Firefox version 29.0

I am enjoying the new Firefox version 29.0 however it isn't for the performance. Fact of the matter is, I cannot comment on the performance because I haven't done any useful surfing with it to validate any comments about it on performance. I am enjoying the new version for its user interface.

Up to version 28.0 the interface felt too common, with some colour for the Firefox button on the top left. While the old version attempted to look new, the interface mechanics were the same and with the same confusion as always. When I say confusion it is not a suggestion that I was not able to do something because I was unable to use it; my meaning is that it wasn't too intuitive, you had to click on a few things to get to something and sometimes a long list to scroll through in a menu. It was a nice interface let's not criticise that, it was certainly better than previous attempts but not anywhere near as good as it could be.

My biggest dislike on the older versions was the bookmarking system. It was ok on even older versions but the more recent versions it just got too irritating to use. If you bookmarked something, instead of just bookmarking it you get a dialog where you either clicked "Done" or fiddled some more. I guess it was an attempt to allow you to sort them out immediately rather than later. Problem with that, I wanted to sort them out later and usually that is much much later. Some bookmarks I made were only temporary because the article was too long and I wanted to read it another time. Every time that dialog came up I get frustrated and then click done causing the list in the main bookmarks menu to grow to an extremely long list before I get a chance to clean it out. At that point instead of being useful it became a hindrance and I had to scroll and scroll to find the things I wanted to find.

How does Firefox 29.0 user interface solve these problems or does it even solve it at all? Well actually and surprisingly it does solve it and at least for now it solves it very well. Since the bookmark issue is important for me let us journey into that first.

Immediately the bookmark feature you will notice is the bookmark icon shown as a star-separator-clipboard image(Fig.1.) If you click on that star to bookmark a page it will immediately add the book mark without displaying that annoying dialog. The star will then change colour to indicate you have that page bookmarked. If you click that star again then a dialog will come up that will let you decide where to put it or even delete it. What I noticed is that if you go to a site that is already in your book mark the star will change colour similar to adding a new book mark. This is useful because it avoids those multiple book marks for when you have forgotten that the site is already bookmarked. But wait there's more! you can actually click on the star and allocate a new place for the old book mark through the dialog box that will appear or delete it. Of course if you want to traverse your bookmarks list it is a simple matter of clicking on the clipboard picture of the bookmark star/clipboard combo icon but this is where you notice another anti-clutter feature. All your bookmarks you added by clicking on the star but not sorted do not end up cluttering the main bookmark list. They are added to a sub-list called "Recently Bookmarked", which is superb and it shows that the Mozilla team really put a lot of thought into the bookmarking system.

Fig.1. Firefox version 29.0 new user interface.

Fig.1 shows a screen grab of the new interface but notice the tabs, they look modern and its usage is very intuitive which is retained from the older tabbed versions. What's different is the aesthetics, it is very pleasing to the eye. It looks like the Pareto's 80/20 principle has been used quite effectively, the law of the vital few. For software it would be that 20% of the features are used 80% of the time and certainly you can see the most used features are immediately displayed and they are placed in a manner that reduces the gulf of evaluation. You have the back arrow that affords the back button placed intuitively before the URL entry field. The home button is prominent and to the left, there is a search field to the right of the URL field, a down arrow that has been kept from previous versions to further reduce the gulf of execution -users know from previous versions this is what shows the downloads. To the extreme right that would support Fitts law is the triple bar menu button. Once clicked it produces Fig.2.

Fig.2. Menu for Firefox version 29.0.

Gone is the coloured Firefox button that was on the top left of the earlier version, replaced by a nice clean and very intuitive icon based menu. Clicking on customize allows you to add or remove what you want displayed so you could leave more of what you use and less of what you do not use.

While I cannot comment yet on the speed and performance of Firefox, I can say that Mozilla have outdone themselves with the user interface in Firefox 29.0. There is clear evidence of good Human Computer Interaction(HCI) principles being applied here. If you have never used Firefox, I'd strongly recommend giving this a try just for the user interface alone but of course being Firefox, you get an amazing browser as an added bonus.