567492 - The new add-ons manager is completely meaningless

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Toolkit :: Add-ons Manager, defect)

Description

[Ryan Li]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.3a5pre) Gecko/20100521 Minefield/3.7a5pre
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.3a5pre) Gecko/20100521 Minefield/3.7a5pre

It seems that the new layout of the add-ons manager has been proposed a long time ago, but not until recently I have found it incorporated in my nightly version.
I am simply disappointed by this, and have to say that this is the largest draw-back in my use of Firefox for over half a decade as a normal user.

The first of all questions: why would you replace something that is working for so many years, and replace it with something that breaks so often?
I am an extension developer myself and use the add-ons manager a lot myself. But I don't want to describe the bugs here since they are off-topic.

Yes, I know. That the bugs are shallow and will be fixed eventually. So let's just talk about the new design.

The new design breaks the uniformity across desktop applications.
The old add-ons manager, is an XUL <prefwindow>, like the browser window itself, is a normal window decorated by the system's window manager. This gives a great harmony among all the applications: the same border, same title, same button style. That's one of the main reasons that I prefer Firefox to other browsers, including Chrome and Opera.
However, the new design, breaks this harmony. I read somewhere that it's the pioneer of your idea that all preferences, etc. should go in to a tab, instead of a windows. But this is how a website works, instead of how a desktop application works. What if I want to maximize my add-ons manager?
Furthermore, the widgets neither follow the same style. The buttons are rounded and small, the background is always gray, regardless of what the user sets as appearance preferences for all native applications with graphical user interface.

So here are the questions. Why should the add-on manager be a tab, instead of window, which could do exactly the same thing? Why is Firefox so different that it looks so strange among other applications? Are you going to develop Firefox as a monopoly operating system, having a fixed look for all of your components, and handing the users/master operating system no control over how it looks?

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[(mostly gone) XtC4UaLL [:xtc4uall]]

please redirect you questions/concerns to the mozilla.dev.apps.firefox NG.
there you find a thread concerning the new addons manager.

Comment 2

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

(In reply to comment #0)
> Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.3a5pre)
> Gecko/20100521 Minefield/3.7a5pre
> 
> The first of all questions: why would you replace something that is working for
> so many years, and replace it with something that breaks so often?
> I am an extension developer myself and use the add-ons manager a lot myself.
> But I don't want to describe the bugs here since they are off-topic.

I believe that I don't have to remind you that you are using an alpha build which is not supposed to have a completely working feature of the new add-ons manager. We have continuous process in the development and ui design. Yes, expect more ui updates in the next days. Those shouldn't be "discussed" here. There are better places like the newsgroups as already said in the last comment.

But if you would like to help in identifying issues and report them, we would appreciate your help. Please see our test plan:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/QA/Firefox_3.next/Test_Plan:AddonsManagerRedesign