In this mockup, all of the controls have been moved into separate panels. A navigation toolbox contains the back/forward buttons, reload and a home button (configurable like the current toolbars). A tab panel contains vertically-arranged tabs with the title and favicon or a film-strip-styled tab-preview à la Fennec. To the right is a Bookmarks panel showing available bookmarks. A small add-ons panel at the bottom contains buttons for various add-ons the user has added.

The document area contains a single browser view. Above it, a draggable, dockable location bar sits. Somewhere, there is probably a search panel with the user’s selected search engine. Other missing fixtures are an auto-hideable menu bar for Windows and Linux. A panel for the Bookmarks toolbar (just the buttons, without the full bookmarks view) would also be a useful feature. There would be others like History too.

For this to work, we’ll need a few more of the planned features for panels: Dockability, hideability (slide them off screen when not in use), and better positioning smarts. When the document view is full-screen, the panels should get out of the way at the screen edges and only zoom in when the user hovers over an edge with the pointer.

I think there are some interesting implications with a design like this, both positive and negative. Rather than burden you with my thoughts, I’d like to hear from others. What works in a design like this? What doesn’t?

Hit me!

Scribefire

This post is written in it. Over the past few weeks I’ve been using this blogging extension more and more often. It’s been getting updated frequently as Firefox has shuffled through the beta cycle and feels ready to go now that they’re up to version 2.2.5. It also includes a number of other useful features including some features like the award-winning Share-o-holic for posting pages to Digg, Reddit and Magnolia, to name a few. The best part of Scribefire is that it keeps my blogging right in my webbrowser. This feels right to me.

Twitterfox

My favorite way to twitter (when twitter is working)*.

Delicious

At long last, the del.icio.us add-on has been released for Firefox 3. It’s still in beta, but I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks now and feel that it’s an integral part of my browser.

eBay Companion

Hardcore eBay addicts will appreciate this. It lets you keep an eye on your watched items and provides a little extra security when logging into an eBay or Paypal site. It has helped me acquire many tiki mugs this weekend at some expense. I considered that “doing my part for Firefox 3″.

Lastly, I’ll mention a few quickies that I really like. It’s time for…

Robcee’s Add-ons Honor Roll!

Fission – progress bar in the title bar. Safari-style.
QuickRestart – restart your browser. Quickly!.
CustomizeGoogle – modify how you work with Google. Force https connections for mail, etc.
Adblock Plus – ads were 10 years ago.

Technorati Tags: firefox, add-ons, extensions, mozilla