Imitating the Best: Firefox 3 vs. Safari 3 Design

Today Firefox 3 was released, and after reading the news, I eagerly rushed over to download it, especially because one article I read touted its complete redesign and must-have functionality. I was a bit disappointed to discover just another copy of an Apple product. At least the older version of Firefox I was using felt uniquely different than either Safari or Internet Explorer. I preferred it, over this design and usability nightmare.

To quote from a MozillaLinks review “Firefox 3 is not a timid release. It has been designed since the beginning with the specific goal of simplifying the web experience…” The problem is, that the visual design varies only slightly from Safari. Since the day Safari came out, it’s offered the same clean, easier to use and understand interface than any other web browser I’ve used. Now that was an original design!

Firefox offers some things that Safari doesn’t, namely a ton of add-ons whose usefulness will vary from user to user. I am a particular kind of user – for some reason, it’s very distracting for me to see a lot of “clutter” in my visual space, and that’s one reason why I’ve had a strong preference for Apple-designed products such as Safari. What I need is there, and no more, and the way the design works is particularly appealing to me – subtle gray-on-gray and minimalistic icons provide an unobtrusive backdrop for what I am focused on, which is a web page or pdf (Safari has in-browser pdf viewing, a feature that’s made hopping from page to pdf a lot more seamless.)

Even though some of the Firefox add-ons seem interesting (though a lot of them are social media related), in just a few minutes I have found myself migrating back over to the simple yet elegant Safari browser to write this blog post. The other browser window just offers too many distractions, and the gui feels more “crude” than the Safari interface, because there’s just too much stuff on the interface.

Some immediate things bother me visually:

• The giant blue star in the Firefox url field, for example, is a visual distraction. They’ve put the “edit bookmarks” feature in a popup dialog, ostensibly to save a user some clicks – but how often do we edit bookmarks?

• They carbon-copied one of Safari’s handiest features, which is a Google search field on the right hand side of the browser window. But they uglied it up by adding the Google logo on top of a fancy gui element. It’s just unnecessary.

• The back/forward buttons are not symmetrical, for no reason I can tell. They both have the feature where if you press down on the icon, some recent pages show up so you can navigate quickly.

The problem with all of these things, is that they are directly in your line of vision almost all the time. This was the great beauty of the Safari interface Apple invented… it “disappears” so you can focus on the content of the page. When you need something, you look back up and it’s there. Apparently, you can switch the toolbar icons to the small size, which makes the browser look even more like Safari. Sigh…….

The one compliment I can bestow without hesitance regards the installation process. I have not yet installed Firefox on my PC, but on the Mac it was a thing of beauty. As someone who has witnessed more user tests on frustrating installations than I can count, one thing I appreciate is a well-designed, user-centered installation process and Firefox gets an A+ on this from my perspective. I’ll test it on the PC to be sure, but I wouldn’t think too many people would get confused or hung up installing this browser.

But that’s the only compliment I personally have for this new release. After seeing Samsung’s copycat iPhone, among others with claims of “being an iPhone killer”, and now this, I feel rather perturbed. Is there no original design to be found anywhere? I guess we’ll just have to wait for the next new Apple product to see it!

2 Responses to “Imitating the Best: Firefox 3 vs. Safari 3 Design”

1. Julio Gonzalez says:

   June 20, 2008 at 12:45 am

   You’re full of crap fanboy. All Firefox did was integrate their application into each respective OS better. If you go to Wikipedia there is a good comparison of how the look and interface of Firefox is integrated into Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux to match the look of each OS, while still retaining the same functionality across these three platforms. I think it is a very smart to make an app that is cross platform, well integrated into each OS’s interface and look, but still have the same functionality across platforms. I hope you were just trolling for Google rank when you wrote this because otherwise you are just a dumb fanboy.
2. Kristi Colvin says:

   June 20, 2008 at 7:13 am

   I debated whether or not to respond to this hateful post, Julio, but you mention something I want to address amidst the verbal vomiting, surprisingly.

   First of all, do your research – I’m of the female persuasion, “fanboy”.

   Secondly, making an application work across multiple platforms is no easy task – I’ve had to design applications with those requirements, and then integrate them together, and it adds complexity and difficulties that you don’t even envision once you actually start coding. But here is where our opinions differ: I do NOT believe, that the Firefox app is ” well integrated into each OS’s interface and look” because at least on the Mac, it is a mere bad copy of existing interfaces that are done well – both the Apple OS and Safari. Firefox doesn’t even use certain trademark characteristics inherent to the Mac OS (like how dropdowns work), and that would not be the subject of my ire if they did. Many companies make MacOS-like applications that are meant to feel a part of the system – look at the wonderful products made by Panic (www.panic.com) – they appear integrated with the Mac OS, use similar icons, look and feel, etc. but one can tell their products are uniquely designed and some people had to apply hard, intellectual brain work to create it. All designers take elements from other places – but the end result should be something original, and hopefully BETTER than the designs that inspired yours. The Panic web site promoting their wares has a similar tone to the Apple site – because they “get it” – they know how to speak a Mac users language and make products that fit the environment. But it is NOT a direct and blatant, and badly executed COPY and if you just can’t get the difference, I can’t explain it any better than this, so we will forever have to agree to disagree.

   Now go find someone else to bother and stop accusing people of “trolling for Google rankings.” You are quite a character, Julio.

   And I would like to point out, this blog post would never even have been written if Firefox were marketing it with honesty – it is NOT the greatest thing since sliced bread, with the most original design of all time – it has some cool new add-ons and is easy to install, in my opinion, and they could have written their PR around that. I still think the design looks like a chunky, clunky monkey compared to the elegant design it mimics. Why would I go with a poser when I can just stick with The Best???