My Ubuntu automatically updated Firefox to 10.1 just yesterday. After a few hours, I dropped the Ubuntu version and moved back to 3.6. I've tried to post this to 'Feedbac… (čítať viac)
My Ubuntu automatically updated Firefox to 10.1 just yesterday. After a few hours, I dropped the Ubuntu version and moved back to 3.6. I've tried to post this to 'Feedback' but the page just keeps telling me to upgrade to the latest version of Firefox..(..) So this isn't really a community 'question' so much as it is feedback to the design / development team.
The black tab bar is a bad design choice. It works insomuch as it makes the tab area insignificant to the eye, which is a good thing to highlight the page. It fails because perusing the tabs for icons has become much more difficult. Many of the pages I use have black shadowed backgrounds or the page icons have black components. The icons therefore become indistinct from the background when trying to locate a specific page. Secondarily, the tab and address bar have become indistinct from the menu bar, which is definitely a bad thing. The menu bar is something used rarely, however the tab bar is something used frequently. There should definitely be a clear visual distinction between these two on-screen elements. This allows the user to easily and quickly distinguish the tab bar from the menu bar (without pause for thought or distraction). Thirdly, the page font I most commonly see somehow got changed significantly to something moderately more difficult to read, and uncommon to my other applications. Perhaps this is just alterable in some fashion, but I didn't bother due to the tab issue.
Before anyone suggests it, I spent half an hour trolling through and testing the various themes, none of which reflected the (imo v.good) visual layout prior to the update (including the Firefox 3 theme), nor provided an improved experience. And no, I'm not going to waste time building my own 'theme' in order to use a piece of software.
I use Firefox all-day everyday for work, and the added difficulty of regularly & frequently navigating between my absolute minimum of four open tabs is an unnecessary burden which I'm not going to bother dealing with. I'll be sticking with Firefox 3.6 until it's no longer usable, at which point if the tab bar has changed to a more usable colour, I'll upgrade once again. If not, then I'll be migrating permanently to Chrome .. which would be an annoying necessity.
I've been using Firefox since 0.8 and this is the first time I've seriously considered having to switch to a different core browser. I don't want to use Google's browser, but the best browser to use is the browser that is most usable.
