The Firefox Proton UI Update and my Perspective

So, as many Firefox users are already aware, Mozilla has released a new version of its popular web browser Firefox with an entirely new look, which has proven to be very controversial. This is nothing new for Firefox, since Mozilla tends to refresh the looks of its web browser regularly and the updates don’t seem to break anything (at least, in my personal use). While I have to admit that I surprisingly enjoy this new layout for Firefox, this topic of refreshing the look that’s been circulating the media and populating my news feed has brought me back to think about my favourite version of the Firefox browser (I was an early adopter for Firefox and Chrome when they were still new to the market and I have been on top of every update since).

My all time favourite version of the Firefox browser, aesthetic and functionality wise, was Firefox 3.x. This browser was released around the same era as Windows Vista and Windows 7 and was very widely used. I remember a few laptop brands even came with Firefox 3.x preinstalled and they could even be demoed with this browser at your local Future Shop. Nostalgia aside, this browser looked and, in my opinion, still looks like a very well laid out, polished piece of software. Every graphic in this web browser UI was 3D and really felt polished. The big blue back button and smaller blue forward 3D buttons were excellent touches to really make this browser feel premium. And, among other things, this version of Firefox even had the option to save your browsing session for next time if you were closing more than one tab. The latest version only seems to clarify if you want to close all your tabs without asking to save. While you can use Ctrl + Shift + T in most modern browsers to restore your previous session most times, it still would be a nice feature to automatically restore your previous session if, say you wanted to shut down your machine at night and resume your session ready to go for the next day, or if you have to go to work and want to pick up where you left off as soon as you’re home, without having to hibernate your machine or accidentally forgetting to press that key combination (Ctrl + Shift + T) to bring your old tabs back up.

Going back to the interface though, I really appreciate Firefox’s latest update, however, I would really love to see the interface become more 3D and I really feel like the Firefox 3.x UI was too short lived and that it really would look excellent in the modern day. This interface really blew me away when I first saw it on Vista and I feel that it would have the same effect today, since everything else has pretty much gone flat. This would help to make Firefox stand out and look much more premium than its alternatives and going back to this design might even help inspire others to start developing 3D interfaces again! Unfortunately, because of security risks and exploits today, I can’t use Firefox 3.x safely, especially on Vista and 7, over a standard network as a daily browser. But I really enjoyed revisiting this browser and I made sure to use downloaded, verified safe, HTML websites stored locally on my hard drives for the purposes of writing this article.

In Conclusion, I really believe that Firefox would be much better off with an interface closer to that seen in Firefox 3.x. This change may still be controversial, since it opposes the ideals set up by what's trendy today, but I sincerely feel that this change would be very well received and could be industry changing!

If you enjoyed this latest article of The Nicholas Perspective, feel free to check out my News Feed on the Home Page regularly for more updates and you can catch up on older articles on my main Blog page. Fun fact, this article was originally written on one of my Windows Vista machines!

I may not post as much lately, due to recent events that have made it prudent for me to shift my focus and restructure my game plan for achieving my goals, but I will try to set aside some time whenever possible to write a quick post, since this blog is still one of my favourite hobbies. I hope to get back to my LDR (Linux Distro Reviews) series soon as well, but those posts take a greater amount of time to research, prepare, test, and document than a standard blog post, so if you’re following that series, I haven’t given up on it, but there will likely be more miscellaneous posts in between episodes.