What I would love to see in future builds is the ability to separate Back and Forward buttons. A ton of FF2 users did things like place Stop or Reload or both in between Back and Forward. Afterall, the icons are already there and available for the Icons And Text option. Honestly, I used to not even use the forward button!

You talk about visual identity and the importance of icon weight in recognizing commonly used icons. I couldn’t agree more, which is why even after the long explanation I find the miniature Stop and Reload buttons to be troublesome. These two buttons I use more than anything else in the browser and their slim design makes them hard to quickly find in my peripheral vision.

I understand that a great deal of work went into these new designs, but I sincerely hope that some revisions are considered for future releases!

http://i.gizmodo.com/5162715/cheap-user-interface-hack-finally-solves-tv-remotes-stupidity

2. The Mac theme is particularly ugly:
- the circular etch to the left of the large back button doesn’t start at the correct height
- the rounded stop and reload buttons look bad and should have just been square
- I’m not sure if the left side of the favicon should be circular or square, but the right side of the favicon should definitely be flat

Can you address these points and/or give some more information on your plans going forward?

“how many milliseconds does it take for you to visually target the control you want to click on?”

That is a very important issue for me in particular due to a visual impairment. Trying to visually focus and lock in on a target when going from several differently sized elements whether they be shapes or text to another can be exhausting and cause eye fatigue that can translate into overall mental and physical fatigue (for anyone) thus preventing the amount of time that can be spent on a computer and greatly affecting productivity not to mention the amount of time that it takes to simply guide my cursor to a target to perform a simple action.

Making all of the elements the same size does make it easier for me to see what is what but then nothing stands out and there is no “visual hierarchy” (I love that term) so it takes just as long if not longer to scan the interface to find the target that I need. But, what has worked for me personally more than anything is the colors and placement of the elements that I use the most and memorizing what is where and this has allowed me to be able to spend as much time computing on an hourly basis as I do.

I have a mental map of where everything is and this allows me to go against the natural (or learned) order of having to start at the top left and read to right, down, left and so on, and so while I have a row of 7 toolbar buttons (sometimes more) at the top right of Firefox, the color takes me there and having memorized the location of each button in that row allows me to find it quickly without starting from the left of the row and scanning right. The buttons are all the same shapes and colors by the way. It’s the group’s overall consistent colors that attracts me to the group as a whole and the consistency in colors and shapes prevents me from having to view and process each button, and so all that I have to do is go right up to the 4th button to open up Fox Notes for example. The more commonly used ones are first and last. Memorizing the position(s) of items also allows me to avoid having to use specific accessibility themes that can detract attention from important elements and eat up valuable screen space that can be used for something else. Enlarging text anywhere on the Firefox UI or on a Web page is a matter of a few clicks or Stylish setting anyway and in my experience, that is unmatched by any other browser

With all of that being said, being able to customize all areas of Firefox is essential for me as for others with disabilities. One size doesn’t fit all and the fact that users can customize Firefox to their needs and liking is a message that I’m working hard on to get out to persons with disabilities.
On the other hand, what a tremendous task that it obviously was to provide an interface that would work for and appeal to the greater majority of end users. You’ve all done an excellent job on it. And while one of the first things that many users do when creating a new profile is alter the UI, you’ve given us a great foundation to start with as Firefox is in general.

A few last points.
Thanks for not stuffing the Stop button in the location bar. Having to go and find that would be counter intuitive as when we want something to stop, we want it immediately as opposed to expecting to wait to go back, home, or refreshing. Hiding when not in use is perfect and I have a User Style to do just that.

Thanks for the info on Fitts’s law. It’s quite fascinating and I’m going to try pie menu items if there are still extensions available for that.

Finally, I’ll leave you with this.
Why do we all still have to look at the numbers keypad on a phone when its been unchanged since its inception?
Perhaps if you can find a remedy for that and dismiss that it is because we are simply lazy than you can retire early.

Thanks for the great read.

You say the Back button is the most used button in a browser, do you have any information on how often the Home button is used, what people use it for and why they use it? What made you decide that placing it on the bookmarks toolbar was the best plan?

Maybe this comment is out of place, but what really happened to the new Firefox logo that was supposed to be ready for Fx 3.0 ?

We ran out of time to do some additional iterations on the design based off of public feedback, and we also needed more time if we wanted to do a full update (t-shirts, stickers, etc.). So we decided to try again for Firefox 4, starting earlier in the ship cycle, instead of having multiple versions of the app icon and logo out there over the course of Firefox 3.