Mozilla is taking Firefox down a new (and somewhat unexpected) road in the near future. Among the usual security and performance enhancements, it seems the user interface is due for an overhaul. Most likely starting with the release of the Firefox 3.7 branch, Mozilla is replacing the traditional menu system with a ribbon menu, very similar to the ones present in Office 2007 and other recent Microsoft software.

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Wow. I have a feeling a lot of people will resist this. I think its a pretty good idea though.

Funny I was thinking about the "office bar" the other day when I went back to the classic workspace in AutoCAD Lt, thinking it was much faster to work with the old bar.
Same thing when I started to use Open Office some months ago.
I honestly think the new style bar slows things down.
The command you need are always in some other tab somewhere.

I really hate this. I hope somebody is already working on an Extension to restore the UI to it's current look and feel.

I'd more prefer that my buttons are always in the same place. No contextual element. And how will a ribbon interface affect screen real estate?

I just wish the firefox developers would bring back the x on the final (single) tab. Haven't there been studies about consistency within interfaces??

I am alpha testing another application and do not like the new ribbon interface. It does have its good points and just a many bad ones. I have not installed a single M$ app since Office 2000 (and that was a gift) and use XP in classic mode. The impression I get is that applications are increasingly being designed for geeks and not for the average user. And each so called 'advance' just bloats the app. and, possibly slows it down. However, I do not want to go back pre-Windows 2000! Chris.