[In response to Firefox 2.0b2 theme issues at jedbrown.net (comments about the new theme "refresh" in Firefox 2 beta 2).]
The Mozilla Wiki FX2 Visual Update/Default Theme Update page outlines the motivation for the changes, which, unfortunately, gives the shaft to Windows classic (Windows XP with Luna turned off, and Windows 2000 and older).
My biggest beef is that there’s no hover outline on any of the toolbar buttons anymore (like on the bookmarks toolbar). The only feedback you get is the slight color change on hover. (That goes for Windows classic, at least.) And that means there is no hover feedback in text-only mode. The back/forward dropdown arrows become tricky because of this—there’s nothing to let you know that different things happen depending on where you click on the back button. It’s also UI inconsistency with the Bookmarks manager, which does have hover/click outlines.
There is a CSS bug that highlights the dropmarker when you click on the back/forward buttons while they are disabled.
I agree with most that the new icons are too washed out and edgy. And too small. There’s hardly a difference between large/small size—what’s the point? I won’t even get into the actual design and meaningfulness of the icons.
I like the concepts of the “attached” go and search buttons, but they look raw and unfinished in Windows Classic. I like the change made to the search engine selector button since the previous Beta.
The pixel shift on tab overflow is amateur theme coding.
I like many of the changes to the tabs—the new overflow buttons and dropmenu are great for usability. But the styling of the tabs themselves is a step back. Faded colors and bold text are not enough to delineate between selected tabs. I can barely tell the difference on this laptop’s LCD display. There needs to be some other size or shape differences that hint at what’s going on.
The landscape page orientation icon in the Page Layout dialog is wrong (though i don’t know if that’s leftover from the last incarnation).
More discussion at:
MozillaZine Themes Forum
Asa Dotzler’s blog
jedbrown.net | blog2
Bug 347454 is tracking issues with the new theme change. At a glance, it appears that many of the issues that have been brought up already have attention or have even been fixed.
