Firefox Getting A Ribbon
Welcome back!
If you're unfortunate enough to be stuck with Vista or Windows 7, your Firefox is going to be changing. According to this pcpro article, they're going to add the Office 2007 style "ribbon" and change the settings so that the familiar menu is turned off by default.
I personally don't see how this could possibly be considered an "improvement", since that ribbon thing is notoriously difficult to use and more difficult to customize.
Fortunately, XP users will be relieved to know that their menu bar isn't going anywhere.
Mozilla is expecting to roll out this most dubious "improvement" sometime around March 2010 with Firefox version 3.7
Technorati Tags: firefox, stupid changes, menu bar, office 2007 ribbon
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What are you complaining about? The ribbon is awesome, because it’s not ugly.
Whether the ribbon is “ugly” or not is in the eye of the beholder. You like it, I don’t and probably never will.
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The reasons I don’t like it is that it replaces something that has a plain basic functionality (the menu bar) with something that is more about “eye candy” than anything else. Personally, I’d rather have the function and forget the eye candy. It may look pretty but it is, in my opinion, a waste of CPU & memory, using many times the resources that the menu bar uses to achieve the same result.
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You see, the people who come up with these whiz bang ideas don’t have to try to use them on older computers that don’t have (and often cannot use) the latest Nvidia or Radeon graphics card or multi-core CPU. In reality, an awful lot of us DO have to try to use whatever software without those things and responding by saying “buy a new computer” is BS, because again, too many of us just can’t run out and get the latest thing. Believe me, if I could, I’d have done it already. (but even then I still wouldn’t want the change from menu bar to ribbon!)
This clearly explains the improvement of firefox, and hence firefox has many advantages and I hope any reading this would go for firefox….
By
Anna Nida
That’s a matter of opinion. I do not consider the addition of the ribbon to Firefox to be an improvement in any way, shape or form.
Thanks for the warning. In my case it’s Vista, so I’ll think twice when Firefox proposes to upgrade.
I suppose that you’ll still be able to revert to the old style?
.-= Luc J´s last blog ..Secure USB Flash Drive – Personal Pocket Safe =-.
From what I’ve read, it should be possible to revert to the menu bar, however doing so will probably involve finding the correct setting to change in about:config
The ribbon is an excellent improvement to the dated Windows menubar components. For anyone that ISN’T a computer junkie (set in their old ways) the menubar is enormously more usable, providing clear labels and sections with pictures to aid in making the software easier to use for those not in the know – which is more folks than ever these days.
Whereas the standard Windows menubar convention is completely worthless and misleading nowadays. Looking at the Firefox “File” dropdown yields numerous things that have NOTHING to do with “Files”:
* New Window
* New Tab
* Open Location*
* Close Window
* Close Tab
* Send Link
* Page Setup
* Print/Preview
* Work Offline
It’s these type of menu items that make computers unusable to those that haven’t been sitting on them for 5-20 years like the rest of us.
Hail the ribbon – and simpler, more usable and clear UI design.
Tell ya what. Those that like that Godforsaken monstrosity are welcome to it so long as Firfox retains the ability to turn the bloody thing off and go back to standard menus. If they remove THAT feature I’ll scream bloody effing murder.
Have you even tried Vista or Windows 7? I have run both of these OS’s and haven’t had any real problems. I have also adopted Office 2007 and use the ribbon regularly. It is well laid out and makes it easy to find the features that were nested several layers down in the old menu system. There was a small learning curve it is easy to master. Do yourself a favor and try it for a while.
I have Vista on a laptop and while there’s plenty that it does ok, I’ve also found it to be a royal pain in the ass (one good example is the UAC, which makes me want to do some very nasty things to the nit who created it). Granted, that pain would be lessened considerably if it were possible to get a machine that ONLY had the OS on it and NONE of the bloated crapware that HP and others just love to include bundled with the OS. For that matter, I seriously miss the days when buying a PC meant that you would get install media for the bare bones OS included with it.
As for Windows 7, me having actual hands-on experience with it is going to have to wait until my budget can reach it. Typically this means that I’ll get a Windows 7 machine sometime when Windows 8 is halfway to it’s end of life.