Asa Dotzler: Firefox and more

I haven't had the time to look for opinions outside of the regular watering holes, but so far it looks like the nos are outnumbering the yeas.

I don't like it either.. asa, lets please keep the original theme.

Good to see someone at moz is willing to sit down and hear critics of new skin; hopefully you guys can make the best choice for your users.

Here's 2 reasons why I believe the new skin is a no-go for firefox

a) It just breaks, in so many ways, the OS integration philosophy you've shown up to firefox 1.5. I remember this used to be one of your selling point when firefox 1.0/1.5 was launched
- The skin simply can't integrate to our OS when your using windows classic (win9x/NT/2k/2k3/winXPClassic) or any current Linux distribution. Buttons can't match the size of the widgets, in linux you get two style of input text box in your toolbar (location bar themed by your os, search bar is a 1px firefox CSSed)

b) It also weakens another aspect of Firefox that mozilla used to be proud of: accessibility.
- Most buttons lost their borders on hover

Here's my opinion on the theme:
I like where it's going...and how it's evolving....but...here are my observations:
-the icons might a bit too shiny
-the forward/back/stop/go buttons seem too dark
-theme looks fine on win XP with: Window's classic style + Windows standard color scheme.....but when you chahttp://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/
MAINnge to the Windows classic color scheme, the tabs/color behind the tabs is too yellow (this is my biggest problem with the new theme and it should be fixed)
-try having this arrangement on the top toolbar (menus, flexible space, searchbar[left to right]) the flexible space would be ignored and the searchbar will float on the left

anything you don't understand...and if you really care...feel free to email me at corevette@gmail.com

On Mac OS X - it is not a "visual refresh" - it is there a "visual disaster"

more specifically notes about the Firefox 2.0 "visual refresh" are on my Firefox theme site: http://www.takebacktheweb.org/

Regards

Ok, some brief comments, based on a few minutes with the new theme (Using Windows XP):

1) If the toolbar buttons are just icons (no text), they are very crammed together, with little space above or below. The buttons themselves feel like they've lost some area, making it feel like more of an effort to "hit" them. the toolbar itself seems very "tight" -- almost too tight.

2) The toolbar buttons themselves seem "dark", even in their "enabled" state. Perhaps a bit more saturation to make them seem more "alive".

3) The toolbar buttons also seem too detailed (the home button especially). Perhaps once they're less crammed together, I won't find this an issue anymore.

4) It seems odd that on the arrow buttons, mousing over the empty space around them brings up the "highlight" state of the button, but the highlight state's border doesn't extend around the empty space where the cursor resides.

5) The default "unfocused" tab appearance makes them seem like they're in a disabled state, and can't even be clicked. Perhaps the rollover state for these tabs (which seems halfway between the focused tab and unfocused tab in terms of tonal value) could be the "unfocused" tab's default look.

6) I'm not fond of having a "go" button next to the address bar that I can't remove.

There's a lot of room for improvement, yet I see no reason to simply abandon this theme yet -- there's plenty of time to address any issues that users have.

I actually really like the new theme (on WinXP).

My only beef (so far) is the home button. I know this is a little thing to nit-pick about but the rest of the buttons look like an upgrade and the home button looks like a step back a few years.

Addendum:

Perhaps if the "unfocused" tab state was done in a hue significantly different from the background of the tab bar, my #5 above would go away...

--chris

Well, since 1.5 the menus have looked awful on Windows Classic. They are Luna styled and thus look ugly. More recently the tab strip has been redone. It to is intended for Luna. It looks flat and just plain ugly. I don't see why they changed it because the tabs were rendered natively. They looked classic on classic and luna on luna. Now they looked luna no matter what. And the go button can't be removed. Other than that, looking good. The new icons look like the originals, only shinier. They rock!

I'm a Windows XP user, and I don't entirely dislike it. I just think it doesn't blend very well with the general UI of the OS. Granted, IE7 does that to an even more harmful extreme.
The theme is too... gray. Window colors in Windows are brighter, and people expect that from their programs. The Home icon is a little too detailed, I think it should be simpler. The search magnifying glass doesn't contrast enough with its background, and the one thing I would change (the throbber) remains the same. I also think the fading of unfocused tabs could be done better.
It's weird because I lots of comments on the style being to XP-ish on the Mac. I think it's too Mac-ish on XP.

Thanks for soliciting our feedback. We appreciate it. Here goes...

THE GOOD - The tab bar refresh is a big step forward IMHO. Not sure about the whole gradient thing, but at least I can easily tell which is the active tab now. I also think the back, forward, refresh, and stop buttons look a bit better than 1.5. And the changes to the integrated search box are nice as well... especially the glow effect when the current site has an engine available.

THE BAD - It may seem minor, but many of us want an easy way to get rid of the new Go button. Yeah, I know we can edit userChrome.css and hide it that way, but a simpler means would be appreciated. I also echo Mathieu's concern about the lack of borders on hover.

THE UGLY - What is up with the new home icon? Was it just an afterthought? It really looks horrible. IMHO, the home icon from Firefox 1.5 is much better and I even like the one from IE6 better than this (though I hate to say that). Something really needs to be done. Just bringing back the 1.5 home icon would be a definite step in the right direction.

Overall, the new theme is an improvement and I would choose it over the 1.5 theme. There's just a little more work left to do.

As with most form-over-function upgrades, I dislike it.

I'm all for upgrades, but Firefox's 1.0/1.5 look is clean, appealing, and overall usable. The new Firefox 2.0 look sacrifices this for elements that are almost completely extraneous and do little to make the interface more intuitive.

On Linux, not only do the new style elements fail to conform with GTK, but some of them are rather divergent from KDE's or Gnome's HIG.

_Please_ stick with the current basic style. It's better for everyone.

k heres my full opinion

the theme isn't too bad..

i would make all the icons darker, and less blurry, in contrast to the default theme i.e. less strain on the eyes when viewing sites that have dark colors,

i would change the orange door on the home button to some other color that matches the theme better, it does have to much detail i think i saw a family watching tv through the window

also also change the go altogether.. i dont like it makes me angry.

also the tabbar is just as fuzzy keep the text black when for the tabs that are not active instead of grey.. ick.

it is nice, just needs improvement.. more on the usability side.

I've been living with this theme for a while and have posted bugs related to the the fixed "go" button, excess padding left and right on the Tab icons etc.
The attitude of the dev's to fixes is very positive, considering all the related issues and patience will see some of these issues resolved.

The poor visual quality of the icons, especially at small size is a real negative against the fantastic improvements to the UI and deserves graphic quality to match.

Opera 9 sets the standard for "out of the box" themes and this current FF one isn't in the same ball park.

Shrade's FF QuBranch theme leaves it for dead.

Thanks for the opportunity to comment.

It'll take a little bit to get used to, but I'm already starting to like it. Firefox definitely needs to look prettier, Windows Vista's key selling point right now is that it looks so pretty.

On Mac. Don't like it.

The long and cuss-laden version of my take is here. You can probably go ahead and skip it. The executive summary is:

1. Firefox is now the one and only tabbed Mac application (out of what, a dozen? More?) that puts the tab-close buttons on the right. This is practically sadistic. I've heard the reasoning for it, and I remain unconvinced.

2. The icons are incredibly washed-out. Hate it, and have been having a really hard time telling what's disabled and what isn't. (Especially with the tab-bar scrollers.)

3. I really dislike the shrink-wrap effect that hits the back/forward buttons on hover. It looks gross, and I don't like having hover effects on Mac toolbars in the first place.

4. Backgrounded tabs are incredibly washed out, and I can't read the text. And yet, it's STILL hard to tell which one is foregrounded, because the black text and saturated icon are the only visible differences. (Black outline? Shadow? It needs something.)

5. The change in icon sizes was a bad one. Large should be large, and small should be medium, especially when the height of the location and search bars is preventing the 16px icons from giving any real payoff in screen space.

Also, the main background color for the toolbars and tab bar just looks really... sterile. I kind of want a warmer gradient, like on the Unified toolbars. Or at least make it as warm as Pinstripe.

I use OSX and GTK themes.

Windows Vista's key selling point right now is that it looks so pretty.

sadly.. i wont be contributing to their poty.

I like parts of it, but I think it really needs a lot of work. Running Win XP, beta2. I like the shininess, the glow when you move over buttons. I don't like how tiny the actual buttons are for forward and back! That's my number 1 issue. I think the tabs still need some work, but I tend to have near or over the limit of tabs, so I'm often in overflow mode. I like the wider search bar, and the search engine buttons there. At the same time, the buttons seem a little schizofrenic as to whether they're in, on, or not attached...

I don't really like the new home button, though I don't use it much. I think the old padlock was clearer than the new one, though it doesn't matter too much to me - I'm enough of a nerd to not be affected by that change in icon, but it does seem less clear to me.

I do really like the close button on each tab, though I sort of wish they were displayed on all tabs, not just the active one at the moment. The overflow works ok, I hope the team still does some tweaking on it. It's not always clear whether there's overflow, or when you're at the end. There's more there, but it'd be hard to explain here.

I think in general the buttons seem to be too washed out, and the difference between inactive and not available ('grayed out') doesn't seem to be nearly strong enough.

There's all my complaints, but there are a lot of good things too. I think the nature of the business is that the good parts of the design aren't going to get noticed much - that means the design is working. So I guess everything I didn't complain about is good. ;)

Hope that helps! I'm really loving all the other features - I'll be really happy when 2.0 is released!

Personnaly I don't like it for the following reasons :

-it's too washed out, icons look dull and difficult to see as "activated" or "inactivated" at first sight. I am never sure that there are pages in the history when I look quickly at the back arrow.

- FF2 doesn't fit neither my XP-Luna environment nor my Gnome environment, Firefox 1.5 does a much better job at it and yet was criticized for not doing enough... FF2 looks broken with Windows Classic mode, which is the theme W2K users have. W2K users won't have IE7, they shoud be a direct target.

- icons look blur, with two many details and colours bleeding out of the icon limets. shining effects, small details and whashed out colours are not compatible with usability

- the Home icon is looks like a refreshed Netcape 3 icon...

- most of the other icons just don't make sense to me at first sight, copy and paste are the same, the printer is... "something with white on top" in small icons mode, the download manager looks like a CD-ROM drive with an arrow

- small sized icons are of very bad quality, it really looks like they are 50% resized versions of the full-size icons instead of redesigned icons like in Winstripe.

- tabs titles in the background are difficult to read because they have too much opacity, the background colour looks weird

On the marketing side:
- we have built a great image with Firefox 1.x, just like Nike, or Ubuntu, you can see from far away that a screenshot is a Firefox screenshot, it is very distinguishable. Just step back 3 metres from your screen and look at the browser, with Winstripe you know it's Firefox, with FF2 you don't even distinguish what icons are in the navigation toolbar, too bad for brand recognition...

- we have now hundreds of extensions that provide icons that all just look out of place with Firefox

- apparently these theme changes would be to target Vista. An OS that i not released yet and won't have more market share than XP anytime soon. Being compatible with the future is good, but not when it is at the expense of the 2006-2008 userbase who all use XP/Luna. Such changes should be for Firefox 2.5 or 3. XP users who will not benefit from the full IE7 feature set since some features or reserved for Vista or just won't be able to install IE7 (SP1 users, illegal versions of XP) should be the main target in the year to come.

- it doesn't have a "wow" effect, I showed it to 4 end-users (family members), totally computer illiterate but Firefox 1.5 users. All of them said it was worse than the 1.5 theme (but they loved the new features), the words "cold", "dull" and "blurry" were prononced...

I know that there was a lot of work put in this new theme, but to me it is disappointing and from what I heard and read around me, I am not the only one. I do hope that some of the critics will be taken into account for the final design, especially about colours and OS integration. So far, I have read very little positive feedback, which is quite a contrast from what I read when Winstripe was prepared for 1.0 and people were quite enthousast about it.

Basically, I expect a refreshed theme to look prettier and be more usable than the previous one, not the case here. Add to it that it breaks OS integration badly and as they say in my language "you are handing to your enemy a stick to hit you".

If all the feedback from the community is taken into account (which probably means forgetting some of the shiny effects), I think this theme can be fixed and improved to meet it's refreshing goal, but that's a big if ;)

I was looking forward to 2.0, thinking that, along with the Gecko improvements, the theme would look even more _native_ than 1.5. Currently, I hate it. It doesn't look native at all, the tabs aren't native, the dividers don't look native (they've never looked native), the tab bar looks ugly on any visual style aside from Luna, and the native bevels are non existent.

Just because IE7 makes these sort of mistakes doesn't mean Firefox has to follow suit. Please revert.

Having worked in the typesetting book design field for many years I have to say the worst things about the new theme are A: It's just to faded for aging or weak eyes.
B:It just has no eye grabbing quality, "Bland" would be my best description and I am not one for eye candy, but it just has no visual appeal at all.
Mal

After using it for a while, I've gotten used to it and really like certain parts of it. Overall it needs work to make sure it works in all OS variations and with different themes.

1. Buttons need to look like buttons, where did the borders go?

2. In Classic and probably other themes, the url and search bars don't match the go and search buttons at all. I added some style rules in userChrome to make them match, that may be the best option, although I'm sure some people wouldn't like it.

3. The tabs look a lot better in recent builds, many of my concerns have been addressed. I've played around with the non-hover state of background tabs being semi-transparent, I like it but don't know if others would.

4. Still waiting for menus to be natively themed, but I guess that's not coming until at least 3.0.

5. I really didn't like the icons at first, but I'm used to them.

the new theme was a huge waste of mozilla's money, just read any negative comments here or on mozillazine and you will see why. nuff said.

I should have just said "yeah, what everyone above said, especially Chris Nelson and Villa."

I don't think you guys should dump the visual refresh, though, like some have suggested (not that I think there's a snowball's chance you'd do that anyways). But there are some major tweaks needed to get this theme a lot easier on the eyes, and easier to click / navigate with.

Good luck!

The theme is nice, just needs some usability tweaks.

1) Home toolbar button is miserable, so hard to distinguish from grey background when using Windows XP and with theming off and Classic style. This is especially true when viewing as small icons.

2) custom/extension based toolbar buttons no longer have hover highlighting, I think it when they have a class = "toolbarbutton-1" assigned, like all toolbar demos demonstration to do.

3) All but the back and forward toolbar icons are extremely flat and drab, need some color to make them a little more distinguishable.

I like the new icons, except for one thing: the New Tab icon. It's too busy and doesn't fit in with the rest very well at all.

Next, the tabs still aren't quite perfect. Things still need to blend in with the OS theme more, and look like the original mockups more (http://wiki.mozilla.org/Image:Fx2-new-theme-in-xp-v1.jpg).

The inactive state of the Close Tab buttons irritates me, because it makes it appear as though those buttons are disabled, when they are actually quite active. Makes for an easy way to lose a tab.

The whole "here, have a go button and keep it" thing bugs me.

And the one that's irritated me since 1.0: WHY NOT HAVE THE NEW TAB BUTTON IN BY DEFAULT? It's the one button that most people NEED to see for them to realize, hey, tabs are nifty!

There seems to be a pretty strong consensus on most points here, but I would just like to add an observation:

The current (1.5) Firefox theme is quite plain and simple, but that is part of the reason that it is an excellent theme. The (back, forward, ...) button look, sizing, padding etc is damn near perfect. Also, it is very robust in a number of arrangements, such as my 'combined' style.

I get the impression from the new theme that it leans towards trendy UI - unified buttons, glassy effect, etc., which make usability a little more flaky. I'm not going to be one of those people who say "please leave it as it is" - improvement is good! But I think the current set-up is very solid and suffers no major flaws, whereas the new theme might be pushing the envelope a bit too much.

Cheer cheer.

I've found that most people who don't like it generally seems to share similar concerns. Jed Brown did a good write up and had some comparison screenshots, which I also had a go at doing before I read his post. I also think IE7 should not be forgotten as far as looking for ideas goes.

Even just on Windows XP using the Royale/Media Center theme, which is glossier than any of the other XP themes, the glossiness on the new buttons looks terrible. There is a lack of contrast on all of them, they look quite poor when shrunk, and frankly, of the extra icons (such as the SSL lock in the address bar, the print icon, downloads, history, etc...) all look more complicated and harder to see than the originals.

I also can't stand the tabs. They should not be faded when unselected - it makes the text harder to read, and doesn't really fit in with anything else in the interface like Winstripe's tabs do - those look native and fit perfectly. As for the close tab button, now that it's on each tab it is seriously overbearing, and this is where I think IE7's close tab button is better. It's small, uncoloured, and doesn't get in the way. And works fine. Firefox's is this big ugly red box.

Also, in Royale, grey areas and scrollbars and such are much like the WinXP Silver theme, but with a very slight blue hue. This makes the background of Beta 2's tab bar look quite out of place, because it's yellow-ish. Again this is something that just wasn't an issue in Winstripe before. I don't get why the tab bar's look even needed changing. All it needed was adding a subtle close tab button on each tab.

I also agree with others who have pointed out that hovering over a button doesn't cause it's background square to become a gradient (giving that slight 3D button look) as we see in the Windows interface now, and in Winstripe. It feels unresponsive without it.

Currently, I plan on using Winstripe for 1.5 as a downloadable theme once Mr Gerich has finished tweaking it for 2.0. I know that when we first moved from Qute to Winstripe everyone said something similar, but Winstripe was something made essentially from scratch, and got a lot better over time. I like it much better than Qute now. But this new 2.0 theme... it's starting point is meant to be Winstripe 1.5, and yet it's "improvements" all seem to make it less usable, odd-feeling, and force me to squint. I can't see it growing on me.

The only things I like are the new Go buttons for the location and search bars - but while I like how they look, I don't like not having the option to remove them, but I figure that's just something that hasn't been added yet, rather than a design fault.

Here's my big list of evil:

- The Firefox 1.x icons were great in that they were easily recognizable geometric shapes with no distractive fanciness. The proposed Firefox 2.0 icons have too much weird shading and gloss going on, distracting from the basic shape of the icon. I also liked the inner border highlight look (whatever you call it) from the Firefox 1.x icons that seems to have mostly disappeared from Firefox 2.0. Strange, considering the look is gaining more and more adoption elsewhere.

- The house icon is plain ugly. And I suspect any forward-facing house icon would be the same. Yes, the angle of the icon on Firefox 1.x was different from the other icons, but to me it never really looked out of place. Maybe it's because the icon had a sort of flat feel to it and kept a distinctive shape. Also, the color choices in the Firefox 1.x theme were great: green, blue, red, and yellow. In Firefox 2.0 it's green, blue, red, and... uh... white/grey with a dab of blue and red. Think if Google decided to permanently change their "o" to white, or if the Windows logo had a grey pane in place of the yellow one. It's a bit out of place.

- That thing that comes up behind the back/forward button looks weird to say the least. I don't know of any other UI design that does something like that, and probably for good reason.

- The new tabs aren't bad, but I don't see the point in the change. I don't see how it's an improvement over the system default tabs, and it's a deliberate departure from what I'm used to.

Perhaps my biggest disappointment overall is that the UI seems to have lost its "fun" feel in favor of a rather cold look. That's really not a good thing when the product is mostly marketted by enthusiastic users. Image means a lot, and the current proposed Firefox 2.0 theme just doesn't project a fun image. Firefox 1.x managed to look both fun and professional at the same time.

That said, I think I actually like the changes to the Go button and the search bar.

Although i can see the designers have tried to meet the style of XP and OS X half-way, it really, really just doesn't 'work' very well. Many of the previous posters have pointed out the home icon, however, i think the home and new tab icons both share having too much white-space in them, essentially making them disappear by seeming too opaque.

Actually, the thing that truly creeps me out is how close to Kevin Gerich's original iconset the new versions are in form, with an amped-up palette and washed-out colours. For example, the mentioned new tab button's green + is virtually invisible compared to the previous version. The blue refresh button is, well, gaudy compared to everything else.

I like it, with reservations. There is too much space between the buttons, which for people wanting to minimise toolbar space (i.e. maximise webpage space) makes it all rather cramped (I have just the one row with (from left to right: Menus, back, forward, refresh, stop, address, five bookmark icons, search bar). Furthermore, the Go and Search buttons should be removable (I have a Userchrome hack for both).

I'm on OS X Tiger, default OS theme.

The theme change seems unnecessary. Yes, it's Version 2, and a theme change does herald the New Version. But I don't find it an improvement. The lighting gradient and more pastel colors on the icons give the theme less of an OOMPH. I liked somewhat larger icons. The go button attached to the location bar looks funny, same with the search bar. The options icons are good, but again--the colors aren't bold--very subdued and dull. Monochromatic and with the gradients perhaps more "hip" than immediately and lastingly agreeable.

The close button on the tabs should be on the other side in OS X. The inability to see favicons in the Bookmarks Toolbar is another downer.

I like the new tab scrolling arrows and the hand grabber is a nice way to hint the moving tab feature.

Dull colors and lack of OS theme integration: bad. Tab scrolling and hand icon: good.

I won't rehash what everyone else has said already but I feel that the Firefox 2.0 theme could have been done much better if the relationship with Arvid Axelsson hadn't gone sour. Qute was always a far better theme than the Winstripe theme that you eventually went to.

Now Arvid has created a new theme called Kempelton for Thunderbird 2.0 and it is just gorgeous. Arvid has talent, the guys you hired for the new Firefox 2.0 theme really can't compare.

It would be nice to see the Thunderbird theme and Firefox theme match. Check out his work on the Thunderbird by using the Thunderbird 2.0 nightlies or just go here to take a peek: http://quadrone.org/projects/mozilla/

I never cared for the old theme either. The theme that it replaced was much better (had a more talented designer). Anyway, the new theme has a few design flaws (on windows):
- Lack of contrast in the icons. I think most criticism agrees on this one. It's a usability and accessibility problem. Treat it as such and don't ship with this problem unaddressed.
- Overly detailed icons. Icons should be minimalistic and clearly recognizable. Many of the icons don't meet these criteria. Good icon design is hard and there are a lot of bad icon designs.
- Non descriptive icons. The new tab icon has been compared to a toaster by one blogger (a fair comparison that summarizes the problem well IMHO). At least a few of the other new icons are also not an improvement over the old ones (e.g. history, print, download icons).
- Visual style breaks consistency with most extension contributed icons which now stand out as a sore thumb. This is largely due to the first problem and yet another reason to address that one. BTW. this problem extends to several firefox icons as well: the logo, the mozilla favicon (used on the link bar in the default configuration!)

Minor issues:
- toolbar with small icons is the same height as toolbar with large icons
- small icons contain way too much details
- tabs no longer have windows look and feel

I recall the last time a new theme was rolled out there was also a lot of criticism. Also it was during a similar late stage of development. I.e. it was to late to properly beta test and fix most theme issues. These issues remained undaddressed during the 1.x cycle and now just before the 2.0 is done, the same mistake is made again. So roll back the icon changes and redesign them from scratch for 3.0. That will take time + a more competent icon designer.

I don't like the new icons, I hardly see them... And I test beta 2 on Windows XP and Linux, I don't see a difference. I prefer beta1 icons.

I think it lacks the contrast that the other theme had. It's too bright in many of the icons and makes it hard to recognize when using small icons.

I don't like the new icons. The old icons were much better -- simple, distinctive and useable, in unison with the Fx philosophy.

The tabs and the tabs bar look really ugly on Windows Classic on XP.

Everywhere I look in the Firefox Builds forum, I see the vast majority of users dumping this so-called "new & improved" theme for something called QuBranch, which just happens to be an offshoot of the famous Qute theme that Arvid Axelsson put out awhile back. Now if THAT doesn't show anybody how much Bon Echo's new theme totally sucks, then I don't know what will.

The bunch that's doing the theme for Firefox 2.0 can't hold a candle to anything that Arvid's put out, and it's amazing to me that they were arrogant enough to think that they were. Just think how stupid they're going to look when the vast majority of users end up dumping their theme for Arvid's upcoming Firefox 2.0 theme, or QuBranch. It's going to happen.

New theme is good, only one thing. Would be cool to have skinning of toolbar in the same way as tab toolbar.

My biggest complaint is the home icon and the overall dim look of all the icons. I always want them to look as dark as when you mouse over them. I like the glossy look but that's just me. I like the go button fine but the search button needs more contrast. I think I'll like the tabs better, once I get used to them.

I don't understand why they didn't include the 1.0 theme as well. Isn't that the point of having a skinnable browser?! I hope they get a new home icon, add more contrast, and include the older theme so people can choose their favorite.

It's a complete usability faliure. You really need to read this http://rakaz.nl/item/new_themes_for_firefox_and_thunderbird

You can't ship with something this bad, really. The reason I don't use Opera is because it doesn't have a native interface.

Also, why is there no new-tab button on the interface by default? Get with the times Mozilla. IE7 & Opera have you licked. If people discover tabs in IE7 because there's a button for it right there, and there isn't such a button in Firefox, they just won't switch.

As a solid fan since 0.8, I really think Firefox 2 is losing the plot. :(

Using Windows, classic style, the tabs are horrible. The native feel is gone :(

The icon colours look a bit "wishywashy, but I like the new images, except for new tab which is a bit odd.

- Icons are pale, washed and need brighter, saturated colors in not hovered state.
- I dont like the green of the arrows. Stop buttons red is not actually red.
- Maybe it's better with a little less shiny , glossy look
- New padlock looks bad, especially small one
- Home is still bad, even after changing doors color
- Back Forward icons dropdown menus looks bad when hovered

Tabs, searchbar are better than 1.5

I really like 1.5 icons, 2.0 needs more work. But I believe it will be better.

With XP, classic theme :

Icons are pale, sad. The whole aspect is ugly.
This is a browser for a witch !

The result is the opposite of the goal : "improve usability".
Usability and simplicity are the keys for success.

I can no longer recommand Firefox (in this state).

Hello!

I don't know what's all the fuss about the updated Firefox2 interface. It's not a big change.

Overall, I like it. On Ubuntu Dapper it doesn't seem to break from the normal interface (at least not more than Firefox 1.5).

I like the glossy look.

But...

1. back/forward have a weird hover drop down arrow.
2. google search bar is too wide.

That's about all.

I like the new theme on XP, but it needs some work

tabbar forward/back/all tabs buttons need to be better integrated, the are flying over now, and i think that a foward / back button should appear only if there are tabs to move to, and they should not be opaque but solid color.

toolbar buttons should be more coloured, i read someone who says "change the hover style with the normal style", i also think so

Go button is too big for me, but i know it'll be removable so can be ok. dropdown in the url bar is not connected to them, i think it should be skinned.

a 1pc space between tabs could do a little more cleaner face.

bye!

. New icons look too pale. The final mockup has brighter warmer colors, so it looks like the colors where lost when saving them. They are so washed out that it is a bit difficult to see which ones are disabled or not.

. Icons simply look unclear and not crystal. A good example is the tabs icon in the options dialog. Or the advanced icon. When hovered they look more clear (which is the idea i know), but when unselected they just look bad. Also note that the content icon, the globe, is chopped off to the left. It's not completely round.

. Its not so clear anymore to see which tab is the active one. They all have the same height (selected tab had higher height in 1.5) and the selected tab doesn't look selected enough.

. It doesn't look native at all using Classic theme in Windows XP. The tabs look misplaced and it looks like there is a graphical error next to the location bar and the search bar: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=232412

. The tab overflow scroll arrows are too dimmed and not easily discovered (currently looking using classic). They almost look disabled. Hovering them doesn't give them much more color.

The new theme feels far away from done. It does look ok using Luna (apart from what was mentioned above), but it simply look pretty bad using classic. Hopefully these issues can be resolved before the final version.

It's gotten better but some issues i still have,

The tab bar colours do not look native(i assume fix is coming). This is must fix imo.

And it has some issues with high dpi/large font size.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=348138
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=350194

I also think the hover states of the icons would look better as default.

Using winxp classic.

On Windows XP, Classic and Luna (actually using a crystal msstyle, but it doesn't use the crystal icons).

In general I'm not adamantly opposed to non-native-looking stuff so long as it's attractive and usable and not glaringly out of place. The fact is, Classic is plain as could be with some patches of real ugliness, and Luna is dated and getting further out of fashion fast: there's no need to hitch our wagon too tightly to those declining themes.

I like the tab bar and the search box: both improvements with the following exceptions:
- Search box may be too wide for smaller screens (fine for me, but I don't lack screen space).
- The overflow scroll buttons in the tab bar are so desaturated that they look disabled even when they're not.
- Some of my tabs have 1px-wide gaps where the background shows through between the main part of the tab and the right curved portion.

I really like the new tab bar, especially the always-present dropdown listing the tabs (besides its main purpose, it gives me a space to drag links/bookmark icons/text addresses to to open a new tab even when the bar is full, a role the close button used to fulfill). The way the overflow buttons light up as you overflow is good, though there still seems to be a 1px vertical jog of the page as you hit overflow (much better than in 2b2, though). I like the new, not-very-native tabs on both classic and luna. Years ago I switched to Luna just because I couldn't stand how ugly the classic tabs were in Mozilla/Firefox. Tabs had not yet been widely considered an important interface element at the time Classic was designed, and it shows: notice how almost every other MDI in any kind of application uses a non-native doc-switching interface. I don't mind the desaturated/lower contrast look of disabled tabs, but I don't think I would mind reasonable changes either.

On to the bad. Namely, the icons. These are so indubitably a regression that I hope never to share a common living or working space with any of their few fans: not only would we not be able to agree on any kind of design or decoration, but I suspect we would not even share any design *values*. The only thing I can figure is that the designers were trying to be mac-like with the icons. I can't really see this working well on Mac (especially after seeing the link from parent), but it sure doesn't work on XP. The biggest problem is loss of saturation/contrast and loss of clarity. On Windows, *desaturated means disabled*. Even look at IE7 (if you must): They have big, shiny, non-standard buttons, but their default state is still boldly colored--they get *brighter*, not more saturated, on hover. Also, in 2b2 many of the small icons look badly resized, the large icons look cramped, the printer looks less obviously like a printer, history looks like calendar, new tab is ugly (though that is a hard one), and the new lock icon is all of uglier, harder to recognize, and misleading. Misleading because of the yellow-and-black stripes, which I have never seen on a real lock (in contrast, I have a lock on my shelf much like the old icon) and which in real life always mean "Danger!", exactly what the lock is not supposed to indicate. Also, In my XP theme, the right corners of all listbox buttons are rounded. This doesn't look great inside a standard rectangular box, as I think the location bar was before, but it looks extra stupid with the go button glued to the side of the box. I will get used to the go button if it stays, but I would like to see the location listbox button made like the search engine picker button to match.

Finally, buttons that look like buttons (at least on hover) are not a bad thing--really they're not. I don't want to go back to Win 3.1 and Win 95 days where applications had rows and rows of small, thickly-beveled buttons, but there has to be a happy medium somewhere between that kind of eyesore and 2b2's flat-except-when-it's-not half-hearted hover effects.

P.S. - This isn't on topic, but 2b2 seems faster and more responsive (I had gotten used to how middle-clicking felt in 1.5, and at one point with 2b2 I middle-clicked a link twice because the new tab opened so quickly and seamlessly that I thought my click hadn't registered). Also I really appreciate the spellchecker and improved add-ins management. And even more off-topic, please make ctrl+enter in the location and search open a new tab.

(Linux + Gnome + Metacity + Clearlooks)

Toolbar:

* The gloss on the 'previous/next page' arrows doesn't look good.
* The color of the arrows is too dark and doesn't fit the theme anymore.
* There is a very ugly small rectangular artefact in the middle of the arrow when the arrows are highlighted.
* The 'home' button is too naturalistic.
* The small icons are very unreadable.

Bookmarks bar:

* The live bookmark icon is too washed out compared to the red mozilla head icon.

Tab bar:

* The unfocused tabs are much too washed out.
* The 'close tab' button on the focused tab is shifted too much to the top.
* There is an ugly artifact when the 'opened tabs list' button is highlighted - the background behind it is highlighted as well.

Other:

* The user agent string doesn't fit in the about box.
* In several cases, contents doesn't fit in the preferences tabs.
* The buttons on the highlighted add-on in the add-ons window don't seem to be designed to be displayed on the kind of background they are.

In Firefox 0.9 and 1.0 I used a third-party theme (Qute with minor tweaks), but I liked the changes in 1.5 very much and returned to the default one. If 2.0 were to be identical with beta 2, I'll probably switch again, mostly because of unreadability of the unfocused tabs and of ugliness of the 'previous/next page' buttons.

Other UI comments:

* I'm not happy with inclusion of the 'close current tab' button on tabs. First, it makes it much too easy to accidentally close a tab when attempting to switch to one. Second, it's very confusing when it disappears and appears again, depending on the number of the opened tabs. Third, it makes it much harder to close a larger number of tabs (it would help a bit if the useless 'close other tabs' in the context menu were replaced with 'close right tabs' and 'close left tabs').
* The 'opened tabs list' button is an excellent addition.
* The 'closed tabs list' menu is an even more excellent addition. It would be, however, nice if there was a button for it somewhere, or if it would appear in the tab context menu.
* It would be nice to be able to get rid of the 'go' button.
* I'm glad that the useless mail-related orphans from Mozilla Classic in the tools menu were finally removed.
* I'm glad that the preferences window was nicely sorted out, and that there is no longer tabs-in-tabs monstrosity in the privacy tab (it still remains in the advanced tab, but hopefully it is less a problem).
* The 'bookmark-related extensions' entry in the bookmarks menu is, while harmless, a bit strange. Why have been bookmark-related extensions singled out from the other ones? Will similar entries be placed in other parts of the UI?
* Spellchecking is a nice feature. I can also see that you can add your words (like 'Mozilla') and download more dictionaries (why isn't English one available?). Having to manually switch languages is, however, a bit cumbersome - an option to use more than one language at the same time would be useful.

Wow! Never seen so many comments on your blog Asa! I run firefox on mac OSX and win XP. I haven't tried the new version on XP yet, but on the mac I think it's a step backwards:
- The icons seems smaller, less recognisable and more squished.
- Tabs that aren't selected are a bit too pale.
- The way the go button, and the search ones are 3d while the rest aren't just looks weird.

I'm loving the spellchecking, tab closes and firefox 2 in general, but the new theme on mac is plain bad.

Rusty

Running Ubuntu with GTK / default OS theme (Human).
No need to repeat what's been already said (especially about the home icon and the go button), I pretty much agree (see neil, who also runs GTK).
I just wanted to stress Back Forward dropdown menus don't just look bad, they are UNACCEPTABLE. When you mouse-over on them you've got the feeling that something with this theme is broken, that's it. The dropdown button is too large and horribly extends under the Back/Forward arrow.

I'm not really a power user (I have one extension =) ), but here's my take on the new theme (even though it's not finished yet I guess).

- The icons are all too pale, colorless and even blurry (the refresh icon, for instance, seems smeared).
- The native button-look should apply to the buttons, this was way more clear than the current "glow" (in which the icons look to dark too).
- The "history"-button looks like a calendar (Google Calendar comes to mind).
- The gloss on the "bookmarks"-button has been overdone, making it really unclear. Also, when my bookmarks are open, the icon becomes quite blue, instead of an open book, which I preferred.
- The "tab"-icon still doesn't look like a tab. :)
- "Small icons" look like crap. I generally don't use the word, but it seems the big icons were resized with paint.
- The icons in "small icons"-mode have too much space between.
- The icons in the options-window look, well, quite "blocky". Also, shouldn't the stop-sign be on the piece of paper on the privacy-icon?
- The feed-icon could also use some smoothing.
- I don't have a problem with the tab-strip, but I would prefer the previous look. My parents and all the people in my street I have to fix the computer for, use classic themes. It's also maybe a bit too white, it looks it's part of the page you're looking at.

But it's not finished, 'ey. :)

windows XP with the silver skin

I find the buttons too soft, I have to stop and look at them to find the right button, they have lost the strength.

maybe I will test it more and look for other things but that's the first impression that I got: urgh

I have never seen anyone suggest this yet, so here goes:

Why can't firefox just ship with 2 themes? Theme switching functionality has been around for years, all they need to do is have a popup on first run asking the user if they want to keep the new theme or go back to the original.

The close button in the yellow bar that appears when a popup is blocked, has the same background artifact as the tab list dropdown button.
Is this something I should report to Bugzilla? Sorry, I don't have much experience in reporting bugs...

I'm sure I'll like the new theme when it's finished (polite way to say I'm not liking it now).

- As Mathieu Pellerin said in the 2d comment, the 2 bars are differently themed in Linux

- The Go button looks bad: 1) What's the idea behind no longer making it optional? it's hidden by default in IE and I'm sure that at least 90% of IE users don't use it. 2) Unlike the mock-up, its top and bottom right corners are badly rounded (pixelled). 3) its height is 2 px less than the addressbar and the dropdown widget.

- Most toolbar buttons faded in the wash, what's the idea behind it?

- The Home button is merely a faded 2-d house with a dumb orange door.

- The tab bar and its "hardcoded" background doesn't match the rest of the UI nor the OS theme.

- Tabs are terrible. 1) it's cool that they are easier to close, but the button itself is distracting (I'd prefer a grey or black cross on transparent background rather than a red square with a white cross in it) 2) That highlight effect when you hover over inactive tabs is annoying 3) tabs no longer look like tabs, they look like flat rectangular buttons.

- IMO its development has been very badly handled, just compare with the current Thunderbird's (successful) visual refresh:
Thunderbird: the guy develops a new theme "offline", checks it in when they feel it's done, asks for feedback and fixes the couple of minor bugs that users reported.
Bon Echo: File a bug, check in an unfinished patch, close the bug, file new bugs to polish, plus a dozen of new bugs to address the regressions.

OK, I read up to about half the page then decided to throw in my two cents (on Windows XP):
1. The small icons are terrible! It looks like they were just straight resizes from the larger icons. They are just not as smooth and clear as their larger counterparts.
2. The home icon is terrible. It looks plain, doesn't fit in with Windows XP icon guidelines, not to mention, it looks like it is on an indexed GIF image.
3. I thought Fx was more for native stylings. Then, the tab bar is custom styled. No doubt, it looks nicer, under XP (not so much under Vista), but I think people will have problems if they use other themes/classic.

On Vista, it looks even worse. In fact, I'm very disappointed by how badly Firefox operates and looks under it. It almost made me run to IE7, which I then found out was a bad move as now I can't have it as my default browser anymore!

http://wiki.mozilla.org/FX2_Visual_Update/Default_Theme_Update

"Three vendors (Meta, Radiant Core, and Raiz Labs were asked to submit proposals for a new theme. They were given the criteria that the new theme had to

* respect OS native look and feel "

Looks like the first and major requirement was completely forgotten since it looks alien in all Operating Systems (haven't tried in BeOS though ;) )...

Asa;

Everything is starting to look nicer and nicer with Mac Branch Build IMHO.
I Did have a problem with some View/Tools/Customize corruption earlier in the week, But the problem has since disappeared.

I really like the new tab strip, just wish you could have incorporated the extension, colorful tabs. I like this extension and feel a alot of other FF Users would appreciate it as well. Incorporate it as an option...but for now, the extension is not compatible with Firefox 2.0b2.

I'm using a iMac G4 2.0 Ghz w/ 20" Lcd Display.
ATI Radeon w/ 256MB VRAM.

Everything is crisp, Another wish is previously during the week, I had
a display option of different tab bar icons, they ranged from light to dark in color, I initially thought this was a work in progress, but they disappered.
It would have been nice for this to stay in the theme for users to select from the tab bar icons, each level of shading they liked.

I was really impressed, but then again, they disappeared and i don't know if it was extension related or theme development...

Keep Up The Great Work,

Ray Marotta; Web Admin; http://www.InTheMac.com

Just to add that from all the screenshots I've seen, the Mac version is indeed the most bearable.

Well mac theme should look more os-like i think. The new search bar is not the best. Should be all white and clear like on other apps. And of course icons are too small :)

I'd like to say that I think the new Firefox default theme is terrible. My reasons have already been mentioned by others, but the primary three are:

- It was just about perfect anyway, very "clean" and neutral, just as a default should be.

- The tab bar doesn't respect my Windows 2000 classic theme.

- The new icons are less defined and look "messy", i.e. too detailed.

I do not like the glossy icons/tabs. Okay otherwise.

I really like the graphics, the new tabs and everything, but there is one thing that is NOT good, which is the missing bevel on the icons of the main toolbar. this is a major clinch, because this is not just "not that native", but completely NOT NATIVE looking. I hate that. Everything else is great :)

I really like the new theme. I'd noticed the oh so very subtle change from a week or two ago. I run nightly builds and I'd noticed that the tab bar colours weren't lining up, like the borders weren't set properly and the icons were a bit too invisible until you hover your cursor over it. I noticed when the visibility changes were implemented and I love it.
Way in the beginning I didn't like the default themes and I'd always try to use Pinball, but after awhile I found a few disadvantages to using Pinball, or any other them for that matter. I've just found that as long as the theme is simple, fucntinal and visible, then it's good for me.
I love Bon Echo, (even camped there years ago) I was using Bon Echo pretty much since it came out and I was having some extension issues, so I had to stop using it, but I got sick of running the 1.5.0.x versions and I found a bad user.js and everything in Bon Echo runs very well, now.
I even used Minefield for a short period, but I much prefer Bon Echo.

I currently on Windows Vista with Aero Glass enabled, and thought I'd have just give Phoenix (0.1) and Firebird (0.6) a quick spin. It's easy to forget that what eventually became Firefox had a very non-OS respecting default theme right up until version 0.9 (by then renamed as Firefox).

The "glossiness" of the Fx2 theme isn't what bothers me, though the fact that like the pre-0.9 themes, it not respecting the the native OS feel is a major faux pas (and as mentioned was part of the spec in the theme refresh). Indeed, the new theme is pretty much the antithesis of what made the 1.x theme "great".

1.x's enabled buttons are nicely saturated with colour, with disabled items in grey-scale. More importantly, when the buttons (such as home) are hovered over, they have the button hover effect as per whatever Windows OS. If it's under Windows 2000 or XP (with Classic), it looks like a native button. If it's under XP's Luna, same again.... and now under Windows Vista (Aero Glass), we get a glossy hover effect which automagically adds a little spice to what is actually quite an old theme.

Furthermore, those buttons have the same hover effect as per what happens with the bookmarks toolbar area. Likewise with the tab bar for the 1.x theme... it looks like Win9x/2k under Win9x/2k, like WinXP (with Luna) when under WinXP (with Luna) and now like Windows Vista when under Windows Vista. Microsoft is rumoured to have yet another theme under wraps till at least RTM (Google for "Vector Glass"), which could very well change the way OS controls look once more. In this case, the 1.x theme shall fare better than the proposed 2.x one.

So what should a 2.x refreshed theme look like? By the fact it's a refresh, it shouldn't be that different... in much the same way the huge Firefox around the globe in "Help > About" was refreshed between 1.0.x and 1.5.x. As far as the browser icons go, they don't IMO need much "improving" (might be the stuckist in me talking ;)), though what the 2.x theme does need is for the menu bar "File, etc) and the menus (regular and context) to also respect the native OS look. For 1.x, it's currently the XP Luna style which jars in Classic, and though while not so bad in Vista, the menu items have a solid hover highlight as opposed to the very understated swishy glossy hover highlight within Explorer, et ali.

One final thing, though not relating to the theme directly, but is part of Firefox branding is that the largest icon sizes right now are 48px by 48px. Vista supports a huge 256px by 256px (4x larger than what OSX allows IIRC) and since it'll land during Fx2.0's lifetime it would be prudent to support such huge icons natively.

Home icon needs to be brighter as others have mentioned, but (on Windows XP here) I actually like the rest of the changes - good work!

Asa, you already have too much read, so i'll be brief.

The new them sucks, big time.

I sugest you to read this blog post, http://blog.jedbrown.net/?p=66

The new theme is a great step in the right direction. I can understand some people disliking the new icons (although I like them), but the new style\appearance of the tab bar is WONDERFUL. It sounds like there are improvements to be made and bugs outlined on many a personal blog. But it seems to me that things are moving forward and I look forward to the final version of this great refresh.

I also don't see any problem with bundling the previous theme (I know it would increase the download size slightly) to keep some of these people happier.

I'm not against new things, but I just don't see why did even visual refresh had to happen? 1.5 didn't look bad in any way... New buttons seems like regression and look plain bad to me - no borders, except on back and forward button. And that borders look really bad... Tab bar, on the other hand, doesn't look bad at all, but should respect native OS feeling. Improvements on tab behavior are, on the other hand, great. Enhancements to RSS icon seem OK to me. To conclude, I liked previous theme better... allot. Used FF on Windows and Linux, by the way, and was hoping for native buttons, check boxes, radio buttons etc. on Linux...

Yikes! I hate the new theme. In fact, there are several features I can't stand in FF 2.0 and, since installing the beta, I found myself continuing to use 1.5. I honestly can't believe this, I've never had so many issues with Firefox before.

Separate the Go and Search buttons from the location bar and search box, respectively. That way, I can get rid of them without taking the whole location and search bars, as I have always done in previous versions. I don't need or want them wasting space when I'll never use them.

The new toolbar icons for back, forward, stop, reload and home buttons look disgusting, I prefer the ones from 1.5. The hover effect on the back and forward buttons just doesn't look right. If you're going to have them look like 3D buttons when hovered, do it like it was done in 1.5 where the button encompassed the entire arrow, not as it is now with the green arrow overlapping the edge of it.

The "Quick Find" bar used when I enable the option to "Search for text when I start typing" is useless. At the very least, I need the match case and highlight all options back, though it doesn't make sense for it be any different from the regular Find bar. I shouldn't have to press Ctrl+F just to get those options, they should be immediately available for when I need them.

I preferred the design of the search engine menu button in FF 1.5, which was just the logo on a white backround. The new button just looks wrong. I don't like the longer search box and the shorter location bar, and there's no way to resize them (I think that could be done with an extension in previous versions, though). I think they should be changed back to their previous sizes in 1.5.

If there's only one tab open (and I have the option enabled to always show the tab bar) and I close the tab by middle clicking on it, I preferred the way that worked in 1.5 where it just navigated to about:blank. If I changed my mind, I could just hit back. Now, in 2.0b2, I have to go to the menu History>Recently Closed Tabs>[Site Name...] which is just too inconvenient. However, in general, I like the ability to reopen a closed tab and I think the menu can stay as is, but restore the old behaviour from 1.5.

Allow me to turn off the close buttons on the tabs. I prefer to close by middle clicking and I don't need or want them wasting space. One problem with them is that when switching to a tab is that there's a chance I might hit the close button accidentally. Setting browser.tabs.disableBackgroundClose to true is an acceptable interim solution, but I just don't want them there at all. In Windows, the new look of the tabs is not so good. I preferred the old design that matched the Windows XP look and feel for tabs much better.

Where is the option gone that allowed me to force links that attempt to open in new windows, to open in the same tab or a new tab? I like it set to the same tab and I shouldn't have to go to about:config to do that.

I hate the new theme, I really do. The reasons I have for this were mentioned before, but I'll give a quick motivation anyway.

I'm on Windows XP using Classic.

- The new icons are blurry, bland and way too light. When using the Classic theme the icons just seem to blend with the background colour. This mainly applies to the Home and New tab buttons. Besides that the "old" icons are just much clearer and better designed.
- Compliance to interface guidelines is basically absent. Why does the adress bar have rounded borders? I'm not using OSX. Is it really necessary to move the search engine button out of the field itself using non standard widgets? It's probably done to make it more clear to new users that it's a button, but I feel there are other ways to educate new users (For instance make a small message appear at the top of the screen on first use of the search field or something).
- I don't use the search field go button, why can't I remove something I won't use?
- The tabs bar is another example of ignoring interface guidelines. It looks like I'm using the Luna theme. But I'm not using Luna... It really annoys me when applications do this. To me a consistent look on my desktop is very important.
-The spacing between icons and the edges of the toolbar is way too small, making it look really cramped.

There's probably more that I cannot think of right now, but there's really nothing about this visual refresh that I feel is an improvement. I don't even understand why it was necessary anyway. I've never heard complaints or questions from other people who I introduced to Firefox about the way the interface works. The old look was clean and clear, the new look is a total mess imo.
No, I'm not one of those people who are afraid of change, on the contrary, but this refresh is just a step backwards and a contradiction to reasons given for interface changes in the past.

Another thing. The toolbar buttons are...buttons. So make them look and act like buttons.

I find it hard to believe that anyone will read down as far as my comments, but here goes. My particular gripes are:

1. Non-native tab bar. This is bug 348975.
2. Native location-bar and search-bar, but _styled_ go and search buttons, despite the fact that they are attached.
3. The difference between small icons and large icons is almost zero (in terms of clickable area). Please restore the button sizes as per Fitt's Law.

1 and 2 are the most obviously ugly problems in my opinion. 3 is a usability problem, but probably won't affect me. Other than that, I'm not really that worried about it. The shiny/faded affect isn't offensive to my eyes. I've seen worse themes.

Oh yeah, I'm on Windows.

I don't understand why anyone at Mozilla is spending time on this kind of unsubstantial fluff and ignoring serious dataloss and useability bugs. For example, users by the score are losing "localstore.rdf" with every update, and many lose their bookmarks when their five backups are overwritten before they notice the problem.

I do like the more polished look, but they’re really not as bright as 1.5.
I use the Firefox default theme, so perhaps the feedback will help before the final release of 2.0.
I’d also like to mention that the Tabs are much easier to read with the contrasting black on white, nice job on that.

Forgot to mention, I'm using XPSP2

Personally, I like it for the most part, and I'm on WinXP. However, please allow us to get rid of the go arrow, since I will never use it.

Close buttons on a tab is a good idea.

But on OS X they are too similar to the stop button.

And they are on the wrong side!!

All apps on OS X have the close button on the left. That's how it's been for years, on all apps.

Firefox breaks this convention with little regard for its users. Frankly I'm disapointed, but hope that this can be re-worked before the final release.

I'm one of the "dislike it" people, using Windows.

- The icons (appear) to me to be smaller, even on "Large" icons.
- The security padlock looks weird on a verified secure site
- The colours seem very pale

The tabs are too bright.
I don't care much about anything else, because I am using the Littlefox theme.
Debian, GNOME.

It also asked me if I want to make it the default browser, and I did, and it did, and it said it is the default browser. Not in GNOME. Where? Beta 1 didn't do that, 1.5 doesn't seem to do anything with that feature.

ASA, congratulations for Firefox 2! :)

There some aspects that Mozilla need review:
-The new home button is ugly.
-The others buttons need to have more details and need to be more alive.
-At Win 9x need a full theme(like opera) not only the tabs.
-At Win 9x there's a strange border in some buttons(go, search).

http://www.googlediscovery.com/firefox2atwin9x.jpg

hello sir .. i think the theme is not bad .. maybe some tweaks might be done to make it Vista-ish will be good but keeping it compact as well.. thank you for your effort .. best regards and continue your good job

I am running Firefox 2.0 Beta 2 on Windows XP Pro, SP2. I use the windows classic theme. I personally like the icons. I saw someone mentioned a hate for the menu system on Windows Classic -- I love it. I love how they look flat. I hate how most everything in windows has that 3d effect. I mean its good on some things, but the menus look good this way. I totally, totally hate the tabs themselves. I like the idea of graying unfocused tabs out, but the unfocused tabs.... the focused tabs... are just waaay tooo bright. The focused tab for me on classic is nearly completely white. A different color is good, but not white. I have to deal with bright things enough.

On the other hand, I agree that the toolbar buttons need their borders shown. I dislike the new back and forward drop down areas -- how just the area around the drop down arrow is bordered on hover.

One of my main complaints though, is in Firefox 1.0 - 1.5, I got used to the close tab button being on the absolute right. Is there any way to make the tab "drop down" optional along with the close tab button. Maybe there's a way to get them to work in harmony. I also really don't like the border on the search engine button. I preferred the search engine being in the search box -- that's where i looked for it. Now I get it confused with a normal toolbar button or ignore it entirely.

I confess, I don't understand the utility of a blog post like this.

Our Beta 2 theme was fraught with polish bugs. These make it difficult to give a fair analysis of the theme.

Even current nightlies already have significant improvements over the state we shipped Beta 2 in.

So... what's the point of asking for detailed feedback, when it's about a version of the theme that's already outdated?

Oh. And I HATE the hand cursor when you hover over an active tab.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1b2) Gecko/20060821 Firefox/2.0b2 ID:2006082101