I use Firebug which is #3. Please do not put all this stuff into my browser! And not everybody uses noscript which I use and which is #4. Im completely fine with installing it.

How about improving on the basic stuff? For example make FF use all cores of my machine and not just one?

claudius• 12 years ago

Please do not put all this stuff into my browser!

I was a very happy Opera user for years under the exact assumption that there is little need to install addons if your browser has all the features you need – and I didn’t use all of Opera’s features either, but somehow even with the included mail and bittorrent clients, it ended up being smaller than, say, Firefox.

abus4• 12 years ago

They already built Firebug into the browser.

Jakob• 12 years ago

For example make FF use all cores of my machine and not just one?

They are working on it: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis

This is already in the nightly version for some months: "File > New e10s Window" will open a new window in its own process.

knusprig• 12 years ago

The issue with pre-enabling adblock in a browser is that chrome is financed completely by google (runs on online ads) and mozilla is substantially financed by google and other search engines (who also rely on ad money).

scrollaway3• 12 years ago

Seeing how much backlash Mozilla got for even proposing to block third party ads by default, I can't imagine what would happen if they shipped adblock.

Just because adblock is popular doesn't mean everyone is using it, and as much as I don't like it, advertisers rely on that... it could seriously damage the web if they did that.

The French have an expression for this, they would say you can see no farther than the end of your own nose.

userbinator4• 12 years ago

Just because adblock is popular doesn't mean everyone is using it, and as much as I don't like it, advertisers rely on that... it could seriously damage the web if they did that.

The sites that suffer the most from adblocking are those that provide very little benefit for the user anyway: splogs, linkfarms, and other very contentless things built solely to lure users in for adverts. While I don't use adblock myself (I use a filtering proxy instead), seeing that part of the internet die off, and possibly a return to something closer to the noncommercialised web of the 90s where the signal-to-noise ratio was much higher, IMHO is a very good thing. Although there are some good ad-supported sites that may die off, in my experience the sites that contain lots of very good, detailed information are unlikely to contain ads too. It's a bit like chemotherapy...

coldpie• 12 years ago

as much as I don't like it, advertisers rely on that... it could seriously damage the web if [everyone used adblock]

I understand this. I gave the advertisers a fair shot. I didn't install any adblocking on my phone. I gave them a significant chunk of my limited mobile browsing bandwidth. I understand it's a compromise; I waste my page space and bandwidth, and the websites I like continue to exist.

Then my phone started talking to me about some TV show or some shit in the middle of the office last week. Firefox installed, adblock installed, scorched earth policy. I will never view another ad on mobile.

I'm willing to be reasonable and compromise here, but if they're not holding up their end of the bargain, I'm not going to carry that burden either. If this is the way the web is going to be, then the web needs a new business model and I'm happy to bring it about.

kijin2• 12 years ago

Tough luck. The overwhelming majority of Mozilla's revenue is from their search partnership with Google, the Internet's largest advertising company. You don't bite the hand that feeds you.

Apple is the only major browser vendor that can afford to ship an ad blocker without strangling its own throat. If Jobs where still around, he might have actually done that, if only to stick a big middle finger at Google. Now I'm not so sure. Maybe MSFT will do it first with IE, if Bing's market share gets any lower than it already is (or if Yahoo finally folds).

scrollaway3• 12 years ago

I'd like to address your three separate points...

Each update contains more "Sign in to your browser" stuff plastered everywhere. Eye candy is added. Useful configuration options are removed.

- First of all, each update cannot possibly contain more "sign in to your browser". Are you talking about Firefox Sync, of which similar-yet-poorer functionality used to be in an incredibly popular extension (by your own rules, that should go in the browser!)?

- Eye candy is nice. Not everyone lives in the 90s and wants a clickable version of Lynx.

- Configuration options are as useful as the users make it. There was a massive outrage on here when Firefox removed the javascript switch, yet that is one of the best decision they made for their userbase. Google sure did remove a lot of options over time, some of it has infuriated me as well (the removal of http: was a big one for me). But most of the time, users do not actually know what they want which is why they just want a bazillion options to be able to change their mind all the time, as if they're not using a browser but playing Wedding Tie Choice Simulator 2015. As Randall Munroe put it: https://xkcd.com/1172/

makomk• 12 years ago

Firefox Sync was in the browser before, you just didn't need to sign in to your browser online to use the previous version. (It also let you sync through your own server rather than Mozilla's which I don't think the new version does yet, but even if you used their server you still didn't need a Mozilla account of any kind.)

blueskin_23• 12 years ago

- Eye candy is nice. Not everyone lives in the 90s and wants a clickable version of Lynx.

Then why are Mozilla removing everything? I like eye candy too. A metro-ified, totally bare browser without even a status bar is the complete opposite.

Oh, and links has mouse support via GPM.

- Configuration options are as useful as the users make it. There was a massive outrage on here when Firefox removed the javascript switch, yet that is one of the best decision they made for their userbase.

Because everyone switched to NoScript instead.

exodust7• 12 years ago

As much as I like Adblock, did you know it blocks static jpeg images that contain the text "300x250px" or similar in the file name? I didn't know until it blocked one of the images I put into a site that has no ads.

I presume AdBlock's logic is that because promo ads often have the dimensions in the filename, that's good enough reason to block EVERY image on the web that has dimensions in the filename. Pathetic logic!

While you might be happy browsing away on the internet with Ad-Block, it could very well be blocking non-ad content, which is not something you want as core browser functionality.

ASneakyFox3• 12 years ago

Image name should be describing the image any way. That's just good seo.

blueskin_23• 12 years ago

What list are you using?

I've never noticed that with EasyList.

Edit: Quick optical grep confirms it, nothing to match image dimensions I could see in the filter rules.

tombrossman2• 12 years ago

Ugh, you're right. Checking the default list from https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/easylist.txt confirms it. I'll have to look into this more and see if there is a better list to subscribe to.

talonx• 12 years ago

+ for mentioning Useful configuration options. Prominent examples include Last tab close and hiding the Disable Javascript option in Firefox. In both these cases, the decision seems to be driven by the preferences of a specific group of developer(s) rather than informed decision making or listening to users.

amatheus• 12 years ago

I would guess most of the users simply don't install any plugins or addons. So in that case listening to them would simply mean not changing anything.

bruceboughton• 12 years ago

How do you propose that our industry pay for the servers then? Magical pixie dust?

I don't mind seeing ads on free services that have some marginal value for me.

Don't force your intolerance for ads upon me.

mike-cardwell2• 12 years ago

Chrome came out and lots of people started using it because it was faster than Firefox and because Google spammed it all over their search engine. Chrome is developed by an ad company. Chrome exists in order to create a web which can serve ads to you in a manner which is more profitable to that ad company.

That's fair enough. Chrome users sow what they reap. If they want a web which develops under the control of an ad company, or several ad companies (Microsoft too), then that's what they'll get.

The trouble is, it affects the rest of us who don't want a web to evolve according to the profit interests of ad companies; Mozilla got scared by the sudden migration of people from Firefox to Chrome, so they've now started copying Chrome in many ways that probably aren't as good as they think they are for the future of the web.

scrollaway3• 12 years ago

Blocking ads doesn't hurt the revenues of ad companies. It hurts the revenues of the sites relying on those ad companies.

That's your mog & pog blog.

cookiecaper2• 12 years ago

Rule #0 is not a good rule at all. People are never happy. When Firefox was focusing on utilitarian concerns, people reamed Mozilla incessantly for "ugliness" and "user hostility". They vowed to switch to Chrome which supposedly cared more about these things because its tab bar background was blue (or plug in your pet issue here). Now Firefox releases something that focuses on fluffy prettiness concerns like "native look and feel" or "non-distracting tab bars" and suddenly Mozilla is vain and silly, and people vow to switch to Chrome because they implemented Real Feature X.

The point isn't that either side is necessarily wrong, just that "listen to your users" is not the #0 rule of business. Users can provide good feedback, but it must be tempered, because there are always going to be detractors, and detractors will always be louder than supporters.

userbinator4• 12 years ago

Useful configuration options are removed.

This is IMHO a most disturbing trend; instead of leaving configuration options available (and possibly adding more), many "UX experts" seem to have the notion that all users are exactly the same and should therefore never need anything more or less than what these "experts" think they should need. Removing options also reduces the amount of learning-by-experimentation that is possible, but experimentation is one of the best ways of learning about things. The point is often made that this is so "users don't break things", but at the same time it denies them a valuable learning experience and takes away freedom.

Meanwhile the focus is on adding eye candy and using plenty of doublespeak (some of my favourite examples of this are "decreased clutter", "simplification", "streamlining", "user-oriented") to make the users think that they're being offered an improvement. The goal of designing a browser for a novice user, which may be initially simple to use, but is "layered" so that it grows with the user's knowledge, is slowly eroding away. Instead, the expectation seems to be that the average user is one who knows little more than how to turn on a computer, and one who intends to remain ignorant --- the model of the "perfect consumer". The customisation features are gradually relegated to extensions, and advanced configuration is not a gradual learning curve, but a big jump, creating a gap that users have to cross - a gap that is widening. Maybe this is a reflection of a general societal trend, but I have no doubt that it is also contributing to it.

In consideration of this, Mozilla also has a rather curious description: "Mozilla is a global non-profit dedicated to putting the user in control of their online experience..."

Although I disgaree with making adblock a default; I think the concept of what constitutes an advert is too ill-defined to add this complexity to a browser. Personally I don't mind anything that is not intrusive or too distracting.

The title of the article is pretty indicative too: "A New, Beautiful Browser is Coming". The first thing that comes to mind is "Beauty is only skin deep."

calpaterson• 12 years ago

Have they tested this design on users? Did they make the records public?

kijin2• 12 years ago

Thunderbird has been using a variant of the Australis theme (rounded tabs, menu button in the right) for over a year.

Firefox for Android also has been shipping with a similar theme for quite some time.

So I suppose they've had ample opportunity to see how people react to it.

blueskin_23• 12 years ago

...and here's a contrasting opinion:

http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/p/30903/355158.aspx

Australis is removing configurations options for absolutely no reason. If people want chrome, they'll use it. I don't care if mozilla want to ruin the default as long as they give people who want a normal browser a way out, but instead they are removing everything they can get their hands on.

Firefox is dumbing down. That's fine if it's IE, Chrome or Safari where the majority of users think said browser is 'the internet', but Firefox is for power users. People who like their privacy, who want to customise their software to their own use case, and who are rapidly running out of options in a world filled with shitty software that assumes the user has a room temperature IQ, removes options and metro-ifies everything while primarily existing to make money off your private information. Even Mozilla are not only dumbing down, but switching to privacy invasion mode with in-browser ads, and replacing their secure sync with one that drops it all on their servers presumably unencrypted as it works with a basic username/password.

Classic theme restorer: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemer...

What we really need is a fork of Firefox.

veeti5• 12 years ago

What we really need is a fork of Firefox.

Step up to the task yourself, then?

and replacing their secure sync with one that drops it all on their servers presumably unencrypted as it works with a basic username/password.

Firefox Sync is every bit as end-to-end encrypted as it was before. The only difference is that it now comes with a login scheme that is actually usable.

blueskin_23• 12 years ago

Step up to the task yourself, then?

Because everyone here is an uberprogrammer, right?

Firefox Sync is every bit as end-to-end encrypted as it was before. The only difference is that it now comes with a login scheme that is actually usable.

I might have believed that before PRISM. I wouldn't even care about it sitting on Mozilla servers if I could still encrypt it with my own key instead of trusting them. Even if it is encrypted, presumably it is then derived from the user's password. For the average user, that might be 20-30 bits of entropy. Not good. I don't use sync, but if I did, now I essentially need a 2048-bit password to get good encryption on it.

duiker101• 12 years ago

I used Nightly for some time now so I know what is coming, and I started to use it after dropping Chrome. I think that the point you and the user on thedailywtf is wrongly exposed. Not necessarly wrong, but I think that it's wrong to see something different and immediatly say "it's not as it was before, so it must be bad, I want it back."

We saw this with Windows 8 and the start menu, we saw this with Android, we see this everywhere, all the time. Things changes and I think you should try it with an impartial eye and than, if you really don't like you can express your feelings in a more constructive way.

Also, "Firefox is for power users". I don't think so, I used to install it on every machine, even for elderly people. It's not some crazy super software.

blueskin_23• 12 years ago

I think that it's wrong to see something different and immediatly say "it's not as it was before, so it must be bad, I want it back."

I've used chrome before. It was constant irritations, from the metro-ified right click menus to its RAM-hogging tendencies to its general inability to restore sessions after a crash. I use Firefox because I like it, and it's the best option that presently exists.

We saw this with Windows 8 and the start menu

...and MS caved and restored it. I tried Windows 8 and found it completely horrible. As did enough other people for there to be at least 5 third party start menu implementations from Classic Shell (near perfect Windows 7 or XP menu) to a metro-ified spin on the start menu I forgot the name of.

Also, "Firefox is for power users". I don't think so, I used to install it on every machine, even for elderly people. It's not some crazy super software.

Firefox is a platform to build the browser you want onto as much as it's a standalone browser. It has basic functionality without addons, but even random end users, in my experience, will learn to use addons and have adblock, etc, or have customised their toolbar layout.

quicksilver03• 12 years ago

What we really need is a fork of Firefox.

The Pale Moon and Cyberfox browsers are forks of Firefox and they will not merge the Australis UI. I'm already using and liking Pale Moon, it's still not on par with Opera 12.17 though but is better than Firefox.

I'll see how Australis looks like on my boxes, but I'm not very hopeful: I like having a proper menu bar, tabs at the very bottom of the window, and a status bar, I couldn't care less for a touch-like interface on a desktop where I have a functioning mouse and keyboard.

blueskin_23• 12 years ago

I looked into Pale Moon before, but I think I was wondering whether they will be able to maintain it as Mozilla keep changing Firefox so much. Maybe it's time to try it again.

agapos2• 12 years ago

The Pale Moon and Cyberfox browsers are forks of Firefox

Those are hardly anything more current source codes complied differently, with a few switches flipped here and there, certainly not real forks.

Also, the only reason many of these so called Fx "forks" do not ship Australis is because they are on the ESR line.

abus4• 12 years ago

It looks absolutely terrible having addon icons crammed into the same bar as everything else. What's the problem with the addon bar? There's even less view pane area now because the top area is so large.

The active tab curve is feminine, not in a good way, but I can live with it.

It does feel faster though, maybe they broke some addons that were slowing it down. Time will tell.

Boriss7• 12 years ago

You can add another bar in the customize menu and put add-ons on that bar, if you prefer!

abus4• 12 years ago

How do you add a bar or spacing or separators?

kawa• 12 years ago

I really ask myself why they insist to put the tabs on top. With todays widescreen-displays, putting them left or right makes more sense for most use cases (at least with FF its possible to get this via add-on). OTOH they try to get rid of every pixel to get a bit more space while there are lots of at the left and at the right. Do all developers only work on 13" laptops today?

m_mueller• 12 years ago

Absolutely. Having the tab placement customizable is something I miss from the Opera.

nicolasp• 12 years ago

You should check out Tree Style Tab [1]. I always have a lot of tabs open and I can't live without it. It lets you choose where to put the tab bar, among other settings.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/

rectangletangle4• 12 years ago

What's with the purple cupcake at the top left?

spyder• 12 years ago

A pinned tab:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/pinned-tabs-keep-favori...

rectangletangle4• 12 years ago

Oh nice! That's one of my favorite features in Chrome.

anandpdoshi• 12 years ago

I am finding the new version to be snappier than usual. I like it. Now please make the developer tools as good as chrome's.

abus4• 12 years ago

Firefox really hates the users who like it because it's customisable and only caters to minimalist-preferring Chrome users who will use Chrome anyway.

rossng• 12 years ago

I've been surprised by the amount of hate for Australis. Are the people who criticise it actually using it?

I've moved back from Chrome to Firefox and I'm a big fan of the changes that they've made. A lot of clunky interface elements have been eliminated. I really like the customisable menu - it's a much better place to put semi-frequently-used add-ons than has been available in the past. The same paradigm works nicely on mobile, too.

The next things to tackle are probably the bookmarks and options dialogs, both of which are a bit of a pain. Chrome's searchable options were a game changer, and Firefox needs something equally easy-to-navigate.

ihaveqvestion• 12 years ago

I agree. I actually began using Firefox again because I heard this UI change was landing in Nightly, and I've been using Nightly since then. I get Chrome's UI minimalism and Firefox's customizability/flexibility - it's the best of both worlds.

beaker52• 12 years ago

"Mozilla releases update featuring curved tabs with brand new radius"

ASneakyFox3• 12 years ago

Opera's recent ui change atleast had a purpose.. they were trying to innovate and bring forth the browser features that their stars determined people use most.

Firefox here. As far as I can tell is just saying "ok we decided to shuffle the buttons around again"

Haven't been using firefox since they switched their patch number schema. But I still feel a little sad seeing them seal their own fate.

Grue32• 12 years ago

If they are so obsessed with details, how did they miss that some people need bookmarks star, but not the bookmarks menu button. For some (I'm sure completely arbitrary) reason, it is impossible to decouple these two buttons in Firefox, so instead of a little star in URL bar you get a honking huge two button combo that takes like 6 times as much space (which is even more limited in Australis since no addon bar).

mseri• 12 years ago

You can already download it using the official link

https://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-29.0&os=osx&la...

(change osx with wath you ned)

I assume they will update the website very soon

gsam2• 12 years ago

I've been using it for a couple months now. Maybe it's just me, but I really don't care too much about how Firefox looks. I actually quite dislike curved tabs, but I can live with it. What frustrates me the most is that I don't want to wait for the fancy animations to finish before doing something. If I want a menu to come up, I want it to come up.

Most of the menu reorganizations have very little affect on me since I usually use shortcuts. But waiting for some of these animations just hurts my productiveness and I've seen other people share my dismay. When changes like this hurt the people who know how to use their browser and want to simply get things done, it's saddening.

Excavator4• 12 years ago

Mind sharing what these animations are? I haven't noticed any that I have to wait on.

You may find some relevant prefs at: about:config?filter=animate

gsam2• 12 years ago

A number of the menus. When I switched, I found the RSS feed dropdown mind-numbingly slow. I've since made a userChrome.css edit which I saw on Mozillazine. Even then, there's still other animations left over. I find it really distracting.

Another more minor change was, prior to this version, Firefox still allowed fixed back and forward buttons. At some point, I should probably find a fix for that as well. Animations are supposed to make the experience feel smoother, but from my point of view, it's simply more clunky.

clarry• 12 years ago

The post goes to great lengths to say they're doing a big, meaningful overhaul instead of a UI tweak. However, the examples given are nothing more than a bunch of tweaks (and not necessarily ones I like). It sounds like someone is trying to build up hype over nothing.

joaomsa• 12 years ago

While Australis is neat, doesn't bother my experience much since I use pentadactyl heavily and most things seem to just work.

My pet bug still lays untouched though. https://bugzil.la/444284

DavideNL• 12 years ago

So many changes nowadays.. isn't there anything that remains the same, something we can rely on in this chaotic world lol :'(

Anyways, I was hoping the 'zooming' and 'back/forward page swiping animation (on a trackpad)' would be improved, to be more smooth/sexy like it is in Safari on OS X. Unfortunately this hasn't been changed however..

philamonster• 12 years ago

Bookmarks sidebar button and Add-on toolbar...nope, no one uses those AT ALL. Now I have all that shit in the upper right-hand corner instead of lower left, near Start Menu in Windows and have to use keyboard shortcuts to get to bookmark sidebar, again in Windows. OS X I'm more adept with keyboard shortcuts but monkey trained to use what he's been using last fucking decade in Windows.

wingerlang2• 12 years ago

A bit of topic here. But does anyone know of any browser that has the URL-field and bookmarks 50/50 on the same row? I don't really need to see the full URL at all times, and I only have small amount of bookmarks. On top of that I use a fairly small screen, so it would be great to combine them.

Boriss7• 12 years ago

Actually, you can do this in Firefox 29! Click the Customize hamburger-button on the right and then click "Customize." Drag the search bar from the menu bar down to the tools page. Then drag "Bookmarks Toolbar" up next to the URL bar. It should display as your bookmarks, listed next to the URL bar. Here's how it looks on my machine: http://cl.ly/image/1M3N3L0h3v1s

wingerlang2• 12 years ago

Neat. I might just go ahead and try it then and hope for it to come to Chrome at some point.

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