648215 - usability: relocate refresh/abort and the tabs!

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 606840

(Firefox :: Menus, enhancement)

Description

[Ulrich Windl]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; de; rv:1.9.1.18) Gecko/20110320 SUSE/2.0.13-0.2.1 SeaMonkey/2.0.13
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; de; rv:1.9.1.18) Gecko/20110320 SUSE/2.0.13-0.2.1 SeaMonkey/2.0.13

I have two major usability issues with Firefox 4.0:
First the combined refresh/abort button that is located right of the URI field should be relocated to the left of the URI field. That is becasue the forward/back buttons are at the left. This avoids unnecessary mouse movements.
The decision to have to tab titles above the "bookmark bar" (I don't know the exact phrase) is poor, because when the mouse is inside the content window and you want to switch tabs, you'll have to cross the "bookmarks bar" to reach the tab titles. That is confusing and leads to mistakes (mixing existing tabs with bookmarks). The design of Firefox 3.x was much better there.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open some tabs
2. Navigate/use those

Actual Results:  
You are moving the mouse (your eyes) more than necessary

Expected Results:  
Regquired mouse (eye) movements should be minimal

Don't do what others do; do the best instead.

Comment 1

[Thomas Ahlblom]

The issue about tabs on top has been discussed a lot, so I doubt there will be any change back. This blog post covers some of it:
http://blog.mozilla.com/faaborg/2010/06/24/why-tabs-are-on-top-in-firefox-4/

Just for reference: Bug 593823 - Put tabs on top by default on Linux 

And as you hopefully already have found out you can just right click on the Menu Bar and deselect Tabs on Top if the current layout doesn't fit your taste.

Comment 2

[Thomas Ahlblom]

Your issue about the reload/stop button being placed to the right of the address bar sounds like a duplicate of:

Bug 606840 - New Go/Reload/Stop button in URL bar makes Back followed by Reload complicated

Comment 3

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2] (away July 24th - August 16th)]

First, please don't put multiple items into a single bug. That's not the way how it is intended to work. Also as it already has been mentioned, you can customize the location of the tabbar and the reload/stop buttons. For the latter open the customize toolbars sheet and drag the icon to the left of the urlbar. Given the summary lets dupe it to bug 606840.