
Firefox 25 will get a major UI overhaul - enthdegree
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Features/Theme_Refinement_and_Evolution_%28Australis%29
======
loupeabody
Here are some very detailed mockups(?) on major platforms whose links are kind
of tucked into the parent link:

Linux: [http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-
design...](http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-
designSpecs/australis-designSpecs-linux-mainWindow.html)

Windows 7: [http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-
design...](http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-
designSpecs/australis-designSpecs-windows7-mainWindow.html)

Windows XP: [http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-
design...](http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-
designSpecs/australis-designSpecs-windowsXP-lunaBlue-mainWindow.html)

OSX: [http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-
design...](http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-
designSpecs/australis-designSpecs-osx-mainWindow.html)

I personally think it looks nice and welcome the update. I haven't really been
using Firefox all that much mainly due to how busy the interface is, so maybe
leaning it out will make me a regular user again.

~~~
spindritf
> I haven't really been using Firefox all that much mainly due to how busy the
> interface is

Firefox UI is as busy as you make it[1]. It's very customizable without much
effort. Not that it couldn't use a refresh but I quite like it the way it is.

EDIT: The commenters below get it right. Tree Style Tab[2] add-on is
responsible for the tabs and you can remove the clutter by right-clicking the
refresh button for example, choosing "customize..." from the context menu and
just dragging all the unused stuff away into the box (a window that will
appear). Toolbars can be hidden from View → Toolbars. Enabling integration
with Ubuntu also thins it a bit.

[1] <http://i.imgur.com/zdIy63Q.png>

[2] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-
ta...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/)

~~~
loupeabody
Oh snap, now _that's_ a UI overhaul. How's that tab interface working out?

At a glance I can imagine how much more effective it is at displaying a large
number of tabs in the same window.

In fact, I'm finding it quite brilliant. The web at large takes advantage of
vertical scrolling, so why shouldn't browsers? All of my bookmarks are already
arranged in vertical lists.

Even when faced with the input procedure of navigating my cursor to a browser
tab, vertically stacked tabs have a clear advantage (for trackpad/thinkpad
nipple users like myself):

To move my cursor up and down (again, with a trackpad) all I have to do is
bend a finger at the knuckle. When moving the cursor a substantial distance
left or right, I torque my whole wrist slightly or reposition it entirely.

Maybe that's splitting hairs... I'm rather starry-eyed at the moment seeing
your Firefox interface. Perhaps I'm missing some disadvantages?

~~~
spindritf
> Perhaps I'm missing some disadvantages?

Drag and drop sometimes stops working and you lose the ability to move those
tabs around (change their order). Some pages will be too wide, at least on a
small screen like mine, forcing you to scroll horizontally. Also, after every
(major) update you need to (re)move the new buttons.

But those are all very minor. Otherwise, it's smooth sailing.

~~~
msujaws
When was the last major update where buttons got re-added? Are you speaking
from actual experience or just postulating?

~~~
spindritf
> When was the last major update where buttons got re-added?

Not so much re-added as just added. The download button (arrow) for example
was added in Firefox 20.

Add-ons also tend to insert their buttons. Or even reactivate the add-ons bar.
But it takes seconds to fix.

------
DHowett
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.

~~~
magic_haze
Is a title bar really necessary, though? The vast majority of the time, the
exact same sentence is repeated again in the page as a h1. More prominently.
With better styling. When I have the browser open, the favicon and the few
characters on the tab are usually enough to figure out what the page is, and
when it's minimized, the text shows up in the taskbar and alt+tab... I'm
curious, what's missing?

~~~
scott_karana
I have three tabs open, all of which begin with the title of the site. How do
I distinguish which is which?

~~~
voyou
How does having the page title in the title bar help with that, though? It
only shows the full title of the currently selected tab, but can't you usually
tell which tab that is from its content?

~~~
mkhaytman
No, not if they're all the same website. Take 3 comment pages on hacker news,
for example, you'd have to look around the page for context to know which was
which if you had several open at once.

------
Taylorious
Hi I'm Firefox and I'm trying to be just like Chrome. Maybe if I try hard
enough I will eventually be indistinguishable from Chrome and then I can just
give up and let Google push me out of the browser scene entirely.

~~~
dreamdu5t
Except they can't seem to emulate Chrome where it counts: The snappy page
loads and heavy heavy caching. Regardless of benchmarks, Chrome is noticeably
faster loading existing and new pages for me. Everyone else I know has the
same perception.

~~~
PommeDeTerre
I agree, this is one of the most absurd things about Mozilla's actions over
the past few years.

Time and time again they've gone out of their way to bring the worst of the
Chrome experience to Firefox. Much of this revolves around the awful UI
changes starting with Firefox 4 that have made it harder and far less
efficient to use. It's pretty sad that we now have to manually enable the menu
bar, and install extensions to get a status bar, for instance.

Yet at the same time, they just haven't managed to implement any of the truly
beneficial things that Chrome offers. Like you mention, Chrome clearly does
perform significantly better than Firefox. While the Firefox supporters like
to trumpet how Firefox is "comparable to Chrome" in the arewefastyet.com
micro-benchmarks, this just isn't observed under real usage patterns.

If the users are going to get the Chrome experience while using Firefox, but
not Chrome's better performance, then what's the point of using Firefox these
days? They might as well just use Chrome, and at least get some decent
performance along with the rather bad UI.

~~~
pessimizer
>Chrome clearly does perform significantly better than Firefox. While the
Firefox supporters like to trumpet how Firefox is "comparable to Chrome" in
the arewefastyet.com micro-benchmarks, this just isn't observed _under real
usage patterns._

Not under my usage patterns. I rarely have fewer than 30 or so tabs open, and
Chrome is simply useless for this.

~~~
Nick_C
Concur. I had to switch away from Chrome _because_ of its heavy heavy use of
cache that slows the entire browser down when you have several dozen tabs
open.

------
IanChiles
If you want to see the work being done done on this,
<http://people.mozilla.org/~jwein/ux-nightly/> has nightly builds of the
Australis UX overhaul. It's still hugely WIP though

------
RKoutnik
And jwz gets proven right again [0]. I don't use Firefox as my day-to-day
browser but every time I drop into it, I find that I have no idea where
anything is. Hopefully they'll stick with the new changes (which do seem to be
mostly cosmetic, instead of location).

[http://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/04/why-i-use-safari-instead-
of-...](http://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/04/why-i-use-safari-instead-of-firefox/)

~~~
skore
Firefox may be changing things, but comparing it to _Safari_ must be sort of a
joke. Just my opinion, of course, but I never found myself as lost in FF as
the article describes. Conversely, every time I'm stuck with Safari I am
frustrated beyond any hope of redemption by all the tiny things that are
weird. It's nice to have things consistent, but to me, in Safari things just
don't make any _sense_.

(Since I'll probably be asked to qualify that, my go to example - The address
and search bar. Basic search is confusing already, but typing ahead in the
address bar is as if the advances of the past ten years of browser technology
never happened.)

------
zerovox
They've had this planned out for a long time now. Thunderbird received this UI
refresh in August last year(the change log said it was to "match the new
Firefox UI"), so I wonder why they delayed adding this to FF for so long.

Personally, I much prefer the current UI. It's very concise, no space wasted
with curves, perfect for people like me who tend to have 10 tabs open at once.
I would rather they update the current style with a few of the nice hover
effects and bolder colours, rather than change the shape of tabs and the menu
location.

~~~
Osmose
The curves are only on the current tab according to the mockups, the rest are
still square.

Here's a comparison using the latest UX Nightly branch with two windows at the
same width that have enough tabs to switch to "scrolling tab mode" (notice the
arrows on either side):

Old: <http://cl.ly/image/221j3J1j3R2Q> New: <http://cl.ly/image/1b1j1m2K2k24>

The new one shows 12 tabs and the edge of the 13th, the new one shows 13 tabs,
the last one being cut off a tiny bit. The new one looks cleaner to me what
with the lack of extra noise with the boxes around the tabs.

(Of course the rest of your comment may still be valid, but the curves/wasted
space in the tab bar in general doesn't hold up IMO.)

------
mlex
I'm actually kind of sad they're moving away from "square" tabs, as that was
one of the design choices they've made that I always really liked. I'm hoping
they'll provide an option in the new release, or at least that there will be
an add-on that allows me to revert back. I'd love to be able to have my tabs
in the title-bar with the current style.

Current setup that I'm happy with: <http://i.imgur.com/lf99vO3.png>

~~~
SkyMarshal
Same, I prefer either square tabs or trapezoidal ones with the just slightest
of roundrect corners, like Chrome/ium.

FF's heavily rounded ones seem to waste too much space in the in-between
areas.

Minor nitpick though, won't affect my use of it.

------
kijin
It looks beautiful in Windows and OSX.

It looks less awful than the current theme in Linux, thanks to the menu button
(which usually occupies the position of the leftmost tab in Linux and isn't
even orange) being moved to the same location as where Chrome has it. But
there still seems to be a lot of wasted space in the titlebar of the Linux
theme.

I remember reading that this is because certain opendesktop UI guidelines
(can't remember which one) prohibit apps from encroaching on the window
chrome. But Chrome doesn't care and puts tabs at the top of the chrome anyway,
and this is quite useful because you can just push the mouse to the top edge
of the screen to click on a tab. With a thick titlebar occupying the edge, on
the other hand, you need to aim more carefully.

~~~
w1ntermute
To be honest, I really don't care about the UI on Linux so much as the
terrible lag. For whatever reason, Mozilla just can't get its shit together
when it comes to fixing lag on Linux. For this reason alone, I continue to use
Chrome, even though I'd love to move back to Firefox and get all the
customizability that it's known for.

~~~
hnriot
I'm not sure what you mean by lag, chrome has preloading, possibly that's what
you're seeing (negative lag?). I use Ubuntu 12.04 and don't see any "lag". FF
is snappy. I use chrome most, but mainly because I prefer it's developer tools
and memory footprint, but neither of them are very economical with memory.

------
jasondenizac
You can download the UX nightly for all platforms at
<http://people.mozilla.org/~jwein/ux-nightly/>

I'm using it now as my primary browser.

------
BoppreH
Whenever I download a new browser, the first thing I do is remove as much UI
as possible. This saves space, removes clutter and generally makes it more
robust.

My Firefox currently looks like this: <http://i.imgur.com/93yRvie.png?1>

A browser is the software I use most often, every UI change has great impact.
Can't wait to see what they are bringing.

~~~
lucb1e
Hmm, makes me think there should be a way to keep the taskbar when you press
F11. Sounds like that'd be an easy solution for what you're doing.

(Offtopic: Oh wait nobody wants a taskbar anyway, ain't it so Windows 8? :P)

~~~
smithian
I'm on Windows 8 right now and I have a taskbar. Perhaps you were referring to
the start button?

~~~
lucb1e
No I'm referring to the app mode they're trying to get every application to
use. The desktop mode is only for legacy and backwards compatibility purposes.
Though they might have changed their mind on that now that Windows 8 pretty
much flopped, I'm not sure.

------
untog
The page itself doesn't make it sound like an overhaul at all- just a
collection of minor tweaks.

------
thomasjoulin
Yet after Lion, Mountain Lion, and in a few month the new Mac OS, they still
haven't implemented the native scrollbar and bounce scrolling... Mozilla is
doing a lot of stuff, but I don't see any focus.

~~~
kevingadd
Yeah, how dare Mozilla not instantly implement the constant stream of random
UI modifications Apple makes on a whim that require every developer to
overhaul their UI and potentially make the UX worse?

From my perspective, not making that nonsense priority #1 _demonstrates_
Mozilla's focus on features that actually matter.

Also, patches welcome, write an extension, etc etc etc.

~~~
rimantas
In this case it is not change made on a whim, it's system-wide, and UX not
following your system-wide settings is worse for sure.

------
cpeterso
The UI feature I will miss most is tabs-on-bottom. I have an address bar, a
bookmarks bar, and a row of tabs. Quickly scanning tab titles and switching
between them with the mouse is more important than knowing the current page's
URL. So the tabs should be closer to "the action", the web page my eyes and
mouse are interacting with (Fitt's Law).

The "Tabs on Top" menu item has been hidden since Firefox 15. The about:config
pref "browser.tabs.onTop" is the only way to toggle this feature.

------
ksec
Well, Great, how about more snappy and perf bugs land on 25 as well. Still
waiting for SuperSnappy or e10s, or the new Necko work.

Firefox is slow ( Comparatively ) , I hate opening Chrome from time to time
keeps reminding me how fast Chrome is ( Although that have gotten slower in
recent release ).

Edit: And God they drop the Firefox Menu Button! Do they have to copy chrome
on every god damn thing? What the heck is happening with Opera and Firefox UI
design team?

~~~
mccr8
Work on Electrolysis is underway again.
<https://wiki.mozilla.org/Content_Processes>

------
bfung
Submission not "easy" to see the new UI changes</end-of-workday-tired-rant>

Detailed mockups broken for me, or perhaps I fail at grok-ing it. Here's what
I found easier:

<https://wiki.mozilla.org/images/0/0c/Australis-i02-Tabs.jpg>

And menus:

[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Desktop/Panel_Menu#Stage_2...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Desktop/Panel_Menu#Stage_2:_Design)

------
Malzahir
Actually for some reason I cant prefer all that flashing buttons at all,
visually its good to have some highlight of what is/will be selected, but I
cant imagine messing around with the interface if the UI is like that.

Just swipe over the menu, its simply to much contrasts and far away from being
gently to the eyes. I also don't want to imagine that with a darker theme (if
it cant be customized).

And again minimalistic and ribbon like menus what was the worst feature
introduced in some more or less modern applications (on windows). I want to
see a menu for several reasons (perhaps a long time user habbit) but, please,
dont remove that if I dont ask for that. Just noticing the min, max and
closing button on the top left(?) of the main window - I really really hope
that this is only for preview.

In addition, will there by any chance a way to customize the colors used for
general UI elements (browser textboxes, find dialog, titlebar) besides the
system one? For example to allow the use of theme colors over the system ones.
Changeable dialog colors would also be warmly welcomed.

------
narsil
If Firefox takes away the ability for Add Ons to create several rows of tabs,
I would have lost the only reason I stay with Firefox rather than use Chrome.

I currently use Tab Mix Plus [1]. It's awesome.

[1] <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-mix-plus/>

------
enthdegree
They've also made a CSS mockup of the new interface:
[http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-
design...](http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-
designSpecs/australis-designSpecs-linux-mainWindow.html)

~~~
panacea
Which doesn't work in Chrome. heh

------
electrotype
I'm always afraid when such UI changes are announced for Firefox. Thing is, I
love how I currently configure Firefox and I don't want to loose the ability
to do it.

So wathever new defaults you choose for Firefox, please always provide a way
to revert to what we prefere (even if that requires to use about:config).

Here's my current Firefox setup : <http://i.imgur.com/PwiPeDM.png> . I'd like
to be able to keep it that way. I seriously don't care about round corners and
stuff like that if that means I loose some control over how I can configure
Firefox the way I like.

------
kibwen
I wouldn't hold the release target listed on a wiki page as binding. Remain
skeptical until we see some aspects of Australis actually land in Nightly
(which moves to version 25 on June 24).

~~~
shritesh
There's a different nightly channel for Australis.
[http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/lates...](http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-
ux/)

------
baby
Native tab on the left, please please please.

~~~
gkoberger
This new layout actually breaks the tree tabs plugin. It relies on tabs-on-
the-bottom (which are then pushed to the left), and the new layout drops
support for it.

Of course, the authors could figure out a new way to do it, but for now it
breaks the add-on.

~~~
baby
God damn, this was one of the huge reason I was still sticking with Firefox...

~~~
gkoberger
It's still a few months out; I assume someone will find a workaround by then
(if they haven't already).

------
Siecje
I started using Firefox for the past couple of days.

I find it slower than Chrome, not page loading but in terms of being
responsive.

Sometimes there is an issue when I drag a word into a new tab, I would like it
to search google, but it tries to go to the site.

I had to reload the page a few times to listen to the changelog today and gave
up and just switched back to Chrome.

~~~
slacka
Firefox will be less responsive than Chrome until the Electrolysis project
makes some progress. FF runs everything in a single process, so a few heavy
HTMl5 pages make the whole browser unresponsive.

------
pjmlp
Can I please have a working bookmarks window or PgUp/PgDn keys that don't stop
working randomly?!

------
python3
Here's a working web demo of the new interface
[https://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-
desig...](https://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-
designSpecs/australis-designSpecs-linux-mainWindow.html)

------
zobzu
sooo we move the main menu around in completely NON-obvious places every year,
just to piss off long time users.

I feel like a problem with UI designers is that once they made something they
feel like they have to change it else they're useless. So they change stuff
for the sake of it or something.

Real changes in australis: \- tabs around more round. \- main menu move from
far left to far right, slightly lower, and has a new icon

arbitrary much? Save 3px?

I can tell you, all the non-techies will be lost (there's no point even
arguing tat), and many of the techies will be pissed (you can argue on that,
but im pretty sure it'll be a large amount)

~~~
orblivion
> I feel like a problem with UI designers is that once they made something
> they feel like they have to change it else they're useless.

It could just as well be the growth team, experimenting with different designs
to see if retention of new users picks up.

~~~
zobzu
So... if everyone goes to chrome, it means the user didn't pick it up, right?

Because I'm not trying to be sarcastic here, that's what the choice is when
you test on release.

------
lazugod
I like what they're doing to signify trust here:
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/File:PanelMenu-i01-CustomizationMod...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/File:PanelMenu-i01-CustomizationMode.jpg)

------
conradfr
I never used Chrome because I hate those tabs. I also hate them in Thunderbird
but I don't use them much.

The rest seems fine, although I didn't see the personal bar ?

------
mercurial
Redesign away, as long as pentadactyl keeps working.

~~~
ufo
Thae addons page says that pentadactyl does not work on FF 21. What is the
deal with that?

<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pentadactyl/>

~~~
mercurial
The addons page hasn't been updated for a while. The nightly works fine on
version 19.0.2. Haven't tried with version 21 though.

------
mcmire
Isn't this the theme update they've been working on for over a year? I seem to
have heard word about this a long time ago.

------
smegel
I wonder if in some deep recess of Mozilla people are giving serious thought
to re-skinning Chrome like Opera have done.

------
miloshadzic
I think it looks nice. The only thing Firefox misses for me(OSX user) is the
character menu you get on a long keypress.

------
progrock
Misleading title. Refined theme, rather than a UI overhaul.

------
mitchi
Still waiting for a joke on Firefox's version number.

~~~
mmcnickle
You may be waiting a while. This thread is reserved for griping about change,
I-use-chrome and why-aren't-they-fixing-bug-x-instead posts.

------
hanifvirani
I know most people hate IE, but I like IE's UI.

------
yxhuvud
Yet another GUI rewamp without vertical tabs.

 _sigh_

------
lg
can they make it obey osx keyboard shortcut overrides like for Select
Next/Previous Tab and Zoom?

------
nfoz
Oh no, not again....

