Firefox's Only Flaw

 This is sort of like loving everything about your spouse except one tiny thing and then going out with your friends and complaining about that one tiny thing.  I love FireFox.

But

Why, oh why, does it ask me to Continue after loading down updates?  This is just thoughtless UI.

Here are my most recent updates downloading.

And here they are downloaded.

If I already told it that it was okay to download in install them - why do I need to click continue?

You see, FireFox isn't like IE - it doesn't have a lot of native components already built into Windows.  So it takes a while to load.  I start up my machine and then Firefox.  Firefox asks me "Do you want to load these?"  I say yes.

So I said yes, it has my permission.  "Continue" merely says "I understand you've updated these."  But if you'll notice.  I can't do anything BUT continue. 

So this is no longer a dialog box, it's an information box.  But Firefox won't load until you click continue. 

So my suggestion is ... load Firefox immediately and leave this information box up with an "Okay" button.  That way if someone like me is going off to get coffee or whatever doesn't come back to the desk with a hanging process.  

Having said all that, it still beats the hell out of Microsoft office, which just now gave me this piece of User Interface artistry:

Technorati tags: firefox, updates, tufte, ui design, dialog boxes, rant, microsoft office

Blogged at my house in Seattle with Live Writer

Comments

[Jay Fienberg]

I was going to suggest that you might get a better UI from Firefox if more of us gave Mozilla financial support, but then looking at the Office example, it's clear that money doesn't necessarily help!

Great user interfaces require a great design process. And, in general, technology companies (and open source projects) focus on organizing themselves in ways that are about things other than running a great design process.

That said, the Firefox UI has been regularly getting better. And, I wouldn't be surprised if their design process keeps getting more refined over time as well.

[William]

http://xkcd.com/c198.html

:)