Today, Mozilla released the fourth beta of Firefox 4.0. After a period of what I would call stagnation, the Mozilla team are back on track with delivering interesting UI concepts. They were sensible enough to copy Chrome’s excellent tabs-on-top UI, but have now also added something called Panorama, a new and very interesting way of managing your open tabs.
Contrary to most (at least, that’s the impression I get), I am extremely anal about my web browsing habits – if I’m not using a page, it goes down. I find it pointless to open dozens of tabs while you can only stare at one at a time anyway. Right now, I have only the tabs open required for this particular story – and a tab for Facebook that I can barely manage to not compulsively close.
I’ve seen screenshots of some of your browser windows over the years, and I’m often surprised by how many tabs people have open. Well, this new Firefox trick, called Panorama, should really be of help to you since it makes it easier to group tabs together in a natural fashion. It is vaguely similar to Mac OS X’s Exposé, with the additional ability to create your own visual representation of groups of tabs.
Firefox Panorama: How To from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.
I’ve played around with the new feature on Windows 7, but I was less than impressed. I found the animations to be choppy, the miniatures representing open tabs were pixelated, and basic things like resizing the Firefox window reminded me of Windows XP’s visual wear & tear days of animations. It’s still a beta, of course, but I’m just baffled as to why it’s so hard to get even these basic things right, and it doesn’t inspire confidence in the rest of Firefox 4.0 at this point.
But alas, I’m probably not the right person to talk about Firefox (“if the browser is not Chrome, then it sucks” is my motto). How are you actual Firefox users experiencing the Firefox 4.0 betas?
i’m using firefox and i don’t intend any “chrome switch” as i dont drink no cool aid – well from my point of view.
but I don’t like this panorama and a few things like that which i think looks “cool” but dont rly add anything i’d use
Then don’t use it! It’s not like you’re forced to use the panorama view just because it’s available.
Obviously, we aren’t forced to use it. The problem is that we’re forced to install it. This was definitely the mentality back in the Mozilla Suite days when Moz was a kitchen sink application, and everything was just a little sluggish and a little bloated.
With Firefox came the notion of minimalism and pushing any extraneous features to the add-on system. This seems like a perfect candidate for the add-on system to me. Heck, why stop with two views? They can have as many different views as they can come up with, but just make them an add-on so we can choose not to have it on our hard drive.
The thing uses new HTML5 functionality, it is nothing that big and complex.
Stuff like that is now possible, so why not? I for one will use it.
Edited 2010-08-27 13:34 UTC
How about they fix those 10 year old CSS bugs instead of piling in more bloat and bling.
Mozilla have lost the plot. The Firefox brand has become more important to them than actual users.
Are you out of your mind? You expect Aza Raskin to fix a CSS bug? Or do you want more CSS bugs?
Actually there are several people working at Mozilla and even more working on Firefox.
If you look at the changelog you will realize that this feature is one among tons of other features, including bug fixing, accessibility improvements, standard compliance, performance improvements and a ton of other non-sexy changes.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?resolution=FIXED,VERIFIED&c…
This feature is osnews worthy because it is visual and everybody like sexy interfaces.
I had already read that entire list. I’m talking about bugs that were filed in 2001, 2003 and the like. Maddening, infuriating, needless bugs that refuse to get fixed because of a priority on shiny things.
This is how the things work – those shiny features are more compelling to the end user, rather than the old CSS bugs, which only a developer can notice. The Panorama feature is kinda useless to me, as I’m already using FoxTab, which is much more intuitive and easy to work with. Honestly, I don’t care if Thom doesn’t like Firefox or having multiple tabs opened, but believe me, there are situations where you need to open ‘something’, read it later, or use 5-10 web apps at the same time. I’m not going to try the beta, at least not on Linux, because the default theme is still not done, it doesn’t support the tabs on top, it doesn’t have the ribbon button, all of my current Addons don’t work with the latest beta, my favorite autocompletion of URL is not likely to be included at all, but most importantly – the new JS engines are not integrated. I’m going to use the official 4 version few months after they declare GA, otherwise it’s just useless.
Linux version of Firefox 4.0 beta has supported tabs on top since beta 2 or beta 3. However, it still doesn’t let you hide the menu bar without using an extension.
Please point me to the bug report you are talking about and I’ll take the time to see if I can fix it ASAP.
These are a few I bumped into and saved. If you asked hundreds of developers, the list would be endless.
Cannot select or edit or search generated content and alt text [GC] (1999-08-25)
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12460
All stylesheets are loaded regardless of rendering media (2001-05-05)
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=79021
Persist alternate stylesheet selection using content prefs (2003-08-18)
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=216537
Anything else, I gave up and went with other functionality. I don’t file many bugs because I have zero faith in the bug system.
Mozilla should spend a release cycle doing nothing but bug-bears (oldest bugs with the most votes). I’ve had to dump great, elegant pieces of code because of 10 year old Gecko bugs.
“Persist alternate stylesheet selection using content prefs (2003-08-18)
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=216537 ”
opera has persite settings.
much less convenient (normal users will never try):
usercontent.css can wrap styles in domain (something like persite)
this says is compatible with ff 3.0-3.6.*
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4066/
or you can use proxo to set stylesheet(s) depending on url.
you can base style on other than the url, but may risk applying stylesheet later in the page, which can cause page to jiggle around when browser finally reads your css. (i suspect I’ve seen ajax also cause similar symptoms.)
Can I assume that was a indirect reference to the little flamewar related to the new bullshit stance on 915?
Or as I call it (and said on bugzilla) “How about before you start implementing specifications that aren’t even out of draft you finish off specifications that have been recommendations for over a decade?”
Welcome to the reality of open source — if it’s not flashy or trendy, and a coder can’t toot their own horn over it, and it’s not quite big enough for people to give money to set a bounty on it, don’t plan on it EVER being fixed.
Which of course is how TWELVE YEAR OLD entries like bugzilla 915 are shuffled around with half assed status changes, until we get the current “Who gives a ****” status of “irrelevant”
So not only is firefux the same fat slow unstable pig it’s always been, they’ve now pretty much said they could give a shit about the existing finalized standards and instead only care about specs not even out of draft… in other words crap like CSS3 and HTML5 which nobody has ANY ***** BUSINESS USING ON PRODUCTION WEBSITES.
After all, that’s what DRAFT means! I swear, it’s IE 5 all over again.
Edited 2010-08-26 03:14 UTC
Some bugs are expensive to fix with regards to time, with little obvious gains. How should they balance developer time between that and implementing HTML5?
Some CSS features are behind (like overflow: ellipsis), but I understand their rational in bug comments…
Did anyone using Chrome bitch this much about missing MathML support before it appeared? No… I think you’re being rather harsh on Mozilla. They’ve got people playing in the interface as well as all the developers they had previously working on Gecko.
As DeathShadow said above, in open source nobody wants to do the grunt work. There’s a reason why IE has the only full implementation of CSS 2.1, they paid their developers to the do it. A broken implementation is worthless and negatively effects everybody—100% complete, or not at all. Microsoft saw the importance of getting CSS2.1 done-and-dusted before working on HTML5. How am I supposed to have faith in Mozilla to implement HTML5 when they can’t even finish a ten year old job?
I can’t count the number of websites where #915 would have made a *big* difference to me, but Mozilla call it irrelevant because it’s old and unused *BECAUSE THEY MADE IT RARE AND UNUSED BY NOT IMPLEMENTING IT*. A self-fulfilling arsehole weasel get out—don’t implement something so developers can’t demonstrate practical uses, and then claim the feature isn’t needed anyway anymore and nobody will miss it.
There was me thinking the only reason was that all the stuff that wasn’t implemented from 2.0 or was implemented incorrectly was dropped or re-speced to do what browsers chose to do instead of following the spec. (This comment applies to all browsers, not just IE). How to gain compliance 101. Redefine the specifications.
I will also question, but I’m not sure, as to whether they have a full implementation, or if as with CSS 1.0 they claim to have a full implementation but only support mandated sections and not optional parts.
I like this feature a lot in fact I had the same idea already. Except in my version it would replace Tabs. This is why Mozilla needs to make a new skunkworks browser, so they can just drop needless interface elements without existing users getting upset.
Right now the only real problem with Firefox is the use of XUL and Javascript for the interface. I think any interface built using a scripting language is going to have the kinds of freezing/stalling Firefox has.
On the other hand, what you lose in performance you gain in customization and extensibility.
I guess, but if I had the choice, I’d rather have performance. At least until I could figure out how to program with XUL and Javascript.
For pure performance there is Chrome, although, IMO, Firefox is fast enough at the moment.
It’s very easy and well documented. If you know HTML and JS you are half way there.
I don’t really have a problem with how fast Firefox is, only how often and bad it hangs, freezes or becomes non-responsive. Occasionally, I’ve had it stall my whole system.
Yeah, I already use Chrome as my default now. I still miss Firefox’s Bookmark/History search and also the Bookmark/History sidebar, but that’s not that big an issue.
I only know HTML and mostly just enough to get by, but I basically have no Javascript knowledge. I might learn at some point but right now I’m not much for web development.
What kind of practical flexibility is really gained by XUL? Are there other browsers/ plugins for firefox out there that are just XUL GUI differences? How popular are they?
The fact that you can tweak the interface more easily, hence the huge number of addons. Yes, there are lots of addons that change the default way Firefox looks and behaves.
Yes, I know there are many. Are any of them popular? Do any of the really improve the interface significantly?
If say pandronic was a XUL using firefox add on that the community had built, and everyone always added because it made everything so much better, then I’d say yes XUL is awesome! See how some one with an idea for an improvement did it, without having to be a C, c++ expert!
Most people I know only have a default interface for firefox with maybe a toolbar or two.
Is XUL really required for a tool bar? Does it make writing a tool bar easier?
A key advantage to XUL is the ability to provide a standardized user interface across platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac) with minimal effort.
My lengthy userChrome.css file begs to differ. XUL’s GTK+ emulation is atrocious: custom fonts aren’t picked up properly, menubar and inactive tab text colours are wrong with most themes, toolbars have heavy padding and the less said about the Vista-esque Library and download manager UIs, the better.
That scripting language is running on the same engine that has been speeding up over 10 times. They are working on that same engine to make it usable for animations(kill the choppyness). Firefox’s main feature is displaying webpages. Then why wouldn’t you want to render the interface using the same parts?
Edited 2010-08-26 07:19 UTC
Well If they improve it enough to where XUL apps don’t freeze/hang anymore then good. So far Firefox isn’t as bad as some of the other apps built on scripting languages that I’ve used so I wouldn’t underestimate them.
Right now though, I’ve yet to see a app using a scripting language without problems with responsiveness.
I tried this feature out on Linux. When I first used it I was very impressed. But then I realized that, in my opinion, it’s kind of a bad solution to the problem of poor window management. The same thing can be said about web browser tabs in general.
In my opinion, good window management and tab management should be part of the window manager. If any application thinks it has to implement tabs or any sort of MDI to be good, then the window manager has failed.
Also, if the problem is that nobody wants to open a new web browser window because doing so would be too slow, then that’s another issue.
Couldn’t agree more. I find the differences between MDI interfaces in different applications quite jarring, and of course they don’t allow to group documents/windows from different applications. Not to mention all the duplicated work.
KWin in KDE SC 4.4+ allows you to combine top-level windows into a single tabbed window. Works quite nicely. Thus, you could hide the tab-bar in Firefox, configure it to open in new windows instead of new tabs, and let KWin handle everything for you.
Agreed. That sounds like a typical case of the “inner platform effect”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner-platform_effect But of course, in practice, using ION3 or dwm has its drawbacks, so browser tabs come handy.
The obvious solution is for the app to improve its support for multiple windows. Maybe the ultimate solution would be RAM data deduplication, which may also make it possible to use static linking where it wouldn’t make sense at present.
Windows 7 allows applications to see tabs as separate taskbar entries. Works pretty well.
Your point is valid though.
I think this feature won’t replace window management but sessions and group bookmarks. The point is that you can organize your webdesktop by having a permanent place to put your tabs and group them by how you use them. The tabs on your webdesktop don’t have to be loaded until you click them so you can have hundreds of tabs there without bogging down Firefox. The grouping also can give you extra information to find them later.
Then you’d want to check you uzbl. A webkit based browser that strictly adheres to the unix philosophy.
http://www.uzbl.org/
Personally, I love the philosophy, but find it to be a little too minimal and a little too steep of a learning curve. Emulating Vim modes, might not have been the best idea.
It took me a while to get used to the “tabs on top” idea.
I always thought Firefox did things the right way.
Tabs organize content, and browser controls are separate from content, so tabs should contain only the content and not controls. It took a long while for me to be comfortable enough with tabs being all the way at the top before I could switch to Chrome (which has higher performance, and is very important on my aging laptop). I understand that Firefox performs better with ass-loads of tabs open, but I rarely have more than 20 open, and those are generally relatively simple pages.
A few important questions: Will it intelligently auto-group tabs? Say, if I’m using Google Reader, and launch a bunch of links from one site, then move on to another feed and start launching, can I configure it to automatically launch those in different groups? Can I set it up to intelligently resize groups that are full of wasted space?
I guess it’s time to nab the beta and find out!
EDIT: I don’t know why, but this is the first thing that has made me excited about Firefox 4. I was always excited about previous major releases, but not this one. I think the Chrome-style UI turned me away, despite being a Chrome user now.
Edited 2010-08-25 20:13 UTC
You can put the tabs back to the old position using two clicks. I don’t know how the English names are but View->(the second thingy)->”tabs on top” or something like that.
So, the URL of the current website is not part of the content for that website?
If you change the content of the tab (click a link, for example), you also want content outside of that tab to change (the controls)? How is that logical?
The address bar is part of the content of the tab and controls the content of the tab, thus it should be part of the tab.
The menu bar is a global thing that affects all parts of the app, thus it should be outside of the tabs.
While I don’t consider the URL as part of content (kinda like a book’s dewey decimal number), it’s a moot point. Putting the tabs above or below the URL and browser buttons is completely arbitrary, and there is no right or wrong answer.
For me, it just feels like the tab bar belongs below. Luckily, it’s configurable in Firefox.
Problem solved.
Firefox 4 Beta UI just mixing Opera and Chrome UI. LOL
That’s a good thing. Chrome’s tabs-as-titlebar is annoying, as page titles get truncated, and there isn’t a place where the full page title is displayed. Having to hover over a tab to get a tooltip that shows the full page title is just plane retarded.
Damn, too bad that the author didn’t place pictures instead of videos … I don’t use flash, d’oh! I couldn’t use it even If i want, so please; consider us, non-flashpluggers and place some pics here and there.
Eventually you could have used some FX compatible video that doesn’t require flash. I’m just amazed how so technical guy like you, Thom, could ever come up with this idea.
Regards
Edited 2010-08-25 20:49 UTC
When I saw the title of the article, I thought, for a moment, that this awesome new feature was going to be something along the lines of a window-split, as in Vim (well, and other decent programmer’s editors). Then I read the article, and found that I was mistaken.
And this made me sad. View splits would be a killer feature, as far as I’m concerned.
I second window-splits. Especially considering wide screens (oh wait we have mostly wide screens these days) and their screen real estate – it would be a nice feature.
On the other hand it is true that this kind of UI features, as well as tabs or any other kind of MDI, should be implemented by the window manager (WM), not applications. Perhaps it’s time for me to switch to a tiling WM?
Have you tried konqueror?
That (more or less) is something I’ve always really liked about Opera’s MDI: you can tile tabs alongside each other, viewing more than one web page in a single window.
I’ve always felt that the way conventional tabs force all sub-windows to be maximised is a stupid limitation. MDI is much more versatile and flexible, making some ways of browsing much more efficient, especially when there’s a decent amount of screen space to play with.
Unfortunately (like quite a few other things) it’s very buggy in Opera 10.5/6. It’s a shame how many of Opera’s obscure and unsung features have been neglected and broken in favour of gimmicks and eye-candy. But hopefully it’ll get an overhaul in a future release.
I’d definitely love to see something similar in other browsers.
I think the mdi-ness of opera was a bit before its time. I didn’t find it very useful with a 800x 600 screen. But now with a much larger screen, I see the value in it.
Or, you could just split your tabs out into separate windows, and use the window manager to tile them accordingly.
You know, using the “window manager” itself to manage your windows.
Maybe I could, if I was using a GUI with a decent window manager. But stuck using MS Windows that isn’t an option.
Even with a better window manager, moving tabs between separate windows, then manipulating those windows, adds extra complexity and extra work, slowing down browsing. Sometimes it’s better to make aspects of window management a feature of the application, especially when that application is used differently from others.
Window management that works fine for a few open documents or graphics, fails when trying to manage a large number of open web pages. When you’re loading groups of bookmarks, opening multiple pages in the background from a single site, flicking through dozens of reviews or listings, and trying to keep it all efficiently managed, I think web browsers need their unique window management features.
Ah, Windows. That’s (lack of a good window manager) something I struggle with everytime I have to use a Windows machine. It’s amazing how the lack of little things like snap-to-edges, maximise-when-move-to-sides, convert-to-tab, make life so difficult on Windows. You don’t really appreciate these little features until you work on a system without them.
Snap-to-edges always pisses me off, and I turn it off whenever I’m using a system that has it turned on.
convert-to-tab us useless to me, as the only app that I feel tabs are useful are web browsers.
maximize-whem-moved-to-sides is done in Windows 7… drag a window to the top, it maximizes. Drag it to the left or right, it maximizes vertically and covers half the screen horizontally. Double-click on the resize portion at the top of a window and it maximizes.
I guess it’s just what you’re used to.
xp doesn’t do those other win7 actions. maybe some shell/desktop addon does those.
tab grouping?
default install of xp would group multiple windows of all apps (including explore) in the taskbar. very annoying.
anything that snaps to edges (such the annoying surprise!-here’s-a-new-toolbar! in windows) also won’t work well for me, because i keep drop folders along the display edges.
perhaps beneficial: if the windows would snap to invisible cfg-able margins.
“Even with a better window manager, moving tabs between separate windows, then manipulating those windows, adds extra complexity and extra work, slowing down browsing.”
No, he’s not talking about using tabs at all. And the extra work you’re referring to applies equally to panorama: you’ve still got to group your windows manually. The idea is to group them as you create them, rather than wait until it becomes a big job and to do this in a consistent manner, rather than each application having it’s own way of doing this.
yeah. just a single horizontal split seems useful for comment pages that have the form at the bottom (usually). for a site you regularly visit, you can userstyle position:fixed to the form
“After a period of what I would call stagnation, the Mozilla team are back on track with delivering interesting UI concepts.”
They were done copying everything they could copy from Opera
“How are you actual Firefox users experiencing the Firefox 4.0 betas?”
The few times I used it, I didn’t see any wear and tear.
Disabling the menu bar results in a “Firefox” button. I usually don’t care much about application colors, but the orange really annoys me. Anyone knows how to change it?
it should be inside a chrome url. you’ll want to create a separate profile, so you can install some userchrome (editing tools) extensions.
i just did some googles, but the answer isn’t showing. ask at mozillazine. maybe somebody can tell you exactly the element.
if ff4 is like ff1 through 3.x, then in userchrome.css in your profile, just use
background-color:green
or instead of color name, use the hex color http://images.google.com/images?q=hex+color+css
example of color for some large parts of chrome
menu, menubar, toolbar {background-color:#e9ffe0;}
http://www.color-hex.com/gradient/e9ffe0
so it’s the gnome-shell overlay?
Due to this article, I just went and download the Firefox 4.4 beta and gave Panorama a spin.
It’s actually pretty cool. Yes, I could live without it, and maybe I won’t even use it much. Still, it’s not a bad concept, and I’m not sure why some people here are complaining about it. Now if it hurts performance, then yes, I’d be against it. So far, I haven’t noticed a speed difference, but I’ve only been using it for about 5 minutes. I’ll be keeping my eyes open to see how well it performs.
Thanks Thom for this article. I might not even have noticed Panorama for months if you hadn’t pointed it out.
Edited 2010-08-26 03:13 UTC
I’ve been using the Panorama feature for a bit now on the nightlies on my Mac and I like it a lot. Animations aren’t choppy in the least, quick and clean. Despite the benchmarks the whole browser has a much nicer and smoother feel than Chrome does for me.
Thom, it is quite difficult to understand why you don’t like tabs. They are much easier to handle with shortcuts than separate windows (especially if you are running several different programs). You can see web site titles so you always know what you opened. Tabs allow to work much faster and easier in the browser. You can see one page at time but you don’t need to close what you’ll read in a second and you can switch instantly. Of course, I think that there is a limit how much tabs you should open and sometimes they become like zombies which are never accessed but you can always close them or just start new session without any tabs. Maybe your browsing habits are different.
my opinion is that its very nice and welcome usuability wise.
but whats next ? a composite manager and virtual desktops / activities on firefox ?
panorama already seems like a virtual desktop manager.
i really wonder if this is a problem to solve windows lack of good window manager.
the panorama feels like spaces or kwin’s grid view to me, but with firefox windows only.
it is crucial on windows for ppl with lots of windows, but its redundant on linux or mac i guess.
The last beta also brings Firefox sync, but the preferences screen for that seems to be broken for me somehow.
does this version support multi process, not only for certain selected plugins, but all tabs too ? the project is called Electrolysis, here https://wiki.mozilla.org/Content_Processes
I agree with your post completely. If it’s not Chrome it sucks, I think you’re right about that.
One thing I do like in Firefox though is AdBlock Plus. I still haven’t seen a good alternative for Chrome which can block commercials from rtlgemist.nl, dumpert.nl, youtube etc. so for those website I still start Firefox (I have been a Firefox user for years until it became too slow, bloated and unstable).
And the tabs yes, they frustrate the hell out of me as well. When I browse a website I always click links with middle mouse button so they open in a new tab, and then 5 minutes later I have like 20 tabs open and I’m going crazy.
At that point my fingers start to get really itchy and I immediately right-click the tab I’m currently viewing and select ‘close all other tabs’. I can’t stand looking at all these open, idle and unused tabs, it’s one big mess I want to get rid of rather sooner than later.
On the other hand I couldn’t live without tabs so I’m really the person that has a love/hate relationship with tabbed browsing.
I don’t know how good it is. But why not use srware iron?
It has an Adblocker and is better when it comes to privacy and licensing stuff:
http://www.srware.net/software_srware_iron.php
Edited 2010-08-28 00:01 UTC
Read about this a while ago when it was still called Tab Candy (http://www.azarask.in/blog/). Cool stuff.
Now, I use a lot of tabs mostly because, like the author of Tab Candy says in one of his blogs introducing Tab Candy (http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/tabcandy/), I typically search for something, then open up a series of tabs for each item I am interested in; or go to a news website and look through the links and (again) open up each article I am interested in into its own tab. Anything else is just too time-consuming and I may forget that something sparked my interest.
Tab Candy/Panorama is nice as it will let me do that without having to have a several Firefox windows open, as well as come and go to the tab sets.
Now I haven’t tried it out yet, but if its in FF4 (which it very well sounds like it will be) then it will be one feature of FF4 that I will certainly be looking forward to and will likely make a lot of use of.
It will certainly be nice to segregate my works flows into different groups and switch between them in a single Firefox window, rather than having to try to manage several Firefox windows and figure out which one has the page I am interested in.
– The Panarama button is on the wrong side of the tabbar. If it defines what tabs are visible, it should be left of the tabs, maintaining a coherent visual hierarchy.
– Panorama basically introduces an MDI. MDIs are the devil; even MS, the most notorious abuser of MDIs, barely uses them anymore. This sort of functionality should be handled by the OS, not by specific applications.
– You can already achieve the same functionality by simply opening a second window. Oy vey.