Comments on: Like Chrome, Should Firefox Put Tabs on Top?

By: Luiz

Luiz — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 02:39:41 +0000

For 10″ netbook the chrome version is much better, because of the space. And sometimes chrome crashes in hotmail. So I like and use both.

By: jose antonio

jose antonio — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 21:43:59 +0000

i guess that for me its all about space efficiency,(hate the bulkiness of toolbars,etc) but some people just wouldnt be ready to change or they just want it one way.... so why cant it just have an intergrated option were the user can choose if they want the tab on the top or the bottom, this would satisfy both sides and would reduce the hassel of whether they shoul or should not put it

By: Shandog

Shandog — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 23:56:32 +0000

How about just letting users choose where to put them?

By: Derek

Derek — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 17:07:14 +0000

One word: Optional.

Some people like them on top, others (like me) prefer them on the bottom.

So, make it configurable. Everyone wins.

By: Luke

Luke — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 21:52:07 +0000

I think they should have the option to put them on top. I prefere them on top, but just because I do doesnt mean everyone should have too.

By: WulfTheSaxon

WulfTheSaxon — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:32:20 +0000

From my understanding, when maximized, they’re at the very top so as to take advantage of Fitts’law with a practically infinite height.

There should be a preference, though.

By: MentalRectangle

MentalRectangle — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:36:32 +0000

Why not move the menu bar/awesomebar/back buttons to the top of the frame, then move the tabs up to where those were? Keeps the same format but achieves the same screen efficiency?

Personally I think the interface for chrome is not one of its assets. Mozilla should focus on replicating chrome’s speed, not its looks. Firefox already looks better, and frankly looks don’t matter.

By: sarm

sarm — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 23:42:59 +0000

This is kind of unrelated but does anyone know if there’s a plugin for firefox to duplicate the chrome tab behaviour where when you start closing tabs, the remaining tabs are not resized until you move the mouse off the tabs. This makes closing a bunch of tabs alot faster since you don’t need to move your mouse between closing them.

By: oCpmture

oCpmture — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 09:17:38 +0000

The “average user” does not need to understand the metaphor of the tab placement to know that they simply switch pages. Even if the user insists on understanding this “difficult” paradigm of tabs representing separate processes before using the browser, it’s like 5 minutes of learning vs a much longer time of using. So I think what you raised is a non-issue.

The only issue I see with tabs on top is how multi-row tabs look like with tabmixplus

By: oCpmture

oCpmture — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 09:10:37 +0000

I believe tabs on top should be THE standard convention. because

1)It save precious vertical space on the now common 768px vertical laptops.
2)It makes tabs easier to reach, because the mouse only needs to move straight to the top, and down a bit, as opposed to the more careful vertical aiming required for bottom tabs.
3)The implementation from the screenshot above leaves space on top for moving the window. It might be harder to move the window, but it’s not a frequent action
4)The shorter title still seems to identify the page.

On windows and linux, browsers are where most of the tabs are anyway (other than property dialogs) , so it should SET the convention, not follow.

By: oCpmture

oCpmture — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 08:46:58 +0000

we should decide based on measured efficiency, not backward compatibility. This is how the world moves forward.

By: Tony

Tony — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 07:51:04 +0000

I prefer the tabs as they are now. I often use windows with 20 to 50 tabs open and if I have to ‘travel’the mouse all the way up to the top to close a tab then that not only increases the travel distance, it also takes more time to do. In addition, I prefer to have the page name on the tab right above the window, not above the ‘clutter’on the browser tool bars.

But bottom line, why even have this discussion? Give users the option to place the tabs where they want them to be just the way we can customize button locations, tool bars etc.
Keep it flexible, keep it simple, keep everyone happy.

By: Aiden

Aiden — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 05:52:26 +0000

I currently use Chrome over Firefox solely because the UI, with tabs-on-top being the most important difference, just feels better to me. Tabs-on-top saves space and looks better.

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 16:16:03 +0000

Yeah, we do. The extensions are what make Firefox worthwhile, and Google doesn’t seem very interested in competing in that area.

So what you have is arguably the worst modern browser being used by most of the web developers out there, so sites always work best with Firefox.

Then you have the newest (I wouldn’t go so far as to say best yet) browser using a rendering engine that almost no one tests with, so presentation and functionality are catch as catch can.

And the most standards compliant browsers are the one that everyone hates (IE8) and the one that nobody uses (Opera).

The browser industry is long overdue for a real shakeup. I thought that would happen when Google made their own browser, but they backed way off of their previously stated intentions for it and went with an interesting technical approach that doesn’t bring anything really new to the user experience. So still we wait.

By: CubeGuy

CubeGuy — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 04:01:05 +0000

When at the top, the tabs replace the title bar entirely. It removes a row of screen space.

By: pwayboy

pwayboy — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 15:58:22 +0000

How would you free up screen space? Seems like six or one-half dozen to me.

Give users a check box to let them choose whether the tabs’placement.