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August 16, 2007
Drowning in UI
If you download a recent build and happen to visit a https site with an RSS feed, you'll encounter a urlbar which looks something like this:
In there we have one drag source (favicon), five buttons, and the original purpose of the urlbar, the URL itself. Surely there are more creative ways of adding functionality than just tossing more features into what should be a simple portion of the browser UI?
At the very least, the spacing/style of the buttons should be normalized to give a more professional finish.
Posted by tor at August 16, 2007 3:13 PM
Comments
It also hide the lock which is important info for everyone.
The RSS and star (?) are used by about 0.1% of the firefox population, and I bet if you did a count on how many times the RSS, favicon and start were clicked, and compare that to how many times they were displayed.
I think you'll find they are clicked once every year. By one Uber geek in New York. The rest of the world simply don't click on them.
Please explain this to someone in charge :-/
Can we back this up with some evidence? click counts?
cheers,
monk.e.boy
Posted by: monk.e.boy at August 16, 2007 3:53 PM
Dear lord, my English skills left me momentarily. I do apologize.
start = star
Is there a way of getting click data from these icons? You'd need to count the number of clicks. The number of confirmed actions (to see how many accidental clicks are made) and the number of times each icon is displayed.
I would love to see this for all GUI elements in firefox. I think that'd sort the 'art of gui' from the 'engineering of gui'
cheers
monk.e.boy
Posted by: monk.e.boy at August 16, 2007 4:02 PM
This sort of thing will probably push me entirely onto Safari at some point. Firefox should be getting simpler - not piling on the chrome. At least Microsoft made a bold push and ditched the menu, demoted the home button to where it should be, unified favourites and feeds and reduced the main toolbar to what matters Back/Forward+Stop/Refresh.
Firefox is just finding new ways of adding more widgets everywhere. Please stop it, consumers are confused enough as it is. Mozilla should be following Safari/Opera's lead of less is more.
Posted by: Kroc Camen at August 16, 2007 4:06 PM
Yeah, the URL bar is getting too busy atm. But really, this is the first places UI to land, so there's still lot of changes to come.
Posted by: Steve England at August 16, 2007 4:08 PM
I don't know what the final plans for the UI are, but i do know that this isn't it. There has been SO much discussion ( http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.apps.firefox/search?group=mozilla.dev.apps.firefox&q=location+bar&qt_g=Search+this+group )(that's just a search for "location bar" in mozilla.dev.apps.firefox) about the thing, and nobody wants it cluttered. This is definitely just an interim step, so don't worry :)
Posted by: brandon at August 16, 2007 4:34 PM
Steve: I'm not singling out places, though the addition of the star did push me over the edge to post this. Like monk.e.boy mentions, I wonder how much all the elements that currently make up the urlbar are used by the typical user. I know in my case that besides editing the text field, the only other element that I use (and rarely at that) is the security button.
Posted by: tor at August 16, 2007 4:53 PM
Must UI be in final, polished state before it's checked in? Is all of your SVG code locked down and bulletproof before it lands?
We're iterating, here, Tor. Relax, and imbue us with a little bit of trust.
Posted by: beltzner at August 16, 2007 5:57 PM
Beltzner nailed it -- we haven't even hit the first Firefox beta yet, so some UI roughness is to be expected.
It's great that people are so passionate about the browser UI, but disappointing that any change seems to spawn a flurry of "wrong, wrong, wrong" comments.
Posted by: Justin Dolske at August 16, 2007 8:35 PM
beltzner, dolske: I'm not saying that UI has to be final before it goes in, but am pointing out an area that has been a problem since Firefox 1.5 and that initial signs are pointing towards it possibly getting worse in Firefox 3. I hoped that posting this would provoke some interesting discussion, such as monk.e.boy's statistic gathering suggestion.
No, the SVG code isn't perfect, and we'll listen to feedback given if you want to post something. For an example of this, see roc's post about the in-core bloat of SVG written back in the 1.5 - 2.0 timeframe, which makes my posting look mild.
Posted by: tor at August 16, 2007 8:48 PM
My vote for removing the favicon, once again ;-)
The lock will go away, too, unless I got something wrong.
Posted by: Dao at August 17, 2007 12:28 AM
Kroc, the whole point is to make things simpler.
Compare the star with the currently available ways to bookmark a web page. Combine it with the organization capabilities Places will offer compared to the current bookmarks folder structure.
Now imagine you are not a long time Firefox user but a Firefox newbie or even better, a web newbie.
Substract how much complicated it will be for power and long time users to adapt to the new way. Add a userChrome.css hack to hide the star and I believe the change is a positive one.
Posted by: Percy at August 17, 2007 1:29 AM
I believe the favicon is still set to disappear someday, although I never keep up on it. From the latest mockups I've seen though, the identity/security UI is probably going to move over there and be on perpetually (much like the favicon already was, but more useful). That just leaves the star and the RSS icons. I've had both of them up there in a build for months. Calling even that "cluttered" is a bit of a stretch, but I have a feeling both of those could be combined into one icon that's perpetually visible. In the end, I think you'll find that theres less up there, and that what is there is more useful. Like was said, this is just the start of a much bigger UI overhaul that's coming at the end of the alpha cycles, like has been planned since work the original FF3 PRDs were put together. Nothing to really be surprised about.
Posted by: digDug at August 17, 2007 7:47 AM
I think we all shout WRONG because it is so obviously wrong.
But it shows we care :-)
monk.e.boy
Posted by: monk.e.boy at August 17, 2007 9:14 AM
Get rid of the RSS button. Any site with RSS has a button on the site.
So why do we need 2 buttons? One in the page and one in the chrome? Mental.
monk.e.boy
Posted by: monk.e.boy at August 17, 2007 9:17 AM
Can't all this stuff go in the status bar?
Posted by: ant at August 17, 2007 2:00 PM
I frequently use the RSS button.
Posted by: starwed at August 17, 2007 4:20 PM
The location bar is some kind of UI dumping ground for unfinished ideas. It's a bad place because it has a reduced click region, and with icons side by side, it's slow for users to click the right thing. Microsoft have got the favourites right, which Places looks to mimick, but in general Firefox's chrome is lagging behind. Opera and IE both have up front tab UI. Firefox does not. To a regular user, it looks like Firefox is the browser that doesn't have tabs!
Posted by: Kroc Camen at August 18, 2007 8:28 AM
You know if you included the g a p that was recently in trunk after the domain, that shot of the urlbar would just have the domain, then space, then the rest of the url faded and cut off after "bug"
Posted by: at October 25, 2007 4:43 PM