Constructive discussion about the Firefox 3.0 theme and UI

KrisSilver · Post by **KrisSilver** » March 29th, 2008, 4:13 pm

Many people don't like the beaks, and put good arguments for at least somewhat more standard arrows which people are more used to. I and many feel native arrows, are what users will be more comfortable with, and there's more to back that up, then there is for beaks. But there we go. Of course that's a view much like most things on here, including your post pro the beaks, doesn't mean either are right, it's usually grey.

Ivan you old SFx+er friend, interesting search engine notification bugs! Fx could better Opera and IE here, but it's massively behind, shading a search engine icon is a little odd and over subtle. I personally don't want to see a toolbar, even if it's just once to show a user, I'd prefer better start up page such as IE 7's whereby you can set preferences easily on a page. There on a subtle notification image would work better, but shading the engine is still too subtle imo. A massive list of engines cannot be the best usability wise, it's a backup at most.

Neither of these two are the biggest issues facing the theme though I don't think, still far more concerned about the lack of colour and icon consistency with not only older Fx's over many years, but even nativity on Windows. Beaks, different colours to old Fx's, different on different platforms, different states, all one colour virtually on one OS. You just don't see this in any other popular standard program, at least to such extents.

code65536 · Post by **code65536** » March 29th, 2008, 4:49 pm

Aureliano Buendía wrote:I think that the new icons they arent not aligned ant with the same height.
see this
[img=http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/9440/78411576ez0.th.jpg]

Ciao
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; it; rv:1.9b5) Gecko/2008032620 Firefox/3.0b5 ID:2008032620

I agree. I think the problem is because the roof of the house adds extra visual whitespace to the top of that icon (even if it may technically be centered), and the overhang from the plus icon adds extra visual whitespace to the bottom of the new tab/window icons (even if those may technically be centered). The appearance of the extra whitespace leads to an appearance of the icons being misaligned, and it's slightly unsettling.

faaborg · Post by **faaborg** » March 29th, 2008, 6:49 pm

We are going to fix all of the alignment issues, but thanks for pointing them out.

WattsvilleBlues · Post by **WattsvilleBlues** » March 30th, 2008, 6:31 am

faaborg wrote:We are going to fix all of the alignment issues, but thanks for pointing them out.

Alex, are there plans to implement mouseover effects for buttons other than the back + forward buttons? Things look a bit static at present with most buttons.

Recall · Post by **Recall** » March 30th, 2008, 9:52 am

Alex, when will the css patches start landing?

KLB · Post by **KLB** » March 30th, 2008, 9:57 am

From what I have observed with building my theme from the default Firefox 3.0 theme is that for the most part the hover and active pseudo classes already exist for mouesover effects. what needs to be done is to modify the brightness and saturation of the hover and active state icons in things like toolbar.png, etc. I'm assuming that this will start to happen once they know for sure that the icon sets have been finally established as every release still seems to have icon changes.

ccMatrix · Post by **ccMatrix** » March 30th, 2008, 10:21 am

There are now several bar styles available which can be used in UserChrome - is there any way to change the color of the drop-down arrow when using black backgrounds ? In places I like the black background of the bar but the arrows are almost invisible.

Additionally: Why is the background of the tree view etc. not white in places ?

KLB · Post by **KLB** » March 30th, 2008, 10:43 am

ccMatrix, can you provide a screen capture of the tree view that does not have a white background in some places?

pencilneck · Post by **pencilneck** » March 30th, 2008, 12:05 pm

One thing I noticed recently in the vista theme is that the progress bar in the downloads dialog box is a bit patchy.

i.e. There are little bits of white in the corners of the left hand area of the active progress bar. (default aero theme, vista sp1)

pheonixheart · Post by **pheonixheart** » March 30th, 2008, 12:47 pm

Weird Icon...

May be minor, but the nice, smooth and largely easy to understand icons are neat and clean... Then you come to one that looks like a goodyear blimp or a fish w/o a tail - can't tell which, and I STILL have no idea what it's supposed to be but it stands out like an albino bull in field full of pitch black heifers.

I would like an "easier to know what it's for" icon for the following (circled in red) that matches the surrounding graphics - I had no idea but for the yellow alt tag what that was for. I like alt tags a lot though

I'm not really a developer, so I really and truly am coming from a user standpoint... Here's a pic of what I mean:

Also, I really don't care for the keyhole it looks to cluttered IMHO. I also don't like the arrow on the right - it makes me think that I can only select forward options. I know different from reading this thread, but the average user simply will not. I see nothing wrong with having an arrow to the right of BOTH front and back icons - it's much more consistent and functional.

I like the go button also - the star thing would be best as a separate icon on the toolbar. Alternately, someone suggested having it toggle as a go/reload button which would be ok too, but the star's functionality is annoying right now as you seem to have to click once to activate it, click a second time to bookmark something, and a third time to click done or remove bookmark... Why do that when you can just click bookmark/bookmark this page - saves a click. So, the functionality is not optimal at this time.

The stop button should be a red hexagon - the big X is too widely associated with close or delete and is therefore causing a move away from user friendliness rather than a move toward it. If all this has been mentioned before I apologize - I only made it to about page 15 of this thread lol

. (it's now at page 42 at the time of my post).

Thank you for making this thread and taking so many user suggestions into consideration

.

Brightest Blessings,
Lisa

--- Nothing is as beautiful as maximum functionality. - Me

fittysix · Post by **fittysix** » March 30th, 2008, 1:00 pm

Recall wrote:Alex, when will the css patches start landing?

A major roadblock to that is <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=425598">Bug 425598</a> - All hard coded colors need to fall back to native colors for accessibility. This one needs to land before most CSS patches, because if we start landing css with affected colors we'll just have to go back and change them once this one lands.

Also of note is <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=423718">Bug 423718</a> - Native platform colors for autocomplete, etc. This one is somewhat special because it forks browser.css for aero and xp themes, but it too depends on the above Bug 425598.

JonathonW · Post by **JonathonW** » March 30th, 2008, 1:46 pm

pheonixheart wrote:Weird Icon...

May be minor, but the nice, smooth and largely easy to understand icons are neat and clean... Then you come to one that looks like a goodyear blimp or a fish w/o a tail - can't tell which, and I STILL have no idea what it's supposed to be but it stands out like an albino bull in field full of pitch black heifers.

I would like an "easier to know what it's for" icon for the following (circled in red) that matches the surrounding graphics - I had no idea but for the yellow alt tag what that was for. I like alt tags a lot though I'm not really a developer, so I really and truly am coming from a user standpoint... Here's a pic of what I mean:

That's the bookmark icon for MozillaZine (this website) and has absolutely nothing to do with Firefox...

KLB · Post by **KLB** » March 30th, 2008, 1:54 pm

JonathonW wrote:
pheonixheart wrote:Weird Icon...

May be minor, but the nice, smooth and largely easy to understand icons are neat and clean... Then you come to one that looks like a goodyear blimp or a fish w/o a tail - can't tell which, and I STILL have no idea what it's supposed to be but it stands out like an albino bull in field full of pitch black heifers.

I would like an "easier to know what it's for" icon for the following (circled in red) that matches the surrounding graphics - I had no idea but for the yellow alt tag what that was for. I like alt tags a lot though I'm not really a developer, so I really and truly am coming from a user standpoint... Here's a pic of what I mean:

That's the bookmark icon for MozillaZine (this website) and has absolutely nothing to do with Firefox...

For some reason the airship always makes me think of the Bolshevik revolution (maybe because of the faded red star).

I never have figured out the airship, it just doesn't seem to relate to anything we are doing here. I have just come to accept it as a matter of fact, at least the header of this site is more peaceful than the new Mozilla.org title graphic.

faaborg · Post by **faaborg** » March 30th, 2008, 3:04 pm

wattsvilleblues wrote:
faaborg wrote:We are going to fix all of the alignment issues, but thanks for pointing them out.

Alex, are there plans to implement mouseover effects for buttons other than the back + forward buttons? Things look a bit static at present with most buttons.

Yes, but we will be doing that last, since we don't want to have to generate them multiple times as the icons change.

[edit: typo]

Kuden · Post by **Kuden** » March 30th, 2008, 3:38 pm

Hi, Alex.
Now, Winstripe has a "Full Screen" button icon.
Implement "Full Screen" button on Firefox 3?
Bug 206544 -- Include "Full Screen" button in toolbar customize menu