Why I switched to Firefox
It’s a sad day and a good day. For years I’ve held onto my IE install out of love. I worked on IE 1.0 thru 5.0, and was one of the people that designed much of its UI. But my love for the past has faded. Last week I switched to Firefox: and I’ve been happy.
Why I switched:
- IE is a ghetto. There are specs I wrote for UI features in 1998 that are unchanged today, 7 years later, in a world where browser usage has changed dramatically. I’ve watched bugs that I fought to have fixed in 5.0 become regressions, appearing in 5.01 and surviving in 6.0. Even though it’s the product I was proudest of, using it now makes me sad – it’s been left behind. I do read the IE blog now and again – smart folks are working – but there’s nothing for me to install.
- Bookmarks work. The Favorites UI model in IE is the same one we built in 1997, when we knew most of our users had 20-40 favorites. It was made to be super simple and consumer friendly as most of the population was still new to the net. This UI is effectively broken today, designed for people that don’t exist. The Favorites menu and Favorites bar show links in different orders, the organize favorites dialog is just weird, multiselect doesn’t work: favorites is a sad forgotten place. This was by far my greatest frustration with IE, even though I’m responsible for much of the original design.
- Firefox has quality & polish. IE 5.0, for its time (1999), was a high quality release. Really, it was. Joe Peterson, Hadi Partovi and Chris Jones fought hard to give the team time to do lots of fit and finish work. We did fewer features and focused hard on quality and refinement. Firefox feels to me like what IE 6.0 should have been (or what i expected it to be after I left the team in ’99). It picked a few spots to build new features (tabs), focused on quality and refinement, and paid attention to making the things used most, work best. The core UI design is very similiar to IE5: History/Favorites bars, progress UI, toolbars, but its all smooth, reliable and clean.
- They made a mainstream product. One of the big challenges in designing software is balancing the requests of earlier adopters in the community, with the needs of the majority of more mainstream users. After playing with mozilla on and off I was afraid firefox would be a built for programmers by programmers type experience. It’s not. I don’t know who in the firefox org was the gatekeeper on features and UI, but I’d like to meet him/her/them (seriously). They did a great job of keeping the user experience focused on the core tasks. If you’re reading please say hi.
- Security isn’t annoying. . The press makes security into such a huge deal, but I’ll be honest. I don’t want to think about security at all. I’ll do what I need to, but mostly I want the system to take care of it and stay out my face. Nothing in FF makes me feel safer explicitly, I just don’t deal with as many warnings, settings and other details. I know from the PR that security in FF is better (even if only because it’s less targeted by spyware, etc.) but I’m pleased that the product doesn’t remind me of how safe I am all the time.
Problems with Firefox:
I’m a UI design guy, so many of these are UI related. (Added note: I’d used FF on and off, but since I’m now 100% some of these are complaints might fade in a month of usage. Stay tuned).
- Find UI. Why does the find dialog appear at the bottom of the screen? I agree that a dialog box (semi-modal) can be a mistake if you’re doing multiple searches, but flipping a coin for placement (top vs. bottom), the top is a better choice for any UI, especially if it’s going to look and act like a toolbar. I can’t move it so it earns a spot on this list. However, the overall implementation isn’t circa 1992 like the IE one. It highlights, it searches on type, & it warns on unfound items – nice..
- Download UI. Here’s a case where modeless makes sense (it’s never my primary user task), but here we get a dialog box. My first crack at this would be a one line toolbar, much like the find bar, at the bottom of the screen telling me about downloads. That’s where all the other dl status info goes. Again, despite my nits, it’s an improvement on the ancient IE implementation (which we all hated forever too).
- Tabs and new windows. Firefox goes against IE behavior and starts each browser instance from scratch. IE intentionally brings the browser history into the new window: the bet being that users who want to continue from where they left off can, and those that want to go their home page can do that with one click. Everytime I hit Cntr-T and see a blank screen I think I’m in Word. I use tabs less often than I expected: opening new windows is often more comfortable – easier to track which window lives where. With multiple tabs (I find) the back/forward behavior becomes complex and hard to predict. Strict UI logic would put the tab UI above the toolbars, not below, but that creates other problems.
- Tabs and modality. The desired illusion of tabs should be to make each tab a virtual browser. Well this breaks when you bring up a modal dialog within a tab: you can’t switch to another tab. It’s an annoyance, not a sin, but when it happens it reinforces my new window habit, and slaps my wrist on my growing New tab habit.
- The return of the go menu. It was with great pride that we killed the go menu in IE 5.0. It was the stupidest menu I’d ever seen, since it was never used and no one knew what it did. For accessibility it was necessary, but had no rights to be a top level menu (IE has View.Go). The Go menu was probably inherited from NSCP/mozilla, but it really should be put out to pasture. And if it stays, someone needs to explain why it shows a different history list than the one in the back button drop down.
For reference: I wrote about principles of browser design here: How to build a better browser.
(Update: I’ve responded to many of the comments in a second post.)
I have a question about FF. On my PC FF runs slower than the IE and I have the feeling some of the Windows updates or something in the OS is causing this. Is this possible and how do I find any evidence or am I way off?
Thanks
Download UI:…My first crack at this would be a one line toolbar…
You might be interested in the Download Statusbar extension for Firefox – it’s been doing this very thing for several years now.
http://downloadstatusbar.mozdev.org/
I have to disagree about new tab behaviour : the thing I absolutely hate the most about IE is the way it brings the previous context over. I *NEVER* want this to happen – I only open a new window/tab if I want to put something new in it. It is that simple.
Sorry Vlad – You’ll have to head over to mozilla.org for questions about FF perf issues.
dj: good tip. Ill check it out. Looks pretty close to what I was thinking of.
Xpm: I understand that’s what you expect or want, but that doesn’t mean that that’s what most or even some of the entire population would expect or want.
My recollection is that we knew it would be polarized: either choice would have a large % of people that wanted us to go the other way. Some decisions are like that.
The logic was: if we bring the history along, people who didn’t want it can just do whatever they were going to do anyway – low impact (the perf profile was good). But for people that need it, it’s there. We felt it’s a bad idea generally speaking to leave people in most read/only software with blank screens. It should at least put you on the start page as it does when you launch FF.
“inheretted” … ??
*ahem*
inherited
:)
Whoops. Nice catch – fixed now.
If you want anybody to do something about those ideas, you should head over to bugzilla.mozilla.org and file a bug report (make sure you search though to avoid duplicates). I like some of your ideas (and some I don’t, but they would be good options).
Nice article, thanks for being so honest and open, very interesting and educating Scott!
The Find UI is being worked on quite heavily I believe, Ive seen it in development plans! Personally, to me its logical its at the bottom, as when you click next and are working your way DOWN the page in terms of the words your finding, it makes more sense to have the bar at the bottom, then at the top.
There is an extension/s for this though, which certainly the one I’m about to link ALL IN ONE SEARCHBAR, adds the SEARCH on Page function to the top right search bar, and is very customizable. https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&category=Search%20Tools&numpg=10&id=377
The download UI, again being worked on, it works best for best, and is basic. You can make the changed you speak of in the extension dj links to above which he seems to make.
On tabs, again improved in forthcoming Fx 1.5! You can clearly configure the behaviour you want with tab extensions such as Tab Browser Preferences, and Tab Mix, found in the Tab section of Mozilla Update > Firefox > Extensions – https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/showlist.php?application=firefox&category=Tabbed%20Browsing&numpg=10&pageid=4
Also, I’d recommend looking into a lot of other extensions, utilities and add ons which will mimick any feature, setting, and behaviour you desire. I favourite of mine is ALL IN ONE SIDEBAR, found here: https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&category=Navigation&numpg=10&id=1027
Another is Firetune which will speed up performance and make other improvements and tweaks http://www.totalidea.com/freestuff4.htm
Also, Mozilla Update is also being worked on and improved by Rebron an admin at SpreadFirefox.com, btw I’m working on upgrades to that site with many others, so all together there’s a hell of a lot of improvements in spoken area’s.
I recomend you check out the TabBrowser Extensions at http://piro.sakura.ne.jp/xul/tabextensions/index.html.en … They will allow you to set it so that when you open a new tab it will load either your home page, a blank page, or the same page as the current tab.
This is the beauty of Firefox, if theres a feature you want, most likely someone else has wanted it too and wrote an extension for it, and if not, you can always write your own extension :)
Be sure to check out Asa’s reply to your blog:
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2005/09/berkun_switches_to_firefox.html
Ben Goodger is the self-proclaimed UI Czar for Firefox. He’s at the forefront of the people responsible for UI leadership and calming the early-adopter outcry for excessive browser bling. He now works for Google.
He also wrote the Download Manager for Firefox 1.0.
The Firefox Go menu is global, in that it tracks all pages visited in all windows and in all tabs. I remember reading somewhere that a developer said that it became useful because it is now global. I use it sometimes (yes yes, I understand your point on mainstream use) because I can’t remember which tab I viewed a page in. If I start browsing in a new window in IE, the go menu remembers where I came from, but after browsing around in window 2, the go menu doesn’t notify other windows where I went. In that respect, the IE go menu is kind of useless. I don’t know if that changes your opinion of the menu itself, though.
Thanks for the really great writeup!
curious: thx. I posted a response comment over there.
Alan/Kris/BobBB: cheers for the pointers.
Simplex: You’re pointing out another conceptual problem with tabs. They fracture the glory of the single back/forward track. I get why they wanted a global history, but introducing it means there are two flavors of history: something that is bound to confuse people. My own response was to ignore the one in the go menu because I couldn’t begin to guess what it was.
I use the go menu all the time. It is really nice for when the browser crashes or you accidentilly close the window. I can quickly load something from the histry without opening the bloated and slow history winodow. And when I want the history window, its right there in the go menu, and not on some silly toolbar icon.
You raise some good points with your list of FF annoyances, but I’ve come to learn that there is nearly *nothing* that I don’t like about Firefox that can’t be fixed by looking for an appropriate extension. The Download Statusbar extension, for example, which dj mentioned. Various tab-related extensions will probably fix your issues with tabbed browsing (though possibly not the one related to modal dialogs).
I disagree with your issue with the find bar; I’m very happy with it at the bottom and indeed it feels more intuitive to me to have it at the bottom. However I will agree that for the sake of users it should be a movable bar.
I also agree with you regarding browser history in new tabs: however when I do want to preserve browser history I simply Duplicate Tab (using Tab Mix, in my case) and then continue browsing. Middle-clicking a link does not preserve history, but then neither does “Open link in new window” in IE. When I do open a new tab via Ctrl-T, it’s because I want to do something new from scratch, and don’t need the current history. So “Duplicate Tab” might be what you’re looking for.
“We felt it’s a bad idea generally speaking to leave people in most read/only software with blank screens.”
Browsers aren’t quite read-only software. In fact, by entering this comment, I am using it to write. Reloading the same page again can be problematic for some web apps. Though I think the best would be to give the user an option in preferences, and don’t load current page in new window by default.
i do not agree with your point on the find bat at the bottom. i love it there. perfect spot. about the download window: there are extensions that put downloads in a sidebar, a toolbar, or in a tiny statusbar item (as mentioned by dj). especially for a gui guy firefox has a lot to offer. just look what the community has done! (and a community is something microsoft/ie will never have, only customers.)
reprinted from Asa’s blog
Berkun wrote:
Openusability.org; I believe it was inspired by Eric S. Raymond’s essay “The Luxury of Ignorance” (which begat part two, which begat The Art of Unix Usability)
Maybe you’ll also find talking to ESR to be rewarding. Maybe….
After reading the praises & faults of FF from a MS exec’s mind, I feel inundated with comprehension of why MS has so many problems with customer relations….MS panders down to what they feel the customer should have (based on some kind of research I guess); whereas other companies (to include open source projects) design from the perspective of pushing the user to an even higher level of production. That is the one message that I get from this.
From the article, I can almost see the author’s condescension of the user. Am I the only one that feels this way?
-JJ
I’m sure they’d appreciate you making it friendlier on irc.mozilla.org
Welcome to the better side.
JJ, I know it’s difficult for people like us (you and I) to understand how most people use their computers. If you’d sit in on a few dozen usability studies with “regular people” (we’re quite irregular,) you’d realize that it’s not condescension, it’s care. It’s because we care about regular people that we work so hard to make our software work for them. People like you and me can always figure it out, or get an extension, or tweak a pref.
Most regular people just want things to work. We didn’t do this by dumbing down the application. We did it by making the application even smarter and by making some hard decisions rather than dumping the complexity in the users’ laps.
With Firefox, we worked really hard so that hopefully the user doesn’t have to. It’s not condescension at all. It’s a passion for users that motivates our drive toward simplicity and making things “just work”.
– A
Just wondering if you evaluted Opera before you switched to Firefox.
It is my opinion that it is a much better browser than both firefox and IE.
I actually hate that IE uses my history when creating a new window. I think it’s the most ridiculous UI decision in the whole app. So now I have to click on the IE icon in my Quick Launch to open a new blank window when ones already open.
I usually only use IE for web apps that take some time to load, and when I need to open a new window quick waiting for that app to load sucks.
Firefox doesn’t need to change anything related to this. This is what users are used to and want. Using history makes no sense.
great story. you’re running mucho open source stuff, wordpress too :) smart thinking. Microsoft needs to follow one day…
Hi Scott,
Good points about tabs/windows and the unreliability of the back button. It seems these days with complex web apps that all too often the back button isn’t there when you want it, and when it is there it doesn’t work like you’d expect. This is something we’ve been thinking about for the past month or so as we take a fresh look at how people navigate the web. Despite what Asa said in his blog post this issue was never actually completely resolved to my satisfaction at least, and I think it’d be worthwhile developing some heuristics for inheriting session history in certain cases and doing some testing on that.
-Ben
You can make a tab go to your homepage (first homepage if you have multiple) if you download the Tabbrowser preferences extension. Also you can get the tab bar at the bottom.
“Strict UI logic would put the tab UI above the toolbars, not below, but that creates other problems.”
I have to totally disagree on this one. This is the one thing in the IE7 beta that annoys me to no end. Menus have always been on top and that’s where I like them. And for those who don’t, let us at least change it. Those tabs at the top annoy me, but not being able to move the menus up top is even worse. I want the tabs close to where I am working for a quick click.
xpm @ post #3
I agree, I don’t even want it to come over. If IE7 has that, then they had better have an option to turn it off, or that just re-enforces my use of FF. :)
Of course, I will probably never go back to IE no matter how many features they add. I just love the idea of ActiveX not even being supported, I really don’t need it at all. :D
Hey just wanted to comment on the “i don’t use the tabs as much as i should” I had that exact problem moving from IE into this famed world of tabbed browsing until I discovere All in one gestures. Now when i want a new tab i just right click and drag a quick up motion and ‘wala’ there is my new tab. There are tons of them to use but really that is the only one. Also a great feature is to click on links with your clickable scroll button which makes the link open in a new tab. Trust me once you get used to those tabs you will never go back.
I seem to remember that the Find bar was at the top of the page area when it was first checked in but was soon moved to the bottom. When it was at the top, it used to shift the page content down when it appeared, which was annoying.
There is a reason for the placement of the search bar:
If it was on top the page content would move up and down as the bar is shown and hidden — this is extremely annoying.
Corey and others are right.
The current (Sept. 14th, 2005) implementation of Tabs in IE 7 is beyond rediculous.
Every app I’ve played with, that features Tabs, does it like Firefox… the Tab is the “handle” for the content directly below it…
If the tab placement, is at all editable by API/ActiveX (cough) extentions, then I would expect that someone releases the “moveTabBar” extention for IE7 within a week of it shipping.
“Strict UI logic”… is obviously in need of an overhaul… UI’s have changed significantly over the last decade…
As for the other comment, about each new tab, not opening the last window/tabs location, I fear you have suffered with the IE design for too long.
I too, am one of the thousands, that swear at my PC, every time I use IE, and open a new window… only to discover that the last window is re-opening (Like Duh! I already had that window open, that’s why I’m opening a new one!)
If the last site (IE only of course) spawned popups, they all re-spawn…
If the last site was a transaction… e.g. my bank transfer to XYZ… OUCH! say goodbye to a bunch of cash…
I understand, that this was your (or your teams) original design, thus you want to stand behind it… but hey, take the flack… it seemed like a good idea at the time, but in hind sight… not a smooth move…
(although I do see one advantage… a “Feature” as MS calls it… sites tracking hits, get falsly higher ratings… as it appears that user ‘x’ hit the site twice, rather than user hit it once, then wanted to comparison shop, or check out a reference link)
A final note on tabs…
If you do not already have it set up, ensure that middle-clicking (e.g. clicking the wheel), opens the link under the cursor, in a new tab (in the background)…. and middle-clicking on a tab, closes that tab. (this will shave countless seconds off your surfing time)
ta.
The key to me about new tabs is the History Trail rather than the Current Page. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’m on a slow non-cacheing website where I don’t want to go “back” because it takes 30 seconds, do 3-4 “Open in New Tab” clicks to see where I want to go next (looking at related products, whatever), then close off the other tabs and keep going. Great, fantastic, nifty use of tabs. Then I change my mind, or want to go back to the previous store, hit “Back,” and realize that I’ve closed off all of my history.
Why not use the current model for new tabs (blank page) but, on all new tabs (with or without content) bring the “Back” history along? No additional network load, no webapp page reloads, if the user doesn’t hit Back it works exactly the same as it does today, but if they do want to go Back then everything still works as expected. I personally can’t see much of a problem there.
My 2 cents. Tabbed browsing is great. But, if you are going to use tabs, do it right. GAIM (http://gaim.sourceforge.net) gets it right. The ability to reorder tabs is a must. And onther feature is the ability to tear a tab out and create a new instance of the app.
Another beef with FF is the close tab button. I have an extension that puts the X on each tab. A must. You cant cntrl-click tabs to select for multiple closures.
And yes the All-In-One-Sidebar is great. As are a lot of extensions I put in FF, but if I, as well as others, think they are so great… shouldnt they be feautures?
Regarding tabs and carrying over the browser history: My most-often way of opening a new tab is by right-clicking on a link and selecting “open link in new tab”. That way, I can continue to read the page I’m on and then hit all the tabs I’ve opened and carry on from there. Using tabs this way gives you much more flexibility than a simple back-next button. It gives you more of a tree structure instead of a single page history.
The tab preferences problem could be easily solved…even on a per user basis if needed. Most OS’s have a specific user login. The first time a new tab is asked for bring up a dialogue box asking how you want the new tab to be handled….bring the history from the linking location or start fresh.
I’d be willing to support your complaint that browser history is not copied over to new tabs if and only if you renounced forever IE/Win’s habit of loading your *current* document into a *new* window.
When you start a new word-processing document, do you get the previous document you worked on?
When you write your friend a letter, do you include the letter he or she sent you first?
When you borrow a new book from the library, do you get all your old books too?
“New” means “new blank document,” not “clone.”
“The Favorites menu and Favorites bar show links in different orders…”
I noticed this one some years ago and was going to submit a bug report to Microsoft. I gave up when the only suggested way to submit a bug report was to send an email to ms-wish@microsoft.com. Was this by design? If so why? It certainly was rather strange.
“I want the system to take of it and stay out my face”
should probably be “take _care_ of”, right?
(Another gripe: IE ate my form data when i had to go back to fix this form. Firefox never does this.)
Ari, I agree and had the same problem till i learnt about middle clicking a tab – it closes it. Also, you could try this little extension; https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=785
Thanks to Jake, I’m going to go and play (and hopefully learn) Mouse gestures :D
The only two problems I’ve had with Firefox are that alerts & password dialogs are window-modal, and a very annoying one that Ctrl+W closes a tab when it does ‘Find’ in pico (nano) in linux, annoys the hell out of me! I’m just glad I have UndoCloseTab. :)
Don’t suppose anyone knows how to change KeyBindings in FF without resorting to editing jar files? I’ll get round to it at some point!
Certaintly some good ideas on here, I especially liked Ari’s points about being able to drag tabs and how Gaim works.
As a shameless plug (it is my site!) I’ve got a little list of some of my favourite Extensions (like most people seem to!) at derp.co.uk – its just a simple wiki of various tips and tricks for Windows, FF and Linux really, stuff that I keep forgetting really I guess!
Personally, I’ve tried IE7 at work and I’ve absolutely hated it. I don’t like the allow and deny sites dialog, and putting the tabs at the top of the page is just a nightmare for my wrist!
Still, some fantastic work coming from the Firefox team and I’m sure like most people I want to thank Scott, and everyone’s who’s replied for giving some valuable insight and a lot to think about, especially in UI design.
eek ook ook OOOK OOOK! Thanks!
Dug (a random visitor… how did I get here actually! Damn FF history!… ;D)
I just read an interesting blog about Vista UI here:
http://applexnet.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1591
Why does Microsoft allow the user experience to stagnate? Microsoft does have a lot of money. They should be able to invest in the research and development of great and innovative products. How can Mozilla outdo Microsoft? What is Microsoft doing wrong?
I agree about the download dialog. It’s friggin retarded. I hate it. It’s the one of the biggest reasons I don’t use FF.
I like Firefox a lot, but it’s just times slower downloading and rendering images. This is my only thing I can’t ignore.
I think the find is at the bottom as a throwback to vi and similar. Just like ctrl-f you can press / to type. Another reason not to put it at the top is, i dont care about the find window. Usually, you know what you’re typing (it’s usually short for a find), and I’m more concerned with what I’m searching for (in the document), not the find dialogue.
It may be personal, I also really like the way tabs open behind. Links often come up in the middle of a document, and pages take time to load. So I usually have it load in the background while I find a stopping point in my current document. Or, if there’s a list of links I want to visit, I can open all of those at the same time and jump along the tabs.
Thanks for the post, it was quite interesting to hear a critique from someone who knows about designing web browsers and can properly contrast ff and ie.
Download dialog Ok have not seen it in ok 2 years. Reason Download Manager. Kinda fixs that problem.
History not being carried from tab to tab is a secuirty thing so you have to live with it.
Go menu Its history but is is also Handy when some one hides the tool bars and leave you with just the menu. Yes it needs a better name but Go has kinda stuck.
I hope you know that you can completely reskin Firefox. I do mean completely. So you can make a them with the Find bar up the top the Go menu gone. Reason I know is restricted computer setups Browser only loaded to one site and you don’t want to let them anywhere else. Yep I removed the menus completely striped out the location bar and left them with tabs and forwards and backward and a home button. Its nice.
Since you are a developer It would be nice to see a theme skin of what you think firefox should look like. Dont worry Firefox has a backup plan firefox –profile Can fix the most evil stuff ups ever included my first attempt home page load no mouse no keys yep no browser. Still backup first.
The Dilog box problem sticks to stop user conusing over windows and stoping windows form geting losts. Close ie to fine 60 windows in back ground. not nice.
I totally agree with you on the go menu thing. I have always hated that drop down menu and likewise never understood what determined what sites were listed there. The thing the pissed me off the most was I could never find how to remove sites from there (I’m not going to deny it, I used to visit so sites I’m not particularly proud of).
Nice to see another conversion from IE to FF :)
Truth be told, however, I remember when IE 5 was the best browser around. I was one of the Netscape 4 hold-outs who just wouldn’t leave Netscape but finally had to because it was beoming unsable. (Plus it was slow as hell).
Honestly, though, my biggest complaint with FireFox isn’t anything you mentioned… It’s the fact that on our corporate LAN (yes, we have FireFox on our machines at work (somewhat thanks to my talking the IT guy into it)) I still have to use IE to check my e-mail because Outlook Web Access is not very FF friendly. (I can’t just set up Outlook since I don’t have my own desk and float between computers in the control room / master control)
As for the tab issue… I have Tab Browser preferences set to put it at the bottom. It works out nicely that way (and of course on my computers at work confuses the hell out of me ’cause it’s at the top)
One reccomendation (I apologize if it’s been suggested already… I was kind of at work when this got Dugg), check out the Mozilla.org extentions gallery. Lot’s of extentions you’ll probably never need but there are some real gems in the bunch.
-A
For those of you who want to move tabs around and don’t have the new Firefox 1.5B1 (it’s built in now from this extension), look for the extension called “miniT” that will allow you to move your tabs to where you want.
Also, I find the Tab Clicking Options to be handy for me. I can double-click on a tab to close it. I tried the extension that put an X on the tabs but I found it annoying, especially when I misclick.
Sessionsaver .2 is nice also, especially when it reloads tabs from a crash. Doesn’t seem to work too well in FF 1.5B1 too well, but it’s better than nothing since I always have quite a few tabs open.
Yes MiniT does allow you to reorder tabs. Good that’s in FF 1.5.
Do not use Tab Browser Extensions, it just slow down FF too much. Tab Browser Preference is faster, but with a lot more functions. The one i miss is making links open just after the active tab. Maybe it can be done in core FF ?
I think the thing with back/forward and tabs is a false problem.
I like the new search bar. I would love to see all occurences highlighted in the page. Of course with a different color than the “active” occurence.
Oh yeah, i HATED IE so much when it loaded the current page on a “new page” ! Never do that again :)
I’ve just discovered the “go menu”. I never noticed and openes it before !
FF is great, can’t wait to see it better :)
Going back to the issue of the “Go” menu… I had never used it before, and I was only vaguely aware of its existence until reading this very page – but it has just come in unexpectedly handy when I accidentally closed the tab I was reading this blog on. I’m converted now.
Changed over to FireFox as primary browser a couple months back, and, except that I find it’s DL manager crude, I’m favorably impressed.
Find UI – strange at first, but find I like it where it is (and not tempted to move it elsewhere).
New tab as blank – Major draw (for me) to use FF. I can understand why cloning the current URL into a new window might have been seen as advantageous when net access was a novel thing to most users, but is, in my opinion, an example of “welding the training wheels on”, and often causes more problems than it solves. Drove me nuts in IE, especially if the current window’s URL was some bloated thing that took a year to load.
Options go to the user – in FF, if you don’t like what it’s doing you can (usually) find a way to make it work the way you want. IE – not so much.
My take on the situation may be wrong, but I’ve long had the impression several changes made in IE4 and higher had more to do with melding the browser into the OS, and often to the detriment of simplicity.
For example, I maintain a simple web site for our maintenance department that is mostly a storehouse of links to vendor documentation, and in-house generated DOC, XLS, and other files containing troubleshooting field reports and the like.
In up to IE3 clicking on, for instance, an XLS link loaded a copy of Excel, and the user had full printing capability. In IE4 and later the file is rendered in such a way so printing capability downgrades to what IE can do, and completely hoses the functionality I was trying to provide.
While I can see where this might be a good thing (if the user didn’t already have a program capable of handling XLS files installed) it didn’t do me any favors. BTW – if someone knows of a good way to revert to the pre-IE4 behavior I’m all ears … I troubleshoot and fix machines, and am not a web author per se.
#3 on your list of complaints about Firefox was my major frustration with IE, and one of the things I like *best* about Firefox.
You wrote “IE intentionally brings the browser history into the new window: the bet being that users who want to continue from where they left off can, and those that want to go their home page can do that with one click.”
Well, you lost that bet! :-) At least with this user.
I generate a new tab (or window) precisely because I do NOT want to continue from where they left off. Most frequently, I’m using tabs as a process queue — as a list of Things To Do or Read. For example, as I browse my RSS subscriptions in Bloglines, I open interesting links in new tabs in the background to review later. That way I can read through all of my feeds, then come back and review those interesting links. If I’m opening a new tab, 99% of the time it’s because I’m beginning a new thought process or line of investigation, not because I’m continuing an old one.
Anyway, the great thing about Firefox is with a simple extension you can have it both ways. Just install the Duplicate Tab extension. With that extension, adding a shift to the shortcut duplicates IE behavior. So SHIFT-CTRL-T gets you a new tab w/ all the previously focused tab’s history, etc. SHIFT-CTRL-N does the same thing in a new window (just like IE!).
Of course, if you like that, you might still complain that the keyboard shortcuts are different than what you’re accustomed to. So what? Don’t fret the difference; install the Keconfig extension. If you don’t like ’em, you can use the Keyconfig to remap keyboard shortcuts. :-)
finally…fireofox is the choice
Great article, well done.
Hi,
I was wondering if you’ve ever tried Opera! I agree with Hugo Del Castillo, above, completely. Opera has the search button at the top; the tabs are located above the toolbar; and there’s a startup dialog that lets you choose if you want to start with no pages or continue from the previous browsing session. I noticed those were the points you mentioned that were lacking in Firefox but present in Opera.
1,2,3 can be handled with extensions. 5, it’s easy to remove the go button.
Numer 4 though. YES!! YES!! YES!! I *despise* this aspect of Firefox.
I’d have to agree with XPM- when I hit the ctrl+t, it’s because I want to start at a new place. Put a tab after that and I’m over to the google search box. If I wanted to see the same page (or a variant) I would be scroll wheel clicking instead of left mouse clicking.
Going to the current page or my startup page is one thing that PISSES me off about Konquerer (in Linspire & Kubuntu). Because instead of typing my next web location, I have to go back to the mouse and highlight the address to change it. This is very annoying, and one reason why I’ve stuck with firefox.
Good article though- it’s nice to hear insider/rival opinions.
If FF ever changes the tab history behavior as described in the article I will no longer use it. As described it seems quite backwards to me. I should see the history for my current tab not all my tabs. If I need my entire history that’s why the history side bar is there.
“IE intentionally brings the browser history into the new window: the bet being that users who want to continue from where they left off can, and those that want to go their home page can do that with one click.”
Then IE/Firefox need a preference to control this behavior like Safari has. Safari allows you to set new windows/tabs to open with: Home Page, Empty Page, Same Page, or Bookmarks.
I’m also a UI guy,and I don’t have Firefox installed because the simply haven’t put forth the effort to refine the UI for OS X.
Super Freak
My main issue with the ‘extensions fix all’ argument is that I use 5 different computers in my day to day life. Two at home and three at work. Now I know it seems a little crazy but thats the environment I’m in. I guess I’m getting tired of having to setup every computer with the right extensions with the right settings. I would love to see a system where I can save off my settings to a file that I could email to myself and import into any firefox browser anywhere. It doesnt seem like it would be that hard to do. Simply save the location needed to download the extension, and have the settings in XML files. That would make Firefox sprantastic.
FF is just great! The default install of FF had nothing I wanted to change at all and I hope it will continue to do so!
I have to completely disagree with you about the location of the search bar. Perhaps the _Windows_ version should put the search bar at the top, but if you’re running something like Linux, and are used to using vi, emacs, and more/less, you expect the search text to be at the bottom of the window. It’s a completely different argument as to whether they (vi/emacs/etc.) got it right, but being as many people have their use ingrained in them, arrogantly throwing out this mode is less than smart.
My opinions..
1) I hate tabbed browsing, I want each window to open separately, not as a child within a parent window.
2) I hate enormous toolbars. The toolbar I use for IE has File, Edit, Favorites, Tools, Help, Back, Forward, Stop and the URL location, that’s it. It’s no bigger than the status bar at the bottom of the page.
3) Pages just don’t look right in FF. The same page looks much prettier in IE.
It’s not to say that I don’t have gripes about IE, because I have plenty, but none of them are mentioned here. I never use Favorites so I don’t have anything to add there. I like when I hit new window and it opens the existing page. If I remember correcntly, back in the day, Netscape would open with a blank page that wasn’t good for anything. One of my bigger gripes I believe may lie inherently in the Windows code.. Even though I’m on a broadband connection, some pages still load slower than molasses.. so when opening links, I nearly always right click every link of interest and say “open in a new window”.. so many times, the new window that pops open steals the focus from the window I’m still browsing on. (I even have PowerToys installed and have focus-stealing disabled, but it doesn’t matter)
Lastly, another thing I hate with IE is when you fill out a bunch of fields, hit submit, and let’s say you got “page cannot be displayed”.. when I hit back, I want to see all the fields filled out with what I put, I don’t want to have to enter it all again. I realize this may be JavaScript at work but it’s so fckin annoying.
Oh and one more. I abbbbbsoluteeeeely hate (it’s again a Javascript thing) when you open a page, say Google for instance, and you do a search, then when the second page loads you realize that you need to modify your search, so you go into the search box, start typing, then all of a sudden the textbox reverts to what you originally had. Being a web developer I LOVE JavaScript, but not for these annoying, inane uses. I can understand setting the focus to a particular text box (which at times can be quite annoying in itself) but resetting the value via javascript, instead of using the text boxes VALUE attribute seems stupid!
This is so cool! People having progressive discussion about the software they use. Changes are now dictated from the bottom up and all software (even proprietary like IE) becomes more innovative.
BTW, does anybody find the similarity of IE’s path to old Netscape ironic?
Overall FireFox is great.
I wish FireFox would save web pages with the usually meaningful web page as the default filename rather than the often meaningless serverfilename.htm name as the default save filename.
A control to quickly switch between the two as the initial save filename would be nice since different sites have different naming conventions.
Hi, I only agree with #5(Go menu) of your criticisms of Firefox, and strongly disagree with #3 (new windows).
I absolutely HATE having the old website show up in IE. I always want to start a new stream of thought or searching with a new window. With IE, you’ve got to wait until IE is finished re-downloading and re-rendering before you can type in a new website. If you start typing in the middle of page load, the address bar reverts to the original if you don’t finish before the render.
Conceptually, I am opening a new window for a new thought.
Tabbed browsing is awesome…I think you’ll love it after you use it for a while, especially in Windows! It’s nice not having a bunch of half-inch tabs at the bottom of your screen just for the browser.
Plus, each window with it’s tabs can function as a “project” or container for similar web pages. E.g. Tabs in window 1 might be research on best flight fares, Tabs in window 2 might be research on best hotel fares, tabs in window 3 might be reviews of mp3 players, etc.
Bhavesh
Enlightening post, especially from a former IE developer. Certainly the clean and simpler IE user interface in 1998/1999 (IE4 and 5) was what made me switch from Netscape 4 to Internet Explorer. Then, IE6 came along, and the pretty Windows XP skin was good – though during Mozilla’s development it was obvious IE was far behind, and Firefox cemented that fact by producing a usable UI. I suppose yes, in a way IE7 addresses some of the flaws with Mozilla Firefox’s UI (particularly placing the tabs towards the top of the screen) – hopefully Mozilla’s team sees and understands them too – but somehow tabs look awful at the top and it’s a pain having to move the pointer to the top of the screen to switch (assuming not using ctrl/command-tab)
I completely agree with Greg R. (5 posts ago)
New tab should not contain irrelevant history.
I’m with Hugo and asddsa. Extension this, extension that, clone, duplicate, don’t duplicate, download manager, blah, blah, blah, check for updates, download, restart, this, that…
Try Opera. Honestly.
In response to:
Tabs and modality. The desired illusion of tabs should be to make each tab a virtual browser. Well this breaks when you bring up a modal dialog within a tab: you can’t switch to another tab. It’s an annoyance, not a sin, but when it happens it reinforces my new window habit, and slaps my wrist on my growing New tab habit.
Firefox has a (hidden) option to enable old-style error pages instead of error dialogs. Since 99% of the time (from my experience) dialogs come up in tabs, they’re error dialogs, I always enable this immediately after sitting down at a Firefox install. I think it should be the default. The error page is better because:
1) It doesn’t block switching to other tabs.
2) It has a “reload” button to allow you to attempt to reload the site. This is important because frequently when an error dialog comes up, the URL field is empty and you can’t remember what link you clicked that had the error. (I usually open a site, click 20 links in different tabs… if one of those doesn’t load, which one? The dialog doesn’t say.)
Safari does dialogs also, but it puts a little marker in the tab that has the error and the dialog doesn’t appear until you click on that tab. It’s a little nicer than Firefox’s method, but still not as good as error pages.
“I have to totally disagree on this one. This is the one thing in the IE7 beta that annoys me to no end. Menus have always been on top and that’s where I like them. And for those who don’t, let us at least change it. Those tabs at the top annoy me, but not being able to move the menus up top is even worse. I want the tabs close to where I am working for a quick click.”
The logic is this: Tabs should be self-contained. The “back” button should be *inside* the tab because it only impacts the current tab, not the entire set of tabs. Likewise with the URL field, the search field, Home, Stop, Reload, etc.
If you see a preferences dialog with a set of tabs, and a “add” button inside the tab and a “add” button outside the tab, you know that the button outside will add a new tab, and the button inside will add a new item in the current tab. Browsing should be the same way.
In short, I agree: The tab bar should be at the top of the window. Actually, ideally, every OS would be like BeOS, and tabbing windows would be handled by the window manager, so you could tab an email window onto a web browser window, or whatever combination you want.