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Firefox 3.0 Skinning Update

Mar. 25, 2008 Paul Thurrott | Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows

Abandon all hope, ye who had hoped that Firefox 3 would look great on your OS of choice. It won't. Mozilla's Robert Accettura provides an update on the new default skin in Firefox 3, this time for the XP and Mac OS X versions. And it's just sad...

Back in January I posted some pics of the new skin in Firefox for those who haven’t tried it themselves. Figured I’d update with the latest.

For the navigation toolbar the most obvious change is the new keyhole design. My only complaint is that the menu that appears when you click and hold isn’t as intuitive since the arrow isn’t there.

Navigation Toolbar (Windows XP)

Navigation Toolbar (Mac OS X 10.4)


That’s all for now folks. If warranted, I’ll post again with updates.

Given this UI disaster, I can only imagine two possibly decent outcomes. One, someone comes up with a Firefox 3 skin that actually looks something like the original plan, as discussed here back in October 2007. Or two, we wait until Mozilla gets serious about the browser UI in Firefox 4. Neither is optimal, of course.

Discuss this Article 11

daveinla
on Mar 25, 2008
I've got bad news guys... I bought a great sport car. it's got great engine, handles great, but it's a total disaster ... The cigarette lighter is in such a place that I can't see it when I'm drivin. I have to bend to use it... That's a shame. I think I'll have to give the car back soon. That's very shameful from these guys who were supposed to design great cars. I'll keep you posted.
brandon.pope
on Mar 25, 2008
I think it is safe to say that Firefox served it purpose by spurring the other big players into realizing they were way behind schedule on their own browsers. Since Firefox became popular both IE and Safari have undergone huge improvements, and in my opinion both are now as good or better than Firefox in almost all of the ways that Firefox became popular for in the first place (aside from extensibility which is only important to a very very small portion of consumers). http://www.chipnit.com
BrightrevCarl
on Mar 25, 2008
I think saying it's a disaster is going a bit far, but I don't like the new theme either. Why is the back button bigger than the forward button? I can think of no logical reason for this to be the case. Were people having a hard time finding the back button? I have similar questions about IE. Why move all the interface widgets around for no good reason in IE7? The good part is that the Firefox interface is easy to fix. I'll just grab the Firefox 2.0 theme (or Vista theme or whatever) when the browser is released.
bielawski
on Mar 25, 2008
The Mac UI looks great. The Windows one looks like it was made in under two hours.
rseiler
on Mar 25, 2008
@Pthurrott: You sure have a knack for keying in on the most important aspects of a story. I hope you keep hammering on this, since there's really not much else to talk about with FF3. BTW, this is the best reporting on a product since CRN's on XP SP3, so good work. @BrightrevCarl: Isn't it obvious? Because the Back button is used much more than the Forward button.
BrightrevCarl
on Mar 25, 2008
@rseiler - Fair enough, but the back button is the first interface element on the left in an app with essentially five important buttons, so it's not hard to find. The big back button seems unnecessary, as does the little tray area beneath the back and forward buttons. I like things clean and simple, and the new theme is funky and unbalanced. Like I said above, I'm happy to solve my own problem by dumping the new theme when I start using FF3.0 full time.
daveinla
on Mar 25, 2008
Actually the back button is the most used in a browser. So I'm happy to have it bigger than the other ones. So now calling the theme unbalanced just because that button is bigger than the others is rather far fetched...
drylight
on Mar 25, 2008
I can't believe that a Vista user would have the gall to complain about a UI. After all, you are using a horrendously looking operating system. "Vista. It's like looking at an 90 year old in drag."
daveinla
on Mar 25, 2008
^ I don't agree, but prepare for the flames ...
Cfischer83
on Mar 25, 2008
daveinla... drylight's comments don't even deserve a flame ;) I personally think that OS X's is decent, and at least better than Safari, but the new one for XP (I'm assuming it looks the same in Vista?) is worse than what they have now!! It's not so much bad as it is antiquated, and seeing how everything else is moving forward in UI design it's like Mozilla is moving backwards...
djRob
on Mar 28, 2008
First it was Symphony is good (better than OpenOffice) because it looks pretty. Now FF is bad because it is ugly. Maybe you should switch to Mac because it is shoooo pretty ;-) BTW Symphony is crap (Beta 2) it can't open documents when you move document icon on Symphony's window or desktop icon.

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