I Want To Love Firefox, But...

Published 26 August 04 by Justin French, 4 comments

It’s fast, it’s free, it’s open source, it’s relatively secure, it puts the user in control, and it has a great plug-in architecture that puts the power of extensions like the Web Developer Toolbar in my hands. It has so much going for it.

Compared to IE/Win, Firefox absolutely wins hands down, and it’s no wonder people are switching.

But on Mac OS X (where I spend 99% of my time), I still can’t bring myself to switch from Apple’s Safari.

Why is that?

Firefox doesn’t feel like a Mac application. They’re trying, and the Mac OS X “theme” gets better with every release, but it’s still no where near Apple’s Aqua interface. In the preferences panel, it feels like a dirty imitation:

But worse still are the form widgets (textareas, text inputs, radio buttons, selects, etc), which make me feel like I’m back on Windows 95. Let’s compare a portion of the Textpattern interface in both browsers:

By using custom form and UI widgets, Firefox instantly feels unfamiliar and cheap when compared to other OS X applications.
They’ve managed to keep (or successfully mimic) UI widgets on the Windows version, so they obviously know where I’m headed with this…

We spend hours everyday working on Windows, OS X or whatever else. The “look and feel” of the OS shines through in 99% of the applications we use, which allows us instant comfort and familiarity with the interface.

Until Firefox starts taking advantage of the Aqua interface a little more, it’ll never be my main browser, and will never feel as slick and refined as it’s competitors.