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Alex Faaborg set the record straight on his user experience blog for Mozilla about Firefox 4.0 coming standard with a ribbon interface. There were a slew blogs, tweets, and news articles saying that the latest Firefox would sport the Redmond style-feature. However, it seems the information may have been a bit misconstrued.
Faaborg clarified in his blog, that while they have been investigating the interface trends in popular software products, they have not chosen the “Ribbon” to be an ideal solution for a web browser. He goes on to point out that “a tab based and contextual UI designed for holding a massive number of commands for document creation (a Ribbon) doesn’t actually make any sense for a Web browser” and they have no intention of implementing one.
It would appear the proposed interface for Firefox 4.0 (see image) resembles the Chrome and latest IE front-ends: losing the menu bar, and integrating a minimal command UI.
What do you think? Would Firefox have been better with a pretty little “Ribbon?”
Image Credit: Mozilla
Links:
[1] http://www.maximumpc.com/user/jcbarry
[2] http://blog.mozilla.com/faaborg/2009/09/24/no-ribbon-planned-for-the-firefox-ui/
[3] http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/351808/firefox-tidies-up-with-office-2007s-ribbon
[4] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/mozilla_expects_ship_firefox_40_late_2010
[5] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/mozilla_teases_us_firefox_40_mockups
[6] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/user_interface_not_speed_was_ie8s_top_priority
[7] http://www.maximumpc.com/tags/firefox
[8] http://www.maximumpc.com/tags/firefox_40
[9] http://www.maximumpc.com/tags/ribbon_ui
[10] http://www.maximumpc.com/tags/software
[11] http://www.maximumpc.com/tags/software_news
[12] http://www.maximumpc.com/tags/user_interface
[13] http://www.maximumpc.com/articles/news
[14] http://www.maximumpc.com/user/login?&commentfragment=comments_top_anchor