How will Pale Moon progress if Firefox implements bug 755593

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Gene-

How will Pale Moon progress if Firefox implements bug 755593

Unread post by Gene- » 2013-01-29, 06:02

I originally was just a regular Firefox user who migrated to Pale Moon in the last month or two due to Mozilla's handling of bug 755593(Remove tabs-on-bottom mode).
I noticed that there was a poll asking whether to continue based on later versions of Firefox or 17ESR, what happens to Pale Moon when Firefox removes tabs on bottom mode?
Either way it looks like I'm going to lose my preferred theme since the guy developing it decided to set it as incompatible for Firefox 17+.

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Moonchild
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Re: How will Pale Moon progress if Firefox implements bug 75

Unread post by Moonchild » 2013-01-29, 10:58

Pale Moon is Firefox-based. It is not Firefox, and as such whatever daft decisions are made by the Mozilla Firefox UX team don't need to be followed. The UI change to Chrome "Australis" will not be followed, for example, since from a design point of view, it makes no sense. Removing features because of an arbitrary decision with no clear and compelling reason ("removing the option to choose") is not and will never be part of Pale Moon's approach to a web browser. The Mozilla code base is characterized by its flexibility and configurability. Removing user choice to make the browser user conform to "the UX team's preferred way of working" is very much counter what Firefox has always been about.

Pale Moon has, and will continue to have, tabs on the bottom by default, with the option to have them on top if desired, because for windowed use of the browser it makes more sense. I've written an explanation of this on the website, and will quote an excerpt here for the sake of ease:
Tabs on top
This has been a hot topic, and one could even call it "trendy" - but is it logical from a UI design perspective?

In some conditions, it is: when a browser is maximized or used in full screen, having the tabs at or close to the edge of the browser means they are at the edge of the screen. In this case, it becomes easier to use, since the screen edge is a "hard" border and you don't have to be as accurate to quickly select a different tab - this follows Fitts' law concepts.

In all other cases, it is not. Considering that today's computers have high resolution screens - in this age of full HD being pretty much standard with any system - most people use Windows with multiple applications in regular windows, and not maximized. In this scenario, having tabs on top means that, once again, element grouping (this time of larger zones of the browser) is not followed.

The tabs don't control the way the navigation controls of the browser or the URL bar look or behave, nor do they influence other toolbars that may be there; they only control the page content. Both tabs and content are dynamic. One could argue that the URL address is an exception to this, of course, but in that case you would expect the URL field to be a separate control in its own zone - which it is not.
If you consider system elements of the window placed around these layouts, like the application menu (which is a standard UI convention to have), title bar and borders, potential side bar, additional browser controls at the left and/or right end of the tab bar, etc., then it becomes even clearer that, in the right hand layout [sic: with tabs on the bottom], the hierarchy of the elements is preserved: the outside being standard system elements (OS-static), wrapping around the browser elements specific to the program (application-static), which in turn wrap around content and content controls, which are dynamic.
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Ryrynz

Pale Moon will *progress* regardless.

Unread post by Ryrynz » 2013-01-29, 11:53

Interesting post here from Nic who's post I just happened to stop my scroll on..

"Who are developers to tell users what suits the users' needs or how the users must work? We can offers options, but we should _never_ adopt the arrogance of some vendors who believe that only they - strictly, their developers - know how users work most effectively with their products."

Reminds me of the Firefox updating debacle.. Hell, reminds me of MS and Windows 8 too. I love how some software companies think it's wise to remove options and "improve" things in such a way it's more a step backwards than forwards.

Thank god for being able to configure things the way you want (thank you addon devs) if only more people knew how to do it or took time to learn to customize things.. luckily there's MC here who has some common sense.

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Re: How will Pale Moon progress if Firefox implements bug 75

Unread post by ron_1 » 2013-01-29, 19:02

After reading through the "bug 755593" link all I can say is I'm glad I found and switched over to Palemoon about a year ago.
Keep up the good work, MC! :thumbup:

atomicdryad

Re: How will Pale Moon progress if Firefox implements bug 75

Unread post by atomicdryad » 2013-02-11, 11:54

....this is the first I heard of that. WTF are they thinking? Entering RAGE MODE in 3...2...
Moonchild wrote:Pale Moon is Firefox-based. It is not Firefox, and as such whatever daft decisions are made by the Mozilla Firefox UX team don't need to be followed. The UI change to Chrome "Australis" will not be followed, for example, since from a design point of view, it makes no sense.
(snip)
Pale Moon has, and will continue to have, tabs on the bottom by default, with the option to have them on top if desired, because for windowed use of the browser it makes more sense.
...*sigh of relief* Someone to save us from the predations of the Firefox UX team. Thank you!

Also, here's another fantastic post regarding the issue: There comes a time in the history of every system where the developer base will run out of good ideas on how to improve the user experience and under internal pressure for change and progress will resort to self-indulgent aesthetic masturbation and delusions of infallibility at the cost of the usefulness of their product. For Firefox this was at the end of the production cycle of Version 3.
:P

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