Polishing Firefox for Windows 10

22 July, 2015 § 12 Comments

Over the years, the Firefox front-end team has made numerous polishes and updates to the Firefox theme.

Firefox 4 was a huge update to the user interface of Firefox compared to Firefox 3.6. A couple years down the line we released Australis in Firefox 29. Next month we’ll be releasing Firefox 40 and with it will come with what I believe to be the most polished UI we’ve shipped to date.

The Australis release was great in so many ways. It may have taken a bit longer than many had expected to get released, but much of that was due to the complexities of the Firefox theme code. During the Australis release we removed some lesser used features which consistently were a pain in the rear when making theme changes (small icons and icons+text mode, I’m looking at both of you 👀).

Now with Firefox 40, we’re able to show the benefits of our refined theme code and our ability to ship updated and modern themes much faster than ever before.

With Firefox 40 on Windows 10, which you can download today using the Firefox Beta channel, we’ve matched the tabstrip and toolbar to the native Windows 10 theme. This includes refinements to our standard icon set, as well as much improved HiDPI (>1dppx) support. All of our first-tier icons now have 2× variants that are shipped with the browser, and the remaining icons buried in the depths of the browser should be fixed soon as well.

My favorite feature of Firefox on Windows 10 is the increased URL and search bar height (pictured above). This is actually something that we’ve wanted to do for a couple years. Firefox has continually had a pretty small font-size for the URL bar, one which makes it hard for users with poor vision to read. The text in our URL and search bars is now on-par with competing browsers. It may not seem like a big deal to most, but it is the small cuts like these that can either add up to cause death by a thousand wounds or be part of the stitches in a bullet-proof product.

Cheers 😊

Status Update – In-content Preferences, part 3

10 December, 2014 § 2 Comments

icons@2x

Since the last update, bug 1022582 (checkboxes and radio buttons in about:preferences lack any indication they’re checked/selected when using High Contrast mode) has been marked ready for check-in and should be marked fixed by late tomorrow.

This marks the last of the high-contrast bugs blocking the release 🙂

We also have had great progress on bug 1043346 (dialogs should have their dimensions reset after closing). This bug looks ready to land after the patch gets updated.

I’m optimistic that we can get a fix in for bug 1008172 ([linux-only] scrolling up and down on pages with scrollbars in about:preferences will change subgroups) soon. I put some tips in the bug, and Richard Marti has said that he will try to take a look at it.

As for bug 1056478 (resizer of sub-dialog follows only half of the movement of mouse pointer), I’m not sure if we should keep it as a blocker. This bug reveals an underlying issue in Gecko (bug 1105906) that exists with any centered resizable element. Webkit doesn’t suffer from this issue, so it’s hopeful that we will find a solution, but I don’t know if this quirk should stop us from shipping.

The next bugs that I would like to see attention on are:
Bug 1043612: Persist the size of resizable in-content subdialogs
Bug 1044597: in-content preferences: resized dialogs should not push buttons into overflow
Bug 1044600: in-content preferences: empty dialogs after pressing backspace or the Back button

All three of these bugs are part of the subdialogs category. Thanks for the work to those contributing patches and helping test, we couldn’t do this without you! 🙂

The Bugs Blocking In-Content Prefs, part 2

26 November, 2014 § 1 Comment

Season's greetingsAt the beginning of November I published a blog post with the list of bugs that are blocking in-content prefs from shipping. Since that post, quite a few bugs have been fixed and we figured out an approach for fixing most of the high-contrast bugs.

As in the last post, bugs that should be easy to fix for a newcomer are highlighted in yellow.

Here is the new list of bugs that are blocking the release:

The list is now down to 16 bugs (from 20). In the meantime, the following bugs have been fixed:

  • Bug 1022578: Can’t tell what category is selected in about:preferences when using High Contrast mode
  • Bug 1022579: Help buttons in about:preferences have no icon when using High Contrast mode
  • Bug 1012410: Can’t close in-content cookie exceptions dialog
  • Bug 1089812: Implement updated In-content pref secondary dialogs

Big thanks goes out to Richard Marti and Tim Nguyen for fixing the above mentioned bugs as well as their continued focus on helping to bring the In-Content Preferences to to the Beta and Release channels.

The Bugs Blocking In-Content Prefs

6 November, 2014 § Leave a comment

Paper Firefox!If you’ve been following my blog, you know that there has been a long on-going project to rewrite Firefox’ preferences and move them to a page within the browser.

Work has continued on that front, but it has been moving at a slow pace. Today, representatives from engineering, user experience, and project management met together to form the remaining list of bugs that are blocking us from shipping in-content preferences to the Release channel.

In total, we have 20 bugs blocking the release. There are five different categories that the bugs fit in. Bugs that should be easy to pick up and finish for a new-comer are highlighted.

If you’d like to work on one of the above bugs, please click on the bug and read the details. If you have any questions, please post the question in the bug and someone will get back to you. Thanks!

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