Only IRC and mail are "input", I don't add text to the feed reader. Anyway, this isn't relevant at all because the point is that I need to switch back and forth beetween applications quickly and easily. The Maemo side bar does a great job here. Kiosk-mode applications like Canola don't.

Bookmarks: Whats the deal? You click on a symbol, get a list and choose one entry. Same principle in both Fennec and MicroB. Except that in Fennec I guess I can't group bookmarks in folders, can't rename them, delete them... not so good. (And, as I think of it: The bookmarks-symbol can be made always visible in MicroB, but not in Fennec.)
Settings: Clear menus in MicoB, somewhat ambiguous symbols in Fennec. Still, you always tap on a hotspot to activate the menu and - oh, no, wait a minute! In Fennec, you need to scroll past the edge of the page first. Very intuitive.

Over-all, I think MicroB's UI is superior to Fennec because it gets you where you want quickly and by using well-established patterns people are used to. Fennec might look sexy, but: Try to go back more than one page. Scroll right beyond page, hit "back", scroll right beyond page again, hit "back", scroll right beyond page yet again, hit "back", .... What the heck is all this scrolling around good for? (Except getting you used to the fact that all the controls are out there beyond the internet, which is not intuitive!) - In MicroB, you see the "back"-button, you hit it three times and that's it. Good user interface. Clean and simple.

That's what I access the volume control for! And then I put it back on when the people are gone.