Australis Discussion

[patrickjdempsey]

I would have not hated them so much , but the fact how they first went in some new direction , worked months on that , and then totally scrapping it for no obvious good reason is VERY VERY disappointing

Since it's apparently not obvious to anyone in this thread, I'll explain:

The overlapping of the corners of tabs created a problem because overlapping is only possible with opaque tabs and Personas support requires semi-transparent tabs. There were also issues with what to do with the ends of tabs in overflow mode and when there are buttons on the tab strip. There are several themes on addons.mozilla.org that attempt the Chrome look and fail miserably because of these issues. After the IE9 developer preview was released someone at Mozilla realized that square tabs can look just as modern as wavy tabs with a whole lot less work and repercussions, so they went in that direction.

And that was a loooong time ago.

The latest iteration is inspired by the look of Office 2010 Ribbon UI on Glass, which has unselected "tabs" with no box around them... which allows them to work-around the problems with curvy tabs. I personally think they are taking the curvy tabs thing WAYYY too far, and I'm hoping at some point someone reins them in and says "hey, lets just go for the tab shape we had planning for 4.0."

[faulty_fox]

I see though i like the current design better, the shape they were planing for F4 is still much more reasonable than the new designs.
I'm ok with the transparent tabs and restyled buttons, but the new curved tabs are just horrendous and i still don't understand why would they remove the app-button.
Ok it would be moveable, so what? There are add-ons which do this already i remember trying one.

The worst part for me is how they can justify one of their choices so well and list lots of benefits, just go in the right opposite direction the very next moment.
I didn't like the idea of squared tabs at the time when firefox 4 was released, but now i actually like them. So why are they going for a completely different look and making this harder on themselves?

[Peja Stija]

Because they're out of options on how get their userbase back from Chrome. Instead of drawing on chalkboards all days & making millions of illustrations & logic burdened visions they better, for once, opened their ears to their customer base which is shrinking and will keep doing so if playing social games and trying&redumping stupid ideas like they are doing since their userbase is going downhill.

[Astrophizz]

I personally think they are taking the curvy tabs thing WAYYY too far, and I'm hoping at some point someone reins them in and says "hey, lets just go for the tab shape we had planning for 4.0."

I agree. One of the things that puzzles me about Chrome's tabs is that the clickable area for each tab actually matches its shape, so you can click in between tabs to move the window, or click overlapping parts. I assume in Firefox it would just be a box around a curved shape, which could have some useability issues. I'm a fan of the alternate, squarer, Australis tabs.

[Canyonero]

I personally think they are taking the curvy tabs thing WAYYY too far, and I'm hoping at some point someone reins them in and says "hey, lets just go for the tab shape we had planning for 4.0."

I agree. One of the things that puzzles me about Chrome's tabs is that the clickable area for each tab actually matches its shape, so you can click in between tabs to move the window, or click overlapping parts. I assume in Firefox it would just be a box around a curved shape, which could have some useability issues. I'm a fan of the alternate, squarer, Australis tabs.

We do take alpha into account with our hit detection, just like happens on web pages with funky shaped round or transparent things. We might have to write up a fancy widget so that the area behind the tabs was a window dragger. It would probably be one of those things that no one uses. BUT doing it makes people feel like you've paid attention to the details.

[Rodze]

I mean the only element after tabs on top which distinguished us from chrome was this Firefox Menu Button which IMO came coz of the Windows7 apps/Office App/Ribbon UI(Major in Win8) look , and now its going away for idk which reason...

No it was from Opera. Actually, a great deal of the look of Chrome was taken from a combination of Opera and Netscape Navigator 9 (which was based on Firefox). It's all a big circle.

Also, there are over 160 themes compatible with current builds of Firefox... and some of them are very very nice.

Its itself a big debate ,the way both browsers have implemented it now , had their mockups made on same day...

But you're right when you say it came from Office 2007, regardless of who decided to copy it first.


Anyway, as for Australis, Chrome can't kill Firefox soon enough.

[Hanki]

might as well as use Google Chrome when they actually release Firefox like that. not gonna be much different

[patrickjdempsey]

Also, there are over 160 themes compatible with current builds of Firefox... and some of them are very very nice.

Except that Chrome can't do this. Opera is the only browser that comes close but I think there's only a handful of themes, and they've also gone in the direction of offering background images as an alternative to real themes.

[_matt_]

I'm wondering how tabs-on-bottom will look. And how ugly multi-row tabs might be.

My impression is that-- other than the once-vocal netbook crowd praising Chrome for all the precious vertical space it saved them-- most people aren't exactly over the moon for Chrome's design, but switched anyway for its performance edge (fewer crashes, faster startup, less noticeable browser hangs, etc.). I like to think that Firefox is making good progress on the performance issues. Why undermine all that hard work by changing the face of Firefox to that of a cheap Chrome knockoff?

[Hanki]

i wouldnt think you can put Tabs on the botom with the new Australis theme

my guess or intake of it, is that Google bought Mozilla with that $300 mill

[_matt_]

I think it's sad that after all the effort of creating the app-button, they are just replacing in with the same button chrome uses only with a different icon.

This could be a win considering it would be moveable. Although now the question of the validity of keeping the titlebar when not in fullscreen mode becomes moot. It's basically just a big empty mouse drag target.

Another possible win there could be putting the title back in the titlebar.

[patrickjdempsey]

I'm wondering how tabs-on-bottom will look. And how ugly multi-row tabs might be.

Why not try SoapyHamHocks' (unofficial) version? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... australis/

Also, multi-row tabs isn't a stock feature and it looks terrible with every single theme other than the default already because it's specifically designed *for* the default theme.

[Hanki]

there's another Australis Theme called " Australis Redesigned " which is a Fork from Soapy's

[dbcooper.dk]

I'm wondering how tabs-on-bottom will look. And how ugly multi-row tabs might be.

Why not try SoapyHamHocks' (unofficial) version? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... australis/

Also, multi-row tabs isn't a stock feature and it looks terrible with every single theme other than the default already because it's specifically designed *for* the default theme.

That theme (with tabs on top) looks good with "classic tabs".

[_matt_]

I'm wondering how tabs-on-bottom will look. And how ugly multi-row tabs might be.

Why not try SoapyHamHocks' (unofficial) version? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... australis/

I did, some time ago. It wasn't pretty, but I don't think it'd be wise or fair to let that theme (itself based on the same few official images we've seen, afaik) speak to the quality of the official implementation, which may be significantly better or worse. SoapyHamHocks' themes, as slick as they are, tend to break some of my Tab Mix Plus settings and that's a deal breaker. Anyhow, I'm mostly only interested in Australis as "Plan B" in the case that mcdavis ever stops supporting NASA Night Launch and I don't find another theme I like as much.

Also, multi-row tabs isn't a stock feature and it looks terrible with every single theme other than the default already because it's specifically designed *for* the default theme.

I don't think multi-row tabs look terrible at all with NASA Night Launch.