Firefox 4.0: New Design Changes Revealed

Non-linkjacked: <a href="http://blog.stephenhorlander.com/2009/12/21/windows-themeui-update/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.stephenhorlander.com/2009/12/21/windows-themeui-...</a> (which I submitted earlier: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1007484" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1007484</a>)

Do you remember in the comics of chrome, they said they were doing it to help other browsers. They also said they'd really like to have their ideas borrowed to make the web a better place.

Very Chromish. I'm glad they're not too proud to borrow good ideas when they see them. Now if they can just improve stability and speed I may switch back from Chromium.

This makes me very, very happy. I use Chrome on my netbook for two reasons: it's faster, and it takes up significantly less screen space. It's nice to see Firefox beginning to compete in at least one of those two areas.

How is this saving space? How is this Chrome-ish?<p>Chrome saved space by getting rid of the title bar (a bar that would just say "Chrome"). From these pictures, Firefox still has a whole bar that just says "Firefox." Why?<p>Mozilla, please allow us to place tabs on the Title bar!<p>And if you really want to blow Chrome out of the water, explore innovative vertical tab options. Tree style tabs is an immensely popular extension for a reason.

All I ever wanted from Firefox 4.0 is the user interface latency (or rather, lack thereof) of Chromium and the process-per-tab / process-per-plugin model. The latter would probably help a lot with the former.<p>The screenshot mockups don't tell.

I wish they'd optimize for vertical space instead of eye candy. Most applications use way too much vertically stacked menubars, toolbars, bookmarks bars etc..., nibbling away precious display space from the document.

Some of the sample back/forward button mockups are quite nice and subtle but the one they use in the final 4.0/3.5 comparison image is terribly chunky.

For those people that said it was pointless for google to enter the browser market, here's why.

Hey, that's just like Opera!<p>Again.