Firefox/Feature Brainstorming:Default Browser UI

« Firefox/Feature Brainstorming

Specific features	References
Combine reload and stop buttons With rare exceptions, the Average User does not need access to both the reload and stop buttons at the same time. Combining them so they occupy the same space and "toggle," à la Safari, will free up real estate on the UI and reduce visual complexity. ...at the cost of continuously reload pages on locks/slowness/etc. Shiira already avoided this solution. If this will be done, MUST be enabled/disabled with a setting in the Preferences.	Apple - OS X - Safari
Simple Interface Many people like the simplicity of IE7 - that's the way it should be. More people would use Firefox if it were simplified. Take out the stuff that's not needed... Do not integrate ANYTHING that should be an extension. Instead of integrating, provide more good APIs (XPCOM components + JS wrappers) for the extensions.	Note that all successful endeavors are simple (ie. Google, Windows, IE) Note that Firefox won't remain even as simple as it is now, if all the suggested features are going to be implemented! It won't be, but it SHOULD be at all costs - as I said, that's what most of the world likes, simplicity. Not everyone knows how to install an extension - we should start off small... Concepts of Firefox "Core" and "More".
Tab Exposé Exposé allows a user to quickly locate an open tab without the need to click through many tabs to find a specific target.	Apple - Mac OS X - Exposé Exposé on Wikipedia Shiira Web Browser
Text link recognition Double click on a text link (like: www.somesite.com/here.html or http://www.somesite.com/here.html) recognizes it and opens it like a regular link, a very simple feature.
Synesthetic Surfing Synesthesia, or the cross-linking of senses, has been long known to be a powerful nmonic for anyone with the ability to tap it. Richard Feynman often thought of complex physics equations in colors, and these powerful associations can be used to assist in surfing the web. I am a synesthetic of a few different flavors, one of which is letter/number to color associations. Whole words have color averages usually dominated by the first letter. The word "Web" for example, is orange with some blue hues at the end. I found a plug-in for Firefox that colored your tabs, but it was random. I would like to see user-picked colors for specific domains. For example, www.google.com would be a yellowish-orange color on the tab. I would select the specific hue I wanted and the tab would be colored so. That way, if I have a many tabs open at the same time, I will know which one is google at a glance. The ability to associate tonal sounds with the tabs as a mouse-over function or click function would also be very helpful. Those who are more inclined to audio cues would benifit from this immensely! I love designing GUIs, so don't worry, if you don't code this, I will ;) -NeuralZen P.S. Check out wikipedia's write up on synesthesia for more info... It shouldn't be user picked, but extracted in some ways from the URL domain and optionally changed by a meta tag in the XHTML. This is important to make it a useful feature for both sites and communications (on other computers, the same site will have the same colour). Also it doesn't overload unneeded customization.
Improved visual navigation Implement popout-prism-like navigation. It seems to be more effeciant than common search navigation when looking for specific keywords on the page. Alternatively scrollbar enhancements could help (refer to the second link for more details). Not sure if it's easy to implement though.	Popuot prism details Enhanced scrollbar details (Russian, but pictures talk for themselves)
Browser Loading Time Make the browser open faster; that is the number one reason that I have heard for people not using Firefox or switching from Firefox
Alternate UI modes Togglable kiosk mode More efficient layout for widescreen laptops Minimal UI mode Show and hide navigation/bookmark/menu bar via a right-click menu everywhere (optional) full screen (or "resize to fit all content" ...a la Mac OS X) mode without toolbars, icons, navigation bar, etc	- details & discussion
Choice of UI rendering mode choice between displaying page when fully rendered (mozilla way) or display as it renders (Firefox way).	Check Smooth Page Transitions suggestion
Rationalize and reorganize browser and context menus Remove some menu items Move other menu items	Reasoning and Arguments
Context Menu Show an open url in new tab or open url option in the context menu when the user right-clicks on a plaintext url (text that is recognizably a url, but has no <a> tags).
Display keyboard shortcuts when hovering over objects When hovering over an object in the navigation toolbar the respective keyboard shortcut should be displayed as a tool tip. It could considerably improve the usage of keyboard shortcuts for new Firefox users that are not used to work with keyboard shortcuts (like old people). This should be a default-on feature with the option to turn off in Options -> Advanced -> General -> Accessibility
Reconsider the idea of Home Page Home Page and Home button have been with us since forever. However, I have a strong feeling they are no longer relevant and no one uses them as they did in the old times of "web portals". I propose to create a task-oriented "start" pane - basically a question of "what do you want to do". It should have: urlbar: "I want to go to that page". history: "I want to go to the page I've been to recently" web search: "I want to search" a button that restores session from just-closed window: "I want to continue" bookmarks and feeds, or otherwise Places I consider Thunderbird's start pane to be a good example of what I'm talking about.
OS X widgets Use OS X's provided widget set, especially for textarea, button, radio, checkbox and select elements. Native widgets feature spell check among other niceties. This would go a long way towards making Firefox feel more like a "real" OS X application. The current UI does not follow many of the common idioms on the Mac which causes confusion when switching between it and other Apple apps. This could greatly impact adoption on OS X, particularly among less savvy users who don't understand why it's different. Still, those should be kept customizable via CSS: only the defaults (unstyled) should be system-widgets.	Apple Mac OS X Safari Browser Apple Human Interface Guidelines Hacking Aqua Widgets into Firefox
Page Zoom Instead of only increasing and decreasing the current page's font size, allow for the entire page to be zoomed in/out, like Opera. Make the zoom keys customizable. Also, like Opera, make sure that all elements zoom, such as Flash.	bug 4821
Better autocomplete in form fields Autocomplete list should be editable (like cookie-list) or erasable otherwise it will contain a lot of trash after some time and it is also a mild security risk because sometimes people demonstrate their actions and it is not nice previous entries pop-up; perhaps some toggle can help to disable/enable the feature Also, Emacs-style autocomplete ("dynamic expansion") of words will increase input speed dramatically in input and textarea fields It could go even further by having abbrev-list in a meta rel fashion (the same fashion as favicon is specifyed or other related documents) If implemented, this proposal can boost productivity for web-application users with technically simple (and known from many text-processors/editors) UI add-on	Emacs Dynamic Abbrevs Discussion
Avoid caching sensitive data for autocomplete Use heuristics to try and avoid caching sensitive data for autocompletion. For example, if something looks like a credit card number or social security number, don't cache it. It's very disconcerting to start typing in your social security number on your bank's Web site, and realize your browser already knows it...
Editing HTML of opened page Be able to edit the HTML source of a web page that is open and then save the changed version to the local hard disc. Currently "View > Page Source" does not allow editing for a web based page. Make this editable and then give the ability to save the entire page with images etc, using the modified source to the local hard disc.	bug 172817 bug 269326
Color of visited links depending on time of last visit Color of visited links should range from VLINK to LINK according to time passed. I'd like that the color of visited links could range from the the color defined for visited links to the color of _un_visited links in proportion to the time passed since last visit. This feature was present in early Mosaic, but I haven't seen it again in any browser.	Bug 211531
Ctrl-Z to undo last closed tab I'd like to Ctrl-Z Undo close last tab. e.g. "Damn, I didn't mean to close the second open tab and now I can't 'right click and reopen last closed tab'".	n/a
Different font sizes for each page I'd like to have the option of choosing a custom font size for a page; the browser should be able of remember the last size in future visits to the same page.	n/a
General tasks
Revisit default tab strip Re-evaluate toolbar buttons Re-evaluate status bar Re-evaluate menus and context menus Ensure shortcut consistency Remove Truncation of Title and Alt Tags	n/a