The whole app feels like an imitation of a Mac app. Most obviously on 10.7, the window chrome is wrong. Other small things like incorrect and wrongly sized fonts inside controls, or the whole menu bar disappearing when you use an extension in its own window. When you add everything together, it just feels wrong, like wearing clothes that don't fit.

The way they've been updating the UI so far has seen some improvements, for sure, but it's as if they've been patching it bit by bit. I just wondered whether this signalled a change of approach.

> or the whole menu bar disappearing when you use an extension in its own window

Could someone explain to me the correct way for a developer to handle this?

I've been aware of this problem for a while, and I've newly come to own a Mac, so I've looked into it more and looked at what other apps are doing. There doesn't seem to be a correct solution.

I looked at how Safari handles the Web Inspector, and it just adds a new, dedicated Debug menu to the menu bar. This is a no-go in my case.

Suppose you're developer faced with a problem similar to the Firefox–extension problem. You have something like an app-within-an-app, or maybe A and B are actually even more closely tied together than that, but independent enough that on any other platform it would be a no-brainer: each one gets its own menu. What do you do for OS X?

You can't re-use A's menu items in B, because A's items—in, say, the Edit menu—don't serve B. You can't just augment A's menu set to include B's menus and items, because B's menus and items are so numerous and specific to B and vice versa, that there's just so much clutter from the other's menus and items.

I think the solution that Apple would suggest is to just not put an "app-within-an-app". If the feature set is far enough apart that it feels like a separate app that needs a separate menu bar, it should be a separate app.

(I actually agree: when is that ever better than a dedicated app?)

I'll reply by pointing out that I wrote

> something like an app-within-an-app, or maybe A and B are actually even more closely tied together than that

>when is that ever better than a dedicated app?

Obviously when it integrates well with a web browser. :P

Emacs keys binding not working in some place (e.g. Ctrl+N, Ctrl+P not working on Awesome Bar). Missing contextual services menu when you right click on some text. Missing text services (e.g. Cmd+Shift+D popup dictionary), etc. etc.

All of the Cocoa UI controls are reimplemented in XUL. They look and behave close to, but not 100% the same as the native Cocoa ones.