Loading ...Firefox 3 gets a toolbar resizer and native Vista menus
Latest Firefox 3 development release (August 8 nightly) got a couple of small but significant improvements among the usual couple of dozens bug fixes.
First, the addition of a resizer to the Customize Toolbar dialog you can add to the toolbar to easily resize the search bar and the location bar, a much requested feature. Currently the search bar is flexible which means it changes size as the window does but you can’t set a specific width unless you hack a bit.
Not surprisingly, since it has just been added, it has some bugs. For example buttons get squeezed if you push the resizer too much towards them and they won’t resize afterwards. But that’s just funny behavior while it gets polished in coming days.
The second improvement gives Firefox’s menus a native look in Windows Vista. Not much else to say but to show in the before and after screenshots below provided by p3nguin and Omega X respectively.
Up: Before menu updates (ugly) - Below: After a.k.a pretty.
As the number of Vista users keeps increasing it becomes more necessary to deliver a native look and feel and Mozilla is on it and has the update of Firefox theme to better fit in Windows Vista as a priority requirement.
Interestingly, the succinct document also mentions the possibility of removing the menu bar but I doubt it will be done for Firefox 3. Not that it’s a crazy idea. It would really make Firefox look cleaner while keeping it functional (you can try it with the Personal Menu extension), but I don’t think there will be time for a discussion as extensive as a change like this would generate.
Improvements keep dropping in. What’s in your wish list?
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August 8th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Well, I sure hope they get enough time to develop places. It must rock! Seems a bit risky leaving the UI until this late in the development cycle…
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August 8th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
One of the things I’d like to see is the removal of the Bookmarks Toolbar by default. I often see it wasting screen space, b/c new users don’t tend to use it. Experienced users can easily enable it.
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August 8th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
I have simple requests for a vanilla install of Firefox, which means they will be hard to implement:
- Smaller memory footprint
- Faster start time
- Full standards compliance (for approved standards at least)
Simple, yet hard. I understand they’re even working on these, but until they stop adding popular extensions into the base code these will continue to be an issue.
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August 15th, 2007 at 12:25 am
as a kde user i really hope they add the ability to hide the menu bar, menubars are necisarry but go unused most of the time. (unfortunately theyd have to hide it, as too many new users would hide theyre menus then waste time trying to get it back, so perhaps it is best as an extenuation)
as for the UI upgrade, it looks good but im starting to get scared that OSX/winXP/vista/gnome are all going to get special attention leaving the rest of us stuck with ths same old UI :(
bob: while i agree with you on the extentions. your other two requirements aren’t possible.
why do you want lots of memory free? using up avalible memory (its there for a reason) allows firefox to run smoother and faster than if it decided to ignore your memory.
faster boot times: as i understand it firefox takes agers to boot because it setsup all the extentions and stuff and checks the system before it starts. to boot faster firefox could assume everything(or atleast somethings) are OK and leave parts of the system setup ready for a fasterboot, however this would increase instability and not be worth it for the average user. instead an extention should offer this.
extentions: should remain as extensions and Firefox should come with useful 1st party ones by default IMO, however somebody has choosen to make firefox 1 huge as program and i cant see this changing anytime soon :(
perhaps there could be a firefox derivative that back-ports important upgrades to the 1.5 branch (i didn’t feel too much feature bloat back then) its alot of work but would produce a faster browser that alot of people would prefer (i think this linux kernels and 2.4 is still maintained to have most of 2.6 (its larger brother)’s featuers)
bram i think they get money for the bookmarks toolbar
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Stephan SokolowJune 28th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Here’s how mine is set up: http://img174.imageshack.us/my.php?image=temp45ka1.png
The globe icon is the menubar as a single menu (Compact Menu 2), I used a userChrome.css hack to merge the Stop and Reload buttons Safari-style, and everything else is either in the context menu or the bookmarks toolbar. (Toggled by the star-and-boxes button)
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April 2nd, 2008 at 8:45 am
Removing the menu is a bad idea. It is, for older users of IE, the biggest complaint I hear because they can’t find anything. I don’t have a problem with it being optional, I just do not want it MIA in a future release.
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