Alex Faaborg

When I read this:

“We have decided to deviate from the XP Luna style in one specific way: our navigation toolbar icons are going to have a glossier finish than the default texture of XP Luna (we are planning to go with a finish closer to the Royale theme), while maintaining a similar color palette. Note that we just made this decision so the the change isn’t currently reflected in the sheet above.”

… I was much relieved! Seeing the *extremely* IE6-ish icons in the sheet made somewhat sad, but alas, now I am happy again!

Looking through the OSX icons (what of them are there, at least) — how are the strings in “Highlight all”, “Previous”, and “Next” handled? Having words as part of the graphics would be a major problem for localisation.

Wow, I’ll be looking forward for the new app icon! However few notes from first glance on the icons:

1. Don’t you think the drop shadows for the Windows XP icons set are a little too dark?

2. Vista’s star glyph doesn’t feel like Vista at all.

3. Why is Vista’s web feed 16×16 icon in blue color?

4. Talk about icon design, I don’t understand why is there a lime background on XP’s and Vista’s History clock icon?

5. ‘Save file’ and ‘Downloads’ icons look the same? Isn’t floppy a better metaphor?

6. Finally, the arrow for the Back/Forward Vista icon is not Vista-ish. Should have used the same arrow shape as XP’s.

As much as I want to claim that themes don’t matter, I’m always excited to see what people come up with. I’m sure this will look nice.

Quick question - the prefpane icons on XP and Vista all look a little…. similar (in fact, main and content are both the same). Are they still easy to differentiate when they’re in use?

Some issues I see:
1) There will no loner be an info button in the download manager, so unless something else is using it, we don’t need the info icon.
2) The download icons look small, like they are now. However, we have Bug 392128 which is blocking+. They need to be bigger.

The new Mac OS X theme for Firefox 3 feels a regression and I don’t like it.

Users won’t feel any difference between Safari and Firefox 3.

The most problematic items are the toolbars buttons: Back, Forward, Refresh, Stop and Home.

What happened to “making the back button larger [...] to create a unique visual identity” across platforms? It seems that you gave up this idea, at least when looking at the OSX back/forward-icons. Is there a particular reason?

Plus, IMHO the refresh icons on Windows look strange compared to the back/forward icons

nice work!

It looks like the icons are coming along nicely. A couple of comments though:

From your last post, I thought the shape of the back/forward icons on Mac OS X were going to be circular similar to the windows ones. Is this still the case?

To help visualize this; it would be really great if we could see the main toolbar with these images on it.

Hm… these icons certainly look different. And actually, there are some icons I don’t like much.
E. g. the odd Windows back / forward buttons. Many have criticised their concept after your last post, since they interfere with customizability, cross-platform similarity and a lot more. I don’t really like their shape either. XP back / forward icons: they feature the 278th iteration of this rounded, boring arrow shape and this bright, annoying green. Vista back / forward icons: the adaptation of WMP icons is okay, although it looks weird that the arrows have strokes at all.
Feed icon: I wish the Vista icon were going into the XP theme, too. I don’t like that plastic style much. On Linux, the first wave seems to be too close to the dot.
Customs officer: To me, his shape looks too simplified, too harsh. The tick in the Windows “Identity EV” looks too playful, especially since the officer looks so square-cut. Why do Linux icons lack a coloured background (otherwise they look cooler than their Windows equivalents)?
Refresh buttons on Windows look like they’ve lost too much weight to my eyes. Maybe it’ll look more elegant once one can see them in context.
The star button: I absolutely don’t like. Please take a look at the absolutely elegant starring icon form Thunderbird! It’s sharp, clear and not rounded at all, also the border isn’t so thick.
The history icon to me, seems to use a too bright green on XP and too dire on Vista (actually the shadow on it makes it look like the upper half is only grey not green).
The Windows Prefpane icons shouldn’t have a window-with-ticks symbolism in the background — from the context it’s clear that this is about options even without it.
To me the Linux tag icon looks best since it doesn’t have that sharp edge on the upper left. (By the way, what about that sort of shape for tags: http://www.covermover.com/images/preisschild3_44_.gif , I have no idea whether that symbol means much in America, but in Europe it is more commonly used for price tags than the other one.)
Some of the small blue icons look fuzzy, but they will probably be tuned later on, I guess.
Fullscreen is cool, although in the Vista variant the window looks distorted. Rest looks cool, too.

It’s a relief to see you decided to go with Royale over Luna for XP. Now there’s an answer for thos of us who felt that XP-integration would leave Firefox 3 too dull and ‘Microsoft-y’.

Why doesn’t the Back button on Mac OS X have the same iconic/circular shape as the others? I thought that this was pretty much what you implied in your previous post.

I think that it would be better for the Back button to have the same shape as Windows but using Mac OS style colors.

Just my two cents worth…

i don’t like the new stop/refresh/star on Vista, they are too dark and no shining at all, actual winstripe has better stop/refresh icons…
Go button blue? well could be, but it’s a little too much “rounded”, is that an arrow at all? it’s a fat arrow…
green crosses over icons (like add addon, new window, new tab, are too vanishing, they need some border to be better visible and shining.
Applications prefpane feels like a calendar…
sokme xp tiny icon has not good looking border, like tab drag marker.
in Vista Content prepane is equal to main prefpane?!
Secure broken is not enough broken (is that an exclamation point?! who can view that? :)).
linux wrap icon is wonderful!

I like the overall work, great work, i can’t wait to see the final result

Some first impression notes:

- Is there an apparent reason why the XP refresh glyph has a different (IMO worse) shape than the Vista one?
- I think the shadow of the blue XP glyphs is distracting and should be removed.
- The “Add Addon” icon is irrecognizable.

Generally, the icons created by the Tango team look more professional to me, which is ironic as I don’t think they are being paid

If, hypothetically, one were using XP but thought the general visual style were extremely gaudy, would it be possible (read: easy) to switch to one of the other platforms’ themes?

I actually have a set of Tango icons installed that replace the entire inventory of XP system icons, so the Tango theme would match much better.

Big thanks for sharing this with us! The icons are such a big step away from Firefox 2 that it is hard to know where to begin to comment… for this reason, I will begin with the overall thoughts:

1. These icons doesn’t fit the philosophy of your previous post. At this point there are 3 completely different themes, where the Windows themes constitute 2 subthemes. In other words, the “unique visual identity” for Firefox is scrapped since there now are 3 “unique”? themes?

2. Commenting on the XP icons might be unnecessary since the XP icon set, as you mention, will be closer to Royale than Luna. Luna is not a pretty theme to begin with and it feels very very 2001. Royale feels like 2004 and Firefox should feel like 2008! Downgrading the visual appearance for the sake of native look and feel is not always the best thing to do, I believe. There must be some way to combine these two: “native look and feel” and “something new, 2008ish”.

The most important thing is that the XP back button is downright ugly. The other buttons (perhaps except the forward button) are much better. And I guess they will be great once the Royale finish is applied.

3. Next, some buttons are hard to understand due to their small size, for example the clean up button. I think the download manager buttons should have their own shapes, for visibility. The round icons are too much alike.

4. Further, I think the inconsistency of some icons are bad. E.g., why is the Aero small RSS icon blue? Why is the padlock perspective different on the platform? Why are all clocks showing different times? Why is the GTK go arrow green and the Tab drag marker purple? Why is the Up and Down icons represented by text in Aqua? Why is the refresh and resume download arrows rotated differently?

5. Last, what about small versions of the navigation tool bar buttons? Will the users be stuck with big buttons?

To sum up, I accept your strategy on making Firefox feel native, but I think this will mess up the Firefox brand identity somewhat if you don’t try to make the icons feel as “Firefox 3″ as well. The Luna theme as it is today isn’t as pretty as people would assume a 2008 browser would be. And the inconsistencies are unnecessary and counterproductive in making a (1) “unique visual identity”.

Obviously there’s nothing else in Linux than Gnome and all its… well, things!. What about KDE?. Eh?. I don’t think that a Tango FF would fit in the new shinny KDE4. It will be and alien!. Is it to much effort for an actually wealthy foundation to prepare a KDE (oxygen style with oxygen icons) edition and a separate Gnome edition (Gnome style and Tango Icons)?. Is it?.

Firefox in Linux isn’t just as good as Windows counterpart and with this kind of bold movements you leave KDE users (which may be 60-70% of Linux users) out in the cold, with no reason to go on using it.

I just hope that Konqueror’s KDE4 version would be fully compatible with Gmail and other problematic sites so I can move away from Firefox at once.

Why are you re-inventing the wheel with all those Vista or XP icons? Why can’t you just use the same controls that are used all over the place, especially in Vista! Mac icons look a lot like real Mac icons than the Vista icons like real Vista icons.
Especially the back/forward buttons should be like in every built in Vista app, the current draft just plainly sucks.
Firefox 3 shouldn’t shine through re-inventing the wheel (so that users have a harder learning curve and aren’t as likely to adopt the fox) but through perfectly integrating in the look and feel of the OS it is running on. Consistency is key, NOT differentiation - at least in the icon area!

No no no!

Those XP icons will make Firefox look like IE, a product you’re competing with.

As i’ve read the other comments here’s my statement:
Why re-invent the wheel?

It’s not worth it.

“…because dropping in new images is pretty low risk in terms of performance and stability regressions”

You’re not talking about the stability of your mail server aren’t you…

It seems like a lot of reader missed the part where Alex points out that the image posted presents an early draft of the icons.

I’m quite pleased to get regular updates on progress of the evolution of the final cosmetic aspects of Firefox 3.

Miguel:
Strictly speaking, you’re not left in the cold as a KDE user. “The Tango icons are building upon many of the current icon concepts used by KDE, GNOME, and Firefox. ” And you could still use Firefox even if it wasn’t the case.

Pulling usage statistics out of your … hat … doesn’t change a thing either. If you really think that the new (yet to be released) version 4 of KDE necessitates a different default theme, well you could gather a bunch of designers and contribute one. That’s basically what happened with the Gnome effort.

Hooray! Now Firefox on XP gets to look like the latest and greatest browser straight out of 2001!

Maybe a page should be taken from the Tango team’s book - they’ve managed to provide a solid iteration of winstripe v2 while achieving consistency with their platform and retaining the Firefox look.
Echoing previous sentiments, the Tango icons even look more professional than the XP/Vista icons (f.e. the prefpane icons; where it looks like someone didn’t even try) you’re likely being taken to the cleaners for!

I don’t see why you need to sacrifice Firefox’s look to conform to microsoft’s horrendous design decisions - just take a sample of successful non-microsoft applications on windows, I guarantee you’ll see almost all of them ignoring the icon look and feel HIGs - there’s a reason for that!

Looks like some good work has been done here!

However, I would like to emphasize some previously mentioned stuff.

1. OSX icons - Why are they blocks? When happened to the circles? The blocks just seem too similar to Safari. Instead of the blocks, you could use the rounded bubble buttons like in Preview or Mail. Now that’d look nice!

2. The Prepane Window icons (XP and Vista) need to be redone. Way to similar at first glance.

4. As said before, the save and download buttons are way too similar. I think somebody already suggested using a floppy disk to denote save. Good idea!

And most importantly:
3. The TAB BUTTON for Windows and OSX. (Linux’s tab button is perfect!) At first glance I really could not figure out what those icons were representing. I had to read the label to the left. For the tab buttons, I think you should model the shape after the Linux tab button or (even better) the original Firefox 1.5 tab button. That was the best tab button ever and I was sad to see it go in Firefox2.

Thanks,
-ChrisJF

p.s. Larry is looking hawt! jk.

The Vista back button is UGLY!!! (The forward button is great.) Why is such a nonstandard glyph used? It should be EXACTLY the same shape as the Command Link glyph, which is used throughout the Vista interface (Explorer, Aero Wizard, Control Panel, Internet Explorer, CardSpace, …) as meaning “navigate” (except for Task Dialogs). Also, the Back button should be completely round, with the History button on the right. Plus, the Go button on Windows should either use the Command Link glyph or be green, otherwise it does not even look like a go button to me. I was confused about what that icon meant until I saw the description. Same with the completely non-descriptive Find Toolbar Highlight All icon, which NEEDS to be replaced with text (like the Mac “icon”) or accompanied by text like in the current trunk code. Firefox should look native, not ugly.

As some previous posters said, the Mac Back and Forward icons are not round, contrary to what was said in “The Shape of Things to Come?”. Me wants explanation!!!!!!1111one

On a positive note, the Star, Lock, Feed, preference pane icons, and Larry look great on all platforms.

I forgot to mention this in the previous post, but since when is Mozilla copying Microsoft’s (bad) decision to turn the perfectly clear “reload” to “refresh?

Hi Alex I just want to ask couple of questions. Since I am a KDE user and I prefer KDE look-n-feel. Well I get that there are more users using Windows but you are making for Vista and XP. Why don’t make for KDE and Gnome. I don’t like GTK style and their icons either, for me they just SUCK. So if you are making the effort to have different styles for XP and Vista why don’t make the same effort to make for KDE and Gnome.

“If you really think that the new (yet to be released) version 4 of KDE necessitates a different default theme, well you could gather a bunch of designers and contribute one. That’s basically what happened with the Gnome effort.”
Does this means that Mozilla is putting effort on only making Firefox better for Windows users and not Linux (speaking for the look not the functionality). It seems to me that this is the case because we have to “gather a bunch of designers and contribute one” just to feel comfortable when we browsing the web. KDE is a larger community than Gnome and I think that you should consider to create a default KDE style and in future maybe use the great Qt 4 and not the slow Gtk. As Miguel Branco said - Firefox is loosing a lot of users from the KDE community for the issues I mentioned above. I think you should put so thought into this because the KDE community is just getting bigger and bigger and with the upcoming KDE4, believe me, the KDE community will become even bigger.
Still, Firefox is the best browser on planet Earth

I have a few questions on choices in the Vista icon scheme.

In the design for the Linux icons for new tab and new window, you have a little spark on the right corner. Yet, this is a convention for new objects that Microsoft created afaik, and continues in Vista’s IE as the icon for a new tab (blank page with a spark) and for a new folder (in the Save As/Open common dialog). And if you notice its also used for add new tab in Excel. I personally think a big green plus is an ugly alternative to that.

Also, you’re adopting a different icon style for stop/refresh/go than are in IE7 and Windows Explorer. Which is obviously your prerogative, since Firefox doesn’t have to look and act like IE7 or Windows Explorer (however, I kind of like that style, excepting the fact that if the stop icon were an actual button rather than at the end of the address bar, needing something like a red circle as done. Why are you making the arrows (in go, back, forward) less elegant looking).

However, if you’re not going to adopt all Vista conventions, I don’t see the reason for the pretension in adapting the style to Vista conventions as much as you still are doing. — There’s got to be a nice way to style Firefox to make it look better than vanilla Vista while still making it fit in.

“If you really think that the new (yet to be released) version 4 of KDE necessitates a different default theme, well you could gather a bunch of designers and contribute one. That’s basically what happened with the Gnome effort.”

That’s your problem with Linux, indeed. You think that all Linux users are geeks (and I bless I adore my geek friends!) and know how to build software. Maybe you have the impression that home users all go into GNOME but NO. Not all. I’m a home Linux user. Yes, It’s true. And I will never be able to gather a bunch of programmers and do a FF theme, just like most Windows users. I wnat you to notice, like Zoran pointed, that KDE community is big indeed and that Gnome and KDE Styles (and now KDE will have a very defined style, with its rules and icons) cover most of the visual diversity of Linux distros. If Mozilla wants to pay back to its Linux contributors and users (could you find a Linux users not using FF?) it should just be equally fair with the two main communities. Tango icons are specifically designed for Gnome and is an main project inside of it. The are an alien in KDE. If you were in need of KDE developers I think it’s not so difficult to have it. Indeed they have even prepared a Oxygen FF theme recently (http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/playground/artwork/Oxygen/firefox/)

As far as I know you have never been fair with KDE users and as I’ve now seen you will never be. The rude tone of your response makes me feel that.

Oh, what does this means exactly?: “That’s basically what happened with the Gnome effort”. Seems a bit like the opposite to say that you have ever supported Linux.

Many of the comments made above are very good, so I won’t bother repeating them.

On the Linux issue, it seems only fair and proper that if you’re making separate themes for the two main flavors of Windows (XP and Vista), that the two main environments (I believe that’s the correct word, I haven’t got round to trying Linux yet Gnome and KDE should get their own themes on Linux.

And one thing that nobody has mentioned: Should the “I” separator that appears on the bookmarks toolbar be included in the icon inventory (see Bugzilla bug 382893: )?

Forget what I said above regarding the “I” separator, it is on the icon sheet (New System > Milestone 3 > Toolbar Drop Marker).

Miguel, although we might share the same first name, keep in mind that I am *not* the author of the article.

And I don’t see how having something contributed is the opposite of supporting it.

Oh, Sorry for the missundestanding.

Is the close tabs on the left will be available on the final release (Mac OSX), i see that the recent build the close tab button still on the right. This is a versatile issue for mac user.

I think the go/back icons history arrow should be to the right of the icons and no gap in between the two icons.

I like the MacOS icons, but I am not happy with the WinXP icons - especially the ugly green Back and Forward buttons.
Please don’t make them so colorful!

I like the FF Qute theme. In my opinion it would be better, if you change the icons to that style.

I hate the RSS icon. The RSS icon from the Qute theme is way better! I like the old satellite dish icon the most.

Additionally I don’t like the size of these big 64 pixel icons. It looks a way too childish.

Most of this is already written, but here are comments:
* big back button just for win theme. I can’t see any reason. It should be everywhere or nowhere.
* strange windows options icons
* blue go button looks strange
* XP print icon is a bit ugly
* Tango definitely looks the best. I guess it is largely due to fact that it is conceptualy better than other themes - people prefer human made over photorealistic (which is always interesting as technology breakthrough, but loses appeal over time), and it is not aggressive - which is also good, you should be feeling like “surfing the Internet” and not “using the browser”.
* Reload icon in XP has its roots from undo icon in XP, but those roots… suck
* back and forward icons don’t look as good as Microsoft’s. hope it is just because this is draft.
* Overall, people should be satisfied with new themes. I am sure that all themes (except XP that is still work in progress) are good replacement for current theme.

Personally, I think it’s a mistake to make the application match the operating system. It’s the kind of thing only a idiot geek would want.

USERS, the people you want to use the software, want the software to be the same no matter what platform they are on. This is why you can’t get people to migrate away from Windows; even though you call the software “cross platform,” it really isn’t. If it were, you wouldn’t know what platform you were running the application on. It would be exactly the same on any system at all.

Until the geeks get off their OScentric acid-trip, no one is migrating to anything.

Take a stand; adopt a single GUI, and use it everywhere.

While you’re at it, you might want to try to make the 16×16 icon on Windows a little more distinct. See bugzilla #332923.

Will there still be “small” icons for the menu/button/urlbar? If there will only be large I’ll screen (and stick with 2.0 or the last 3.0b that has old icons

How about a preview on the small icons? And making the back button same max size as the others in small (16×16). That would make that an option for those wanting to save space?

The following is meant for KDE users who think they don’t get what they should get (Oxygen-based theme), especially Miguel Branco and Zoran Dimovski who posted comments above:

The idea for Firefox 3 was to integrate it nicely into the OS. On Linux, Firefox uses GTK. GTK apps normally use GTK stock icons, which are themable icons that also provide a fallback in GTK itself, for the case when the desktop icon theme does not provide that icon.

For some time now, GTK ships Tango-styled stock icons. Those work nicely together with the default GNOME theme, but also the Tango reference theme and many other applications that use the Tango style (Gimp for example). One thing that everyone should understand is that Tango is not GNOME, but GNOME chose to follow the Tango guidelines, with the aim to give apps on Linux a common look.

KDE choose not to base Oxygen on Tango initially, but over time the Oxygen style has evolved and now looks not all that bad together with Tango. Also, the Tango icons in Firefox3 generally will be a bit more shiny then those in Tango Icon Theme for example, to even better match Oxygen. The KDE theme developers are aware of Firefox and will probably ship a GTK-compatibility layer, so that Firefox3 will use Oxygen versions of the stock icons.

So why is there not a second, Oxygen-based theme for Firefox on KDE? I guess there has never been much interest from the Oxygen developers to do this, else they would have done it. This would require redoing all the icons btw, as Oxygen is not using the license Mozilla requires.

So, in the end, I am sure Firefox 3 will look a lot better out-of-the-box on KDE than Firefox 2 did. And I’m also sure someone will quickly hack together a 3rd party theme using official Oxygen icons.

The mac icons are boring…

And dark..You cant even see whats in the picture of the buttons

I would prefer some more “color”

Even some blue aqua icons would look nicer…

Look the mac icons of the dock by example…they are happy and colorized…

Bad bad…

I take advantage of reading this post to ask you a question…

Is it planned in Firefox to use more icons in the different menus and right-click menu?
Because I’m clearly convinced that firefox is much more easier to use with such icons. We can easily and quickly find one entry because it’s much more visual.

And the gain for early user seems to me very important.

PS : I know some extensions do that but I want that for all of us compare to the sad other browsers.

Hello

By one set of icons by system, you lose the consistency of the Firefox visual identity. To do so, make a logo system by Firefox…..

The big “

well done
but anyway.

don’t you guys have anything real useful to do?
it looks nice, for sure, but I hae that strange feeling, that you guys have too much time *lol*

I may be posting something someone already did, but here it is…

Not only I find that the different sizes and shapes of the back and forward button are completely weird an unnecessary, they are just copies of Luna XP icons.

So, if you want to insist in this asymmetry thing, I (and many I believe) can deal with that. However, at least create an ORIGINAL FF icon instead of copying the Microsoft ones.

As said, the XP look is ugly and dated and I also believe FF needs to have some identity of its own (or at least maintain it), like many other programs do..

Nice work overall, but some recommendations…
Mac OS X icons should look more like the 10.5 release. The new refresh with OSX Leopard brings in slightly modified and more professional icons that I think could quickly be switched into Firefox.

On a larger issue, shouldn’t Firefox start to think about more icon unification across platforms and perhaps leading with its own design? It doesn’t need to be revolutionary, but Firefox is not and should not merely tweak the status quo from Microsoft, Apple, or Linux. Users should have a relatively familiar interface, but let’s stop copying browsers we hope to replace in use and in style!

I’m quite disappointed with Apple’s move towards “tiny icons in a box” and think that if you want to be the better browser, you should go with attractive icons that stand on their own without a box. The outline of an icon is a big part of how your brain quickly identifies it, and putting them all in a box hampers that. I believe that even Apple’s UI guidelines agree - even if they don’t follow them.

Also, please don’t use icons that mean something different to mac users. Applications Settings in Firefox should not have the same icon as the Applications folder. Also, on the mac, they are called “Preferences”.

I think I like the Linux ones best.

Going to agree with Lim Chee Aun’s observation about the back/forward button arrows on the Vista theme. It looks nothing like the arrows used in the standard Vista theme, which is not too different from the arrows on the XP theme. The triangular tips are rather jarring compared to the look and feel on the rest of the apps.

The back/forward icons in vista definitely need work. The proto theme’s back/forward arrow icons look wrong too. I would LOVE to see an option to turn bookmark favicons on or off based solely on preference rather than theme, for all of these, and I hope you make all of these available from the get-go in the themes menu of add-ons, or at least downloadable.

Yet another software, that has round back and forward buttons
I like the rectangular ones, where each arrow has the same size!

I hope, we will be able to test all look on all Firefox 3 Os version

Is there a way to turn off this os integration? I like the Firefox 2 theme much better than this gnome-integrated look in 3.0 beta2. I can’t stand gnome and I really don’t want firefox to look like it!

Hi
When I look at the Tango Linux version I hardly see any icons, Plus lets remember Tango is really good for Ubuntu Linux but not really for Linux in general, Most Linux Distro’s these days use xfce, icewm, And other 3D desktop with a Gradient or Crystal Flavor of style, Not the Simple 10 or less web colors of Tango, This would of suffice a few years ago, But since then a “Linux Desktop Explosions” Has Happen and Linux Users want to lead the next millennium and leave the other 2 mainstream Operating Systems behind. To do this Linux has to be innovative not bland. Sure Tango is great for that office feel, But not for the exciting new look that Linux has been striving for. If you look at my website you would see, Crystal and Carbon Fiber. I have my own linux Varient based on “Puppy Linux” Called “Fire Hydrant” And I know what Linux users want, Also a great way of knowing is look at your theme downloads, You have Crystal themes and Tango themes for Linux, The Crystal themes are download 10 times more then Tango, So why would you even Consider Tango? Maybe 1 person in your organization with a “tango” following, Really now lets look at my facts, And also I personally think Firefox is the worlds best browser, That my default Browser on all my computers/OS but every time I download Firefox, The first thing I change is the theme to a “Crystal one”. If you stay on this track and not look outside the box. You’ll never know what your missing.
ttuuxxx
Ps I like the new Robot on the Firefox 3.0b update page. Maybe as a new Browser Icon, Also as browsers icons go people have been using this black&Grey Firefox icon which is more appealing even the Firefox icon which is eating the explorer Icon wasn’t bad either. Oh well at the end of the day we all know that Linux users always get the short end of the stick!

I don’t like the home icon in ff3 beta 2 on linux. It’s better than ff2’s, but still is not right.

It looks too much “cartoony”, maybe something more real would be better, but probably tango is the problem.

Not sure I agree on trying to fit into the native schemes. But that is a design choice and I won’t fuss about it. But icons should be intuitive and distinct. When two completely different functions look essentially identical (download and save) you create confusion, not ease of use. There’s a reason why a couple of people have already suggested you return to the use of a floppy disc: even though they verge on extinction, they are, well, iconic.

Really good except for the stop sign:D

The XP refresh and stop icons arent as nice as the current ones. Rather than make them similar to Vista, it would be cooler to keep the current/linux theme. It’s not like people switch back and forth between vista and XP and therefore would like similar icons.

I love how you guys go into so much detail - right down to the icons.

Don’t think I like the new back/forward icons

It’s worth stepping back for a second and looking at the other two browsers on my XP machine.

IE7 looks odd because it introduces style cues from Vista - but MS would like me to upgrade so it’s in their interests to get me used to it.

Safari looks totally alien because it uses Mac UI and completely ignores my chosen XP style.

I use Fx the most because it lets me change things I don’t like - but I’ve never felt the need to change theme.

Hard to say how I feel without seeing the final XP icons but worst case scenario with this integration project is I switch away from the default theme. Yes, I won’t feel comfortable on someone else’s fox but that’s already the case from other customisations.

Clearly the reaction here highlights that some people will forget that users can change themes.

So I’d like the default Windows Fx3 install to include both XP and Vista themes and even ask people during install which they prefer, reminding them that other themes are available.

I’d like the Fx2 > Fx3 upgrade to additionally include an Fx2 theme or at least a link to one on the welcome page.

I really do like the icons coming up - good job!

The Vista icons look so small and neat, but the XP icons look a lot more comfortable (the Prefpane icons for example).

Other observations:

1) The Vista ‘Stop’ doesn’t really look right.

2) Is there nothing more creative than the half circle arrow for the Refresh icon? Every other browser has that.

3)Great idea on the different sizes for the Back and Forward.

Keep it up!

I do not like the idea of different icons for different operating systems. I own both a mac running leopard and an xp machine, and i don’t like the icon differences as they are. I think you should use the same icons for linux, xp/vista, and leopard/osx. There is also a glitch on this website the comment bar does not sync with the rest of the page correctly.

Also when you go to forums like http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/
version 2.011 works perfect but version 3beta2 all the icons/pictures are really bad quality looking, what is up with that? Its 100% firefox’s fault and this bug should be fixed asap.

I like the use of the border/customs officer as a symbol of identity confirmation. However, the major clue that this is a border officer is that the officer is holding a passport. Several of the icons show the officer holding a question mark or a check mark. This is not as clear as the icon looks a lot like a traffic cop when it lacks the passport clue. I would be tempted to always show a passport for clarity and put the question mark or check mark below the passport, as is done with one of the Linux icons. Using colors green/yellow along with the check and question marks makes it even better.

Keep up the great work!

Type your comment here.

I use both Linux and Windows at home, and I have replaced all of my Windows icons with those from the Tango set because I enjoyed them so much on Linux. Will which icon set is used be a user selectable option regardless of which operating system one happens to be using?

IT LOOKS GOOD,IT FEELS GREAT.BUT VISTA AERO THEME DOESN’T WORK ON IT.

As much as you KDE people complain about the GNOME-centric style of Firefox on Linux, you guys seem to forget that GTK+ can be encapsulated by Qt so that GTK+ apps look native in KDE. So really, Firefox 3’s use of native widgets is good for KDE users too. Though there might be a mismatch in styles for some icons, since some will be Tango, and others will be Oxygen or Crystal, but meh. If you KDE users really want it to look better, simply gather up some people to replace the icons that GTK+ doesn’t control and then the rest with KDE Oxygen replacements.

Finally! GTK icon integration! <3

it’s very cool

ttuuxxx: I would love to see these “Crystal and Carbon Fiber” icons you are fussing about. I see no such things on your web site. In fact, all I see is a poorly designed site. Most linux distros don’t use xfce, icewm, or any 3d magic stuff. In fact, almost all of them use either GNOME or KDE by default. And in fact, most of them ship tango styled icons by default for the theme. And the Oxygen icons in KDE 4, while attempting to look more realistic, often look quite close to the tango style anyway, at the smaller resolution sizes that matter for icons on current hardware.

I don’t know where you get your ideas of knowhing what Linux users want, but I would have to say that it’s hardly accurate. For what it’s worth, most Linux users don’t use “Puppy Linux” or “Fire Hydrant”.

I don’t even know where to start when it comes to how terrible the XP theme looks…

I like these icons, but why are the vista icons so dark-looking like in the old theme. That was exactly why I switched to WineStripe in the first place becuase 2.0’s default theme is just isn’t colorful at all and is dark. Take for instance the Home icon in 2.0.. that dark brown house. I’ll pass and find one that actually looks like something I want to click/look at you know?

Stop, refresh, history, secure. I’d rather have the XP versions of the icons.

I’m not saying go crazy with the colors, but add some if you don’t mind haha.

I love the new Visual Integration. Something I would really want to see is something only IE7 has got atm and that is a option to allow all tabs opened in a window to popup next to that tab and not at the very end.

dobey I know your part of the Tango Team and thats why your such a Prick To me, The Icons On 3beta2 suck, Hands tooo dark, too small, Not green or red enough, depending which crappy button your looking at. And The House looks like something from the 1950’s cartoon book. When I look at how bad the icons look I feel Like Firefox is a becoming a sellout to tango, Letting them control where firefox goes, Really eye-candy is just important as functionality. And we would take the most downloaded skin and use that as the default and screw TANGO off.
ttuuuxxx

I’ve been playing with Firefox 3 beta 2 on Linux for the past day.

Using the GTK icons helps make Firefox look like a native application. I like that.

The worst part is the close tab icon. The default GTK one is ugly, and there’s no hover state. In beta 2 the close tab button isn’t working sometimes, so it would be really handy if it lit up when the mouse was over it.

Look, you could design the best and coolest Icons in the world and you are still going to have hordes of folks who think they are ugly, dated or some other knit-picky thing. As a programmer, I suggest that you grow a pair and make an executive decision and go with something functional but unique. Something that anyone going to any OS and using FireFox would easily recognize as being Firefox. While user input is useful, don’t get caught up in the ‘appeasement trap’! You have to know that some folks are chronic complainers, and are the type, if all they had to do in life is pickup gold $20 pieces off the ground, some would complain about having to bend over and some would complain about having to touch the coins! In otherwords, there is just no pleasing some folks, no matter how hard you try. I want a secure, fast and functional browser, looks are secondary at best. If you have a tight app - secure, fast and functional, it won’t matter what it looks like to most users, and the rest… well who cares!

I agree with #39 bruno: the Mac icons need to have some more color in them besides EXTREMELY boring black and silver. Have you seen Apple’s proprietary office suite, iWork? http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8b/Pages3.png I would be delighted to see icons much like those on the top toolbar.

But I guess we just -have- to copy Safari’s design scheme…*sigh* but then again there may be other themes; which is why I still use Firefox.

Just loaded it!

Well i gotta say, i was also extremely relieved to hear that you guys wouldn’t use the default xp luna icons, because they were indeed ugly and looked a lot like IE6, which i by the way hate with all of my heart.

when this is all said, i hope that i, as a windows xp user will also be able to select the other themes, since i like the vista, the linux and mac OS theme a lot better. But of course when the icons for xp wil not be made as they were in the icon sheet, its not that bad, but i still like the bluish vista version better.

i just want to comment on the download manager… As we dont see most of the download manager in browser dont save the files.. i mean wen the download is turned off immediately due to may be power cutoff… just implement this feature in the upcoming firefox and i assure this will be of greater help and also of greater success as most people prefer this feature… rest all is working fine n about the themes people have different choices of there own… thanks

I HAVEN’T USED FIREFOX 3 YET, BUT AM LOOKING FORWARD TO GETTING STARTED. I HAVE ENJOYED FIREFOX UP TO THIS POINT AND EXPECT THAT WILL CONTINUE.

Firefox is great, no doubt, but from a web developers point of view, please make CSS and HTML coding more compatible with the standard CSS. Eg: using a div with a height and padding style is incorrect in FF.

But I look forward to the final release. Good Work.

excelent article, thanks for sharing with us!. saludos desde argentina!

I think Firefox 3 is seems to be Vista’s part, because glass and colorful effects is more bautiful than XP Luna and OSX Aqua.

“. . . I want users to think of Firefox as the browser their computer should have shipped with.”
I think this is a great aim, but in the case of some of the OS X icons, I think you need more emphasis on the “should have” part of the above statement. One of the many things that differentiates the user experience of Firefox from Safari is color. Red means “stop,” green means “go.” Make the icons square and Safari-ish if you want, but give us a red stop button, for the sake of usability.

Hey there - I think the idea of having different icons for each application is a pretty neat one, however please *make sure you allow us to choose icons that do not belong on our platform!!* - I cannot stress this enough. A lot of people have used patches etc etc to use the tango styled icons on windows or various other OSs purely because we wish to escape the look and feel of Luna or Aero. For these users, the tango’d “Linux” style icons would be far better for integration into our OS of choice.

Thanks!

There are basically two philosophies here:

1. The buttons and other decorations should be native to each platform.

2. The buttons and other decorations should be unified across all platforms.

You folks have chosen #1, and at least several of us here (myself included) think you should have chosen #2. It represents a philosophical difference. We feel you are making ONE browser for whatever platform you happen to be on; logically it should look the same on all platforms, certain basic OS-generated decorations excepted, of course.

In my opinion, it would have been entirely more logical for you folks to have worked on icons for Oxygen and Tango (since they hail from the Open Source world as does Firefox) and used those universally. Naturally, it would make sense for you to allow the app to use user-supplied button sets and other visual customizations (like what KDE, Gnome, et al do).

Now, to those here who want to talk about how some of the buttons are confusing… Sure, if you’re like a n00b who’s never used a computer before, but c’mon, guys. If you’re savvy enough to post a detailed opinion here, you’re savvy enough to figure out whatever buttons are present in an app (otherwise what are you doing using a computer in the first place?)

Anyhow, I agree with the previously expressed (if somewhat tongue-in-cheek) thought that you folks are spending an awful lot of time and effort (and quite probably money) on button sets and theme files, all of which would probably be better invested in other areas, like adding features and keeping the code sane and stable.

I think is super
\

Are you on drugs? This is supposed to be representative of a professional company but yet it reads as though a drunk wrote it. eg.

(my apologies to Johnathan for the use of lock icons, I had a complete set)

Windows XP Luna

The XP Luna style contains icons are colorful and fun. The icons appear as simplified illustrations.

Mind you, some of your comments have little better to be said of them. eg.

I was much relieved! Seeing the *extremely* IE6-ish icons in the sheet made somewhat sad, but alas, now I am happy again!

Is this American English? If so, learn “real” English.

(Also, your diagrams would fail all but the poorest standard of primary school examination)

I’ll start by saying that I’ve been a loyal Mozilla user straight back to the Netscape days long ago. I’ve converted a LOT of people by having moderate tech skills and an ability to persuade by explaining in everyday language. I also have talked a lot to a few people that haven’t converted after trying it.

That said, based on my limited experience, you’re making quite a mistake. New users are foremost concerned about whether a new app has buttons in the same general location they’re used to, and whether those buttons represent their function in an intuitively logical way; past that, how intuitive the app is in general, what truly useful (without complicating things) features it has past the absolute basics, and whether it’s nice to look at are the other main concerns.

In total contrast to your intent, people — especially new users — tend to identify a program and its associated abilities based on what design traits they notice subconsciously. Without strong enough visual cues, they’ll automatically think of the new browser as being feature-limited like the old one, and expect it to work in an identical fashion — when it fails to do everything precisely the same way, instead of thinking of it as usefully innovative, they end up with the impression that Firefox is merely an inferior clone of their old browser. Next thing you know, they’ve uninstalled it since it’s a seeming waste of disk space.

Try looking at at the “Maxthon” browser as one example. It’s essentially a clone of IE (using the same engine) that offers features and add-ons more similar to Firefox… The “Maxthon” people could easily have made it look like IE (and probably did at one point!) but instead, they’ve used subtle yet powerful visual cues to make sure buttons/features are both easy to identify (to the point of seeming familiar) and to ensure the user remembers the other neat new abilities it offers. I believe that they also have made the very wise decision of allowing it to change themes on the fly, as many programs do now — so a user that doesn’t like the default and wants to try out other styles won’t become frustrated restarting the thing a dozen times (as happens with Firefox).

Beyond that is the fact that many users don’t especially love how their OS looks, whether they have the ability to change it (as many of us do) or have no clue how — they’re not using the OS because they like how it looks. Yeah, you let them change themes if they dislike the default OS look, but if they don’t already know how to do that, or they’re too timid to try it, you’re merely giving them an unfavorable first impression that they can’t get away from.

Matching the OS, to my knowledge (22 years of heavy computer use) has never meant having exactly the same buttons as competitors. Look at the avalanches of Windows apps that do the same thing, follow the same basic design rules (the OS forces certain elements), and yet have both recognizable and unique icons. It’s bizarre beyond bizarre to decide that “matching the OS” for some reason means becoming a clone of an OS-installed application, and as I explained above, counter-productive. One can match the OS and yet look a lot better than other offerings; in fact, most good programs are in that category!

Another huge detriment here is that you’ll be using resources trying to make three different “looks” synchronize. (Or four; I’m a Windows user but agree that Linux deserves two variants too.) I’m sure the designers have other images in the browser that could use work.

Yes, in some cases, it can be useful for Firefox to look like an OS-based browser, but it’s a very limited set of circumstances, primarily having to do with converting extremely change-averse users. If that’s your intent, then IMHO it would be much better served by offering both OS-specific and Mozilla-designed themes from the start — either as a single download with multiple built-in themes we can delete, or as multiple options for downloading.

You should develop the XP icons more. They aren’t as good looking as the old ones. Change them to make them look…sleeker.

good

I need firefox community developers to develop addon that will pop-up & show new & updated escorts in my city.

Its really excellent.
I prefere XP Royal Texture.

Its really well

Very Good Job

John

hey guys give them a break, icons constitute only about 1% of whether you’ll use the browser or not. today all of you are banging on about ugly this and ugly that and leaving me out and being partial to a particular OS when you know that you’ll adopt the browser only if the overall functionality is good. look up at your browser there aren’t too many icons anyway and the ones in menus have text stating exactly what they’re there for not to mention tips pop-up every time you scroll over an icon. if the functionality of firefox is good you’ll be saying, “firefox is a great browser though it doesn’t look that good but for the functionality it provides its the best browser out there”. also there’ll be hundreds of themes to make firefox look like ANYTHING you want. bottom line if it functions well, you’ll accept its icons.

Vista “forward” shape with glyph has an exaggerated lighting effect, or you could say the light blue doesn’t stretch out high enough.

Vista “stop” looks like its missing something, minor shadow detail maybe.

Vista “star” glyph looks too cartoony, seems to suite XP a bit.

Vista and XP “resume download” glyph looks like a + instead of an > .

Both Vista and XP “refresh” glyph look plain(for lack of a better word) like they have been carried on from an old set of icons.

On a positive note:
Vista Tab glyph arrows look great,
all Objects look great IMO.

When will a wide-available beta be released WITH the new icons. It’s only then we will get responses from a larger number of users.

Last time I was talking to some locals, we were talking about screen and ico colors. Every one there said black and gray was in there top 10. Like Royal noir for XP or now caled Zune. It is a huge download look up. Make a zune like interface and Become the fad to have. Also, adding a torrent engine in Java might be a great idea also. also Firefox mail add on might be a big hit. however working on Icons is a first step to the rite state. Also a clear mode or see through mode might also do well for power users. In any case Mozilla is going the right way.

First of all, the XP theme doesn’t look good. It looks to much like XP Luna. I hope it’ll look better once the Royale finish is applied. Then, Vista theme’s Back and Foward arrows are awkward. I would also like a beta release of the Firefox 3 theme for Windows.

At last, a sane idea about interface design. Having a consistent style on a particular platform seems to me to be the best approach. Safari is a perfect example of how doing the opposite simply doesn’t work. Running Safari on Windows example just looks totally out of place.

If people don’t like the default then they can change it but the default should be the chosen OS.

The icons are looking good by the way!

And to the person who said people don’t interchange XP and Vista. I use Vista and XP at home and XP at work and I know many others doing the same.

Interesting idea on the theme. Unfortunately, I can no longer mouse over the X button on the tab and watch it light up. I use this feature heavily to know when it’s okay to click, in case firefox has some events queued up that it hasn’t processed (which happens often for me — browsing the web takes a lot of CPU power!).

I just had to reinstall my OS and application programs in my hard drive.
It is premature for me to give you useful feedback at this time, but I will do so in the future.
I hope you continue to try to use common user interfaces.
We do not expect that new vehicles have the accelerator and the brake pedals in different locations.
People keep changing the user interfaces of programs and I find myself wasting time trying to relearn old activities instead of developing new skills and learning new technologies.
My past experience is with Netscape and Internet Explorer, but I keep reading good things about Firefox and I will give it a good try.

ok. So it will be abouth linuks.
Not every one uses gtk aplications. I know that main distibutions like ubuntu are using gnome enviroment, but the look is not the best.
My sugestion is to create some icons based on kde style. Soon there will be kde4 whit new icon theme. May be something like this?
At the end sory for my english. It is not my favorite language.

It said URL not avalible.

Answering Lim Chee Aun (5th comment) :

‘5. ‘Save file’ and ‘Downloads’ icons look the same? Isn’t floppy a better metaphor?’

=> What’s a floppy ?… ‘Young’ users don’t even know it. You’d better go for a USB key if you really need to refer to something touchable.

Type your comment here.

Love the job you’ve done on the new firefox guys. I would love to be able to choose which style of icons. I use a vista pc and always have a mac theme installed for firefox. If I can natively to use OSX icons that would be awesome.

About the older Extensions like Gmail Manager, Extensions developers should manage it to newest version or firefox will allow those olders things?

I hope that all these icon packs will be available for all os systems. I personally like the linux one but i run xp. I think that it would be nice if during setup you had the option of any of the four, seeing as you have gone to all the effort of making four it seems a shame to waste them each on a single os.

I would like to agree with the comments made on the XP look: I too don’t know where to begin on how horrible it looks.

I would hate to see Firefox, which had always touted it’s unobtrusive interface, to adopt the horrible design of Windows XP. Immediately having to add the Luna extra says enough. Even Bill Gates frequently admits their design decisions aren’t very good and that he would like to have Steve Jobs’ taste.

It was a bit of a change, but I really like the current FF2 design because it’s nicely toned down and doesn’t distract from actual websites. So please don’t do this to the people who aren’t upgrading to Vista, because coming from the current theme it’s all going to look like the very outdated/ugly IE6 again. Then even XP with the current IE7 looks better. Then just leave the current design as the XP one.

The iconfactory make great icons but if the vile green back, forward buttons and way to colorful teletuby style icons will be used, I HOPE you will at least make the old FF2 theme easily available through the theme-settings (pre-installed).

Please, create Oxygen theme and icons for KDE4 also, not only Gnome.A new KDE4 looks much better.
Thanks.

I think that Firefox overall is a good browser. These icons will definitely made the browser classier. There are a few kinks that need to be worked out and I think they will be in the future. I love what you’ve done with the place (Firefox Beta 2)!

Wow, IconFactory is making a Vista theme?

We WILL be able to download themes to make our Firefox look the way it was designed to run on other platforms though, right?

so far everything looks pretty good. I’ve only stumbled on a few roadblocks so far and that was on Pogo.com. Some of the pages stalled out on me.

I like the new Icons because you are all staying oroginal, except for the icon to go back one page, looks like the ie 7 design, never really liked that but anything other, keep up the phantastic work