August 23, 2010
Posted by beltzner
Delicious, soapy ham hocks
I am now a big fan of soapy ham hocks.
Brian King recently wrote about a very significant change to the Firefox user interface which will be seen by all Windows Vista and Windows 7 users when they upgrade to Firefox 4. Designed by Alex Faaborg and the UX team based on community feedback from Test Pilot data, this new “Firefox Menu” will replace the Menu Bar. The goal is to put the most frequently used controls in a single menu, and return vertical space to the web content area by removing the pixels otherwise taken up by the Menu Bar:
(Image courtesy Brian King)
Alex filed a bug with the design, which included several new UI concepts that had not been previously implemented using XUL, such as a two-tiered Windows Vista-esque menu, and a menu that had buttons in it. At the time the bug was filed, we weren’t sure who would have time to experiment and implement the changes, and considered some of the design items to be at risk for Firefox 4.
This is where the soapy ham hocks come into the story.
Joshua M (who also goes by SoapyHamHocks on IRC) created a Bugzilla account on August 12th, and put up his first attempt at an implementation the next day. Working with the Firefox team in IRC and through Bugzilla, several iterations of his patch went by, and on August 20th, the patch landed in Mozilla’s codebase. There are some bugs and issues to work out, but thanks to Joshua’s contribution, our Windows Vista/7 users will all be able to look forward to a much more native, and better user experience – and of course, if Windows XP users want to try it out, they can customize their UI to do so! It should appear in a future beta revision, and of course users will be able to give us feedback about it at that time.
I’m always thrilled to see new contributors who want to make a difference for millions of users finding their way into our community, and similarly thrilled when our community can guide and help these new contributors towards successful implementations. Welcome to our motley crew, SoapyHamHocks – we all appreciate your work and effort.
14 Comments
August 23, 2010
Now I feel inspired to have a go at some patches as well. Where do I need to go to get started with editing the source code and whatnot?
August 23, 2010
I have already themed this menu in my theme Nautipolis, and I’ve changed it so that the appmenu is always shown (even if the menubar is visible).
August 23, 2010
Screenshot can be found at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/61354415@N00/4919824480/
August 23, 2010
I’ve been checking out the new menu in the nightlies… very cool.
The one thing I can’t seem to get used to is the behavior of the split menus, though. The mouseover target to show the actual menu is very small. It’s a continual irritant… I’m so used to easily displaying submenus in every other application I use.
I sympathize with bug 589146 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=589146).
August 23, 2010
@josh – https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Participating_in_the_Mozilla_project has a bunch of information, but you can always hop onto irc.mozilla.org and join #fx-team or #developers to ask people on how to get started.
August 24, 2010
Looks great! How about icons for History and Downloads too?
August 24, 2010
This styling is dependent upon the user having Aero in use. I use Vista and do not use Aero so I still see the titlebar and the new Menu button (this should be fixed).
Also, why do I still have to display the menu bar to get to the Check for Updates command? Now that we have a two-pane Firefox Menu can’t this still live under Help or Options?
Thank you.
August 24, 2010
@Orrin – From what I’ve read, “Check for Updates” is going to be moved to a link on the “About Firefox” dialog window.
August 24, 2010
This new single “menupanel”, and in particular the behaviour of the arrows, is one of the most shocking UI decisions I’ve seen since the massive failure of IE7 revamp. Arrows open submenus that cover already opened menus, arrows act independently of the label “attached” to them. Overall, I find this panel unintuitive, mixing menus and panels, badly organizing the spatial layout of the popups. Urgh. Sorry…
August 24, 2010
Shocking! The behaviour of the arrows are bugs, Daniel, and they are on file. Thanks as always for your positive and engaging contributions.
August 24, 2010
Mike, my opinion is that integration with Windows is one thing, _copying_ Windows is another. Here, the menupanel is a clear copy of the Start menu of Windows, something average users often complain about because of its lack of intuitivity. Gecko2 has IMHO everything needed to improve the menubar UI and UX far beyond what MSFT is able to do with the Start menu paradigm…
That said, a contribution has not to be always positive or constructive. I dislike 100% the new menu and that is feedback. A few other persons around me right now dislike it too, in strong terms too, and that’s also feedback. Feedback is always valuable even if negative. I commented on a technical proposal and I appreciate the fact you replied with a personal attack
The menupanel can be technically well designed, well coded, well organized and I still have the right to think and say it’s ugly in terms not only of UI but also UX. Take it or don’t ask for feedback again.
“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” — Winston Churchill
August 24, 2010
I find the new menu to be both useful it saves the use of more Icons. I do not see it as a copy of anything. Kudos to SoapyHamHocks for the design. I am using it now and it is great!
August 25, 2010
Me likey, but I think the spacing on XP needs to be boosted. Can the menu be made bigger? It’s tiny, even on my 1024×600 netbook.
Also, I’m not one for quoting Fitt’s law, but the target areas for those submenu arrows are very small. The popup on delay will help, but can the target areas be made bigger (particularly, wider)?
(I sound like a grumpy old man: I can’t see anything! Why isn’t it bigger!)
Really love this approach, though.
August 26, 2010
I’m not crazy about the icons, but the rest of it looks good. I don’t mind split menus a long as they don’t take 2-3 seconds to load like they do on Windows’ start menu.
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