Australis customization (or lack of thereof)

[sabret00the]

Thanks for the clarification MattN. Though at the time, it seems that there's been no definitive answer on customisation. I suspect that if you run out of time they'll ship it without the customisation and if the negative blow back isn't too huge, they'll simply leave it out. For that reason, I hope you work quickly and manage to get five clones of Dao to help you.

[SaphirJD]

MattN, thanks for posting that! I guess we will see soon enough when Australis is landing what can be customized and what not

[speciesx]

They are removing the "small icons" mode ?
I always use the small icons, to save vertical space on a 16:9 notebook.

yeap https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=736179

That's a bummer. I've always used small icons mode, no matter the theme.

Me too.

[joeg]

They are removing the "small icons" mode ? I always use the small icons, to save vertical space on a 16:9 notebook.

yeap https://bugzilla.mozilla.orgshow_bug.cgi?id=736179

That's a bummer. I've always used small icons mode, no matter the theme.

As I explained in the now-defunct UX discussion, I've used the text-only mode since Netscape days. Here's what the latest UX version looks like with the default theme.

If they'll only give me the title bar back, leave the Red Cats Green Flavor theme alone, and let me close the tab, they can do whatever they want.

It's nice that MattN dropped by. It'll be nicer if he and the others listen to the voices of the beta testers. And it'll be especially nice if they remember us iconoclasts.

[LoudNoise]

Can you make that into a thumb nail please.

[joeg]

Can you make that into a thumb nail please.

I don't know how, but I made the image smaller. Is this OK?

And in case anyone's interested in a fix to the "Keep one tab open" issue, please take a look at this thread.
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2688521

[Frank Lion]

Hello, I'm one of the Firefox developers working on Australis

Hi and thanks for introducing yourself. As you may gather, many of us have no idea who the ever changing Mozilla devs are.

Plus, although the general message may be similar, it does make a difference to how I put over that message to an active dev, as opposed to a total stranger turning up here with 15 posts to his name.

Q: Which regions will be customizable?
A: Existing regions are not out of the question

Can you clarify exactly what this means? We already know that the existing (customizable) regions are not out of the question. It is the, at present, non-existing customizable regions that are concerning people and myself here.

Written as it is, that quoted statement reads like Nancy in Oliver Twist by Dickens and her 'It's rather more no than yes with me ' obscure line.

I did note your general 'good news' message, so I'm assuming there must indeed be some good news regarding UX, it's just that I'm not yet clear about what exactly it is.

Indeed, also feel free to expand on why anyone in the UX team thought, or still thinks, it desirable to de-customise the tabbar and Addons bar, after so much effort went into making them really pretty good features back in FF4 or so.

I can appreciate, technically, why it might be thought necessary to lock down the urlbar area, but have you thought of making that change default theme specific, in the same way as was done with Personas, i.e. the 'lightweight-theme' code was written so that only the default theme could show Personas and 3rd party theme could not (no bad thing, I thought) Why not use that approach here and then 3rd party themes would truly be unaffected by any restricting customising regions that it was thought was needed/desirable for the default UX theme?

... not intentionally breaking third-party themes but we also can't guarantee absolutely everything will work perfectly upon release.

Not a problem, themers know and expect stuff to break on major releases. It is the heat in that particular kitchen and goes with the territory.

All that they would ask is that stuff is not hard coded in, so we cannot fix/style it. Don't forget, it is not our job or desire to remove any new features (although we could) but just to style them, move them about (Fitt's law, etc) or even add to their functionality.

Finally, I would like it to be noted that we do really appreciate Mozilla newish habit of putting new features in new folders (together with their related css files and sometimes images) within the skin/browser files, rather than piling everything into browser.css as of old. Also the greater use of the /*comments */ within the css files has made code intentions much clearer. Both are appreciated and both make things easier for us.

[MattN]

Q: Which regions will be customizable?
A: Existing [pre-Australis] regions are not out of the question

Can you clarify exactly what this means?

'Existing" in this case was referring to pre-Australis customizable regions such as the tab strip (e.g. default new tab button region), bookmarks bar, additional toolbars, left side of the location bar, menu bar, etc.. I have now edited my comment to clarify this. The wording is a bit awkward since we don't yet know what problems will arise until more regions are implemented. Enabling customization of new regions is not something being worked on this week but there will definitely be more of them in a few weeks once work on the new panel buttons is completed in this customization milestone.

Indeed, also feel free to expand on why anyone in the UX team thought, or still thinks, it desirable to de-customise the tabbar and Addons bar, after so much effort went into making them really pretty good features back in FF4 or so.

I suspect the tab bar will remain customizable especially since the new tab, all tabs and panorama buttons are on it for many people and those have always been customizable. One reason I've heard to have add-ons move from the add-on bar to the panel menu and/or navbar is that there is a lot of unused space on the right of the add-on bar since most users don't fill the whole width of the window with add-ons there. This goes along with the reason for adding a close button to the add-on bar:

…one of the UX team's most important goals for Firefox 4 (and beyond) is minimizing Firefox's chrome and maximizing its content space.

I wasn't part of discussions on this though so I don't know the other reasons.

[Drumbrake]

I suspect the tab bar will remain customizable especially since the new tab, all tabs and panorama buttons are on it for many people and those have always been customizable. One reason I've heard to have add-ons move from the add-on bar to the panel menu and/or navbar is that there is a lot of unused space on the right of the add-on bar since most users don't fill the whole width of the window with add-ons there.

First things first,thank you for chiming in here,Matt.
Having said that,you suspect the tab bar will remain customizable,whilst we all strongly wish that the tab bar will remain customizable,just to make this point very clear.

Regarding the addon bar,that's another pretty sensitive argument,whilst many users may not fill it (just as many users may not even know that they can assign tags or keywords to bookmarks...),I OTOH have mine looking like that



and I regularly use let's say 80% of that gizmos and I also like to know that the other 20% is there if I need it:let's say I won't be very happy if that vanishes one of these days

[Ge3k0s]

Indeed, also feel free to expand on why anyone in the UX team thought, or still thinks, it desirable to de-customise the tabbar and Addons bar, after so much effort went into making them really pretty good features back in FF4 or so.

I suspect the tab bar will remain customizable especially since the new tab, all tabs and panorama buttons are on it for many people and those have always been customizable. One reason I've heard to have add-ons move from the add-on bar to the panel menu and/or navbar is that there is a lot of unused space on the right of the add-on bar since most users don't fill the whole width of the window with add-ons there. This goes along with the [url=https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=629905#c15]reason for adding a close button

The plan was also to kill all UI at the bottom of the browser (except Dev tools).

[Drumbrake]

Now I'm really hoping that this is nothing but a sketch of what the future Firefox is meant to be : I've just discovered that control-clicking the reload button doesn't duplicate the tab anymore,as well as ctrl+drag the tab on the tabstrip doesn't duplicate it either...

I suppose this is one of the many features that,given that they've happily neglected to explain it to the masses since forever,"no one knows about and no one uses it anyways",so it can be safely deleted and no one (well,no one except us established whiners) will be the wiser.

[JayhawksRock]

Control Click still WFM if it makes you feel better

[Peja Stija]

Feeling better while watching Australis ? Nah.

[Drumbrake]

Control Click still WFM if it makes you feel better

Not at all,unfortunately,moreso considering that also middle-clicking the reload button doesn't do the trick-and,before someone asks,yes,this is on a separated nightly testing profile (clean,no addons installed) and everything still works as expected on my default Firefox installation.

[Frank Lion]

Now I'm really hoping that this is nothing but a sketch of what the future Firefox is meant to be : I've just discovered that control-clicking the reload button doesn't duplicate the tab anymore

WFM on XP/UX, as does middle clicking Reload.