We have all been waiting to see what the new Firefox 2.0 Visual Refresh was going to look like and now we get a glimpse of it. You can tell by looking at the overall picture above that they are trying to give a more glossy effect to the buttons. It kind of reminds me of Windows Media Player 11.
Believe it or not but each of these tabs show a different shade of color. The first tab to the left is demonstrating what a selected tab will look like. The middle tab is showing what a background tab will look like when the mouse is hovering over it and the last tab just shows a background tab.
This image is supposed to demonstrate that the borders around the buttons will be nearly non-existent when the mouse is not near them, but as soon as the mouse comes close the borders will reveal themselves so that the user knows they can click on them.
This pictures just shows the new search bar. As seen in the picture it will glow when a new search engine is available to the user.
Finally, the RSS feed icon. Unlike before the RSS icon will always be visible in the address bar but it will normally be grayed out if there is no feed available. If there is a feed available it will start a glowing effect so that it really stands out to the user.
Overall I think that the design looks nice and the new glossy appearance is great. However, I was expecting to see a different style of navigation buttons like combining the Refresh and Stop button. Maybe they have that in their plans though?
Enjoyed the post? Subscribe to our feed to get a daily dose of CyberNet!
Related Posts:
- Firefox 2 Visual Refresh Coming Very Soon
- No Firefox 2 Beta 2 Until August 15
- Mozilla Changes Search Box In Firefox 2.0
- Mozilla Fixes 2300 Bugs In Firefox 2.0 So Far
- Firefox 2.0 Beta 1 Scheduled For July 6
Is there any way to get this theme for Firefox 2b1 or then will this release in a nightly or somewhere else?
This is sweet! IE is going down in a blaze of glory!
There is no theme that you can download to make Firefox look like this yet. This is just a mockup that Mozilla had developed to demonstrate what it will look like. It may get released in a nightly build sometime and when that happens I will let everyone know.
-Ryan
OK Thank you Ryan.
Awesome! A much needed refresh.
Well you can get extension for Stop/reload swapping, but actually I hate that feature. I liked it when i used opera and missed it when switched to firefox, but soon realized that it was more a hassle when something gets hang and you press stop/reload multiple times…
I had heard about the extension before but I try to minimize the number of extensions that I use. I always seem to have bad luck and pick extensions that leak memory.
-Ryan
The icons look kinda dark and pointy to me. But it’s not finalized and they’re getting feedback from people, so here’s hoping I like the end result better
Re: combined Stop/Reload, it sucks when the page finishes loading just as you try hitting Stop, and you hit Reload instead. That happened to me alot back in the classic Netscape days.
I like the combined Go/Reload idea better, though I hear Go-ing your current page actually has a slightly different effect compared to Reloading.
I have a feeling that these are far from finalized and could differ a lot after it actually gets implemented. They could find some usability issues, and like you said the icons are a little dark.
I have never experienced a combined stop/reload button but from the sounds of it many people don’t like it. I just thought one less button would be better, but I guess you give up a little space to get more convenience.
-Ryan
Using these two extensions
MR Tech Local Install 5.2
Nightly Tester Tools 1.1
You can instal:
Colorful Tabs 1.4
Tab Clicking Options 0.6.6
Too many tabs! 0.5.4
onto Portable Firefox 2 beta 1 and get better results than using the X’s plus colored tabs with fade out which you can customise.