Originally posted by hydrapheetz

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Why the hell is everything trying to imitate Chrome?

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When Google Chrome was released, they said that they wanted other browsers/applications to copy their UI design. Mozilla is just taking them up on their offer.

Now, the reason why they are putting Glass into the client area in Windows:

It is meant to keep user's attention on the actual content of the window, rather than the controls around it.
In Windows Vista, you would obviously only see the glass if the window isn't maximized, and when the window was maximized, the taskbar and the window goes dark.

Microsoft changed the behaviour in Windows 7 because they noticed that the glass effect is actually less distracting than the opaque effect.

It's like this: the blurred background of the window pretty much makes anything that is behind it, well, out of focus, like a camera. When you take photos with a camera, you want to focus on a certain subject, That's where your lens blur and depth-of-field come in. In Windows 7, Microsoft uses it well in various Wizards and applications like Windows Explorer and (not as much) Internet Explorer to get the user to focus more on the content of the window rather than—as I said earlier—the controls around it.

Google Chrome, Safari 4, and (upcoming) Firefox 4 features the Aero glass effects to the user's advantage.

And now, about the menu bar disappearing in Firefox 4, and being replaced by a 'system button.' For one thing, all recent Windows software are starting to use the UI standards set by Microsoft's built-in software (WordPad, Paint, etc.), Microsoft Office 2010, and the upcoming Wave 4 release of Windows Live applications. Another reason why, is that it greatly cleans up the UI.

To me, it just seems that people just want to keep on using a user interface that has been used for at least 8 years. Then again, I do tend to be an early adopter of sorts when new things come out.

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Originally posted by Terra

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I don't like how they removed the "up one folder" button, replacing it with a back button that takes you to the last folder visited, not the one above the current folder in the hierarchy. They think that file management works like Web browsing?

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That annoys me too. Although Microsoft added a keyboard shortcut for going up one folder in the hierarchy: alt+up. And they actually added a New Folder icon to the toolbar!

All that we need now is a keyboard shortcut for adding a new folder, and then Explorer would be fine... Right?

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