Thanks for all the feedback!

I think he was. It was called About:Tab. But then he fell completely off the map and came back with Tab Candy.

@Tiago Sá’s monster reply covered most of my comments in detail.

Displaying the same UI element in more than one place at the same time is hella confusing for average users, so I agree:
* don’t duplicate the search box
* don’t have tabs within this tab.

Keep experimenting, but right now the 4.0b4pre Tools > Add-ons left-hand nav seems a better layout than your inner area that gets filled up from either side. (Tools > Add-ons has its own flaws — it looks like a web page, but doesn’t have the context menu or selection behavior of one, Grrr.)

The iGoogle home page does a page of widgets really well (A Firefox home tab that let me place some Google widgets would be awesome.). But a page of widgets isn’t so good for long lists of contacts and bookmarks. Maybe let extensions add a column of widgets and gadgets on the right for power users.

You’ve already got a name + icon + count for the Bookmarks, Sync, Downloads, etc. buttons; you should make these buttons info-rich without being intrusive, as apps do with their system tray icons. (Heh, Tools > Addons should have counts in its nav buttons!)

Cheers!

I’ve been following the progress of the bug for Firefox 4 (over email) and I’m happy to see this is getting more fleshed out that I thought it would have been, considering you’re working on Firefox 4.0′s home tab… I think this is, already, a very solid proof of concept that could even cut it as a final home tab, even though it has a few obvious issues, in my view, at least, and is plenty of rough around the corners (aka it’s not preeteeh!).

# the title bar is very old-school. It’s ever present and takes up his own space. Have you considered putting something on the background, more discreet, bigger even, and something that doesn’t use up space?

# the search bar will be a very big redundancy if it’s just a duplication of what the search bar in the UI is. If it’s something different, “global”, as you say, then it’s great, but that Google logo makes me thing the “global” search is not the default default. It should be, in my opinion, and it should allow the user to use any of his available search engines;

# while it’s good that things are centered, it’s not so good that the menu (with web apps, bookmarks and so on) is split in two, half in each side. Unless there is a clear (very clear) distiction between the two sides, the whole menu should be in the same place. Have you considered a vertical sidebar of sorts? Something that’s not too wide, not to disrupt the balance;

# the blog type thing really doesn’t tell me anything. I believe the whole home tab should be composed of widgets, so this should be option, and we should be able to choose what appears up front (bookmarks, sessions, contacts, whatever);

# the web apps section is fantastic, and definitely an appropriate thing if Firefox is going to get rid of the whole concept of startup pages (aka Home Pages). I believe we should let the user choose his startup pages (and change the name from home pages to startup pages) and let him choose who those pages open (if as normal tabs or as app tabs). We should also allow the user to open those startup pages from the home tab (to mimic the functionality of the current home button). This is something that absolutely has to be considered fore Firefox 4.0, and not only for Firefox 4.x;

# this is pretty obvious, but the “sessions” title is misleading, since you’ll be restoring tabs, and not sessions. Consider changing the title of this section to something more comprehensive. Also, consider my next point, which, I believe, has something to do to why you called it “sessions”;

# you should always remember that l10n builds WILL have huge words that will not “fit” into a vision like the one you’re presenting now. Just the small, compact “Web Apps” will grow into things like “aplicaciones de la interneta” or whatever it is in Spanish. So building a more structured menu is probably a must, so it’s able to cope with this kind of line length changes;

# you also have to take into account that window sizes will vary a lot, from small 400×300 windows, to big ass 2300×1400 windows. Your design needs to be done with that in mind. Elastic pages are great, but they kind of break in big windows, if you want to read text (long lines is a no-no). I always prefer something semi-elastic in web design (not just min max-widths, but also varying margins and so on);

# I will not comment on the contacts section, since this is, as far as I know, a whole different project, but I think the user should be able to sort his contacts by different categories. By where the contact is, by user-made groups, by availability, by date, by name and so on. This isn’t something hard to make, I think;

# shared content should be somehow connected to contacts (or the other way around). Most likely with different names. It’s not really helpful to know what you’ve shared or are sharing if you don’t know who you shared or are sharing it with, right? It’s also not particularly useful to see all your shared content. You can try a look at online sharing networks (like p2p and so on) to see how stuff is organized there. You also need to consider what you’ll prioritized: the contacts you share stuff with, or the stuff you share. You’ll probably end up wanting to allow the user to choose, rather than anything else;

# the bookmarks section SHOULD be much more bookmark oriented. It’s much more useful to have an integrated bookmark manager than having some kind of speed dial or anything. Furthermore, the bookmark manager deals well with both few and many bookmarks, so I’m thinking that’s really the best thing to put in the bookmarks section. It’s also what I was expecting to see. Of course, maybe some widget something for frecency or something, but it should be possible to simply browse all bookmarks;

# the history section is underdesigned. History logs are usually huge, and that small log is very cool looking, but that’s because it’s small. Have you considering trying to make huge history logs small like that? Maybe putting only one entry per site, and then allowing the user to expand to see all entries on that site… That could be awesome, and much more useful that the current history manager. Also, we should be able to sort history entries, as in the history manager. Well, the history manager itself sucks big time, so I’m not expecting much from this section. The best and most logical thing, in the end, may be merging the bookmarks section and the history section into something else, something customizable and all…

# the downloads section… isn’t the downloads history going to be changed for Firefox 4? Also, this may become redundant, since it’s basically the downloads tab duplicated, so you may want to simply link to the downloads tab. Remember: links are good! Which leads me to my next point;

# you will want to link to loads of stuff in the home tab. I’m talking stuff that’s meant to help the user around Firefox. Link to the add-ons manager, to the knowledge base at SUMO, to rock your Firefox, and maybe somewhere else too. This is a great place to put things you want people to know about. And if you create room for links, rather than just categories, you can evolve the whole concept into something more developed. Which is nice;

# at the end, and I think this is really important, you should create duplicates of things you find somewhere else in Firefox. It’s true that the very concept of home page is mostly useless, but instead of trying to cram stuff into the home tab to, hopefully, make it useful, you should put in stuff that is actually useful and doesn’t belong anywhere else (and cannot be found anywhere else). A download manager? Not needed in the home tab, as you can find it somewhere else (maybe have a link to it?). A speed dial type thing? Maybe it’s needed. Let the user add it as a widget if he wants. A bookmarks manager? Not really needed in the home tab, as you can find it somewhere else (again, a link?). On the other hand, the web apps section is genius. You get what I mean? The home tab should be a place you NEED to use because what’s there can’t be found somewhere else, and not a place where everything from everywhere gets crammed into. Allow the user to put everything in there? Sure, why not? But definitely not by default, and we should definitely allow the user to put stuff there that he CAN’T find somewhere else. A very good example of why this is so important is, in my case, the reason why I don’t use something like iGoogle on my home page: there’s relevant to put there. All the widgets in iGoogle are just small copies of big web pages. Weather, calendar, reader, whatever, I don’t need that all in one page, I will visit each one of those on my own time, as I need them. I understand that some people will want something like that, with everything at one place, but that’s why I’m saying it’s crucial to allow the user to customize the home tab.

I hope this is fruitful feedback. Keep up the great work!