420525 - Use a more friendly default window size for new/fresh profiles (golden ratio)

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

Attachment: Current window default size

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.4; en-US; rv:1.9b4pre) Gecko/2008030111 Minefield/3.0b4pre ID:2008030111

The default window size of Firefox doesn't look nice at the moment. It fills the whole height and only a half or third of your desktop. The aspect ratio should be updated to better fit todays monitor resolutions. A good thing would be to use the golden ratio which will be more eye-friendly.

Even if the default start page for Firefox 3 will be similar to the latest beta versions, most of the content will be cut-off. See the attached screenshots. One for the current default size and the other one with a proposal.

Comment 1

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

Attachment: Proposed default window size

Comment 2

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

Maybe it should open maximized? I think most people are using a browser maximized and I assume that anyone knows how to resize a window. I agree that the initial size looks weird on a widescreen but the reason is understandable and familiar (the same as TV).

Comment 3

[David Naylor]

I'd cast a vote for maximized. Not using the full screen when browsing is stupid and Firefox should encourage users to use it.

Those who have huge widescreen screens are obviously a minority and can reduce the size of the window if they like.

Comment 4

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

(In reply to comment #3)
> I'd cast a vote for maximized. Not using the full screen when browsing is
> stupid and Firefox should encourage users to use it.

Stupid in which case? You only can argue from your point of view. Personally I don't like fullscreen because other applications need my attention.

I cannot remember any application which opens maximized on first startup. We shouldn't break that. And I don't think that most people are using their browser maximized in general.

Comment 5

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

I think the majority of normal users actually do browse maximized by default, based on anecdotal observation.  I don't because I have large displays and its not necessary, but lots of people are on 1280x800 laptops or 1280x1024 desktop LCDs, or smaller.

Comment 6

[David Naylor]

@Henrik Skupin: Well, what can I say. Firefox didn't get to where it is today by sticking to the conventions.

And no, I can argue from many people's points of views: Most people have something like 1024 or 1280 resolution. They won't have loads of different apps up in one go and they may as well use the full screen for their browser.

Those who know about maximizing will generally do so. (And yes, that is a notion based on my own experience, no scientific study, so shoot me.) Those who don't will just be using a certain percentage of the screen they paid for.

I guess you could tell firefox to maximize on screens up to 1280 wide and stick to 1280 wide on larger screens, that would make sense.

Comment 7

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

Attachment: comparison screenshots Vista (widescreen) - Windows XP (normal screen)

FWIW, I made some screenshots too. On both laptops with very common (not very high) screen resolutions I used the same settings:

width="983"
height="716"
screenX="4"
screenY="4"

Comment 8

[David Naylor]

If the default window is not maximized, I'd say the current size is a better size for browsing the web than the proposed size. The web is taller than it is wide, as opposed to TV content.

Comment 10

[Peter Hewitt]

I agree with those saying it should not open maximised, however at the moment the window is too narrow and often strangely tall looking due to it taking the max height but not max width.

Comment 11

[(not currently active) Ted Mielczarek]

Not going to block on this, but I think we'd take a patch.

Comment 12

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

Alex, could you give some ui advices?

Comment 13

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

With all the changes to the navigation bar, the default sizing on OS X for Firefox 4.0 makes the locationbar completely unusable. We should really find a more friendly default window size across platforms, and especially OS X.

Comment 14

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

Attachment: screenshot (OS X)

Comment 15

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

Attachment: screenshot (OS X)

Now a screenshot with Beta 7.

Comment 16

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

Attachment: screenshot new add-ons manager (OS X)

Even other components are affected by the default width. In case of this screenshot you can see that the category entries are shown in their collapsed version.

Comment 17

[Alex Limi (:limi) — Firefox UX Team]

Attachment: Minefield fresh install on a 1366x768 MacBook Air (11")

I had the same experience when installing Firefox (well, Minefield nightly from Dec 4, 2010).

Attached is a screenshot of how it looks like. We should either center it and apply some algorithm to how wide we want the window to be, or just open it maximized.

My recommendation would be to just open it maximized, and let the people that have 30" screens deal with it as they wish, since we're unlikely to find a good default for these anyway.

Comment 18

[Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich)]

This would be nice, and we'd take a safe patch, but I do not think we should hold back the release for this. It's not a major regression in functionality, it's just not ideal in appearance for first-run users.

Comment 19

[Frank Yan (:fryn)]

I don't think we need to change anything in toolkit/ for a win in Firefox.

See https://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/base/content/browser.js#1282

I might take this bug, since first-run experience is super important.

Comment 20

[Frank Yan (:fryn)]

Taking.

Please read all the comments before adding another. Almost everyone has been saying the same thing, and we don't need more of that.

Comment 21

[Sylvestre Ledru [:Sylvestre]]

No assignee, updating the status.

Comment 22

[Sylvestre Ledru [:Sylvestre]]

No assignee, updating the status.

Comment 23

[Sylvestre Ledru [:Sylvestre]]

No assignee, updating the status.

Comment 24

[Sylvestre Ledru [:Sylvestre]]

No assignee, updating the status.