Upcoming Firefox Makeover – Imitation (of Chrome) Truly The Most Sincere Flattery

In a move that may prove the undoing of the Firefox market share, the developers are stating that Firefox will get some changes as a nod to the changing face of Windows, but also the details show that more than a few of the proposed changes will make the new Firefox look more than a little like Google upstart Chrome.

Explaining that it will be a two step transform, we are not allowed to know the exact reasons why. It might be a process that the developer’s believe is too much for one jump, from a programming standpoint, or, perhaps it is being considered too large a stride for the users.

The developer’s fully admit that the Firefox look is frumpy and dated, and the story in ComputerWorld tells why -

Noting that Firefox’s current Windows interface feels “dated and behind,” Mozilla wants to spiff up Firefox 3.7 by embracing the “glass” style Microsoft debuted in Vista, moving to a more neutral color palette, hiding the menu bar, trimming the menu to just two items — “Page” and “Tools” — and combining “Stop” and “Reload” into one general-purpose button.

The decision to hide the menu bar, which Mozilla initially said would be replaced by a “ribbon”-style design similar to the often-derided look of Microsoft’s Office 2007, raised a ruckus in September when users expressed their displeasure. Mozilla later clarified its planning documents, and denied it would “ribbonize” Firefox.

Firefox 4.0 will continue the interface changes. Current ideas for that 2010 release include giving users the option of moving the browser’s tabs to the top of the application’s display, a so-called “tab-on-top” look that other browsers, notably Chrome, have adopted.

The Firefox interface was dated and behind from the start. That splash of color with vast expanses of overwhelming beige was advanced for Windows 3, but nothing more.  The dearth of beige was one of the things I found so enticing about Opera.

Other possible interface changes in Firefox 4.0 would combine the browser’s address and search bars — another visual element within Chrome — and remove the status bar at the bottom of the display.

The Firefox interface design plans have been spelled out in a long entry on Mozilla’s wiki.

Since I no longer use Firefox (whenever I install a BSD or Linux distribution on a machine, the very first addition is Opera. I find the Opera way of doing things much easier, and I don’t have to ever put up with the ’sea of beige’.) I can’t say I speak for the average user, but I do know that the combined address and search bar in Chrome for lots of people I interact with is one of the deal breakers.

Mozilla preempted criticism of some of those moves by saying it is not copying Chrome in particular, or other browsers in general. “We are not trying to make Firefox look like any other browser,” Mozilla stated in the planning document. “Firefox is Firefox. Similarities between browsers are unavoidable. They all have shared lineage and are based off of their predecessors. The basics of what a browser does and how it does it is already established. Browsers are all trying to solve the same problems so evolutionary ideas that are similar are inevitable.”

I find this very disingenuous. Clearly the Mozilla people are trying to increase share, and include the things it thinks are best from other browsers. No one can assess blame for that, but ‘lifting’ pieces from other browsers directly is not good form.

I find I use Chrome as a secondary browser, and I don’t expressly dislike it, but other than using it to be familiar, I don’t find anything about the interface especially innovative, usable, or handsome. I believe that 8 out of 10 would answer “speed” when asked why they use it. It is like that quick and dirty batch file that used to be thrown together to accomplish something that no other program would do – you used the batch, got the results, and put it away until next time, because there was nothing to look at.

Firefox has become big because it is not Internet Exploder, but also because of its modularity, with the various extensions. If the developers wanted to make Firefox truly innovative, it would make large chunks of the code interchangeable, kind of like a Lego approach. If you could add the interface of Opera, with the extensibility that Firefox has already, and a dose of speed from Chrome, with a possibility of substituting a Chrome-like face if that becomes the user’s preference. you could really ‘clean up’ because most everyone’s choices could be accommodated.

The article goes on with -

Firefox, he said, didn’t mimic Microsoft’s Internet Explorer look and feel when it debuted. “We innovated,” Beltzner said. Now, however, things are different. “All the browser UI designers have been experimenting, [drawing] from each other,” he said.

As an outside observer, I look and see that not much has happened to the Firefox interface from the start, and, when I did use it, I wasn’t overly enthused – the best thing was that it was not IE. I later became fond of extensions, but they were always lagging behind the development of the main program – sometimes far behind.

Opera has been an innovator, and when I see things in Firefox or Chrome, much of the time they have previewed in Opera. Also, it is not as if the lifted ideas were being better executed. Many times the execution was not as well done. It really does amaze that Opera has not grown much more rapidly – the only answer I’ve been able to posit is the fact that Opera, though free, is not open source. Lots of people are on the bandwagon due to the idea of open source, and I certainly understand.

The new look and feel will most likely please Windows users, but how will it work on other operating systems? Time will tell if changing to try to capture the latest fashion look is a smart move. (Still, I’m all for as much beige removal as possible.)

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Quote of the day:

Martyrdom is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.

- George Bernard Shaw

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