Closed Bug 763294 Opened 12 years ago Closed 12 years ago

Restore tabs on bottom option

Categories

(Firefox :: Menus, defect)

Product:
Firefox
Component:
Menus
Version:
16 Branch
Platform:
x86_64
Windows Server 2003
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

()

Status:
VERIFIED WONTFIX

People

(Reporter: jab_creations, Unassigned)

References

Details

Attachments

(2 files)

Classic Theme Restorer "Tabs not on top option"
42.21 KB, image/png
Details
tab far away from its content - why??
42.56 KB, image/png
Details 
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.2; WOW64; rv:10.0.5) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/10.0.5
Build ID: 20120531185831

Steps to reproduce:

I had to manually download Firefox nightly to avoid it overriding the previous version.


Actual results:

Tabs were on top. The context menu ability to make the GUI usable was missing.


Expected results:

Tabs don't belong on top, stop copying Chrome! If you're really desperate to figure out why Chrome is "popular" install Avast to witness Chrome automatically installing it without the user's explicit consent, people aren't using it because of it's lack of usable GUI.

Tabs on top should be an option, NOT the default. Tabs (and therefore the page open in the tab) do not override the browser controls, therefore by hierarchy of visual controls tabs are inferior to browser controls.

Additionally the ability to move tabs-to-top is not available.

Previously when tabs-to-top the default was incorrectly set to tabs on top.
Component: Untriaged → Menus
Depends on: 755646
QA Contact: untriaged → menus
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 12 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
The UX Team presented there reasons for moving the tabs above the navigation bar a long time ago. While the reasons may not make everyone agree. They certainly were sound and were completely independent of Chrome design. At some point point it was inevitable that the product would evolve to the point of killing legacy designs.
Will we be having option in about:config or Mozilla simply removing legacy designs and users who want to use it need an add-on for this ?
Congratulations Paul, the "design" team are clueless and probably get along with the people at Microsoft responsible for the abomination known as the "UX" of IE9.

Virtual, do you even need to ask if you should make the context menu available to easily restore NORMAL functionality?
(In reply to Virtual_ManPL from comment #2)
> Will we be having option in about:config or Mozilla simply removing legacy
> designs and users who want to use it need an add-on for this ?

The option will be removed from 15 IIRC and thus about:config/add-ons will be necessary to restore tabs on bottom UI for those not already using tabs on bottom. The beauty of Firefox is that despite removing the option from the primary UI, it will still be available via extensions and themes.

(In reply to John A. Bilicki III from comment #3)
> Virtual, do you even need to ask if you should make the context menu
> available to easily restore NORMAL functionality?

As stated above, at some point you have to push forward with things and remove options. I do however believe that it would've been better if the User Research team presented some information showing that tabs on bottom had become something that very few users were actively using since tabs on top became the default.
King above peasant.

Feet above stool.

High school picture above name.

User interface above content.

This is called hierarchy.

>The beauty of Firefox is that despite removing the option from the primary UI, it will still be available via extensions and themes.

No, this is only "beauty" in that it is your excuse to not only impose your backwards sense of design on others but also enforce it making it difficult for the average user to restore normal functionality thus further diminishing the desirability to use Firefox.

Change alone from the established hierarchy of how humans interpret good design to changes for the sake of changes automatically overrides on the principle alone: if it's not broke don't "fix" it.

It is beyond blatantly obvious this is being done intentionally to give Firefox users the shaft.
Your rant appears to be of the assumption that I was part of the decision making process. I wasn't, I just don't happen to disagree with it. Ignoring that tabs on bottom has been an afterthought for more than ten release cycles and the fact that the option isn't available on any competitor browsers, I'm unable to find a reason for which it _must_ be supported. As I said, such a change should've been presented with numbers from the UR Team but it doesn't make the decision bad.

Please see: http://blog.mozilla.org/faaborg/2010/06/24/why-tabs-are-on-top-in-firefox-4/

Also http://people.mozilla.com/~faaborg/files/20100625-tabsOnTop/conceptualOnBottom.png vs http://people.mozilla.com/~faaborg/files/20100625-tabsOnTop/conceptualOnTop.png
John A. Bilicki III: 
Please read https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html and understand it before posting a comment again in Mozilla Bugzilla, otherwise your account might get disabled due to both offtopicness (for this specific issue), missing respectfulness and wrong assumptions. Bugzilla is not a forum for rants. Thanks for your understanding.
Summary: Restore tabs on bottom → Restore tabs on bottom option
Rants aside, I think selectively making it a one-way street is not a good way to go about it. Showing the option when tabs are on the bottom and not showing it when tabs are on top and requiring the user to take a lot of extra, advanced steps to go into the configuration editor and flipping a pref is forcing a cookie-cutter UI on users. Firefox is, and always has been, about easy customization, which you are effectively removing here by only making it "easy" in one direction to push users towards tabs on top.

Both tabs on top and tabs on bottom have their uses and logic behind it. It's not just about "Legacy UI", it is also about different people doing things in different ways, and mentally organizing information differently.
It also has to do with how you use the browser: full screen or windowed? It also has to do with what you use the browser for: websites or web apps? Do navigation controls really need to be classified as "dynamic" while for most uses they don't change? etc.

In short: it is a personal choice based on many, many factors, and the number of users having/preferring tabs on bottom is not negligibly small. 

PS: Be aware that your telemetry data is probably also mostly measuring a specific group of users: the users who take everything "out of the box". People who change the browser's configuration often also don't send in telemetry data. You shouldn't blindly trust it.
Mark Straver said it absolutely correct.

I have been using FF for a coon's age, tabs on bottom.  That's where I want them. That's where I am habitually used to finding them. On top they get lost in the clutter of the toolbars.

Some time back they moved Private Browsing to "Files".  I don't use that much, and went nuts trying to find it after an update.  No notice it was moved.  

They also just took out the "X" on the first tab, unless there is a second tab, so now to clear that tab, you need to open a second tab so the 1st tab can be cleared.  How dumb is that???  

Mozilla is learning from Microsoft about just unilaterally changing stuff that worked and what people got used to.

When you make a change to "legacy" functions you have to make the change OPTIONAL for the millions of legacy USERS.  New users won't know, so they won't complain.

TABS top or bottom is a single user choose line item in a Dbox. Not a major reprogram.
When using Firefox the eye concentrates on five things, which for me have the following priority :

primarily the web-page content
second the open tabs (because I am usually looking at several different web pages simultaneously and often want to switch tabs)
third the bookmarks (because I want to open a new tab) 
fourth the url and search bar
the page title and function menu (using Ubuntu, this is set by the operating system)

The user interface needs to be set up to support the scan of the eye to match this priority. Otherwise, the eye has to cross data which is not immediatley required and the crossed text has a distracting effect.

Tabs at the top puts the second most useful element of the display at almost the least useful place - an eye movement to the tabs is distracted by the text shown as bookmarks, the url, search box and function icons. 

The difficulty of reading the tabs is exacerbated by the use of light text for non-selected tabs and the lack of differentiation by background colour or shade. The unselected tabs are the very things you want to read easily as switching to another tab is the reason one reads the tab bar !.

This is why having tabs at the top is a poor user interface design.
Putting TABS on top or bottom is a NO-BRAINER.  Just give us the CHOICE in Tools-Options.
There are many less than useful choices for mundane things there, so why not tabs???

Bill Oldroyd makes a good point on why they should be on the bottom, but some may prefer the top. (NOT me)

A better analogy for tabs on bottom would be going back to where tabs originated.... paper filled filing cabinets.  The tabs are IMMEDIATELY above the paper based data (Web page today) they describe.

I can't believe that Mozilla, a company that says it listens to its users, just simply refuses to fix this.
Tabs below the location bar can now be achieved by installing the Classic Theme Restorer add-on. I've attached a screenshot of the relevant menu where the option can be seen.

Download from here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/?src=ss
I am using a Tabs on bottom add-on.  Works as expected.  But AVAST keeps nagging me to remove it for some reason.
It really needs to be a restored fundamental function in Firefox, not an add-on to fix a simple removal of a FORMER function to change tab positions.  It simply galls me that Mozilla won't fix it, yet spends time and money on dubious bells and whistles for the next "improved" upgrade.
@ JG Berson,

Be careful with AVAST. Their forums were hacked recently and all user passwords were stolen. They've since placed it online again, but with a different security setup. Advisable to change your p/w if you've ever posted there. 

Also, there are incompatibility issues with Windows 8.1 for which AVAST has released a fix. Maybe that's why you're seeing the prompt: http://www.getavast.net/solution-for-windows-8-1-and-avast-compatibility-issues
I don't use AVAST forums, and I am on WIN 7 not 8.1.

I also did not heed their "warning" about the tabs add-on.
There's no point in continuing a discussion in a closed bug, restricting comments to editbugs privilege.
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
Restrict Comments: true
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