Membranophonist’s Ramblings

While I think Firebird is a great browser, there are several things that could improve initial user reactions to it.

My biggest question is why are the much-touted tabs hidden away from the user? The “New Tab” button isn’t on the default toolbar and the first window is configured to display a single page. These defaults are not bad, but they do not show off one of Firebird’s biggest advantages over Internet Explorer, the aforementioned tabs.

I suggest that the first spawned window contain two tabs, both displaying sections of a tutorial on using Firebird (such as the Firebird Features page). In the first tab, the user would be walked through the process of opening links in a new tab and opening/closing tabs. The second tab could have information on using bookmarks, configuring toolbars, and other customization options.

The default bookmark toolbar ought to have a folder of popular (standards compliant!) sites that would show users how they can set up folders of sites and easily launch them simultaneously with the “Open In Tabs” command found at the bottom of the menu.

It is good to see that the developers of both Firebird and Mozilla have sites detailing the advantages of the respective projects, but I think it would be more effective to show and tell rather than just tell.