… Firefox 3.6 plays HTML5 videos in full screen
The throbber as you know it from Firefox 3.5 and before does a decent job of indicating activity, but it doesn’t tell you how much progress has been made. A background tab may already have 90 per cent of its resources and be usable, or it may have stagnated at 20 per cent. The new pie-chart throbber addresses this by
As a pleasant side effect, the new throbber also eats fewer CPU cycles than the old one.
Grab a nightly, give it a try, report bugs!
Frederic Morel meint 2009-09-30:
Is this for 3.6 or 3.7
dao meint 2009-09-30:
This doesn’t have a fixed target milestone. It’s on trunk to gather feedback. If no serious problems arise, it may find its way into 3.6.
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Clochix meint 2009-09-30:
Thank you, it’s really a good idea. I like it and hope to see it in FF 3.6
Rhapsody meint 2009-09-30:
I really like the idea of this too. It’s clever and sensible enough that I’m amazed no one ever thought of it before.
cuz84d meint 2009-09-30:
What about the 3.7 line progress bar.. mockup?
I think it would nicer if it was green like the current progress bar in the status bar instead of grey, grey is dull here. If it pulses maybe it should also use a different color when the the pie being filled in like yellow or red.
Kinda like Larry and Traffic lights.
Thomas meint 2009-09-30:
I really like this idea.
In the same way, in the status bar we can see a “Done” when finished. I think that it could me removed since we already have another activity indicator.
Mike Beltzner meint 2009-09-30:
This code makes things like the progress line a lot more feasible. As I mentioned in the original bug, I think that showing overall progress is virtuous, but we need to get it on trunk so shake out unexpected behaviour before we can commit to shipping it in a specific version. Dao’s great about this sort of thing.
Also, I’m eager to see what visual treatments we can come up with. The pie chart is a good start, but I think we can do better.
Dan meint 2009-09-30:
I like it, but I don’t think it has enough stages, or something isn’t quite right…
If I load http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/layout/base/nsCSSFrameConstructor.cpp the pie chart will almost immediately go from nothing to 2/3 or 3/4 full, but then stick at that for quite a while until the page is loaded.
cuz84d meint 2009-09-30:
Sounds good Mike. I cannot believe i didn’t re-read what I wrote for grammer check.
I do like the throbber update, but I agree there is room for improvement to make it a great throbber update from a visual UX side and it would probably fit better overall if it matches the other items I mentioned.
Thanks!
Kroc Camen meint 2009-09-30:
Makes the browser feel twitchier and draws attention away from content. It makes the browser feel less transparent to me. As others have said, it definitely needs to be smoother, and I would add subtle too. Chrome uses the outline of the pie, rather than fully filled in. Perhaps you could inset the pie into the tab, so that when the pie fills up it actually disappears.
David Regev meint 2009-10-01:
cuz84d just gave me a great idea: extend the pie chart to the Smart Stop/Reload button. I had previously suggested that the Stop/Intermediate-State/Reload button should get a more consistent metaphor: Red/Yellow/Green traffic lights, respectively (and Go would look like a green right-turn light). My new idea is to have the red light fill up with yellow in the same pie-chart manner. When the page loads completely, the button is completely yellow, which turns to green after the delay (corresponding to the intermediate state being replaced by Reload). And when the page-load stagnates, the part-red/part-yellow button would pulse on and off, as if the light bulb inside the light were being turned on and off.
Thoughts?
Aaron meint 2009-10-01:
With this implementation it makes even more sense to now remove the archaic status bar progress meter.
Neil Rashbrook meint 2009-10-01:
Nice to see Firefox catching up again! OK, so bug 169380 only implemented the backand portion in SeaMonkey to make it possible for third-party themes or userChrome.css to implement this.
José meint 2009-10-01:
I hope now that the progress bar in the status bar finally goes away.
Astron meint 2009-10-01:
I like the idea, as it makes the status bar a bit more superfluous (therefore is a step to freeing some screen space for the average user). But, if you can avoid it, please don’t make it pulse and please don’t make the animation too smooth; otherwise easily distractable users like me will have the same or worse problems as with old one. (If you know the animation current-generation I-Pods make when syncing, take that as an example of an animation I like.)
Aaron meint 2009-10-01:
Really nicely done!
Gabriela meint 2009-10-03:
I think it looks really great and I would like it on 3.6 too!
