Firefox 3: no border below/no margin above active tab

Might be intended. I don't actually think it's bad.

Maybe it's just a personal preference thing.

I particularly think it looks weird when the page background color is similar to, but but not the same as, the tab color. The change between the two colors is hard to distinguish and looks a bit muddy.

e.g. data:text/html,<body%20bgcolor%3D"%23eeeeee"><%2Fbody>

Created an attachment (id=290436)
screenshot 2: http://www.mozilla.org/

> when the page background color is similar
> to, but but not the same as, the tab color

e.g. this screenshot of http://www.mozilla.org/

The new look matches Epiphany and other native apps so I don't think a change is likely.

There is another issue with the active tab. There is no top margin, which makes the tab stick to the navigation bar. Also, there is no left margin on the left-most tab, which makes it unpleasantly stick to the left border of the screen when Firefox is maximized. 1px at the top and 1px on the left would already make it look much better.

System: Ubuntu 9.04 (default theme)

Michael,

Native apps do not have a border because the content of the tab is native too and there is no background color change (thx, Daniel, for pointing that out). Web-pages use their own custom themes and will rarely match that of the native windowing environment.

BTW, the Windows version of Firefox has a border under the active tab even though native apps do not, and it has correct left and top margins.

Why do you think it is appropriate for Windows but not for Linux?

This bug needs more discussion and should be reopened. And, it should be fixed in Epiphany too.

Best,

Yegor

(In reply to comment #4)
> The new look matches Epiphany and other native apps so I don't think a change
> is likely.

Actually, the borderless "new look" actually does *not* match Nautilus (native file explorer, which uses tabs), nor does it match gedit (native text-editor, which uses tabs).

If we're talking about "matching native apps", I'd say these two (natilus/gedit) are among the most-"native" apps that there are on Gnome.

Reopening, since AFAIK the justification for closing was that we were trying to match the native look (which we don't). Screenshot coming up to demonstrate.

Created an attachment (id=439648)
screenshot 3: nautilus vs minefield (showing we don't match "native" look)

Here's a screenshot of nautilus vs minefield. Both have "#eeeeee" as background color. (I changed my gnome theme to achieve that in nautilus).

As shown in the screenshot:
 - Nautilus's border makes a clear delineation between the tab vs. the content.
 - In Minefield, on the other hand, the lack-of-a-border makes the tab/page boundary look messy, since the colors are similar but not quite the same.

I'm using Ubuntu 10.04, btw. (I don't remember if Nautilus/Gedit had the border in earlier Ubuntu versions.)

Nautilus doesn't put a dividing line between the tabs and the content, but draws a border around the entire content area, i.e. on all sides, which we certainly don't want in Firefox.

(In reply to comment #9)
> Nautilus doesn't put a dividing line between the tabs and the content, but
> draws a border around the entire content area, i.e. on all sides, which we
> certainly don't want in Firefox.

Sure, and I'm not suggesting we do that. I was just pointing out that the "our look matches the native Gnome apps" argument (from comment 4) doesn't seem to have a lot of support. (at least, not anymore, with newish versions of Gnome apps -- it might have been more valid a few years back.)

And I'm pointing out that your counter example doesn't have a lot of merit...

(In reply to comment #11)
> And I'm pointing out that your counter example doesn't have a lot of merit...

Well, if we're trying to match a native-theme look, I think nautilus & gedit are actually pretty reasonable targets to emulate. But that's beside the point.

Regardless of the particular example, the fact remains that the "no border between tab and content" look is *not* a standard feature of native tabbed Gnome apps. (regardless of whether it's a tiny border around all of the content vs. a border on the bottom of the tab) That's all I'm pointing out. That struck me as a new piece of information that might cause us to re-evaluate the reasoning behind the WONTFIXING of this bug. If not, that's fine -- feel free to WONTFIX again.

(In reply to comment #12)
> Regardless of the particular example, the fact remains that the "no border
> between tab and content" look is *not* a standard feature of native tabbed
> Gnome apps.

(to clarify, I'm not saying that *no* gnome apps have borderless tabs -- gnome-terminal & the epiphany web-browser are two examples that lack a border below the tab. On the other hand, nautilus & gedit & the midori web-browser all have a border -- admittedly because of a small border around the whole content area, it seems, as Dao points out in Comment 9. That's all the tabbed gnome apps I can think of right now. :))

The "native apps" argument is not valid precisely because web-apps/web-sites are not native. I would like to hear a good argument from design/usability standpoint. My argument is that native and non-native content does not mix naturally.

If we want examples, may I suggest:

- Firefox (Windows and Mac versions)
- Google Chrome (all versions)
- Apple Safari (all versions)
- Opera (all versions)

All, without exception, have a border between the tabs and the web content (in some cases by putting the address bar in between).

Unless someone has a breakthrough idea, I recommend that FF for Linux follows the industry standard.