Comments on: The “Single UI Element”

By: Gerry Lang

Gerry Lang — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 04:15:43 +0000

I think that a common UI is a good idea.

I would like to have a 2nd status bar that would be free of clutter. I am a nix user and find that many applets or extensions are windows centric. Having a common UI would make multi-platform transportability transitions easier.

By: jeffrey

jeffrey — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 17:29:22 +0000

That was a lot of words for: “Were going to copy Google Chrome’s Extension system.”

By: Nuss

Nuss — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 14:44:47 +0000

Awesome! Just plain awesome. Perhaps it steals a bit too much screen estate though, you could easily shave off at least 10 pixels in height (and of course I understand it’s an early mock-up, but still). Will non-Jetpack add-ons be able to use this space too? And, oh, did I say it looks awesome?

By: John K

John K — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 03:44:02 +0000

This is one of those little things that just makes so much sense. In fact, your screenshot reveals another piece of software that went with a similar approach…

Good work, guys!

By: Tiago Sá

Tiago Sá — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 15:06:57 +0000

I’m not well acquainted with google groups and meetings and whatnot, so I’ll leave it here and hope that someone relevant reads it:

This idea is very neat looking and interesting, keeping everything in one place, preventing the Tools menu from becoming a mess and whatnot. But I’d like to remind you that there is a very very high extension limit in Firefox, and there are a few (“few”) people who use 50+ extensions. Some sort of “organize” is a definite must, and, with it, a “other extensions” menu with a drop-down(up).

I, myself, have around 70 extensions, and use Menu Editor and Status Bar Organizer. Right now, I have a total of nine small icons on the right side of my status bar, which I use frequently and are readily accessible: Quick Locale Switcher, Mute Flash, Secure Login, Flagfox, Adblock Plus, Stylish, CS Lite, NoScript and Vacuum Cleaner (alhtough I could probably live without the last one). So, little more than 10% of my extensions have a button readily available. And it’s not an enable/disable button, it’s icons to use the extension or its options, because that’s what’s relevant. Of course, an enalbe/disable option would be nice, no doubt, mostly in terms of memory consumption, and could be place together with the remaining options of the extensions.

I do use All-in-one-sidebar, which is readily accessible by clicking on the left-most margin of Firefox. In it, I have three other extension icons: DownThemAll! manager, FireFTP and Firebug (I mostly press F12, so I don’t use this last icon very much…).

Basically, all I have in my Tools menu are entries for configuration extensions like TabMixPlus and Customize Menus. Those I don’t use a lot, so I live them there if I need to use them. All the other extensions that are just install and forget about it, I simply disable the menu entry with Menu Editor.

This is my experience, so I hope you don’t forget about me.

By: Fred

Fred — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 14:10:11 +0000

Oh please, just stop copying Google Chrome for god’s sake!

Think of something new, original…

By: sabret00the

sabret00the — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 11:41:07 +0000

In it’s current form, it’s far too wide. I’m also hoping that this be auto-hidden. But I love the fact that you’re working on something like this. I look forward to seeing the development of the extension bar unfold.

By: oelmekki

oelmekki — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 09:56:24 +0000

Can’t this beautiful experiment story and proof of concept be summed up as : “hey, chrome’s extension structural UI is cool, why not using it?” ?

By: Michael Kaply

Michael Kaply — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:15:28 +0000

You guys really are copying Google Chrome.