Look to your right. No, on the screen. Yes, right there. See it?

http://www.mozillazine.org/screenshots/

"These screenshots don't make me feel any better, as I see a number of glaring usability errors: some basic UI problems, some problems which are the result of introducing XPFE widgets (but which could be fixed, given a little effort), and some faults carried over from Communicator 4.x."

The dialogs haven't been tuned for usability yet. Not much more to be said about that - they'll be cleaned up later in the game.

"PS: Three cheers to Chris for FINALLY getting round to updating the screenshots section ... :-)"

You can thank Jason for this...

Everyone is so busy there's not much time to build better interfaces when the base is leaking memory, drawing slowly and crashing! What exists at the moment is either a placeholder to test the functionality of the base, or stuff lifted from 4.x.

That does not make your concerns any less valid - if you could make a list, and post them to mozilla.ui, it would be very helpful.

Thanks.

No need for a competition - if someone can contribute changes to the UI that are improvements on what already exists, the change *will* be merged! If people have changes, patches etc, just post them to the NGs.

Actually we do have multiple Usability and User Interface Design groups here at Netscape. I realize that we have a long way to go before we have a final polish on all the dialogs, widgets etc. But if you consider the enourmous tasks to develop a brand nw environment, while a revolutionary toolkit underneath is still in flux, I am sure you will cut us some slack. As we greatly value your input, I'd encourage you to send your concrete feedback to netscpae.public.mozilla.xpfe(widgets, toolkit etc) or to netscape.public.mozilla.ui (general ui issues). Our group members while not always able to answer due to time reasons, do read every message, and with the help of the net well will evolve and improve this platform. So go ahead, kick the tires and let us know where it hurts, German Bauer Netscape User Experience Group

One of the key reasons why I wont use Netscape 4.x is because it is impossible to use properly without a mouse (that is apart from its inability to render CSS).

I hope that Mozilla will add the much needed accessability features that IE have made a feature for so long.

mhp

Well I just lost my whole post so here goes again.

I think it would be silly to try to create a generic widget set that incorporated the behavoir of all native widgets. It would just be too bloated. As with the Java gui, there needs to be a set of generic, platform independent, widgets which CAN, but don't have to map directory to native widgets. Most of the generic widgets probably will map directly, but some won't or will not be able to provide some peculiar native function. For instance, it might not be feasible to provide the Mac user with the ability to rearrange their scroll buttons, or the windows user to use intelliscroll with the generic widgets. Actually an argument could probably be made that having a common interface to an /application/ accross OSs is just as important as having a common interface amongst applications on a given OS. A browser is pretty much ubiquitous, so there may be a benefit of standard generic widgets accross OSs, even if they can't provide every little peculiar feature that a native widget might.

`Network disk space used: 5.79 Mb ... Please try to keep to a limit of 2 Mb.'

No, I really don't have room for it, sorry. :-)

And as for posting to the ngs, the university NNTP server doesn't carry those groups, and the proxy doesn't allow me to connect to the external news server ...

Time to hit Deja/Remarq, I guess. :-)

-- mpt