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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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).

  1. 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..Firefox find
  2. 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).
  3. 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.
    Firefox tabs
  4. 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.
  5. 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.)

316 Responses to “Why I switched to Firefox”

  1. matt

    About the new tab behavior:

    I personally never understood why IE opened new windows to the same address the current window displayed.
    I’ve never opened a fresh new window from the menu when I wanted to browse the same or simlilar pages as the one I’m already in. when I do that its usually a right-click on a link I want to open into a new window (now tab in FF). then if I want a complete departure from the pages I’m already on, I open a fresh tab and enter a url.

    As to the location of the tabs, it seems to mirror the functionality of Excel, but with the tabs at the top of the page rather than at the bottom. The controls remain the same, and are therefore bound to the “frame” of the window, with the tabs being located as close to the content as possible.
    the inability to re-order the tabs gets really annoying tho. It would be great if a simple click-drag worked to reorganize them.

    Reply
  2. jason

    Blah Blah Blah-Yes everyone has an opinion on Tabs and everyone is different. Kudos to the author for writing an interesting perspective that none of the above posters have. I use FF a lot but its far from perfect-the find at the bottom suxs-the download window is annoying (i can probably turn it off but…i would rather not figure out how)-the Go is useless (ok i used it once to search ebay)-I like the tabs and the web developer extension (should come built in its so good). Remember people its OK to be critical of apple, firefox, google and the rest of the “Good Guys”.
    Thanks again for a great write up.

    Reply
  3. Ikkonoishi

    If you go to “C:Documents and Settings$USERNAME$Application DataMozillaFirefoxProfilesdefault.b8nchromeuserChrome.css”

    You can put in the following line to make the Go menu disappear.

    #main-window menu[label=”Go”] { display:none !important; }

    It seems to me that for features that some would find useful, but others wouldn’t that things like this are a good comprimise.

    For instance I’m sure that many people that use firefox would find a use for the “File” and “Help” menus as well. I don’t so for me they don’t show up.

    I like my browser UI to be as unobtusive as possible as can be seen here. Firefox lets me indulge that preference.

    Reply
  4. Don

    Hi Scott, good honest article.

    My favourite peeve, is with the find bar.

    Why the heck is the close button on the left?

    I mean, on every single window on my pc, the close button is on the right, including the close tab button up top in Firefox.

    i’ve got no idea what they were thinking when they did this, sigh.

    Hopefully someone from firefox will see this and add it to a list. Pleeeeese. :-)

    Don.

    Reply
  5. Adam Carheden

    Awesome analysis, thanks for taking the time to share your valuable experience. As for the firefox search though, it’s my #1 reason for using the browser. I need to find what I’m looking for in a page without moving my hand back and forth between the mouse and keyboard. I totally agree with you on the Download popup though.

    Reply
  6. Raven

    Vlad Zachary said: 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?

    I’ve found the opposite in most respects. Amongst other things I develop web apps of Intranet and Internet use. One task that left me shaking my head was a Group Membership page based on two list boxes of members with a set of Add/Remove buttons in the middle – it took 2-3 seconds for FF to move 1,500 items between the two lists with JavaScript, but IE took nearly twenty seconds.

    Two things which FF is defintely slower at, however: Initial startup (FF has to load Java first, but most likely half of IE is already loaded by Explorer) and rendering in 256 colours – Gecko seems to take a huge performance hit running on a 256 colour screen, as I regularly have to endure on Terminal Server (RDP 5.0).

    The other weird UI thing I encounter is that clicking on a web page shortcut (a .url file) to start FF from scratch often results in two FF windows going to the same site instead of one. This is inconsistent since it only happens on about half the machines I use.

    Reply
  7. Angrydot

    Interesting blog entry. I love FF!

    I found that if FF is my default browser on Windows 2000, it takes very long to load. It loads faster if it is not the default browser.

    I also found that closing FF using the close X is slower than using the menu items File | Close.

    Tabbed browsing is great. With the number of apps I have clogging my taskbar, having my web sites on tabs is very helpful. Also, being able to open a slew of sites at once from a bookmark folder is great. I use it to view my “daily readings” sites, which led to reading this blog.

    One grip – opening a new FF instance, as opposed to opening a new FF window, links the new instance to the old. For example, I cannot use FF to login to a site as 2 different users without their sessions being mixed.

    Reply
  8. Kris Silver

    Again, for most of the things being talked about, virtually all of them are possible with add ons, tweaks, utilities etc. Specifically on changing tab orders, thats possible in 1.5 beta, and is possible with 1.0 with a tab extension https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&category=Tabbed%20Browsing&numpg=10&id=176, and is also one of the many features in a more extensive tab extension Tab Mix https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&category=Tabbed%20Browsing&numpg=10&id=625

    Reply
  9. Jason Solis

    Come on – I give you credit for naming 5 things you don’t like about each, but you have to take tabbed browsing off your list.

    “easier to track which window lives where.” – not really. Right now I have 10 tabs opened in my FireFox window. I also have 15 applications running. If I was browsing using IE, I would NEVER be able to find which window had which website. Having all my pages in one window makes it easier to track what lives where

    “With multiple tabs (I find) the back/forward behavior becomes complex and hard to predict” – you sounds like a smart chap. You can’t really find this complex. Each tab has it’s own history. Just like if you spawned a new window. It too would have it’s own history.

    I think it would be fair to say you like IE’s model of carrying over history better, but you can’t honestly say FF’s implementation is confusing.

    ——–

    As for the find bar being on the bottom – I have to agree the first time I saw this, I was confusing for .5 seconds. Overall, I think it’s better on the bottom since the top is already cluttered with address bar, Personal Tool Bar Folder, installed toolbars, tabs, etc. I think using the bottom for space was a nice UI touch.

    ———

    Tabs & Modality – true, it’s not a sin, but I completely agree with you. They need to fix that.

    ———

    Other than your point on tabs & new windows – great posting.

    -j

    Reply
  10. jollekox

    What about enabling drag and drop for tabs? One of the features I miss in Safari, is that I can’t reorder my tabs. I don’t think it is possible in FF.

    Another bad thing with FF is that the close icon for tabs is located in the right end of the tab bar. I’d prefer if it was placed on each and every tab, but that is my opinion.

    Reply
  11. paolo

    I noticed only tonight the existence of the Go menu, so I guess I won’t cry if it is removed in next releases of FF.
    Tabs are ok where they are now, because they’re close to the page. Actually half of the things above them are global to all tabs and half are local (Go, Bookmarks, Tools, Help, the search box vs File, Edit, View and the navigation bar) so it is a hard choice.
    Tabs are ok to start blank (I don’t even have a home page to start the browser with) even if it would be nice having an option to switch between the two behaviours.
    Find-as-you-type is ok at the bottom, again because it is close to the action. Having it on the top of the screen would require more eye movement and a hard time finding a place for it.
    Finally, managing bookmarks is a major effort. I should probably look for some extension that make is easier.

    Reply
  12. brianlj

    @ Sam Kass: ” I know I should have opened it in a new tab, but that’s impossible to do retroactively. So I have to back up, open it again in a new tab, then go to my second page.”

    When you realise that you need to do that, simply ‘Duplicate’ the tab. In Opera, (and, I assume, Fx + TabMix) that will preserve the history in both tabs and allow you to branch back and forth at will in whichever tab you happen to be.

    And when you need to branch again, simply duplicate the duplicated tab. :)

    Reply
  13. Og Say Find at top bad

    The reason I thought they put find at the bottom, is that at the top it would either scroll the whole page down a bit or obscure the top. Usually you would want the bottom obscured not the top.

    Reply
  14. Cory

    Great article. One of my least favorite features of IE (through 6.0) is that opening a new window bringw over the same page. It would be acceptable if the URL was already selected in the address bar so I could type a new URL but it isn’t. I have to press Ctrl+N, take my hand off the keyboard to the mouse, move to and click the URL and THEN I can finaly enter the URL I want.

    The fact that I can press Ctrl+T and type a new URL without ever moving my hands from the keyboard was a big attraction to me when switching to Moz/FF.

    The tab functionality was as well.. ctrl+clicking or middle-clicking down a list of URLS in Google or on eBay does just what I want and in the way I want. The only thing I would probably change is for it to bring the “Back” history along with the new page. Then again it’s not so bad just going back to the leftmost tab. Also once I have closed all of the “details” tabs I opened I’m left at the original page anyhow.

    Reply
  15. Marco Vervoort

    Regarding the new-tab-with-history feature: I use the MozFBRH extension (http://mozfbrh.mozdev.org/), which allows you (amongst other things) to middle-click on the Go, Back, Forward and Reload buttons to open the result in a new tab, with a copy of the session history.

    Reply
  16. Xeno

    I have to say I agree with your first two points very much but I too like the fact that the Tabs don’t carry the bloat of your other window with it. HOWEVER… I do see how some MIGHT ant this feature and believe that this CAN be configured in your about:config file.

    You’d be amazed how much of Firefox can be customized via the about:config file. :)

    Reply
  17. DagB

    When would anyone want to open the current page in a new browser window?
    This (even more than the lack of tabbed browsing) is the single most *annoying* “feature” of IE. It is just so impressively stupid, and I have yet to find a single person apart from Scott to defend it.

    Reply
  18. Alex

    RE: Problem with loading up “blank” pages.

    Type about:config in the Address bar, hit enter.

    Type “browser.tabs.startPage” in the text box, and double click on it. Change the value to 1. This will allow you, open all new tabs to your set start page (agreeably, it’s not the browser-history type feature, but you said opening new tabs makes it seem like you’re opening up a blank word document, this fixes that I guess.)

    Reply
  19. Ed

    Find shows the located word on the bottom line. It would be better if the located word were 5-8 lines up from the bottom so you could read the whole sentence without having to scroll.

    Reply
  20. woot

    go is a button not a menu and i use it when im not sure if something in windows has stolen my keyboard focus. IF i hit enter to go to a site then maybe some other application would have stolen focus in the meantime and the enter would be sent to another window.

    this is especially true over a laggy rdp or VNC session

    Reply
  21. One word

    One word: Opera. Does all you want it to do and a lot of useful tings you probably never thought about (fast forward, nicknames, persistent sessions, persistent forms, undo, etc.).

    Reply
  22. Brian Dilley

    Hey, you should write a set of firefox extensions with your requests (it’s XUL and JavaScript) and contribute them to the mozilla project :)

    Reply
  23. Xofis

    Maxthon is so much better than Firefox– mouse gestures, drag-to-open links, groups, aliases, max compatibility due to the IE engine…

    Reply
  24. Logan

    To Don, about the close button on the find bar:

    Interesting. Now that you mention it, I agree the location is a tad bit inconsistent on Windows (on the Mac, the window close buttons are on the left, though), but I had never noticed it before, because I am always just hitting the Escape key to close the find bar anyway. (If I’m using the find bar, I’m probably already typing something anyway.)

    On the subject of new windows (or tabs) automatically carrying over the previous context:

    Personally, I think carrying over the context has one HUGE down side. Many Windows users (especially those with small monitors) maximize the web browser window. When you then hit Ctrl-N (or use the menu) to get a new window, it opens a new window that is also maximized and fills it with the exact same contents as the previous window. On a really fast computer, this happens so fast that you might not even know that it has happened. Or even on a slow computer, you could easily believe (as I did) that I hit the wrong button and just caused the window to refresh or page to reload. The differences in what you see on the screen on a reload vs. new window are extremely subtle.

    As a result, when I’m using someone’s computer that has IE on it, when I want a new window, I find myself scanning the window list in the taskbar, then doing the Ctrl-N, then watching the taskbar to see if the number of windows has changed, because this is the only reliable way of verifying whether I really got a new window or not. (Maybe I hit the wrong key and didn’t really get a Ctrl-N.) Well, that or I have to un-maximize the current browser, then do Ctrl-N, then go back to the window where I started, re-maximize it, then find the new window I’ve created, and re-maximize it.

    All in all, a giant pain in the butt. To me, the clone-window thing, when used on a maximized window, violates one of the most important UI rules of all: when you’ve tried to do something, and you’ve succeeded, the computer should give SOME sort of acklowedgement that SOMETHING has happened. That is, the computer should give you feedback on your actions.

    Reply
  25. Spanish Man

    Concerning whether or not the current page and history comes along when you open a new tab or window, I’d be royally annoyed if it didn’t. I suppose it’s the history I most care about. I think this is the reasonable default behavior as it preserves the current context. If I wanted a fresh window without concern for the page I could just click the browser icon in my tray again.

    All that said this does sound like a prime candidate for a user configurable option since I think most folks that are OK with a blank window probably fit in the power user category anyway and won’t mind tweaking a setting or two.

    Reply
  26. Furry Marmot

    When I open a new tab in FF, or even when I open a new window in either IE or FF, it is because I want to fork my browsing experience (sorry for the geek-ism), and most definitely not to continue browsing the current site, which would make no sense to do in a new window.

    Example 1: I’m browsing a blog or new site, want to follow a link, but am not done with the current page. Ctrl-click a link (FF) and the new link opens in a new tab in the background, where I’ll get to it when I am done with the current page.

    Example 2: I am not done with the current page, but I need to follow a link now. Ctrl-shift-click (FF) to open and go to the new tab or Shift-click (FF/IE) to open a new window. Browse, fill out a form, or whatever. I am not constrained by needing to remember my place in the Back/Forward chain, or remember what the page is called so I can find it in the Go menu or history. When I’m done, I just close the new window/tab, and continue where I was.

    Example 3: I am not done with the current page, but want to go to a different site. I open a new browser/window/tab and then either type a URL or select a bookmark.

    Continuing the contents and history of one window in another just doesn’t make much sense unless you plan to continue browsing where you left off — in which case you shouldn’t have opened a new window. Moreover, the notion that a user will be lost and clueless when presented with a blank screen is soooo 1998. That said, I’m all for putting the options in the program (or installing Tabbrowser Preferences).

    Cheers! And thanks for a great read!

    Reply
  27. neorser

    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

    Well, there is a free utility that speeds up your firefox by tweaking your profile settings (it will not modify the firefox executable)

    http://www.totalidea.com/freestuff4.htm

    Reply
  28. Simon Ruggier

    Another thing that was fixed in the Firefox 1.5 beta is the modal dialogs. If there was one thing that detracted from the browser’s polish more than anything else in 1.0, for me it was the modal dialogs. I didn’t mind them much, but they stick out as something that needs to be fixed, lowering the user’s impression of the product.

    Reply
  29. adam nichols

    “new tab behaviour”
    I always use new tab instead of duplicate tab as there’s no reason to duplicate the page I’m already looking at. If I want to open a link in a new window there’s the context menu.

    However to keep everyone happy, parhaps there should be an option that allows crtl + T to toggle between new tab and duplicate tab. However I’m going to say that the default should still be new tab. I believe the most common reason to start a new tab is to look something up. Maybe you see a word you don’t know, or you need to check your bank account before you buy something online.

    I also disagree with the tab plcement… those buttons above the tabs are common. They would be on every page anyways, so why not just put them at the top and be done with it? As for logic, I can see your reasoning, but I’ve never heard anyone complain about it before.

    Reply
  30. Richard

    Hey Scott, I was a UI tester in Redmond for IE 5. I still can’t use FF, but I do use Avant Browser that has extended the UI to the levels that IE should be without the hassles of FFs rendering issues and what I think is poor UI.

    Cheers!

    Reply
  31. Wayne

    I use both browsers and I guess there’s something wrong with me because I just don’t get to excited about either of them. They both get me around the web so I’m happy.

    Anyway, I actually like the IE new window history. I used it on this page when comments referenced Scott’s issues by number. Instead of scrolling up the page and to see what issue they were talking about and then scrolling back down and trying to find the comment again, I just hit CTRL + N and then Home and I had a new browser with the Scott’s article sitting their. No fuss no muss.

    If you don’t want to have the current page open in a new browser then open the program directly. That being said, things like that could and should be a user option.

    And I agree that the Find at the bottom can be cumbersome. On my 19″ flat at work I don’t expand my browsers to fit the screen and often the bottom of the browser is below the OS system tray as I move browsers around…meaning that the Find toolbar is not visible. It should at the very least be moveable.

    I do like FF’s extensions but realistically the majority of web users will either be not be motivated/not smart enough to actually use them. There good to have but they should never be relied on to be permanent fixes to UI/functional issues.

    Reply
  32. itsy

    Re: BLANK NEW TAB

    I’ve recently discovered that middle clicking on the home button or any of the buttons on the bookmarks toolbar opens the tab with the relevant page (ie. the home page or the bookmarked page).

    I find this more useful than a blank page.

    (This may have been mentioned above – haven’t read all the comments.)

    Reply
  33. Alexander Sandström

    This is ALOT of comments (guess its slashdots fault), I am not sure that you will even read this comment :P

    You seem to have alot of skill, why dont you join the firefox team, I am sure they could have very much use of your skills. Firefox is a good browser, true. But it could get alot better.

    Nice post anyway! :D

    Reply
  34. Gerge

    You had me with point 1. (I’m msft alum as well) I’ll go back further even. I filed a bug on a new feature for IE4 in 1997. Everyone agreed it was a bug that deserved some attention. Everyone agreed it probably wasn’t a difficult fix. It’s still not fixed in 2005. (IE, Tools, Options, Programs – it stores in HKLM and not HKCU).

    The new window behavior of IE is something I miss in FF, contrary to what seems the majority opinion here. When I hit control-N, I like my contents cloned. I primarily use it on sites that spawn new windows that don’t have toolbars enabled. Control-N with IE gives me the site with my settings, not theirs. This would be easy enough to make optional either way for power users. Set the preferred way once, control-shift-N gives you the opposite behavior to the preferred one.

    Your also dead-on about modality in FF. A tab shouldn’t throw up a dialog that prevents me from using the entire window.

    My personal can’t live without and won’t go back to IE without is a specific extension: AdBlock. IE needs extensions, badly, and it needs them not just for users but to court the hobbyist developer crowd (who, in turn, influence users). That crowd has been lost to msft for quite a while and it’s sad.

    Reply
  35. Ian S.

    Well, Firefox is opensource ;)… So, you can make plugins to change the UI. But, I am quite comfortable with the Firefox design. I use *nix operating systems with minimalistic WM’s, and prefer to have as little windows opened. The search makes sence if you’re a *nix user, becuase it comes from *nix users, it’s implemented in a friendly way to the common *nix user. Almost all programs have the `/’ command to query the search, and it all happens through the bottom, rather then top. Other then that, I love your article and am quite glad you’ve gone to the winning browser ;).

    PS. It’s impossible to get spyware if you switched to *nix ;).

    Reply
  36. Amadeus

    Hi.

    Very interesting post!

    Mozilla knows about almost every users concerns and suggestions from Bugzilla. In most cases the answer is:

    “We agree with you, but Firefox is for the average user, and your suggestion for UI or feeature is not suited. The change you suggest should be done thought an extension. Please try this extension to see, if it solves your need.”

    You will find the Tab Browser Extension and Download Sttusbar very interesting, as they solves two of your points!

    In the case of Download Statusbar the default settings will not satisfy you. So I would advise you to set the settings like so
    http://www.heko.dk/~maj/dsb.png

    Amadeus

    Reply
  37. Amadeus

    About the Go button. With this extension it becomes just as useful as Back/Forward.

    You will be able to go one or more levels up in the path, or e.g. enter the main domain.

    http://clav.mozdev.org/#digger

    Reply
  38. Kent

    Hi; I read the blogpiece and about 5% of the comments posted after.

    I had a friend tell another friend of mine why he loved tabbed browsing was because it “allowed him to browse breadth-first instead of depth-first.” To me, this means that I can be reading from a webpage, like this one, and when there’s a link, I can middle-click on it and have it load up in a background tab without losing where I was on the original page. Then, when I’m done with the first page, I can just go to the next tab and read up on what that was all about–for me, tabbed browsing helps keep related pages grouped. If there’s some “tangent” webpage that isn’t related to the first, then I can always open a new browser window for that.

    I do use the tabbrowser extension, mentionned somewhere way above, which lets me customize the behavior–middle click on a tab to close it, middle click on an empty space in the tabbar to undo a close-tab…stuff like that. It also lets me re-order the tabs by dragging them back and forth. That way, the conceptual “tree” of related links can be maintained (if you think back to the programming idea of keeping a tree-structure with a static, one-dimensional array–the tab bar is pretty much just like that). The tabbrowser extension will, of course, let you open links in new tabs right next to the current one (and before the adjacent tab) to maintain this.

    As you said, some of the UI is kinda wonky, but overall, it’s well thought-out.

    And yeah, I never even noticed the Go menu-item until you mentioned it =)

    Reply
  39. Martin J. Bligh

    Re the window context cloning – yes that bugged me too. But the “clone window” extension fixes it very nicely. Other favourites are:

    Adblock
    Clone Window
    Session Saver (restore state if we crash)
    FLST (Focus last selected tab (if we close one)
    Past and Go
    Bug Me Not.

    Good luck, and thanks for focusing on the UI – it’s open source’s biggest problem.

    Reply
  40. Carl Scarlett

    I’m another Avant lover. I tried FireFox, but the thing I really missed was the back and forward mouse gestures that Avant provided. Also, a lot of the pages I visited didn’t work well on FireFox (probably because they were written to target IE! *boink*)
    Avant gives me the best of two worlds; the flexibility of tabbed browsing and mouse gestures.
    The sad side, is there is no feature like FireFox’s highlight search words built in. Still, I do most of my searching using Google, and the Google toolbar provides 99% of my highlighting needs.

    Reply
  41. Nikolaus Heger

    I think you are dead wrong about wanting to bring status. When I open a new tab or new window, I want it to be empty and devoid of context, a fresh clean plate to start from.

    IMHO opening the current web page when you open a new window is the worst feature by far in IE. It always confuses me – “Am I now in a new Window or not? It looks the same!”. Wait, I just opened a new window so I could load a new web page while keeping the old one, and it loads the _same page_? That just doesn’t make any sense. No one would conciously open the same page in two different windows, so why does the browser do it?

    A comparatively minor issue is also that It takes time to load despite everything being in the cache. I want the browser / new window / new tab to start instantly, and without wasting time showing me a useless “home” page or the same page I was just looking at.

    I agree that the find bar should be on top, but for me, the find feature was one of the major revelations in FF. No one had a find feature like this before, not even Apple’s Safari. FF was first to have a really awesome find and should be applauded for that.

    Reply
  42. John

    Wow, big IE guru change his opinion. Firefox is good, but their politics sucks. Even if opera is pay is better, and more free…

    Reply
  43. Arthur Goldsmith

    I have to COMPLETLY dissagree regarding the new tabs comments. You said this:

    “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 if anything FF improves on that by introducing the ‘ctrl+click’ or the ‘middle click on’ any link, providing a new tab for the link you want, and leaving a tab for where you left off. (similar to opening a new window) There’s no need to opening a new tab or a new window with the information you already have, if its that information you need to continue, just middle click on the thing you want.

    Give it a couple weeks, you’ll start to LOVE using the middle click. Whenever I’m trying to find something on Google, I middle click 8 things that I think might be worthy of the search and sift through all my open tabs to find what I want…. Leeearn to LOOOOVVVEEEEEE the tabs.. get riiiid of the new windows… clutttterrr on youuuurr taskbar is aaall that leads to!!!

    Reply
  44. kL

    No Go menu.
    Per-tab modality.
    Tabs above addressbar.
    Find toolbar on top.
    Download progress on bottom of screen.

    It sounds like your dream browser is Opera 8.

    Reply
  45. Scott

    I have to disagree with a few of your complaints about the FF UI. In order:

    1. I agree that the ability to move the find bar would be a nice feature. Infact the idea that there is a “right” place for a lot of the UI elements is a problem that I see hurting IE7 really badly. That said, I hated the find bar on the bottom for about a week. After that I realised thatit was the natural place for it. The thing I hate about MS Office the most if tool bar clutter. Finding text *IN* a document is not a *WEB* navagation task, it has nothing to do with all of the tools bars at the top. If I want to look at the content while using the tool bar (for me) the bottom is wher eI want my mouse.

    2. The download UI is a bit broken, however using an extension avalivle on the firefox extenions page you can get the download window to laod as a tab (either forground or background depending on your taste). As side form being a little buggy, this combined with setting a default download location for specific file types, is I think the right way to do downloads.

    3. There are two parts to the tabs question. First IE7 puts the tab bar above the tool bars which means that my mouse has to move 50-100 pixles further every time I want to get to the bar that I use (as opposed to all the othe rtool bars which I generally try not to use). If strict UI logic wants it above the tool bars then I want to use better UI Logic. I am not sure about the history bit as I also use a extension to extend the tabs functionly that creates a “duplicate tab” functionality. Though in general I like the blank page it loads faster than a web page that might be down. I don’t need google in every new tab I open, plus I usually open tabs by middle clicking a bookamrk or peronal toolbar bookmark. This opens a new tab at the location I want.

    Reply
  46. Damon

    I used to feel the same way about duplicating the current page in a new tab. I really liked this about IE. I liked it because I often wanted to explore multiple links from one original page: I’d Ctrl-N to make a copy of the page and then click a link. Often I’d make multiple copies and click on different links in each one.

    Then I realized that Firefox supports an even better way to do this. Shift-click on a link brings that link up in a new tab. This is more direct than the IE way. I can shift-click the three links I’m interested in and know that when I go to those tabs the content I was interested in will still be there.

    I have my tab preferences set to not switch to new tabs when I create them so that I can also use this as a pre-load mechanism: by shift-clicking the links I plan on visiting (such as a series of links to big photos), I start the pages loading so that by the time I click on their tabs, the content will already be there.

    Reply
  47. moonscrap

    # John Says:
    September 15th, 2005 at 5:07 pm

    “Wow, big IE guru change his opinion. Firefox is good, but their politics sucks. Even if opera is pay is better, and more free…”

    The the fkck does “opera is pay is better, and more free” means?!

    Reply
  48. John Carney

    Another serious FF UI flaw: Tools>Options>Privacy. Apart from the obvious fact that the entire Options dialog is an unfortunate mish-mash of conflicting UI design philosophies, it is *way* too easy to accidentally clear *all* browser cookies.

    Reply
  49. SuperFreak

    “Glen Neff Says:

    September 15th, 2005 at 12:42 pm
    Hey Super Freak,

    Give Camino a try: http://www.caminobrowser.org/

    It’s basically Mozilla, with Apple UI widgets, etc.

    -G”

    Well, I have had them all installed at some point, including OmniWeb 5, several versions of Netscape, Opera, Camino, etc… But for me, none of them have matched the elegance of Safari’s interface or worked as seemlessly with OS X as Safari does. Plus I have found the performance of other browsers to not be up to par.

    Super Freak
    :( no spell check, i’m using IE at work

    Reply
  50. Tmortn

    Liked all your points except about how new tabs should be created and the concept that some choices must be either or. The power of Firefox is that it does ‘just work’ and yet it allows the programmer to do what they want. The same is not able to be said of explorer. As far as how new tabs are dealt with… they should deffinatly have the option of a default manner in which new tabs are spawned and then have choice for other means such as a right click menu on a tab or pulldown option.

    The Go menu… eh knowing it is global now might actually help me. A few times I have been annoyed I had to ctrl-insert shift-insert URL’s from various tabs to get pages up in order on a web site or something… but with a global go history that ought to stop that in the future. Seems go has more use than it once did in a single window paradigm.

    If you have made this switch recently I would suggest you keep going. The training you have had for many years (especially being involved in the UI development like that) will take a while to break and allow you to stop trying to use FF like IE and instead start using it like FF. At first I used to open seperate windows myself cause I had a lot of skill in manipulating them that way… now I am annoyed like hell when a new window opens up instead of a tab despite extensions that stop it happening very often. The split histories also have their advantages as well but right now your still thinking in a single window/instance paradigm. It takes a while to get out of that.

    In the end I always feel hamstrung when I get forced back into IE either using someone elses system or having to use some IE only feature of a web site in a way I never felt when switching back and forth between IE and Netscape back in the day. When IE playes catch up I will give it a fair shake…. but they need to best FF and take the next step because if its the same and I just have to get used to it that isn’t going to be much incentive to go back. I had incentive to learn and embrace FF not because it was different, but because it added capabilities I did not have with IE.

    Bookmarks and bookmark management still sucks in general even for FF. Perhaps Google will come up with a solution… it is a similar problem to info indexing. Reminds me I need to go look up bugz on FF bookmark manager… it won’t let me arrange things in order, just seems to move things about randomly when I drag them about.

    Nice story by the way.

    Reply
  51. gjw

    as far as #2 goes, i agree completely. check out the “download statusbar” plugin, i think you’ll find it excellent, if in need of a little polish. and it would be supernice to be rolled in to the default.

    re: #3, this is true, and quite annoying.. however, one of my first great joys i found in using firefox (mozilla etc) was the fact that unlike IE (still), cookies *are* migrated from window to window. seriously, if i was IE QA that would have been a showstopper.. on many sites its quite annoying, and some sites become literally unusable. Many sites when you log in, the first time you click a button to launch a new window, the new window doesnt send the proper cookie, and you get redirected back in to the login page. wtf?
    that should probably go on the IE blog though…

    Reply
  52. GenJox

    The thin i like most about firefox is the extensions you can get. I Have over 100 on my firefox and its the most dang tricked out websurfing prog ever. i can control foobar or winamp, and get the local weather and everythin. Firefox pwnz the shorts of IE!

    Reply
  53. Mark

    In response to one of your comments near the top, Scott, re: new tab behaviour, I think quite a few people would prefer the current implementation over the “new window” sort. It’s a _new_ tab, not a copy of a tab. Perhaps there should be a different shortcut — Ctrl-Shift-T? — to create a new tab with the old context. Just a thought.

    Reply
  54. Donovan

    With respect to the tab history/go (global) history thing … first thought: there really isn’t a tab history; it’s closer to the string given by Ariadne to Theseus when he was set into the Labyrinth. It didn’t really keep track of everywhere Theseus went, but was only a straight-line path from his current place in the Labyrinth to the start point. If Theseus had hit a dead end, he would have had to pick up the string, follow it back to a previous decision point, and then re-lay the string as he chose a different pathwayThis, I think, is how the back-forward “history” in any browser probably should work, and it should be separate from the actual History, which should record all sites visited regardless of window/tab. Now, maybe there is an intermediate need for an actual tab/window history (/i.e./, ‘remember all the places i visit in this tab/window without respect to their linear relationships or my actual surfing behavior’), but /that/ would likely be too confusing for novice users.

    Reply
  55. Mark S

    Interesting blog — I’m a complete sucker for websites written by UI people, and I’ve spent countless hours going through asktog.com.

    I’m not sure that I agree that the Find bar should be at the top. When I’m searching iteratively through a document, whatever I’m searching for comes up at the bottom.

    The “I wish I could move it comment” is what kicked me a bit, though. One of the things that I most dislike about Microsoft product UIs is that they are always in “edit” mode. That is, if the user interface can be reorganized or altered by the user, it is always reorganizable. While I can understand that the folks at Microsoft may be trying to make UI reconfigurability more discoverable for users, it often results in people accidentally mangling their interface — and with many draggable elements and snap-to on, it becomes very easy for users to frequently accidently alter their UI layout — be it from resizing or moving their Start Bar to the side of the desktop, from scrambling the positions of their toolbars in VS6, or what-have-you. I would far rather have an easy-to-toggle “UI edit” mode that would let me alter the position and layout of things. Continuously on edit mode would be ideal if I frequently alter the layout of my UI, but I almost always want to configure it and then keep it in that position.

    I disagree a bit with your “Firefox is not by programmers, for programmers” bit. A big concern with a lot of folks is that a good deal of open source software is hard to approach, because it has a complex interface, or an extremely large number of options. Yank those, and you drive the hacker types nuts. Firefox is incredibly reconfigurable via tabs, text-based chrome alteration, the about:config dialog, and so forth, for those who like tweaking the guts of their software. I really don’t think that power ever needs to be dropped to make stuff more approachable — maybe a simpler front end needs to be made, but throwing out features makes me sad. Firefox’s prefs are pretty simple, but if you want Emacs keybindings or want to change your menu accelerators, or whatever, you can do it.

    I’m not sure I agree with adding a download pane or bar or whatnot. Another thing I get frusterated with in many Windows UIs (sorry, you’re just going to have to get both barrels from me :-) ) is the fact that they have an incredibly large number of panes. Watching someone work in, say, Visual Studio .NET is amazing — they’re often peering at their code through a tiny hole in the middle of their window, while almost all the screen real estate is consumed by rarely-used toolbars and panes and whatnot. When I’m working, I prefer to keep every last iota of screen real estate available for browsers, notepad windows, and the like — I don’t work in a modal fashion, with maximized applications.

    I do think that you have a good point with tabs. I prefer to use tabs strictly for keeping associated pages together, but vanilla Firefox is rather poor at letting you alter your tab/window scheme once you’ve chosen to open something in a new window or a tab. There really needs to be an easier way (in base Firefox — yes, you can fix some of this with extensions) to “move between” a tabbed mode and a windowed mode. I’d like to be able to easily turn a window into a tab in another window and visa versa. And doing so isn’t something that’s really been done before in any windowing environment that I can think of, so it’s going to be a bit odd. At least I get draggable tabs with an extension.

    I agree with you about modal dialogs, but honestly, I’d rather see Firefox experiment with replacements for modal dialogs entirely. Modal dialogs are a throwback to early classic Mac OS (well, maybe before, but that’s where I’m familiar with them) where you had *one* program running at a time. Maybe flag a window as “having an error” — color it differently, whatever — and then drop a collapseable pane or something down in the affected window containing the error. New UIs to deal with the many, many windows per program reality of today.

    And somehow, despite using Firefox for quite some time, I’ve never noticed the Go menu. I’m going to go with you on this one.

    And I agree with the other Mark that Ctrl-Shift-T or something similar would be good for a “clone the current tab” option for folks like you. Honestly, though, I’d never use such a thing — I never want two copies of a tab. I *do* want to open a new tab with a link from the current tab, but I can middle-click on a link to do that already.

    Thanks for your thoughts. Interesting reading!

    One more thing I’d like to submit to your consideration for a “top hitlist” — a better browser history. Someone mentioned on Slashdot once that they loved an old browser (from IBM, perhaps? I don’t remember) that maintained a full, tree-style history of everywhere they’d gone where clicking on a link creates a “child” history node to the node representing the current webpage. I think that this would be an awfully nice history paradigm in today’s browsers, or at least a nice alternate view for thier history.

    Reply
  56. Foo

    I seem to be in the minority here, but I really like the download window. I guess it’s because I’m a heavy downloader. Start 7 downloads simultaneously, do it 5 times a day, then tell me that a dinky one liner at the bottom is an adequate replacement.

    Reply
  57. Henry

    You can use CTRL+N if you dont like CTRL+T, but I DO think switching between tabs can be improved, CTRL+Tab switching is an expensive operation, is it possible to make it like ALT+Tab funtions in most windowing system, e.g. display a selection list to switch instead of really switching to each of them? To make a selection list or Go menu useful, we need page authors take care about the tag in their HTML.

    For security, FF does remind you. As a web programmer, I will tell you security is important. When you access a HTTPS website, FF will change its address bar. Btw, one of the most stupid thing of IE is… you never know the exact URL you are downloading (which I believe is a security problem).

    Reply
  58. Mark S

    bhavesh, regarding the following:

    “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.”

    A thousand times yes. I cannot figure out why this UI decision was made — it is probably the single most irritating (intentionally done) thing in IE. If you want to load the previous page — yes, fine, but why would you destroy the work of the user, who is trying to type out a new URL?

    On the same note, the last time I was still using IE, it had a tendency to “cancel drags” when completing rendering — that is, if it would complete rendering when the user was dragging the window, the window would stop being dragged and snap back to its original location. I can only assume that this was not a conscious UI decision, and was the result of some technical choice, but boy, did it ever seem senseless.

    I also agree that the concept of tabbed application windows is incredibly useful, as long as (a) the tabs can be dragged, reorganized, and so forth, and (b) existing windows can be converted to and from tabs in another window. The concept of “grouping windows” is tremendously valuable, and the ability to just tab a collection of windows would be awfully nice for a number of folks, including me.

    aix5000: “BTW, there’s also something missing in Firefox that Konqueror does: Quick URL access; p.e., typing ‘gg:hello’ uses Google to find ‘hello’. I know you can type ‘google hello’ in Firefox, but there doesn’t seem to be a way of defining new quick access words like you can in Konqueror.”

    Firefox does do this. Go to the Properties of a bookmark, and enter the string you want to use in the “keyword” field (I know, misleading term to use). You use a space rather than a colon, and stick a “%s” in the URL where you want the text following the keyword to be inserted — I use “gg foobar” to search for foobar on Google. Firefox has a really great way to generate these, too — right click on a text-entry field and choose “add a keyword for this search”, and it will automatically do the work for you.

    Darin Smith: “But I don’t know the keyboard shortcut or mouse gesture for switching active tabs.”

    Ctrl-PageUp/Ctrl-PageDown

    “Another improvement I would make would be to have a single-click way to copy a URL into the clipboard.”

    Probably hasn’t been addressed because Unix/Linux systems already deal with this by having a second clipboard that contains the contents of whatever is selected.

    Krick:”I don’t really see the point of tabbed browsing. I find it almost as annoying as when XP stacks multiple instances of the same application on on the taskbar. If I need to view two (or more) websites at the same time, I want them in separate windows so I can put them side by side if necessary.”

    Most of us that use tabbed browsing just stick things that we want to view in another window in another window. It’s so intuitive and automatic that I don’t really think about it at all. Tabs are also very quick to switch between and make it easy to group related URLs — without tabs, above about eight URLS open, things get unusable in terms of organization. I use a Linux box with twelve viewports (three desktop widths by four desktop heights) and often have forty or fifty URLs open on various viewports when I’m working on a number of different projects and want to retain my state on each. Without tabs, you’d go batty.

    Fred G: “I use it all the time. It is great when some bozo’s web site blocks the back-arrow from working.”

    This is another thing that burns me about IE. While IE does have some stupid architecture decisions made from a security standpoint, the thing that really gets me is that, in the effort to make it easy to “build a remote application”, they forgot that all website content is potentially hostile. It’s not just concerns about data loss — a remote website should *never* be able to impact your computer-using experience. Netscape had its share of bad decisions in this vein, but I remember IE as doing most of them. For example, the ability of Javascript to open new windows — what were people *thinking*? The concept of “blocking the back arrow” — why on earth would you do that? Maybe it’s a useful feature for some web designer, but the first thing a web browser author should always think is “can this be used to potentially cause more harm than it’s worth” — and there was a notable lack of that sort of thought back in the day.

    Wayne: “I do like FF’s extensions but realistically the majority of web users will either be not be motivated/not smart enough to actually use them. There good to have but they should never be relied on to be permanent fixes to UI/functional issues. ”

    I believe they they are intended to be permanent solutions to situations where there is an unreconciliable schism over how to do something — Firefox takes the “mass appeal” route, but a plugin can be used to keep all the folks that want some oddball feature happy.

    Reply
  59. Weston

    This was certainly an interesting read. As far as your criticisms , I like the find bar at the bottom of the screen and I’m not a vi user. However, it would probably be a good thing to let the user decide where they want it. I don’t really have a problem with the download UI, but I guess it could be made smaller. I have never liked the fact that IE copies your current window over to the new window, but since a lot of people do seem to like that behavior, there should be an option for it. I know that there are extensions like Clone Tab, but a lot of people using Firefox don’t know about extensions so a simple option in the preferences is preferable. I understand your thinking for making navigation buttons and what not part of the tab, but I don’t like the idea of having to move the mouse more to get to the tab. Finally, I’ve never used the go button/menu in Firefox or IE so I wouldn’t miss it. I have it removed in userchrome.

    Besides the availability of extensions, my favorite part of Firefox is the fact that I can modify the context menus (and the main menus for that matter). I don’t use 70% of the context menu items so I just remove them using userchrome, same with items in the file menu. I currently only have Save page as, Page Setup, Print Preview and Print in my file menu. I also love the find toolbar and the search bar because I can add search engines to it.

    I noticed a lot of people saying that they use ctrl+T and then type the address into the address bar. Instead you can just go up to the address bar, type in your link and hold down Alt and press Enter to open the site in a new tab. This also works with searches in the search box. I don’t know if the keyboard shortcuts are different in *nix, or what they are on Mac, but I’m sure there’s an equivalent shortcut. Also, to switch between tabs, hit Ctrl+Page Up to switch to the tab to the left or Ctrl+Page Down to switch to the tab to the right. To anyone who doesn’t like tabs, you can have firefox just open everything in a new page, like IE.

    Here are some features I would like to see. Firefox should add Session Saver, undo close tab, and tab focus options by default. I believe that Session Saver functionality is supposed to be added for 1.5 or 2.0, but I’m not completely sure. Undo close tab seems like an easy thing to add, so that would be a nice feature. With miniT, and I’m sure most tab preference extensions, there is an option where you decide if you want to focus the last selected tab, the tab to the left or the tab to the right when you close a tab. Like I said, I know this available in a lot of extensions, but it also doesn’t seem to difficult to add. I should probably mention that I’m not a programmer and I’m really just guessing about the difficulty of implementing features so don’t take my “this isn’t hard to implement” complements the wrong way.

    There are also a few things that I’d like to be fixed, such as the Windows Luna theme change in 1.5 beta 1, which goofs up the look in Windows classic (including Windows 2000, 98, 95), and some changes made to the dialogue for allowing extensions and themes to be installed (“Allow websites to install software”) and how extension updates work. However, both of these are currently being dealt with so I won’t dwell on them too much, especially since many people have raised hell about the Windows Luna theme. Just a suggestion on the Luna theme issue, since users have fixes using userchrome.css, why not add an option in the general tab that shows a small screenshot of Windows classic and Luna, with radio buttons next to each. A file in the firefox directory contains the userchrome code, so that if a person selects Windows classic, the code is copied into userchrome, the user is notified of the change, asked to restart Firefox and the change is applied on restart. Then, if the user later switches to the Luna theme, the code is deleted from userchrome, but the file in the Firefox directory still contains the userchrome code in case it is needed later.

    Sorry for the extra long post.

    Reply
  60. Michael

    I have many issues with the IE UI, but I think that the strange, mystifying and completely unintuitive decision to bring the history forward is probably my number one complaint. If I (or anyone I know, including very non-tech savvy types) want to open a new window with the current window’s content, we – continue using the current window. I’ve provided quite a bit of support/assistance in my time and I’ve never seen anyone open a new window in order to have the same content as the current window. I have, however, seen some non-savvy types get mildly confused by that behaviour (I presume their confusion was much greater when first they encountered it). It’s akin to opening a new window in Word and having the current document pre-loaded.

    If they want a new window, they want a NEW window. If they want the same window, they use the SAME window. A “new” window which is not new is counter-intuitive.

    To me, having the tabs above the toolbar would be using tabbed windows, not tabbed tabs. The current tab interface seems more logical.

    I was a bit thrown by the search bar, but came to like it. My primary UI complaint is that it isn’t entirely obvious that it has appeared when one first encounters it – which is to say, one expects either a dialogue or perhaps a bar at the top of the page.

    Reply
  61. Kevin

    As a quick FYI, to get rid of the modal error/warning dialogs in FF (I agree, they are completely annoying, and definitely mess up the tabbed browsing experience), do the following:

    In the address bar, type: ‘about:config’
    Use the (top docked!) filter dialog to filter on the value ‘browser.xul.error_pages.enabled’, and change it’s value to ‘true’

    From that point forward, warnings/errors (that are tab specific) will appear in the html content of that tab (similar to IE).

    Reply
  62. Weston

    The error pages have really been improved in Firefox 1.5 beta 1 compared to early versions. Sometimes you couldn’t use the back button when error pages were turned on in 1.0.6, and the pages were ugly. If people don’t mind some features breaking occasionally or weird behavior on some sites, they should try Firefox 1.5 beta 1 because it is a huge improvement over 1.0.6 in most areas. If you do try 1.5, make sure you install the Nightly Tester Tools extension which lets you force all extensions to be compatible. It shouldn’t cause a problem with most extensions, but really old one extension versions might not work when you force compatibility. Oh, and I think there are certain extensions that have recent versions that are only compatible with 1.5 so that could cause problems if you try to go back to 1.0.6 with the same profile.

    Reply
  63. friday

    RE: problems with Firefox

    You’ve probly been inundated with responses about your list of problems bu consider this point-by-point answer:

    1. Find UI – agreed, the location is incorrect but it functions as it should

    2. Download UI – True, a pop up is not a proper solution. Adding more confusing to your possibly cluttered screen is generally bad idea. Opera has the right idea by opening a new download tab.

    3. Tabs and New Windows – I’m sorry that you feel like you’re in word when you see a blank browsing tab, but I disagree with you. A blank window save you from waiting a few seconds for a reload of the previous page you were in. Believe it or not, we all will watch the damn things reload before typing a new URL or reaching for bookmarks. Alternatively, this should be a feature you can change in the preferences (blank or previous URL). What FF really needs is a auto save last session feature – really handy when your browser crashes or your system hangs – another Opera feature.

    4. Tabs and Modality – I like having a predictable location for the navigation buttons. nothing would annoy me more than the navigation moving below the tabs every time I move from a single to multiple tabs. As for moving the tabs above the navigation buttons, that would not affect me in the least. On this that FF does need is a clearer indication of what tab is been actively viewed (bold type just doesn’t cut it). Opera does a good job in this respect.

    5. Go menu – It’s a history list. Yeah sure, you could pull down your url history next to your url dialog but lots of people aren’t that smart. Just renaming it ‘history’ is a no-brainer necessity even though it is a functional duplication.

    Browser development still has a long way to go in terms of paring down to a simple but effective UI. And what’s with the grey dialogue of FF? Is this Mosaic from the early 90’s? Come on. There is so much that can be done with colors to make it nicer and aid navigation.

    Reply
  64. Somebody

    The Go button has no use… unless you install the Digger extension. It becomes one of the best feature of Firefox. I wouldn’t be able to live without it now that I tried Digger. By the way, if you don’t like the Go button, nothing forbids you to remove it with the customizing dialog.

    Reply
  65. Steve Hill

    An excellent and informative article, Scott. I thought I’d put my 2 pennies in: I originally used to use IE as my browser of choice back in the 1997 – 1999 era and IMHO it was certainly a lot nicer than Netscape. Unfortunately since the competition between IE and Netscape came to an end it seems that all development on IE has ground to a halt and whilest development is now being started in response to other browsers I have little faith that IE7 will have enough real fixes to bring it to the same level as these browsers.

    These days I use Linux fairly exclusively and don’t touch IE unless I need to test some web design work (although increasingly I am just plain ignoring IE for personal stuff because making a site work with IE is a lot of effort and often really overcomplicates the markup).

    I understand that as a UI designer you’re looking at the problem from a UI point of view, but I’m curious if your switch was also partly down to non-UI problems with IE such as the lack of standards compliance, etc?

    As for your comments on the FireFox UI, my personal views:

    1. The find UI – personally I find putting it at the bottom of the screen very natural because as a programmer I do a lot of code editing in Vim which does find in a similar way – i.e. appearing on the bottom of the screen and FireFox feels even more natural since I can start a search by simply typing ‘/’, exactly the same as Vim. (I understand that most “normal” end users wouldn’t touch Vim but from my personal perspective this is good).

    2. The download GUI – I actually find it quite handy to have this in a separate window since I can have it sitting there on my other monitor – it’s then out of the way but I can keep an eye on my downloads to see how they’re going. Maybe having it open the download manager in another tab would also be a good option.

    3. Tabs – If I hit CTRL+T to open a new tab I’m afraid it’s because I want to go somewhere else. Re-opening the page I’m looking at would be annoying, especially if it’s got Flash, Java, etc on it because that would make things slower as it fired up all the applets. Infact I can’t think of a circumstance where I’d want the current page in a new tab – if I wanted to open a link on the page in a new tab I would’ve just middle-clicked the link.

    Reply
  66. Tab Monster

    Tabs and new windows? Can you say: Ctrl-C, Ctrl-T, Ctrl-V? It’s an Emacs moment for sure!

    Reply
  67. Benjamin

    If you’re finding some of the way tabs open to be an issue in Firefox (in that they open fresh pages rather than reloading from the location you came from), the latest version of Netscape might be useful to you. It runs on a multiple core, and allows you to have both Internet Explorer and Firefox rendering in the one browser. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, it’s built on Firefox itself. Only problem being, security IS in your face, unlike in Firefox.

    I guess it’s just one of those features they really need to cater for with a selectable option in the preferences. Personally, I like the fresh pages, but I’ve gotten used to that having used “Firefox” since Firebird 0.5 came out (They changed names after 0.7, I think it was). Also, if it does get implimented, they need to make it use the cache of the previous instance of the page, instead of re-rendering the page from scratch (which is quite painful when it’s a blog with 1,000-odd replies to it).

    But, it’s certainly nice to have the perspective of someone who worked so closely with IE for so long to use as a reference point. Though, I gotta say, IE3 has to be one of the craziest UIs I’ve seen in quite sometime, methinks. ;)

    Hopefully the developers take heed from those who came before them on some things :)

    Reply
  68. san

    The thing that i don’t like abt FF is that when you’re writing a mail for example at gmail and when u put a ‘ like u’re (dam n it did again), FF would hook into it and wud start searching for it as ‘ is a shrtcut for searching like in vi or sumthing.
    can we get away with that..i think the same happens for a /

    san

    Reply
  69. san

    I think the greatest feature of FF is tabbed browsing, and ctrl tab does allow me to switch between tabs.
    I think another letdown of FF is that when u close the FF window, it shud have a remember feature as to what all URLs were opened on which tabs, which is very useful when you do a Firefox upgrade or sumthing, when u need to clode FF. cos i takes me ages to close the FF window.

    san

    Reply

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