Firefox 4 Windows mockup provides 5 UI hints of things to come

Want a hint as to where Firefox will go next? As a product visual designer at Mozilla, Stephen Horlander is the kind of guy who can make things happen -- so when he shares updates and mockups on Firefox 4's user interface, we tend to pay attention. He outlines five portions of a screenshot teaser that'll get a much cleaner, more streamlined facelift. Our favorite takeaway is the singular app button for menu navigation. Several variations are shown, but if you ask us, we're currently fond of the setup above. As Horlander notes, the design's in constant flux, but what we're seeing is certainly promising.

[bulgarian388 Posted Dec 23rd 2009 11:26AM]

@fourthletter I've wondered about the same thing. I can only speculate that they've already baked in the new UI for 3.7 and aren't going to commit to the 4 UI until they start work on that version... Guessing though...

[artist Posted Dec 23rd 2009 9:19AM]

firefox is for posers

[bulgarian388 Posted Dec 23rd 2009 11:25AM]

@artist are you able to come up with non-flaming comments?

[johnny00johnny Posted Dec 23rd 2009 9:26AM]

I'm excited for FF4. But in the meantime, you can make sure you're running the latest version of firefox at http://doineedtoupdate.com/

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 23rd 2009 9:44AM]

Maybe he oughta look at Chrome...
that whole top bar is still just wasted space

[AllisterA Posted Dec 23rd 2009 9:51AM]

First thing that came to mind while looking at this mockup is the new opera pre-alpha, the UI looks awful similar.

[JREwing Posted Dec 23rd 2009 10:29AM]

One thing that I wish had been implemented is an option for placing the tabs down the left side of the window, as you can implement with the Tree Style Tabs extension.

Tabs on the left-hand side work beautifully with widescreen monitors, as websites typically are far narrower than the screen itself. It frees up precious vertical height and minimizes scrolling.

@fatbencher
I have my Firefox window down to two toolbars of UI at the very top (including the standard Windows buttons) with a combination of Tree Style Tabs, a nifty status bar add-on called autohideStatusbar, and rearranging the toolbars to only take up one bar.

[fatbencher Posted Dec 24th 2009 10:00AM]

@JREwing
Thanks, I'll give that a whirl. That's the drawback of so many extensions and addons: the good ones tend to get little publicity. Or I don't look in the right places. Maybe that. :)

[Tohe Posted Dec 23rd 2009 10:40AM]

I'm a big fan of "the-one-line-tool-bar" that is possible with Firefox, I hope this cluttered tabby look is customizable and that I can enjoy as much viewing real state as I currently do with Firefox 3.6

[RLJSlick Posted Dec 23rd 2009 10:49AM]

That's very cool and all, but if they dont' find a way to speed up Firefox I think i will be looking elsewhere for my browser. Work on that then you can do what you want to the GUI.

[bulgarian388 Posted Dec 23rd 2009 11:24AM]

@RLJSlick are you kidding? Are you just talking out of your butt or what? Have you even read the development blogs and MDC articles on what has/will be changed in the releases. 3.6 is already much faster and it's only going to get better with each release. That's how software development works. UI and core are handled by separate teams which are not dependent on each other.

Learn to research in the future before you just start talking nonsense...

[Tohe Posted Dec 24th 2009 1:05AM]

@RLJSlick

Want a faster Firefox, then type in the address bar: "about:config" in the filter type "pipe" find "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" set it to 15 or more. Cheers.

[Tristan88888888 Posted Dec 23rd 2009 11:26AM]

looks a lot like good ol chrome.

[bulgarian388 Posted Dec 23rd 2009 11:29AM]

I don't quite see it looking like Chrome, more of a natural evolution of the structure which happens all the time in software development. Chrome is "ok". I'm using it for the moment while 3.6 comes out because I recently reinstalled the Windows 7 and didn't want to install 3.5 and then upgrade to 3.6. While using it if had Chrome crash several times and have not been truly impressed by it, but I just don't want to use IE8...

[mattcoz Posted Dec 23rd 2009 12:19PM]

A lot of the features everyone sees as being a copy of Chrome were actually copied from IE7/8. The menu button reminds me of the File buttons in Windows 7 ribbons. The "app tabs" in Chrome OS were already in Firefox 4 mockups, in fact you can already get them as an add-on in Firefox 3. The "tabs on top" is the only thing they really took from Chrome. Still, what's wrong with that? Where would we be if nobody ever copied eachother? Where was everyone saying "omg they copied Firefox" when Google came out with Chrome extensions? I say everyone should keep borrowing good ideas and coming up with better ones.

[C4rlos Posted Dec 23rd 2009 1:39PM]

@mattcoz
Exactly many of the features were from IE7/8 not Chrome, Chrome copied IE7 features, Anti pishing, no menu bar, back and forward only buttons, address highlight. So yes if google can copy any features they like, then the others can do it too.

IE8 separate process for tabs, was showed one week earlier than chrome showcase.

Still FF is the better browser primary because of that many excellent extensions. IE has had add-ons many years before anyone else but they are crap and poorly organized, except IEPro which doesn't work with IE8.

[v4npro Posted Dec 23rd 2009 1:44PM]

Check out Opera 10.5 Pre-Alpha. Very nice.

[whatpoint77 Posted Dec 23rd 2009 2:18PM]

I like

[artshark Posted Dec 23rd 2009 2:52PM]

forget ui stuff, can it scale well? runs well on my 2 year old even then midline desktop, but FF3 runs poorly on netbooks, no matter the os

[Pedobear Posted Dec 23rd 2009 5:04PM]

yes, but can your google chrome make you coffee :D

[thanatos465 Posted Dec 23rd 2009 8:15PM]

Chrome forever!

[Zorque Posted Dec 23rd 2009 9:34PM]

All my most-hated UI aspects of IE7/8 and Chrome in one impossible-to-use package, awesome.

[J2800 Posted Dec 23rd 2009 11:24PM]

Sexiness ftw

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 24th 2009 7:41AM]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!
They are ruining it :(

[kibbledbits Posted Dec 24th 2009 9:46AM]

it's about time they fix the forward/back buttons. Ever since they implemented consolidated back drop down it's sucked.

[Wwhat Posted Dec 24th 2009 2:20PM]

Chrome, ha ha bloody ha, sell your soul to advertisers why don't you.
I for one will not use chrome, ever, not even if you pay me, and they should pay people.

[AvgConsumer Posted Dec 24th 2009 10:13PM]

i tryed out chrome a while ago and idc what the others do i caqnt see me switching to a different browser. chrome launches quickly and does what it needs to, browse. IE no one likes, safari on windows is crap, i like opera as my 2nd browser cause its faster than FF on my machine, but it takes a while to launch. FF i have it on my computer, but i never use it. it takes too long to launch for me, and it seems slower. im glad to see FF still improving anyway even if most browsers look very similar now. chrome is just right for me and im looking forward to version 4 of chrome also (at least i believe chrome is on 3.XX but i maybe wrong)

[DanielViverridae Posted Jan 6th 2010 5:20PM]

I don't know about this Chrome stuff, but the very first thing that came to my mind when I set my eyes on that mockup was that I was looking upon a bit modified version of a browser UI I was using already a long time before Google's copy came out...