Firefox 3 Usability Improvements

A few days back Firefox 3 beta 5 was released. I just got around to downloading it and a few things struck me.

The Back Button

The back button is probably the most clicked button in a web browser. I’m amazed when I watch my family and friends that aren’t “webbies” continually hit the back button. I’m more of an “open a new tab” kind of guy, than a “click and wait for something and then it’s not what I want so hit the back button” kind of guy. Anyway, everyone knows the bigger something is, the easier it is to click. Firefox 3 thought about that and made the back button twice the size of the forward button. Really nice touch.

The Address Bar

Another nice touch is when you click in the address bar, it auto-selects the entire url. The Firefox crew probably thought (correctly in my opinion) that people more often replace the entire url than modify the one currently there.

Also, the address bar now is a bit contextual. As you type it searches through your history by url and by page title. This means I could type in ‘addictedtonew’ or ‘about me’ and my about page would likely show up in the results. You can see the example in the screenshot below.

Overall

Overall, it feels a lot faster and lighter. It still doesn’t feel like a Mac application but it seems to be getting better.