[Brad]

Those who know me know that Firefox holds a special place in my heart. I'm the guy who wants to like Firefox, but I keep getting driven away by its alien UI on Mac OS X. It never quite feels like a Mac app, but it doesn't feel like a Linux or Windows app either. It's just... alien.

Firefox has long been plagued by visual and behavioral weirdness and backwards UI conventions that just feel wrong in the context of virtually all other Mac OS X software, both by Apple and the masses of third-party developers.

Firefox 2.0 promised and failed to deliver a more native look-and-feel on the Mac, but the Firefox team vowed again to refresh the interface in 3.0 to make it fit in better with the host operating system. Does Firefox 3.0 deliver on that promise?



Note that I don't argue that Firefox is laking in features. To the contrary, it has far more options than most users will ever fathom to use and its extensions framework allows for endless more. I don't hate Firefox because it's "not Apple" or for some other fanboi nonsense like that. To the contrary, I want Firefox to be the the ultimate browser. I want it to feel natural and blend seamlessly with my other Mac software. I know how much potential it has and that's why it bothers me so much when it just falls all over itself in the UI department.

I made lists of UI grievances for Firefox 1.0 and 2.0 to demonstrate why Firefox irks me. These lists consist of separately relatively minor issues, and I could live with Firefox if it had only a handful of them, but instead I'm treated to a collective deluge of UI quirks and inconsistencies that make using Firefox on a Mac a chore.

So, I'm doing the same with Firefox 3.0 and I've started with a clean slate. I wiped my Mac of all old preferences and settings for Firefox and have begun documenting a fresh list of Firefox user interface problems. The list you see below I compiled after some heavy FF3 usage tonight and will probably grow as I find/recall bugs new and old.

Without further ado...

General Weirdness

• You can't run two versions at the same time? Web developers haven't rioted about that?
  
• Default "blue" buttons don't pulse anywhere. They simply remain in a cold, dead, dark state.
• Upon first launch, the "Import Wizard" window floats above everything, even above windows and floating panels in other apps.
  
• Firefox sometimes "relaunches" itself at startup for no apparent reason. The icon loads in the Dock, vanishes, and starts loading again. Firefox also relaunches after clearing the "Import Wizard" dialog. Wtf?
• Sheets seem to be semi-modal. When a sheet is present on a window, the menu bar vanishes and keyboard shortcuts for the missing menus all fail. Sheets were designed to eliminate modality of dialogs that block processing and Firefox gets this concept completely wrong.
  
• Some "regular" windows also go semi-modal like the sheet. For example, click any of the buttons in any of the tabs under Preferences -> Advanced.
• Window scrolling is stupidly fast in Firefox. In seems the minimum scroll step is roughly 15 pixels when it should be 1 pixel.
• The fake tabs use images from Mac OS X 10.2, but mix with the inset area style from 10.3+.
  
• Firefox apparently gets confused over when to use Aqua versus Graphite.
  
• The "view source" window has a blinking cursor that implies that it accepts input, but it doesn't.
• Save and Print dialogs are modal, not sheets.
• Command-shift-P should open "Page Setup" but it doesn't.
• In Preferences, the "Main" icon should be called "General".
• There is no documented keyboard shortcut for switching tabs, even though multiple variations exist.
• Some regular windows with a standard close box also have a redundant "OK" or "Close" button.
• The selected item in the "List all tabs" menu should use a checkbox, not bold text, to indicate selection.
• Accessing a website with an invalid cert puts you through a gauntlet of confirmations to gain access. Love the cheeky "Get me out of here!" button, modal sheet, and the "Confirm" button on the wrong side. It took me no less than five clicks and lots of reading to gain temporary access.
  
  
  
  Camino gets this right with a perfectly legible dialog needing only one click:
  
  
• The list in the bookmarks "Library" window should repeat the alternating strips even past where the list ends.
• Option-clicking on a disclosure triangle should expand the entire sub-tree (such as in the Library window).
• In the Library window, hover is inconsistent in the source panel; Tags and History get underlined and change the cursor to a hand upon hover.
• Fonts are still slightly too large in Firefox. Curiously, Camino seems to be slightly smaller instead. Top to bottom: Safari 3, Camino 1.6, Firefox 3.
  

Window Decorations

• The location field shouldn't be rounded. There may not be an "official" standard for rounded fields on the Mac, but realistically you only ever see them as input for searching and filtering. The roundness is especially bad in contrast with the square favicons that most sites use.
• Command-return in the location field should load the URL in a new tab. Currently option-return (why?) does this instead.
• Clicking once in the location field should not select everything.
• Despite the creation of a unified-like theme for Firefox's window dressings, they still don't really look like Mac windows. The gradient is wrong in every combination of foreground, background, large, and small. Curiously, the height of the titlebar and toolbar are always a pixel too large. Firefox on the left; Camino with a standard toolbar on the right.
  
• Despite the unified-like appearance, windows are not draggable by the open areas in the toolbar. Instead, you have to hit an undefined upper region to initiate a drag. Also despite appearance to the contrary, windows cannot be dragged by the grey status bar along the bottom.
• When the status bar is disabled, the resize widget covers the down arrow, making the down arrow impossible to press.
• The close box on tabs is on the wrong side.
• Some windows (such as the About dialog) have a "pill" toolbar toggle button that does absolutely nothing when clicked.
• Search field elements are backwards. Firefox on the top; various Mac apps below.
  

Toolbar Issues

• The "keyhole" back/forward buttons. Seriously. Does anyone actually like those?
• Modifier-clicking the "pill" toolbar button does not change toolbar display modes.
• Toolbar buttons are not selectable by keyboard navigation.
• Toolbar items cannot be rearranged by command-drag, nor can they be dragged off to remove.
• The fake toolbar customization "sheet" behaves little like its proper counterpart. It looks very little like a real sheet. It has an odd scrolling region. The button layout is completely nonstandard. Items have to be dragged into an undefined region to remove them from the toolbar. Despite having a default button, it can't be dismissed using return, enter, or even escape.
• The toolbar context menu is woefully incomplete. It lacks the three mode options, the small size toggle, keep item visible, and remove item.
• In Preferences, the highlighted lines around toolbar buttons are too big, spacing among the toolbar buttons is off, and text in the toolbar doesn't have the beveled highlight. Firefox on the left.
  

Contextual Menu Issues

• Context menus in Firefox don't have rounded corners.
  
• Command-up/down, option-up/down, and home/end have no effect on the selection in Firefox context menus.
• Typing in Firefox context menus does not select the item that starts with given letters. Instead, certain letters activate various functions ('a' = select all, 'r' = reload, 'e' = email, 'b' = back). These "commands" don't correspond to the first letters of anything in the context menu and they surely don't correspond to actual menu commands. I have no idea where the connection is made here.
• Up/down arrow in Firefox context menus wraps around forever; the selection should stop at the top or bottom.
• The selected context menu item in Firefox cannot be activated using the space bar or any other key.
• Context menus in Firefox don't appear properly under the cursor. Not really a bother, but it's a sure-fire indication of Firefox trying to fake things and getting them wrong.
• Selected menu item doesn't blink upon activation.

HTML Form Issues

• HTML select menus are all kinds of wrong. Firefox on the left; Safari on the right.
  
• HTML select menus cannot be opened using the space bar in Firefox.
• The focus ring shows only on unstyled form elements. Applying CSS styling eliminates the ring from some elements and gives the crappy 1-bit back dotted inner-ring for others.

System Integration

• Firefox still isn't localized properly. Yes, you can download Firefox in a million different languages, but you can't get a single multi-lingual Firefox application.
• Still no text services. No text-to-speech.
• Copying text from Firefox into another app doesn't preserve fonts, styles, etc.
• Firefox's spell-checker does not look like, behave like, or even share the same dictionary with the system-wide spelling service. Of course, the floating dictionary is also MIA. Firefox on the left; Safari on the right. (both with the same word)
  

Now, to show a little mercy on the Firefox guys, here's a list of UI issues I was happy to see resolved with the release of Firefox 3.0.

UI things that Firefox 3.0 got right! (that 2.0 got wrong)

• HTML form inputs finally look like Mac widgets! And to one-up the Camino guys, Firefox 3 takes Safari's approach and reverts to non-Aqua when CSS styles are applied!
• Dragged text and images are WYSIWYG! No more dotted black outlines!
• The window resize button no longer leaves 128 unused pixels on the right! Leaving the resize-vs-maximize debate aside, at least now it is doing one of the two correctly.
• Text selection is better! Double-click-drag now correctly alters the selection by whole words.
• Text editing navigation by keyboard is better! Option-left/right doesn't seem to get stuck on punctuation any more.
• Despite the weird gradient and dragging issues, the adoption of a unified-like window toolbar is welcome!
• Even though they aren't documented, the adoption of Safari's tab-navigating shortcuts is welcome!
• Resize knob between the location and search field = win!
• Tooltips look way better! They now practically look native (just a touch too yellow) and don't blink upon creation.
• Real sheets? Real sheets! Now, just make them work sanely...
• The "Special Characters" palette is finally available from the Edit menu!

[Fahrenheit]

Don't use it then!

[chucker]

Originally Posted by Farenheit Don't use it then!

That's about as silly as "what? you're complaining about open source software? go ahead and fix the issues yourself!"

There's a thing called constructive criticism, and Brad masters it. He's interested (as he pointed out numerous ways in the post) in improvement, not in bashing.

[dmegatool]

Originally Posted by Brad The list you see below I compiled after some heavy FF3 usage tonight and will probably grow as I find/recall bugs new and old.

Well... nice starting draft. :P

[Banana]

Brad, you've probably done that, but I wanted to make sure you sent in all those excellent feedback to the FF team?

Also, does sheet = dialog box?

[sirnick4]

Very nice, Brad. But I was expecting this thread sooner

[ezkcdude]

The one feature I was hoping Firefox 3.0 would finally have is something equivalent to Opera's "Magic Wand" tool for filling userid/pwd combos. Firefox has the ability to store this info, yet it doesn't have an auto-fill feature, AFAICT.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by Banana Brad, you've probably done that, but I wanted to make sure you sent in all those excellent feedback to the FF team?

Not this set, no, and unless someone has a "connection" at MoFo to whom we could send my list, they may not get it because I'm not about to spend days slogging through Bugzilla searching for duplicates, adding comments, filing new tickets, etc. for all these issues.

Originally Posted by Banana Also, does sheet = dialog box?

The big difference between sheets and old-style modal dialogs is that sheets are tied to a single window and are considered non-blocking because you can continue to work in the application elsewhere. Modal dialogs, on the other hand, block all other activity in the application until the dialog is addressed.

Non-blocking sheet dialog:



Blocking modal dialog:

[rampancy]

Originally Posted by Brad [*] Accessing a website with an invalid cert puts you through a gauntlet of confirmations to gain access. Love the cheeky "Get me out of here!" button, modal sheet, and the "Confirm" button on the wrong side. It took me no less than five clicks and lots of reading to gain temporary access. Camino gets this right with a perfectly legible dialog needing only one click:

I bumped into this when I was browsing Buckleys.com and collided with what Firefox thought was a bogus certificate. I hated how in almost Vista-like fashion, it made it almost impossible for me to easily and quickly dismiss the security warning screens for what I knew was a legit site. Ugh.

[chucker]

Originally Posted by Banana Also, does sheet = dialog box?

A sheet is an alternative to a dialog. It's different in that, rather than being modal to the application or the entire system, it is modal to (and visually attached to) a window.

Example for a dialog in Safari: File → Open File…
Example for a sheet in Safari: File → Save As…

[Banana]

Brad,

So Bugzilla is a monstrosity? Tsk. That may partially explain why they're so slow to detect and fix bugs.

It should be something like this: You post a report, it takes care of posting each issues to correct threads, tells you if it's already been posted for so and so and you click 'OK' and you're done.

Oh, well.


Thanks for the explanation about sheets/dialog boxes.

[Bryson]

So, for the benefit of us non-coding moron types, why is that Firefox can't use native widgets like everyone else does? Is it just contraryness, or is there a technical reason?

[Banana]

I think I saw a mention in that other thread about 2.0 UI grievances saying that FF originally was designed to be cross platform, and thus tried to avoid dependencies on native libraries, which would complicate the porting, and initially wrapped everything in their own UI library. Abstracting away the UI, so they can continue to port around the engine and other functionalities without worrying about the UI to support them is what's going on, I think.

[chucker]

Originally Posted by Bryson So, for the benefit of us non-coding moron types, why is that Firefox can't use native widgets like everyone else does? Is it just contraryness, or is there a technical reason?

It's because Firefox's UI uses XUL, a custom Mozilla-designed language that works across platforms. While they employ various techniques to adapt the UI to particular platforms, the overarching goal was to share the same UI code between Aqua, Windows, Gtk and others, and it shows.

To go fully native would be to imitate the project goals of Camino.

[rampancy]

smorgan, one of the Camino devs, posted this to the Camino forums;

What did *not* happen, but many people are interpreting "Cocoa Firefox" to mean, is that the browser chrome (everything that isn't the web page) is now using standard Cocoa controls. Firefox still uses XUL for all of its chrome. The toolbar isn't an NSToolbar, the URL bar isn't an NSTextField, the search bar isn't an NSSearchField, the bookmark manager isn't NSOutlineView or NSTableView based, context menus aren't NSMenus, etc. As a result, lots of things--some subtle, some less so--still do not behave the way they would be in any other OS X application, just as was the case in Firefox 2.

Edit: Beaten to it by chucker...

[Banana]

Wait, so you're telling me that they're effectively creating their own Mac UI controls?!?

Can't this be as simple as identifying the platform, then calling on the appropriate binding to a UI library, be it Aqua, Windows, or Gtk so the developers can just use FFTextField which would then inherit NSTextField?!?

[Bryson]

It does seem odd. If the stated aim is to make the UI platfor-agnostic, then why not, you know...make the UI platform agnostic? At the moment they write custom UI widgets for each platform anyway....

It seems to me that what people really want is Camino, only with Firefox extensions.

I'm sticking to Omniweb, thanks!

[Brad]

Originally Posted by Banana Wait, so you're telling me that they're effectively creating their own Mac UI controls?!?

Yeah, that's how all Mozilla apps (Mozilla, SeaMonkey, Firefox, Thunderbird, Songbird, Flock) have always operated. Camino is the sole exception because it actually uses native chrome and only uses the faked stuff within the rendered browser view.

Originally Posted by Banana Can't this be as simple as...

One would think so, right?

[chucker]

Originally Posted by Brad Camino is the sole exception

Actually, there are other Mozilla-derived projects that don't use XUL, among them K-Meleon on Windows, Galeon and Epiphany on GNOME, and Correo on Mac OS X. None of those are part of Mozilla Foundation/Corporation, but then again, you also listed Songbird and Flock, which aren't either, as well as Seamonkey, which isn't any more.

[Fahrenheit]

Ok, I will say one thing that bugs me a little - on Safari I get feedback that I have copied text correctly by the menu bar drop down flashing blue (try it if you don't get me), but with Firefox that doesn't happen, so there is no feedback.

[Bryson]

Hang on, hang on. We're all missing the important info in this thread.

There's an Executive Squash Room?

[dmegatool]

Originally Posted by Farenheit Ok, I will say one thing that bugs me a little - on Safari I get feedback that I have copied text correctly by the menu bar drop down flashing blue (try it if you don't get me), but with Firefox that doesn't happen, so there is no feedback.

It's working for me... maybe I'm the exception but when I copy some text, I can see the "Édition" menu flash

[Banana]

Originally Posted by Brad Yeah, that's how all Mozilla apps (Mozilla, SeaMonkey, Firefox, Thunderbird, Songbird, Flock) have always operated. Camino is the sole exception because it actually uses native chrome and only uses the faked stuff within the rendered browser view.

Sure looks like they re-invented wheels...

One would think so, right?

Well, I sure hope they had a good technical reason for doing that (even if it didn't work out as originally envisioned when they hatched that idea of XUL...) Else, they're going to look mighty foolish...

[zippy]

Man, I'd hate to be a child of Brad's bringing home his first kindergarten art project. I'm not sure the tyke would survive the scrutiny.

[Banana]

Well, considered that Brad's fixed, we won't have to worry about that hypothetical child being traumatized.

[Majost]

Originally Posted by Banana Sure looks like they re-invented wheels... Well, I sure hope they had a good technical reason for doing that (even if it didn't work out as originally envisioned when they hatched that idea of XUL...) Else, they're going to look mighty foolish...

Well, for one, themes are possible and (apparently) easy with XUL. But really, if you do it right, do you really need themes to fix it?

[Brad]

Originally Posted by Majost Well, for one, themes are possible and (apparently) easy with XUL. But really, if you do it right, do you really need themes to fix it?

Correct and correct.

The problem here is that themes only superficially change the looks. Themes cannot fix broken behaviors.

[ironlung]

I was waiting for this Brad. Good criticism. Thank you. I particularly hated how the import window floated over everything, while I was installing.

[Banana]

Originally Posted by Majost Well, for one, themes are possible and (apparently) easy with XUL. But really, if you do it right, do you really need themes to fix it?

Now, that may explain it a bit. I wonder if they were in the mindset of "making a browser that anyone can edit to their liking!" more than "making a browser that looks purty!" and thus we have XUL....

[rampancy]

Apparently by delving into the hidden prefs accessed by going to "about:config" you can actually fix the location bar's behaviour with text selection so it can behave the way it should; essentially all you need to do is change "browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll" from true to false, by double clicking on it.