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IE UI Designer On His Switch To FireFox
wellington writes "Scott Berkun (who worked on UI design for Internet Explorer 1.0 thru 5.0) talked about why he switched to Firefox. In addition to five reasons why he switched, Scott also detailed five UI flaws in Firefox."
I completely agree with the issue of the search box being at the bottom of the screen. I work on a 21" monitor, and it drives me nuts looking down, then on the page, back and forth.
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Isn't it about time that any link that is included in an article is coralized first? Makes the site admins happy, makes the readers happy.
But wait, that might require effort, or even a very small perl script...
Indeed, we are seeing the benefits of true competition in the browser market. People have a better product to choose from, and existing manufacturers are forced to innovate.
Just when people thought that the desktop computing environment had started to stagnate, we're seeing many new developments recently. Most of the developments have been the result of competition from Mac OS X, the Mozilla Project, Linux, and other open-source software.
It's good to know that open source software has the ability to affect a misbehaving economy in such a fashion. But then again, perhaps it's just the system working as it should: there's a demand for new software, and that demand is being met by the open source community.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
If that wouldn't confuse the user, nothing would. While that may work for you, it's not standard for other apps on any OS. I think the current option (the 1 close option on the far right), or installing an extension that puts a close tab button on each tab are the best options, as they follow most widely accepted paradigms.
*** For a better tommorow, change your life today ***
I agree with most of what this guy has to say, except for the "blank tabs" thing. He wants new tabs to open with the home page, or last page visited, or something. But opening new tabs blank is exactly right. Whenever I explicitly open a new tab -- i.e., whenever I say "New Tab" rather than "Open in new Tab" -- the next thing I do is type into the URL box. IE's approach of having crap already in the URL box just adds steps. If you want a new tab with your home page, then make a new tab, then click "home."
Cantankerous old coot since 1957.
- The connection has timed out
That's unbeatable...- The server at www.scottberkun.com is taking too long to respond.
- The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few moments.
- If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's network connection.
- If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.
[Try again]bad_outlook
--
Is this vague enough for you?
Wonder if, secretly, Bill Gates runs Firefox
Maybe. There's quite a bit of evidence to suggest that he "secretly" runs a Mac, so why not FireFox?
and his "engineers" are buying copying, I mean, Innovating for the next version of Internet Explorer.
Doubtful. If you check out most of their work over at Channel 9, they're being quite arrogant about IE 7. They don't seem to want to be influenced by FireFox at all, and they seem to think that standards compliance should take a back seat to making IE "cooler".
That being said, there is one thing that everyone should keep in mind about IE 5.0. When it was released, IE 5 was the best browser in existance, bar none. It was light, it was fast, it was simple, it was straightforward, and it had real features that helped people. (Such as the ability to save passwords.) Microsoft never properly thanked SpyGlass for their browser technology, but Microsoft *did* take the browser experience to a whole new level.
It wasn't until Mozilla reached somewhere around the 0.8 version that any browser even tried to compete. Even Opera was kind of pathetic in comparison. By the time Mozilla hit 1.0 (and Opera finally got the lead out), IE had held the market for several years. It's only thanks to Microsoft's intentional attempts to sit still that Mozilla, Opera, and now Safari had a chance to play catch up.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
RTFA this time - it's worth it. And get Ben, Asa, and crew to give him a call - not because they need help, but because I think he's honestly on the same wavelength as they are and a fresh perspective can be a good thing. The issues he raises, while relatively minor, are worth addressing.
Anything I type here won't add to it.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
Uh no. That "X" is supposed to exit the program. You need to change you habit.
Shouldn't be difficult to make the action of the main window X configurable...
That's a horrible idea, IMO. Changing the default behaviour of what is traditionally a "close application" button would mean that I now have to contemplate what clicking the 'X' does in all future applications. Will it close all of my windows? One of them? Do I have to look for a configuration option in each application and standardize them all?
It's like those horrid web pages that redefine the behaviour of check boxes to act as radio buttons, or vice versa, just because they like the look better.
As others have pointed out, use the red X specifically designed for tabs.
I don't know about the rest of you but I love having all my tabs in one place. It drives me nuts when I needed to open a link in IE in a new browser. It's just easier to organize when there's 1 button in the taskbar to click showing my website titles all lined up in browser tabs.
The point isn't that the shortcomings can't be fixed - it's that they shouldn't be shortcomings in the first place.
And most of them aren't shortcomings at all.
Find is at the bottom of the screen for a reason (and a good one). However, it should be positionable by the user.
Tabs opening blank is the *CORRECT WAY* to do it - as another poster pointed out. "I'm opening a new tab, I'm not cloning an existing one." New means *NEW*, not "clone of what I'm vewing now." When I open a *NEW* tab, it's because I want to go somewhere else, not see the exact same thing I'm already looking at. If you want to visit a link in the page, use middle-click, which will open a new tab, and load the link (which is more user-friendly than cloning the tab and forcing the user to click on the link - one action rather than two.)
I've never used the Go menu, but some of the responses are interesting - it holds a global list of sites visited, shared between tabs. In a non-tabbed browser it's pretty useless, but combined with tabs, it becomes pretty cool.
Absolutely! It can screw up a site's visual presentation, but being able to actually read the content is more important than what some graphic artist thinks "looks cool".
I suppose the use of all Flash for sites is the graphic designers' revenge, but more often than not, sites that use Flash exclusively are just that - flashy eyecandy for people who can't/won't/don't want to read.
BUT it doesn't do what he wants - not to have to worry about where he has to click exactly if he wants to close the current tab or window.
Because expecting the user to click in certain places for certain things to happen, especially when using a mouse, is TOTALLY unreasonable.
The fact that the user isn't really owning up to is that he is using a behavior to close a window when he doesn't really want to close a window.
So... if you change the behavior to not close the window... now you need to come up with a way to deal with the people that actually want to close the window when clicking on the close window widget.
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX
But tabs opened by clicking a link, and choosing open in new tab SHOULD inherent the history from the tab with the link.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
So you support the less-consistent interface, then? The "x" in the top-right of a window closes the window. It is the same with every other program. That is what that button does. Making it close tabs would be counter-intuitive and inconsistent. Likewise, forcing people to navigate menus to perform an incredibly common task which can be done without them on every other program on the system seems a little harsh.