

Firefox 12 will finally have a New Tab Page and Home Tab - kennjason
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/115935-firefox-12-will-feature-long-awaited-new-tab-page-and-home-tab

======
dlevine
It's funny how things come full circle. Circa 2004, Firefox was the browser
that forced Microsoft to reinstate its browser team (which had been disbanded
around 2001 after the release of IE6). It had a revolutionary interface, and
did a lot of things right (although it did lack some important features that
IE6 had). Firefox was pretty much static after that point, adding important
features (such as contenteditable), but not pushing the envelope much in terms
of interface.

Then Chrome came out. It was rough around the edges, but Google released a new
version every few months, and it quickly improved to the point where it was
better than everything else. It represented a generational change in user
interface paradigms and development cycle time.

So now Firefox has been forced to play catch-up to Chrome, much as IE had to
play catch-up to Firefox. To be fair, this happened when Firefox abandoned the
monolithic development cycle, but the UI changes represent the full
acknowledgement of this.

I wonder where the next revolutionary browser will come from. My intuition is
that it will be on the mobile side...

~~~
gcp
_Firefox was pretty much static after that point, adding important features
(such as contenteditable), but not pushing the envelope much in terms of
interface._

Pushing the envelope in terms of interface is a really tricky thing to do.
Each time you do it, there's a huge user outcry, and it does turn some users
away or stops them from upgrading. I don't think the Firefox feature announced
here will be much different.

People like things to stay the way the are used to. Unless there's a huge
change and they can see how dropping their old habits all at once is somehow
an advantage.

Gradually adopting improved versions of the most sensible Chrome features
might sound like sound engineering, but due to these dynamics I really wonder
if its a survivable strategy in the long run.

There were some UX mockups posted a while ago that looked far more ambitious.
That's more like it.

~~~
baddox
> _Pushing the envelope in terms of interface is a really tricky thing to do.
> Each time you do it, there's a huge user outcry, and it does turn some users
> away or stops them from upgrading._

It's true, yet I think it still needs to be done, even though I'm often among
the complainers. The key is balance: advancing UI without forcing users that
are looking for a solid consistent experience to beta test your UI ideas.
Ubuntu is an example of a _lot_ of really bold UI decisions, and I think
they're too eager to force things on users. Ubuntu is in the tricky situation
of making a product for "the hard-core" (Linux geeks) and "the noobs" (non-
tech-savvy users wanting a free OS).

------
asr
Eh... not such a big deal to me. I would like to use Firefox--I think Google's
privacy changes demonstrate why it's still important to have a non-profit in
this space--but these changes are not going to lure me back to Firefox. I
moved to Chrome because Chrome is faster.

I know Firefox has worked on their speed, and it may be I only notice a
difference because I'm on a netbook, or because the Firefox versions of my
extensions are more poorly written than their Chrome counterparts. But for
whatever reason, Chrome feels faster to me--both in general, and also due to
other nice touches like its ability to open PDFs without launching Acrobat.

The window-dressing is nice, but just as search quality is the most important
thing in search engines, and auto-complete, instant search, etc. are mostly
secondary, speed to render the site appropriately is the primary indicator of
browser quality; new-tab windows and the like are nice-to-haves. As far as I
can tell, Chrome is still winning on speed, and I hope Mozilla is devoting
appropriate resources (read: 90%) to changing that.

EDIT: as an aside, I know downvotes are somewhat amorphous on HN, and I
shouldn't take them personally, but it bugs me that when I take some time to
try to write a thoughtful (though admittedly critical) reaction to news, I get
voted down to -1 (at least 5 downvotes) for my trouble. I've seen similar
reactions frequently in other threads, and it saddens me that this is
apparently now common HN behavior. This response is just not conducive to
building a community. The responses here are great--if you think my comment is
wrong, upvote those instead. Meanwhile, excuse me while I leave HN...

~~~
DEinspanjer
I agree it is painful and not right to be downvoted for things like this. You
are just sharing your opinion, on topic to the post.

I work for Mozilla and I think that the only thing we are really losing on is
the perception race. A frequent trend I hear on forums and comment threads is
how slow Firefox is or how much it crashes. People seem to almost enjoy making
the assessment that it is a universal constant. I know that it isn't a
constant. Even though I have a profile that is many years old and has a dozen
or so extensions installed, even though I have run prerelease versions for the
last three years, I still generally have a stable and fast browsing
experience. Even when compared to Chrome which I install clean and try out for
a couple of weeks every few months. There have certainly been occasions that I
have run into issues, but because I have been willing to give Firefox the
benefit of doubt, I've dug into those issues and usually found something that
was either a bad add-on, something bad I was doing, or a bad website to be the
root cause.

We continue to strive to find ways to resolve these issues without having to
rely on the user or the community to figure them out. That is just part of
making a good product. But I know that the problems are not a universal
constant that every user must deal with, or a reason to try to get everyone to
move to a different browser.

One of the biggest projects my team (Metrics) has been working on lately is a
way to enable people to easily measure the performance and stability of their
own browser and compare it to the general population. If it turns up systemic
problems, that is wonderful because with evidence, it is easier to fix those
problems. If it turns out that a person with poor performance is obviously an
extreme outlier to the typical performance, hopefully it will make it easier
to change the conversation from "Firefox is slow for everyone and no one
should use it" to "Firefox is slow for me and I would like help making that
not be the case for both me and anyone else who ever ends up in my situation".
This would be a paradigm shift that would obviously be great for Mozilla, but
I think it would be great for Google or Microsoft or Apple if they chose to
follow a similar strategy as well.

At the end of the day, many Mozillians do not hate Google Chrome because it is
still pushing to make the web a better place. Maybe not in all the same ways
we push, but every little bit is better than none of it.

~~~
sc00ter
"I've dug into those issues and usually found something that was either a bad
add-on, something bad I was doing, or a bad website to be the root cause."

And therein lies the root-cause of Firefox's perception problem. The average
user doesn't care who's fault it is - all they know is it's broken or slow,
and as Firefox surfaces those issues, it must be Firefox's fault. Chrome does
a better job of shielding users from perceived browser problems.

~~~
DEinspanjer
It is certainly the root-cause of Firefox's perception problem with users who
are likely to run into these issues.

My question, which I hope we will be able to answer better soon, is whether
this is something that actually does happen to the average user or if it only
happens to certain types of power users. Either way, we need to strive to do
everything we can reasonably do to fix it, but I would be much happier to know
whether I was in the outlier group of people who rarely experience problems or
if the "average user" does not see those problems but we continue to talk
about the problems as if they were the typical case.

------
kibwen
I wish I could find the source for this, but I recall one of the Mozilla
designers saying that the reason they were reticent to implement a speed-dial
in the new tab page was because they envisioned the new tab page as a blank
slate for when you're on-task, free from the distractions of your favorite
websites. As someone with mild ADD, I agree with this assessment.

Don't get me wrong; it's nice that this feature exists. But, personally, I'll
be disabling it immediately.

~~~
mrsebastian
Yep, FWIW there's a little 'X' in the top right that lets you hide the tiles.

------
ward
Was this really that "long-awaited"? I for one quite like a clean New Tab and
if I did want something like the envisioned, then I don't think 3 by 3 would
quite cut it. Not to mention that if people were really that anxious for it, I
would be pretty sure they could find an addon with that kind of function.

Good thing that like just about everything in Firefox, you can configure it to
your needs when it lands. :)

Side note, for those interested of an overview of planned features in Firefox:
<https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Release_Tracking>

------
zyb09
I think it's time to switch back to Firefox, Chrome is freezing a lot for me
lately (Aw, Snap!). The only thing I miss is the universal
search/URL/autocomplete bar, is there an extension for this?

~~~
gkoberger
<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/omnibar/>

I can't speak to the quality of it, however. I use ctrl+l for URLs and ctrl+k
for search, and am so used to it I don't even notice (especially since
Firefox's AwesomeBar tends to have better results for me than Chrome's
OmniBar).

------
figital
They had a design challenge related to this awhile back. I think I received
the lowest score of the entrants for this desktop metaphor concept:
<http://vimeo.com/9451028> (pardon my rookie screencasting skills). I think in
the end though those favorite sites aren't much different than active windows,
"top apps" is quite similar to a quick launch bar ... and the sidebar chat
window looks like ... a sidebar chat window. That's the way things will go
#IMHO. Firefox 12 looks like a great gateway toward this.

------
ExpiredLink
BTW, this description is mostly up to date for current FF versions:
[http://www.howtogeek.com/58035/how-to-make-firefox-4-look-
li...](http://www.howtogeek.com/58035/how-to-make-firefox-4-look-like-
firefox-3/)

------
baby
Am I the only one who's still waiting, version after version that they let
users put the tabs on the left?

~~~
gkoberger
Try this:

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

------
nextparadigms
Is that WebRTC with GTalk contacts on the home page?

~~~
AgentIcarus
The title of the image is "firefox-home-tab-mockup" - I don't think it
represents the current state of the art.

