New Customization/New Menu UI mockup

[Omega X]

Just what I said. They shouldn't release drafts or plans.

They would still get a whiff of it once it shows up in Nightly. Mozilla would have to play the marketing game if they want to get seen as first implementation.

[Srap]

They would still get a whiff of it once it shows up in Nightly. Mozilla would have to play the marketing game if they want to get seen as first implementation.

True. but having it on nightly would mean that it is nearly finished, and it may land soon. They have something to point at and call it 'the original one' and the others would be in a disadvantage.
But as for a draft... last time I checked PBDM, it was still half-done, more than a year after the it's implementation in Safari.

[patrickjdempsey]

So which parts are you guys so concerned some other browsers will "steal"? The parts already implemented in Chrome and Opera for iPad, or the parts that no other browsers will ever use because no other browsers (except Opera which already has something similar) are customizable?

Also, has anyone else noticed "toolbar" in singular and no other toolbars displayed, and no "add new toolbar" button? Does that mean the future of Firefox means the death of toolbars?

[ioiokzkz]

Actually, Chrome copied the menu button look (those three horizontal lines) from Shorlander's mockups. I noticed that in Canary build a few days ago. So Chrome stuff is not saint either...

True. But they got it done first, among loads of other things.
Here's a nice quote of the day: "Vision without execution is hallucination."

[patrickjdempsey]

Actually, Chrome copied the menu button look (those three horizontal lines) from Shorlander's mockups. I noticed that in Canary build a few days ago. So Chrome stuff is not saint either...

True. But they got it done first, among loads of other things.
Here's a nice quote of the day: "Vision without execution is hallucination."

The Facebook App featured it first... in October of 2011. And even then it's just a minor modification of the Motorola Droid menu button.... from 2009. Until very recently, Firefox mockups all featured the "gear" button a'la Safari.

I'm someone who is *barely* aware of mobile devices and apps, and even I've seen these things.

[Pravda]

I really like that you can customize the contents of the menu in an easily understandable fashion although I strongly agree with patrickjdempsey that the choice of icon for the menu button is unfortunate. It is no wonder that it is called "hot dog" icon in the press because nobody can associates anything useful with it. I have not the faintest idea what Google is trying to achive by replacing the wrench, especially because the bars are really confusing on OS X 10.8 where the notification center in the top right screen corner uses a very similar icon.

[Drumbrake]

What annoys me the most is the "Chrome is having a lot of success,so it must be doing things right,so let's copy it" argument:Chrome is IMHO indeed having a lot of success not because it's so much better than Firefox,but because of Google's massive firepower that Mozilla can never match,and it shouldn't anyways because its principles and rules are different.Almost every program that you download nowadays comes with the option of installing Chrome,a host of websites feature the "install a better/faster/modern browser" blurb to promote Chrome,Google obviously promotes it on its homepage,so I think that even if it were the worst browser available (which I don't think it is,but neither I believe that is better than Firefox ) it would be surprising if it wouldn't still be the most popular.All of this is to say that the UI team should (always IMHO) drop this trend to minimalism/chromification or whatever we want to call it ,and come out with a better way to re-design Firefox other than porting mobile GUI elements to the Firefox interface:Gnome has done this horrible mistake before,and look at the results.

Edit: on the argument that Mozilla's mobile and desktop interfaces should look as similar as possible,I don't think so:the devices they run on aren't the same,so other than a general consistency of appearance and themes ,there is no need to have cellphone-like menus on Firefox desktop GUI at all costs.

[Ver Greeneyes]

UIs are something you can get used to in my opinion. The real problem is that Mozilla was flying blind too long without tools like telemetry, about:memory and the built-in profiler. Firefox 4 hit too many unforeseen edge cases of slowness in the wild and that gave the browser a bad reputation. Since Chrome has never really stumbled in that regard (they have their own version of telemetry and other tools), it's hard to break this perception unless you specifically have issues with Chrome and switch back to find Firefox now much snappier than before.

But that doesn't mean the UI guys just want to sit still. If it seems like Firefox is trying to be more like Chrome, that's generally because the UI guys are thinking in the same direction (though probably handling the details in a different way). You can disagree with their vision, but you shouldn't assume they come together to discuss how they want to improve Firefox's UI and their only thought is "hey, let's be more like Chrome".

[Drumbrake]

UIs are something you can get used to in my opinion.

Sorry,but I don't buy that:being forced to readjust yourself to a new interface when there was nothing obviously broken or inadequate with the previous one,which you were in turns perfectly accustomed to,is not a good thing IMHO.I'm a computer illiterate,but-as I imagine you may know already-even folks way more in the know than me subscribe to this point of view : http://evilbrainjono.net/blog?showcomments=true&permalink=1094

The real problem is that Mozilla was flying blind too long without tools like telemetry, about:memory and the built-in profiler. Firefox 4 hit too many unforeseen edge cases of slowness in the wild and that gave the browser a bad reputation. Since Chrome has never really stumbled in that regard (they have their own version of telemetry and other tools), it's hard to break this perception unless you specifically have issues with Chrome and switch back to find Firefox now much snappier than before.

Agreed,very good point:when I started to play with Firefox 4 (the first beta browser I've ever used) I was shocked to see how it could misbehave in some particular heavy usage cases, like handling huge sessions:it really is much better now,but it took a bit too long to implement even relatively simple fixes,say, tabs loading on demand (unloading them is apparently a different deal,it's taking forever and I doubt I will see it anytime soon).

But that doesn't mean the UI guys just want to sit still. If it seems like Firefox is trying to be more like Chrome, that's generally because the UI guys are thinking in the same direction (though probably handling the details in a different way). You can disagree with their vision, but you shouldn't assume they come together to discuss how they want to improve Firefox's UI and their only thought is "hey, let's be more like Chrome".

Well I reckon I may have sounded disrespectful,clearly I hope that's not the mood of the discussions of the UI team,however the actual outcome is Firefox looking more and more like Chrome,and the fact that developers are as of now generally thinking in the same direction IMO means that they are all caught in this frenzy to scale down desktop interfaces to the lowest common denominator,i.e. mobile devices-which is awfully wrong,always IMHO.
Again,I hope that I won't see another disaster the likes of Gnome 3:take a perfectly working,user-friendly,beautifully dialed-in interface and trade it for something that makes even highly skilled people want to tear their hair out.

[patrickjdempsey]

If you don't think Firefox developers are copying Chrome on purpose, then you aren't paying attention. Mozilla spent a decade trying to figure out how to win over users from IE by imitating things that IE did. In the process they managed to arrive at a middle-ground in between Mozilla Suite and IE that was actually dramatically better than either. Now IE is dethroned and Chrome is the new target. Mozilla developers saw it immediately... something new to drool over and really Mozilla developers were ahead of the curve on being in love with Chrome long before the rest of the world.

[nwg]

Mozilla Suite was a continuation of Netscape but when I tried Firebird for the first time it was instantly better than IE. Never touched IE ever since... so I would say it was a lot less than a decade struggle. Besides, people were not stuck with IE because they liked the features, but because of ignorance. Anybody that gave Firebird a chance was probably an immediate switch, so it was just a matter of getting people to try it.

[LynCardinelli]

just saying...they sort of need to have the toolbar menu like they're doing to not have people complaining about the win8 hot corners. So regardless of their actually motivations, it would have needed to change anyway. Minus one thing that people apparently think are stolen from Chrome

and actually im quite glad that they are at least making the menu customizable. I found it somewhat annoying that i had to use all the secondary popout menus in the Firefox button to do the things that i actually used the menu for. For the most part though, using that menu is something i would expect most people to use rarely anyway, so i dont see what the big problem is. If you want, go remove the menu from the toolbar and reenable the menu toolbar

[patrickjdempsey]

I'm more upset about what I'm guessing to be the end of true customization of toolbars. I do know that they are planning on locking the Back/Forward/urlbar/Stop/Reload into one fixed element. And judging by missing elements in the mockups I'm willing to wager that they will remove customization from toolbars other than Nav-bar and probably also remove the ability to create custom toolbars as well. These are BTW, extremely simple things to remove, every customizable toolbar carries the attribute:

toolbar[customizable="true"]

Remove that, and poof! customization disabled. All it takes to remove custom toolbars is simply don't include the button Add New Toolbar. Easy as pie. Looks like they already plan to move the Find bar to the top. And with those gone, and this new menu/addons button available, why would they need the rebranded statusbar/add-ons toolbar? Before you know it, the final nails in the coffin for customization will be simple, effortless patches.

[Drumbrake]

Exactly,what I don't like one bit is that stuff that can be easily hidden by default (if that is the way that the standard interface is deemed to look/work better) with a simple toggle (that nonetheless people who aren't supposed to be messing with will never know about),is now been taken away for good without the chance of re-enabling it in about:config for those willing to take these extra steps.
If all the fuss is for finally having a customizable menu,there are extensions that can tweak it to personal taste https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search/?q=menu&appver=10.0.2&platform=linux already.

[BruceAWittmeier]

With all the variations of how individuals customize their browser it makes sense to remove everything but the URL bar. That seems to be the only common element. Then just provide space for tool bars to be added/customized by the user.