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→completely missing the obvious...: new section
== Simplify paramterised URLs ==
Where a url is parameterised - simplify to base address & provide a drop-down to each parameter with its value). Copy to clipboard will need to reconstruct full URL
== completely missing the obvious... ==
The work done by the theme team has lead to an intriguingly compact "top end" of the browser. Some of the ideas I like, some of them I'm not too keen on, but there is one crucial aspect that seems to have gone utterly unaddressed: by compacting everything and neatly nesting all of the elements together, where in this layout is there going to be space to add custom toolbar buttons? The only way this browser layout will ever look decent is if it's run in the completely stock configuration shown in the mockups -- and that's totally out of keeping with the Firefox customization aesthetic.
I've been wrestling with this issue for years. I used to run the Compact Menus extension to basically achieve the same thing these mockups do: to eliminate the menu toolbar and reclaim this much needed vertical real estate (which is crucial on widescreen monitors). The menu elements are reduced to an icon, positioned next to the back button, and since the throbber can be put onto tabs, there's no reason to keep that bar turned on.
The problem comes from the fact that all of the other toolbars pretty much need to be full width of the browser window. Even if you could eat into the horizontal width of the tab or bookmark bars, it would seriously compromise usability. So if there's no menu bar, what space does that leave? The navigation toolbar.
It's not necessarily a bad thing to move the home button to a tab -- so long as it's fixed and you don't have to scroll through a list of tabs to find it -- but the amount of space that you reclaim from doing so is minuscule. So where are the icons added by extensions -- or by the user, selecting from the stock palette offered by the browser simply for the sake of convenience -- going to go?
Since the menu bar -- in its default configuration -- is NOT an efficient use of space, I've taken to using the blank area as an icon dock. Depending on what profile or OS I'm on, there can be just a few icon buttons, or a whole bunch of them. There's enough space to accommodate either need.
Some commonly used extensions that basically require the use of a toolbar (or status bar) button are: Secure Login, Adblock Plus, Update Notifier, Tab Counter, RoboForm, ForecastFox -- and there are dozens more that appeal to more specialized audiences.
How will this new layout concept address the needs of these users? Are they going to be expected to create another toolbar row to stick their buttons on? Because if that's the case, the browser layout will look worse than it does now, and the design schema has failed before there's ever been a chance to implement it.
