Re: FF 5. 0 and user interface

Greywolf wrote:
 > On 20/08/2011 12:36 AM, Asa Dotzler wrote:
 >> GreyWolf K, can you tell us which particular features were
 >> uncomfortableor difficult for her to locate or use in the latest
 >> version of Firefox? Do you know what she thinks of the features that
 >> you didn't revert to 3.x-like location, behavior, or appearance?
 >>
 >> I think some details might make the data point more useful.
 >
 > Sorry, that was three weeks ago, can't specify. Basically, she looked
 > at it, and said "What's happened to my Firefox?" Just the look of it
 > was unfamiliar, and that was enough. FWIW, I've also fixed the Win7
 > look and feel to make it as much like XP as possible. Same reason.

Change is difficult, Greywolf, as you are witnessing. We don't make 
change just for change sake. We understand how difficult it is for the 
billions of people who work on computers every day. We try to only make 
changes when we think the benefits far outweigh the difficult of the 
transition to the new feature.

But change is unavoidable. We must change because how people are using 
the Web is changing and if we do not adjust to that, people will move to 
other products which are adjusting to that.

One thing that I'm really excited about is that with the new 
rapid-release model, we can distribute those changes more evenly so they 
don't get all batched up for a year or two and then happen to the user 
all at once. By landing features when they're ready, we can introduce 
change to at a more gradual pace and avoid some of the pitfalls of the 
old world, where like your wife, users see very different product when 
they update where nothing is where they expect it and everything works 
differently. That's actually one of the big wins of this new release cycle.

Thanks for sharing what you remember from that and for offering further 
suggestions on how we can improve.

- A