Firefox, too, revamping new-tab behavior
Opening a new tab in a Web browser shows a lot of prime but empty real estate, and now the programmers behind Firefox are following their peers at Safari and Chrome in trying to make it more useful.
Mozilla interface guru Aza Raskin posted screenshots of a new way to fill the new-tab screen with something useful but not too taxing for the computer.
Along the right edge is the "quick-access bar," a stack of thumbnail views of your popular pages selected on the basis of how recently and frequently you visited them. In the upper left are buttons that take various actions. For example, if you've selected some text on a Web page before opening the new tab, that text will be presented as a search that can be performed by clicking the button in the new tab.
Those with the latest developer build of Firefox 3.1 can try the new-tab behavior through a Firefox extension. To do so, see Raskin's three-step process described on the Mozilla Labs blog.
Mozilla has been testing new-tab options since January. "From the feedback from the last two rounds of new tab concepts, we know that the page needs to load instantly (even a small wait breaks user experience); that it shouldn't be visually distracting; and that it should be a launch point into your daily activities," Raskin said.
Safari 4, in beta, and Google Chrome both offer an array of popular Web pages when opening a new tab. Google's Toolbar can bring the Chrome behavior to Firefox and Internet Explorer.
Raskin explained Mozilla's thinking about relegating the Web page thumbnails to a right-side strip this way: "It may seem strange that the quick-access strip is along the right of the window. It's there in order to be polite. If you've got your mind on opening a new tab and just entering a url, it's outside your foveal vision."
Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank. 
Just look at what he said about Opera:
1) "It may have a lot of nice features, but who knows?"
Hmm? What? You are not certain what features Opera has?
This is hint #1 that you have never used Opera.
2) "The interface is so bad it's impossible to use them."
Examples please.
I find Opera to have the best single-key shortcuts among all major browsers not to mention you can customize them. Also single key search in location bar is a very nice feature and is customiazable to. As for the rest of user interface involving tabs and mouse click and point, it's pretty much the same as all other major browsers.
3) "I'd rather use Internet Explorer than Opera."
Yup. An IE fan boy alright.
Unless you think Opera is so good that anyone who says it's worse than IE is actually praising IE, since there's no way in freezing hell they'd be bashing the "best browser" Opera.
Nobody cares about opera. I have it installed on my computer along with Firefox, IE, Safari, Flock, and Chrome. I prefer everything to Opera except for Flock.
Does that make me an IE fanboy since I never explicitly said I prefer IE to Opera? Oh frack, I just said it.
Then how come it has nearly 40 million users and all other browsers keep ripping off Opera's features? And how come the Opera haters are so keen on bashing Opera. Clearly, the "nobody cares about Opera" trolls do care about Opera. Otherwise they hadn't bothered bashing it :)
Maybe because Chrome leapfrogged Operas years of marke tshare in a single month.
Opera roxxx .....'tis the best browser ever and don'cha dare 4-get it!!!!
Are you listening, Firefox developers??
There is a handy little "Home Page" button on the tool bar. How hard is that to use? Does it take that much time?
Of course, that probably only works with the Tab Mix Plus extension, which already lets you decide to what to Load on new tabs: Blank Page, Home Page, Current Page, Duplicate Page, or a User Location of your choosing.
IE8 lets you do that.
Glenn, I don't use the bookmark toolbar because it doesn't work well for large # of links. My home page has about 60 different links on it (work and otherwise) - all of which I use throughout the day. It's nicely organized across the entire browser page - I can go to most links almost by "muscle memory". The toolbar can't hold many links accessible with a single click. Also, as you said - you need TabMixPlus...which is what I was using until it no longer worked with FF3.1b...thus my comment here.
Anyway, as another poster pointed out IE8 (and even before, I think) has it and I believe Safari might too. Additinally, as a GUI developer, I find the new-tab vs. new-window difference inconsistent. I expect to at least have a *CHOICE* (among prefs) to make it behave consistently.
Tab Mix Plus has a dev build that works with 3.1b2.
http://tmp.garyr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9864
<cite>I tend to have my hands on the keyboard and use CTRL-T a lot. Is there a keyboard equivalent to the action you gave?</cite>
I find Tab Mix Plus to offer vastly more useful tab management in Firefox. Among the many wonderful additions it offers is what should appear in new tabs. With that option, you can arrange to have your home page load in new tabs. See Tab Mix Plus here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1122 (home page: http://tmp.garyr.net/).
OpenNewWindowFromHere gives you a "New tab from here" contextual menu item when you right click, so you can duplicate the current tab.
Go To Selected Text essentially lets you treat any selected text as a link, so you can right-click on it and open it in a new tab.
There's probably one or more "Search for the selected text" extensions out there which will open the results in a new tab, but I don't really have that need so I haven't looked.
Until they implement that mind reading plug-in, don't waste cycles and bandwidth trying to guess.
oh and my thing with opera is that i cant visit NRL.com because its written in some code not yet recognised (yep top browser that is)
Done!
Is it that hard? You want 1 click, there it is.
same goes for when they add a feature that you don't really need (through NOTHING that they have added to the default thus far can be considered annoying!) just find the addon that works around it.
this is the Firefox way! --- its a Great Browser, but the addoins make it a GOD
All browser makers steal from each other. It's the same as software and OS's.
Idon't know maybe I'll give Firefox a try and see if it lives up to the hype. I am kinda getting curious.
What I'd like is something you can't get through any skin or plugin currently. Give us the ability to (optionally) take advantage of the title bar space for our tabs, ala Chrome and Safari 4.
All want in firefox 3.1 is faster application loading time, and a stable tracemonkey. Then I will move back to Firefox for my default browser.
1) Privacy - You cannot have a tab open to something without the other tabs being visible to those around you.
2) Layout - This effectively kills sites designed to take full advantage of 1024 pixel screens as most users are still on 1024x768 and many using 1024x1280 portrait mode. Even if they make it collapsible it's still going to take up 10 pixels for the splitter bar and that's 10 pixels that's going to cause horizontal scrolling.
i think most of personal computers as now now - still have windows 98 or millennium installed on them, so what.
this technology is for the front line, so forget about 1024x768. and portrait mode 1024x1280?? popular format? common.
same for privacy, let's say the thumbnails of sites could be blured or something, depending on privacy settings - it's all doible.
still both browsers are far ahead of nearest competition
so if you want full featured internet browsing you will use one of them
and if you want minimalistic stable emulator you may switch to opera or safari - but again, chrome whould be better for such cases
the only good thing about opera to my opinion is it's usage in mobile devices like HTC phones and same goes to safari for iphone.
@dry_gin Your claims are invalid an hold no water.
That way users could choose what work best for them. BTW I hate IE for lack of full CSS 2.1 support but if they can do it then FF should be able to make this work too.
I'm using FF mainly because of Firebug the very best web developer tool ATM.
I tried Opera out as well but somehow it didn't fit in my work flow that well so I don't use it much. I do use it just for a quick browser test and for testing sites with disabled Javascript and Flash plugins because with the Quick Settings (F12) I can turn off/on said features with one click-- Genius!!
Chrome looks pretty good but as long as FF is working for me right now why should I switch?
- by shellyle June 21, 2009 1:29 AM PDT
- see how <a href="http://www.newtabking.com">new tab king for Firefox</a> has changed the landscape of new tab navigation - my choice for the time being until Aza the guru bakes it into the Fox.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(45 Comments)--shelly