[Usability] Firefox Button, GNOME Conventions, Windicators, GTK+ 3, and some more

[Allan Caeg <allancaeg gmail com>]

Hello All,

I am communicating with Mozilla's UX. We're discussing the Firefox Button (screenshot). You'll notice that it's already on the Windows version of Firefox 4 Beta, but it isn't in the Linux version. 

Here's what Alex Faaborg said:

my understanding is that we won't be able to draw in the title bar until we have access to GTK3 (and even then some of the details need to be worked out to make sure that we have the capabilities that we need).

The other issue is trying to integrate with the interactive design of the surrounding platform and other applications on that platform.  For instance, if Nautilus and all of the other applications that the user regularly interacts with use the menu bars, then not having a menu bar for Firefox would violate the user's expectations and built up knowledge.

On Windows 7 and Vista it's the opposite situation, menu bars are incredibly uncommon and users expect commands like Print to be located in a very saturated and colorful application control in the upper left hand corner (wordpad, paint, office, etc.)

The third consideration we are weighing is that the Firefox button seems "new" while the menu bar seems "old."  It might be the case that if we choose to match the interactive design of the surrounding OS, people will criticize us for not paying attention to Linux, and prefer Chrome's UI because it is new and different.

Here are some mockups that Stephen created to show various options:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/4.0_Linux_Theme_Mockups

Here is the bug where we are discussing drawing in the title bar (which we actually need for a few reasons beyond the Firefox button, including Personas and darkening the window for private browsing mode):

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=513159

For Firefox 4, currently we are thinking that we should expose the Firefox button as a option, but keep the menu bar the default interface (which of course distros can change).  Since we can't draw in the title bar the FIrefox button would need to be placed in the tab strip, directly below where it appears on Windows.

Let me know what you think, and also if there are any significant changes planed to GNOME's overall UI that would impact our decision (moving to a global menu, getting rid of menus entirely, in favor of toolbars that mix buttons with menu commands, etc.)

After talking to GTK+ guys, I told him that there seems to be two ways to add the Firefox button: not displaying the window manager's window border (just like what Chrome is doing, which is feasible today) and client-side window manager buttons on GTK+ 3. Drawing the app's own window border is good in terms of feasibility, but it will create a lot of inconsistency in the platform. If we do it, Firefox will render a window border that won't be present anywhere else unless it copies from others (like Chrome) or or others copy it.

The client-side buttons is still under heavy development. Right now, adding those buttons will break a lot of stuff, because the app doesn't know what's happening to the window border so this needs a lot of work. If this eventually becomes polished enough to be a convention, this won't be an issue.

In the Ubuntu side of things, there's the Windicators Project. I don't exactly know what's happening to this project right now. It may just be possible for the Firefox button to use the same technologies that the Windicators are built on. Those who are familiar with this project, please enlighten us.

There's a lot of developments like this upstream, but GNOME conventions seem to restrict them from innovating (we don't want them to end up like this). Adding the Firefox button may compromise platform consistency and break things (Ubuntu Netbook Remix, other window managers, some Metacity themes, etc). What can we do about this?

--
Regards,
Allan
http://www.google.com/profiles/AllanCaeg#about

+63 918 948 2520