back to article Mozilla plans to tie Firefox 3.7 pigtails in pretty Ribbon

Mozilla is planning to radically overhaul the “dated and behind” Windows version of its browser’s user interface by considering the introduction of a Microsoft Office-like Ribbon in its Firefox 3.7 release. The outfit said in planning documents that it might drop the current menu bar in the Firefox UI for version 3.7. The …

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  1. Nigel 11
    Thumb Down

    What's wrong with menus?

    I *like* menus. Why slavishly follow Microsoft (or fashion)?

    Anyway, at least with Firefox, there will either be an easy way to get them back, or someone will soon write a menu plug-in!

  2. Roger Barrett
    Thumb Up

    okay, I'll bite

    I have to admit I quite like the idea, although more for a change in the Links toolbar which I use quite a lot, I have about 20 shortcuts on there and just the other night I was wondering whether some kind of Ribbon/spinning toolbar would be sensible, or maybe I could just buya wide screen monitor to make them all fit....Of course if a plugin is available for the current version of Firefox, feel free to let me know.

  3. Jon 66
    Thumb Down

    kde4

    this is what kde4 has done:

    1. decide they know better than their users

    2. decide to fix something that for the majority of users ain't broke

    3. try to copy microsoft's perverse idea of what a good user interface is

    ...hence after 10 years as a perfectly happy user of kde i'm now moving to gnome.

    google chrome anyone?

  4. SynnerCal
    FAIL

    Noooooooo

    Mozilla planning to implement something like "efFluent" ribbon bar in Office 2007 - great idea, that'll make it totally useless for users!

    Still at least - according to the article - this'll be an option (unlike the crap forced onto the world by Orifice 2007)

    Seriously, here'll be one part of the Mozilla community that'd vote "no" if asked.

    Personally, if they've got spare developer cycles, why not make FF more stable and a little bit faster - not that I'm complaining at the moment, but it never hurts to be "better". Oh, and address the memory footprint that some have complained about.

  5. Pirate Dave Silver badge

    DAMN

    I've liked FF since it was the Phoenix days. Too bad they're gonna screw it up now just to follow MS's horrible ribbon interface. Monkey see, monkey do.

  6. Ammaross Danan
    FAIL

    Office version error

    "Microsoft debuted its controversial Ribbon interface that it prefers to dub “Fluent” in Office 2003."

    I'm sure this line was a simple typo, but it should read "2007."

  7. Aaron Gilliland
    Gates Horns

    Brilliant!

    And then they can provide a way for users to hug poisonous snakes.

    YES

    They will HUG and KISS some POISONOUS...

    SNAKES.

  8. Calum
    Thumb Up

    Progress

    Ive been using TinyMenu addon to achieve a similar effect for a long time now, good to see cleaner interface in the works.

    Next on the list is to get rid of the title bar, à la Chrome. :)

  9. fidodogbreath
    Paris Hilton

    The ... Ribbon?!?!?

    Nooooooo............

    Paris, because (like the Ribbon) she looks pretty, but does not do anything useful.

  10. Phil Rigby
    Grenade

    Office 2003?

    I have Office 2003 on my machine and I don't see a ribbon bar - I thought it debuted with 2K7... am I wrong, or is it you? (If it's me, my bad. If it's you, do some research :-) )

  11. robert 15

    ribbon in 2003?

    Was it not 2007 that the ribbon appeared?

  12. northern monkey
    Thumb Down

    Well...

    ...it won't be getting one from me. Pleased to hear they're not going to force the ribbon on us linux users though. Oh that reminds me, I wonder what decision OOo made on their ribbon development.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    oh jesus

    please no

  14. Richard North
    FAIL

    Call me "Luddite..."

    But whoever invented that bloody ribbon should be hung by it.

    It's the main reason people I know prefer older versions of Office - it looks shagnasty, and it's just plain horrible to use.

    If there was a 'throwing up' tag I'd use that, but there isn't so I'll have to settle for 'fail'.

  15. Simon 58

    Ughh

    But what if we dont like ribbon? Personaly i cant stand it

  16. David Simpson 1
    FAIL

    Fail

    "Microsoft debuted its controversial Ribbon interface that it prefers to dub “Fluent” in Office 2003."

    Nope it was Office 2007 actually.

  17. Apocalypse Later

    So

    Not only do we have to spend half an hour updating our software every time we turn our computers on, we are also to be required to learn new interfaces every third day. Luckily I no longer use the damn machine for anything very important, but it must be a burden to those who are still trying to do useful work.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Ribbon sucks

    I'm not the only one who thinks that the ribbon sucks.

    I'm not a stupid person. One of the things I do is get paid to figure out how to use software and then instruct people how to use it themselves.

    Clients with Office 2007 think the ribbon sucks as much as I do.

    To hell with the ribbon, I think it's completely un-intuitive.

    With a menu, you go through until you find something that looks like what you want to do. Every time I am forced to use the ribbon on a client's machine, I can't figure out where anything is.

    I'm on Outlook 2007, but the rest of Office is 2003 here.

    I don't want a Firefox ribbon forced on me. At least give me a choice.

  19. Stuart Elliott
    Thumb Down

    Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo...

    ... oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo^36

    I absolutely HATE the Office ribbon.

  20. Jason Chapman

    pedant of the week award.

    I thought ribbon birthed itself Office 2007.

  21. Greg J Preece

    Dated?

    Menus are dated? Actually being able to find what you want somewhere obvious is yesterday's news? Obviously I'm not keeping up with the times! I was under the impression that most people *hated* the ribbon interface...

  22. BlueGreen

    "...effectively provide more space for the browser display, said Mozilla"

    can't beat F11. UI's fine IMO but some emacs bindings would be welcome... (C-w, C-y/M-y, C-<, etc)

  23. Tony Hoyle

    Uh?

    Safari *has* a menu bar. Last time I checked chrome does too.

    If mozilla starts to look like IE7 I'm dumping it and looking for something else. Why can't mozilla look like mozilla? What's with the desire to carbon copy microsoft even when their offering is a total disaster? IE7 is a bear to use, compared to any other browser out there.

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Welcome

    Nail...

    ...meet coffin

  25. Tom Maddox Silver badge
    Troll

    To summarize

    At the moment, no comments have been posted, so let me see if I can summarize the salient points of this thread before any show up:

    1) Firefox has become bloated and inefficient, and the developers should go back to the 2.x/1.x/0.x code base.

    2) Opera did it first, back in 1975.

    3) "Windows sucks anyway so this is just one more reason to use FreeBSD Linux."

    4) Generalized Ribbon interface hatred followed by repeated posts pointing out the obvious fact that changing back to the menu-driven interface will be simply accomplished by switching the theme.

    I'll check back later to see if I missed anything.

  26. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    Just make it an option!

    Whatever you do, make it an option! The ribbon is horrible in everything I've seen it on, and having the menus as an option lets people get a proper interface back. It shouldn't be too hard to do either (particularly since every other platform is apparently going to stick with menus.)

  27. Kotonoha
    Stop

    Office 2003?

    I thought Ribbon was introduced in Office 2007 :V

    Also Ribbon is awesome compared to toolbar spam :)

  28. Aaron Em

    Why not?

    Everything else about Mozilla's been steadily going to hell for the last half decade or more. Why not this too?

  29. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Wouldn' t it be better

    Wouldn't it be better to concentrate on making it work better rather than changing the way that it looks?

  30. Mark Jonson
    FAIL

    No it didn't

    "Microsoft debuted its controversial Ribbon interface that it prefers to dub 'Fluent' in Office 2003."

    The ribbon debuted in Office 2007. I will never forget it, because all those who insist on punishing themselves and refuse to transition to the simple task-based interface provided by the ribbon all continue to use Office 2003.

  31. the real jacob
    Grenade

    of all the UI features to mimic...

    ...why pick the one everyone hates?

    Is there a "this sucks, I want my fecking menu back" mode?

  32. Jean-Luc
    Thumb Down

    I do so love Office 2007...

    Seriously, the ribbon in Office is a huge annoyance. When I went to a, pretty basic, UI design course, one of the items they touched on was not to show/hide command objects too much based on user input. That was mostly intended to keep menu items visible, if grayed out, rather than hiding them willy-nilly.

    Anytime you choose a different header in Office 2007 the whole ribbon goes all over the place and it is difficult to remember how a particular function is accessed because you have to activate the header items (Home, Insert, Page Layout, etc...). Granted, maybe "approaching" middle age is baking habits into my neurons, but I just don't see much gain for the pain. (I am no fan of KDE4 Plasma either).

    I hope FF know what they are doing. It should help that a browser's command set is simpler than Office's. But, if they are keeping the menus in *nix and OS X anyway, why not leave ribbon/menu as a user preference in Windoze?

  33. Dave 129

    Office 2007 surely?

    "Microsoft debuted its controversial Ribbon interface that it prefers to dub “Fluent” in Office 2003."

    I am sure that a tonne of people have pointed this out already but err, didn't the bloody ribbon start with Office 2007?? 2K3 has standard menu bars with a sorta blueish / orangey colour scheme (and kinda rounded) from what I recall.

  34. Wallyb132
    Stop

    Oh God! Please no.. tell me this is just a...

    Please tell me this is a bad dream... I hated the office ribbon, so much so that i'm still using office 2003, i hated it in office, i'll hate it on my web browser. i'be been perfectly happy with my firefox, perfectly happy! *sigh* but now i guess i'll have to start looking for and testing a suitable replacement... this sucks Mozilla... cant you just leave my browser alone?

  35. Jason DePriest
    FAIL

    Completely daft

    There are already themes available for Mozilla Firefox that can make it look just like IE7, missing menu bars, combined forward/back button, everything. I can also make it look like Safari on the Mac Aqua interface.

    That's the beauty of Firefox. Not only is it themeable, people build themes for it and give them away.

    There is no reason for Firefox to overhaul the interface in such a manner if it isn't across the board. Why mess around with cross-platform visual compatibility? As it is now, if I screenshot Firefox running on Windows XP and Linux with GNOME, they look almost identical. That's how it should be. That is what cross-platform apps should strive for.

    If they do butcher it down, they should provide a way to bring the menus back like IE does.

  36. Potts

    Ribbon in Office 2003?

    Open to being proved wrong here, but I didn't think the ribbon appeared until Office 2007???

  37. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Words Fail Me

    Words fail me - horrible, just completely horrible. About the only idea I don't object to is combining the stop and reload buttons.

    Combining 7 menus into two - well why not combine them into one and go 1 better than IE? (I'm joking of course). I can't quite work out, should "copy" be under Tools or the Page menu, because it's a tool, and you do it to a page?

    I was hoping to leave a comment on the Firefox webpage, but as it seems to involve editing a wiki page instead of just sending an email, I can't be bothered.

    If it comes to a browser near me, I'll have to change browsers :-(

  38. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    Nooooooooo!

    I spend half my day trying to find the things that used to be on the menu bars in office programs and vista's bloody explorer bastardisation. Things move when I am trying to click on them, are sometimes where I expect them to be (and where I last found them) and other times not.

    Perhaps the interface is fine, and it's too much beer on my part!

    Seriously, if the menu bars go, I'll find another browser, and I really like FF, and have used it since it's first release.

  39. Forename Surname
    Unhappy

    copying a poor design decision

    Windows Explorer contextual strip is a real PITA.

    What is wrong with a toolbar anyway? The only reason the new MS way of doing things is still around is because it doesn't have enough market penetration yet to get serious complaints.

  40. Matthew Saroff
    Gates Horns

    You Have No #@$ing Idea How Hard it is For Me Not to Swear About This

    Microflaccid's ribbon really REALLY sucks.

  41. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    That's it, I'm done.

    Fuck Mozilla. I'm done with them for now. Back to 2 for me.

    When someone comes along with half a brain and a team with some design sense won't someone please give me a ring, yes?

    I want a browser. A fast browser that renders websites properly. A faster browser that renders websites properly and has an intuitive interface. Also, a nice plugin system and a lowish memory footprint.

    That's it. Nothing else.

    Fuck you, Mozilla.

  42. Greg K Nicholson
    FAIL

    Folsfax.

    Firefox won't be using a ribbon, as the mockup picture illustrates.

    That first quote is about Windows's design direction, not about Firefox.

  43. LaeMi Qian
    Thumb Up

    I like it (the consistecy, not the ribbon)

    I am not a big fan of the ribbon (though I dislike Apple's insistence on retaining the top-of-the-screen menubar a good deal more) but what REALLY gets my goat is 3rd-party applications that diverge from the parent OS UI standards. Camera manufacturers are particularly good at this and I am soooo glad they don't release their crappy file-system-obstificating 'enhancements' for my OS of choice.

    While I only use MS-Windows (and MacOS) at work (ie when I am being paid to) I prefer my apps there to have a consistent look and feel for their platform. So Kudos to the Mozilla devs. for acknowledging that, for-better-or-worse, this is how current iterations of MS-Windows look.

  44. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Clippy!

    Why stop at the ribbon? There are many more inventions from Office you can copy. We need the Office Assistant in Firefox!

    "I see you are surfing for Britney Spears nude pics.

    Would you like help?"

  45. TimeMaster T
    Linux

    MHO

    Optional; OK, as long as it is not default, some people might want it.

    Not optional; I will start looking for a new browser if it finds its way into Seamonkey (Firefox/Thunderbird integrated suite)

    I still use KDE 3.5.x cause I think the new interface sucks monkey balls.

  46. StarMartyr
    Thumb Up

    Welp...

    The ribbon is about the only thing I like about the recent versions of Office. Now if someone would make it more customizable and allow me to place it at the BOTTOM if the application window instead of the top then I'd be very happy. Then if I could do that with ALL windows I'd be in interface heaven. I have a large screen and it would be helpful if everything was closer to the taskbar. I moved the taskbar to the top of the screen but it doesn't seem right up there.

    SM

  47. Subban

    Oh dear...

    I am glad to hear that the linux version will dodge that bullet for a while, but its certainly going to appear sooner or later which is bad. OpenOffice is threatening to implement a ribbon liek interface as well, and again after playing with the preview I cannot see the upside to it at all.

  48. rhdunn
    WTF?

    Misunderstanding

    The section being quoted is about the direction of applications in general in reference to not showing the menubar. This is used as justification to remove the menubar for Vista and later (under a section about hiding the menubar no less), not about adding Ribbon to Firefox.

    See https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Sprints/Windows_Theme_Revamp/Direction_and_Feedback#Hiding_of_the_Menubar.

  49. Colin Wilson
    Paris Hilton

    How about...

    I realised many years ago that many users are clueless, and most menus showed far more things than they were ever likely to use (yet alone understand).

    I've been arguing that there should be a simple toggle available between "expert" and "simple" modes in most applications for some time, perhaps this would help address the issue.

    Paris, because i'm sure you can guess which mode she'd use.

  50. Cornholio

    Won't bother me too much

    "“Windows XP would retain the menu bar by default as would Linux and of course Mac,” it said"

    Well, that's alright then. No Vista or 7 on any of the machines that I have to use.

    But boy, I hate Microsoft's Ribbon. Really, really hate it.

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