I downloaded Firefox 3.0 this afternoon and ran into something that’s a wee bit annoying. Firefox’s interface includes a smooth, single-toned grey top to all its windows. Here’s the Preferences window (cropped for size issues; click on the image to see the full-size):
Looking at this, you would think that anywhere in the dark grey area you could click and drag around the window. Such is the case for just about every Mac OS X application, Cyberduck, Safari, iTunes, etc. The areas of the window in dark grey are draggable areas. (Apple Human Interface Guidelines) Apps that don’t use the large expanses of grey, TextWrangler, Neo Office, for example, use a thinner dark grey bar at the top of the window reminiscent of older Mac interfaces and their window bar. Still, the dark grey area is a draggable interface.
But in Firefox 3, while the look of a native Mac app is there, it’s misleading. Only the top 20 or so pixels of the window tops is draggable. You click anywhere below that invisible 20-pixel line and you can’t click & drag. In addition, Firefox 3 uses the dark grey color at the bottom of browser windows. This area is also not draggable.
Good design serves a purpose and is invisible to the user. The look, while right, in this instance it’s a hindrance.
**Some more Googling and I found a comment left at Alex Faaborg’s blog back in May that mentioned this same thing in one of the beta releases.
