Re: [Usability] Mozilla Firefox 2.0 Chrome Changes

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Wed, 1 Mar 2006, Vidar Braut Haarr wrote:

> Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2006 17:43:36 +0000
> From: Vidar Braut Haarr <vhaarr+usability gmail com>
> To: usability gnome org
> Subject: [Usability] Mozilla Firefox 2.0 Chrome Changes
>
> Hi,
>
> Mike Beltzner, Mozilla Corp.'s UI wizard, has put up a post entitled

> "Changes to Fx2 Chrome" on the mozilla.dev.apps.firefox newsgroup[1]
> detailing some changes that are being considered for Firefox 2.0.
>
> I know this is a bit off-topic, but it is something that will "affect"
> most of us, and I don't know who better to comment on these changes
> than many of the people here.
>
> 1: <http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.apps.firefox/browse_frm/thread/85a8c60c5b9a3f93/c4d7088e08d3dfcc?tvc=1&hl=en#c4d7088e08d3dfcc>

>> (1) The reload button [...] inside the URL bar
>>
>> (3) The RSS [.)] and Go [=>] buttons move inside the URL bar

Making the association clearer is a good idea but

>> The Go button becomes a stateful button that is either "Go" or "Stop";

This has been suggested before in various contexts, and objected to many
times.  The Gnome Guidelines even went so far as to discourage this kind
of overloading of buttons, and there are also accessibility implications.

"Show separate Stop and Pause buttons. Do not change Play to Pause while
the clip is playing."
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/toolbars.html
(yes this is directly applicable)

>> 5) The throbber

How did a redundant piece of advertising junk hang around this long?
Netscape managed to make their branding less than completely useless by
duplicating the progress information already shown in the status bar and
somehow this idea became popular.  It is terribly crude way to show
progress.

I quite like how Safari used a backfill of the location bar to show
progress (similarly Microsoft Office used to temporarily replace the
statusbar with a progress bar to indicate progress when loading very large
documents).

>> (10) The status bar is hidden by default,

As others have already mentioned the benefit of this is questionable and
the disadvantages known.  I hope they have strong justification for making
this change.

/me goes back to using Mozilla Seamonkey :P

Sincerely

Alan Horkan
http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/