Minefield - UI redesign (On the Mac OS X)

Waves of changes are about to hit you with Mozilla Firefox 4.x series. This article is about Minefield, a developmental branch of Mozilla Firefox that updates every day. It is not necessary that all the changes brought about in Minefield to be incorporated into the stable (or even the beta) branch of Firefox.

Here are two changes that particularly caught my attention. 

1. Menu redesign (update checking)
2. Loading progress notification 

Menu redesign:

The process to update Minefield is now "Minefield > Check for updates ...". Compare this to "Help > Check for updates ..." I just have to show you a simple picture to illustrate this.

Loading progress notification:

minefield menu

Although similar to Safari's approach, Minefield's loading progress notification is more subtle. When you are on the tab being loaded (or reloaded), the progress bar appears right below the URL (compare to Safari's progress bar that covers the full address bar). When you are not on the tab being loaded, it shows up on the top of the loading tab.

Again, it is better to see pictures than to listen to me ramble about it so here are some screenshots.

when tab is active

when tab is not active

How do you like these changes?