User:Broccauley/Firefox Menu Explorations/Archive

2-pane Office 2007 / Win7 Style

The following mock-up is of what should appear once you click the orange Firefox Menu button. It is similar to the 2-pane menu used in the "ribbon interface" in Office 2007 and Paint/Wordpad in Windows 7. It is also like an inverted Windows 7 Start menu with "jump-list" arrows:

I think the analogy of the Firefox menu button being the "start menu" for the application is a good one, and hence the styling - note that the grey colour in the above mock-up is intended to be Aero glass.

This idea differs from the Win7 Wordpad menu for example in that "Page" is selected by default (in Wordpad "Recent documents" is by default, but in this case the options under "Page" are so much more important). Another difference from the Office 2007/Wordpad/Paint "ribbon interface" menus would be that the hover delay on hovering over an option in the left-hand pane would need to be longer in this case - this is because the options in the "Page" section are the most important and it would be annoying or the user to accidentally navigate away from the Page section.

In the above mock-up the "Open New" item would contain the options "Tab", Window", "Private Window" and "From File...". "From File..." would be the same as the old "Open.." option under the File menu. I think it is logical to merge the "open" and "new" items like this as these old File-menu options are a relic from word processors - a web browser doesn't actually create "new" HTML documents, it only opens existing HTML documents!!

Clicking the icon of the "Open New" option would perform the default action ("Open New Tab"), but the user should also be able to configure the default action for each drop-down menu item. Actually, it might be more logical to put "Open New Window" as the default here as "Open New Tab" is already exposed in the main UI (though having said that, it is easy to open a new window from the Windows OS). Heavy porn surfers could of course put "Open New Private Window" as the default ;).

The "Style" option contains the old View->Style menu and Character Encoding (Character Encoding is NOT a "Developer Tool" IMO).

The "Bookmark..." option might be better as a drop-down to allow the "Bookmark all tabs..." option. Also not shown is a "Subscribe" option which would be context-sensitive.

The "Preferences" section would contain all the customisation settings, as well as the "Options..." dialogue (default).

Compared to previous mock-ups I removed the icons from the left-hand side - this I think was a good move as reduces visual noise.

The following mock-up shows what it would look like if you hovered over "History", or clicked the right-arrow beside "History":

Clicking on the word "History" in the left-hand pane itself would perform the first action on the list ("View All History...")

Clicking on the icon in the top-right will pin the History to the Sidebar (as in IE8).

The following mock-up shows what it would look like if you hovered over "Bookmarks", or clicked the right-arrow beside "Bookmarks":

The bookmarks list is scrollable like the Windows Vista/7 "All Programs" option on the Start Menu, and like the Internet Explorer Favorites pane. The icon in the top-right pins the Bookmarks to the Sidebar as in IE8. The menu should also be re-sizable to accommodate long/wide lists by dragging the bottom/bottom-right-corner like the IE8 Favorites pane.

Broccauley 19:40, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

With controls moved to the Status Bar

All mock-ups above assume that the Status Bar is to be scrapped in FF4 (as rumoured). I think that that would be a mistake, and that a better idea would be to increase the functionality of the Status Bar by putting more useful controls on it. Therefore, here is a mock-up of the FF Menu if certain controls were moved to the Status Bar:

The Status Bar would then contain the following:

- zoom and full-screen controls in the bottom-right (like IE/Opera/Office)

-a small control in the bottom-left to show/hide the sidebar (like Opera and old Netscape versions).

-"Working Online" is a status and, instead of being scrapped (as proposed), could also be placed as a small icon in the bottom-right of the Status Bar(like IE/Netscape).

-The new "Sync" feature is entirely status-related and could be entirely controlled from the Status Bar. Broccauley 21:52, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Point 2 would only work if the sidebars aren't going to be removed in favor of other functionality. Auscompgeek 01:08, 7 August 2010 (PDT)

Obviously this is true, however, the sidebars are my personal favourite way to access History and Bookmarks - better than all other views IMO. Who knows what Mozilla are going to do?! Broccauley 09:37, 9 August 2010 (PDT)

Mock-up:

Some people have been complaining that the full Page Title isn't displayed any more in FF4 - this could be shown in the Status Bar after "Done" is displayed. Mock-up:

However, I don't think the bottom of the screen is a natural place to show the page title. Instead, I think this is a better solution. Broccauley 09:37, 9 August 2010 (PDT)