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Safari Should Display Favicons in Its Tabs (daringfireball.net)
Favicon -- or its lack thereof, to be precise -- has remained one of the longest running issues Safari users have complained about. For those of you who don't use Safari, just have a look at this mess I had earlier today when I was using Safari on a MacBook. There's no way I can just have a look at the tabs and make any sense of them. John Gruber, writing for DaringFireball: The gist of it is two-fold: (1) there are some people who strongly prefer to see favicons in tabs even when they don't have a ton of tabs open, simply because they prefer identifying tabs graphically rather than by the text of the page title; and (2) for people who do have a ton of tabs open, favicons are the only way to identify tabs. With many tabs open, there's really nothing subjective about it: Chrome's tabs are more usable because they show favicons. [...] Once Safari gets to a dozen or so tabs in a window, the left-most tabs are literally unidentifiable because they don't even show a single character of the tab title. They're just blank. I, as a decade-plus-long dedicated Safari user, am jealous of the usability and visual clarity of Chrome with a dozen or more tabs open. And I can see why dedicated Chrome users would consider Safari's tab design a non-starter to switching. I don't know what the argument is against showing favicons in Safari's tabs, but I can only presume that it's because some contingent within Apple thinks it would spoil the monochromatic aesthetic of Safari's toolbar area. [...] And it's highly debatable whether Safari's existing no-favicon tabs actually do look better. The feedback I've heard from Chrome users who won't even try Safari because it doesn't show favicons isn't just from developers -- it's from designers too. To me, the argument that Safari's tab bar should remain text-only is like arguing that MacOS should change its Command-Tab switcher and Dock from showing icons to showing only the names of applications. The Mac has been famous ever since 1984 for placing more visual significance on icons than on names. The Mac attracts visual thinkers and its design encourages visual thinking. So I think Safari's text-only tab bar isn't just wrong in general, it's particularly wrong on the Mac.
Show me the whole URL! Believe it or not Apple, it is useful. It's almost like they purposely turning off power users.
Quite - if Apple thinks Favicons make things look a mess, and aren't terribly useful (they're mostly the same for a lot of pages on the same site, or for many sites that just don't have one), then let them come up with an alternative way of quickly seeing what tabs are. Oh wait - they did - pinch to zoom out, to see all the tabs arrayed in front of you, which is way easier than looking at favicons.
But it looks so flat & clean. - Jony
The Macintosh was always sold on its superior usability. In the early days, it lived up to that promise. Today, the Macintosh sacrifices actual usability for an illusion of usability; this charade is sustained on Apple's side by hype and glitz, and on their users' side by ignorance and blindness. I can not tell you how sad this makes me.
As a Mac user, I could not care less about FavIcons in Safari, partly because I don't use them and mostly because other, better options exist for web browsing on OSX (Chrome, Opera, FF, et al). Icons make the tabs easier to identify, but to me the title typically does too.
One thing I will never understand is the people who open 50+ tabs in a single window and then complain about legibility. I don't understand leaving that many tabs open, but if you're going to come back hours later to do so you might as well stash them in a new window and minimize it.
What are they?
Owned a bunch of Macbooks. Never really used Safari. If you want a better-behaved browser, why not just dump Safari?
>> The Mac attracts visual thinkers
So do boxes of crayons, "Murder She Wrote" and traffic accidents.
To me the appeal of the Mac was and will always be that you can open a bash terminal and get all your work done while ignoring all of Apple's icon-based crap (and the silly iTunes store).
I've discovered that Chrome simply works for me better, so I switched. Some sites would not work with Safari (e.g. my bank's bill pay).
For those of us who like to keep a lot of tabs open there is Tree Style Tab: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...
Never looked back. Whenever I try to use someone else's browser I cringe at the terrible idea of putting the tabs at the top.
Adding favicons doesn't really fix the problem when there are many tabs open, especially if you have multiple open on the same domain (same favicon) or sites without any favicon.
Apple just went a different route and said we'll just give small thumbnails of the website for people to switch if they are hunting for a specific tab. Just click the little button in the upper right corner and find the tab you want.
Er um, you do realize we are talking about browsers specifically on desktop? You can get a different browser.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
*Channeling Steve Jobs* A web browser is an experience. It needs clarity. It needs consistency. It needs to be beautiful. The toolbar area of Safari is beautiful. Notice the clean monochromatic appearance. Notice the lines, the pristine appearance, the unblemished look. It's perfect. It's sterling. It's absolute perfection. To introduce favicons would smear it with excrement. It would disturb its Zen tranquility. It would besmirch its purity. Yes, the Safari web browser, a thing of beauty is a joy forever.
Problems with the favicons in Safari do seem really really minor when compared to something like the Mozilla Information Trust Initiative.
In their words:
It scares the hell out of me to think that a browser developer is getting involved with what sounds to me like an attempt to control, and maybe even censor, content online. It's even worst that this is apparently being done in the name of "openness".
What is it?
All that overseas cash and they can't make a standards compliant browser. WebRTC, PWAs, etc, etc.
If Apple doesn't get their 30% internet tax, why should they?
Safari (at least on my computers) only shows fewer than half of the favicons in my bookmarks, both the Favorites bar and the main Bookmarks drop-down menu. This isn't a big deal, but it is mildly annoying.
I have a better solution. stop using that POS browser. its the mac equivalent of IE.
I wish that the major browsers didn't support many of the newest web standards. They aren't worth supporting, as they don't actually improve the web experience for users, and often just make it worse.
There's no need for WebRTC in the browser, and worse than that there were security concerns involving it.
WebGL is just a shitty imitation of OpenGL, and it really has no reason to exist in a web browser.
Geolocation support is a privacy concern.
JavaScript just results in slow and bloated pages riddled with stupid effects.
These new web technologies are why disasters like the Slashdot Beta site can happen.
It's even worse when you realize that most of these are easily exploited by advertisers and others who want to track the activities of web users. If they aren't used to display ads in some way, then they're used to fingerprint or track web users.
It's bad enough that we have to go through and disable these sorts of things manually. They really shouldn't even be supported in the first place.
WTF is this on my Slashdot? News?
Microsoft, Apple and Google are all about controlling the user experience in their operating systems these days. I think that they're responding to a market where the non-power users have mostly migrated over to tablets and phones for daily use, and the idea of one strictly enforced UI standard actually makes sense in this case.
The problem is that power users aren't dead, but there's fewer of us and it makes less sense to cater to power users' needs in the minds of the hardware/software vendors. Windows 10 users, myself included, have been asking Microsoft for ages to bring back more customization features, and especially now that Windows Phone is dead. I'm not talking anything crazy -- just bringing back the ability to reskin things without having to resort to third party tools. But the trend has been to include fewer knobs and buttons to customize things, not more. I'm actually surprised about the favicon thing though -- most web developers I know, at least on the front end, are Mac users and you would think they'd have some pull with Apple.
In my opinion, the fight for the ability to customize commercial OSes died when everyone started using phones. People expect an iPhone or stock Android device to work the exact same way, appliance-style, and you can only customize a very narrow band of settings.
I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but the latest browser usage stats show that more people use Safari than use Firefox.
iOS Safari has just over 10% of the market. macOS Safari has about 2% of the market. So 12% of web users are using Safari.
Firefox for Android has 0.04% (yes, that is much less than 1%!) of the market. Firefox for iOS doesn't even register, and probably shouldn't even be considered because it uses WebKit instead of Gecko. Firefox for desktop, despite supporting far more OSes than Safari, only has about 5% of the market. Since Firefox has essentially no mobile presence, its total market share is only about 5%.
As we can see, Safari has about 2.5 times as many users as Firefox has!
You joke about Opera, but it's actually very close to Firefox's usage. Opera Mini has about 3.2% of the market, and desktop Opera has about 0.8%. So Opera has about 4% of the browser market.
Rumor has it that Firefox 57's switch to the WebExtensions extension model will likely break a lot of existing extensions. This could be disastrous for Firefox's already-dwindling market share. If this breakage drives away more users, as it very well could, it's very possible that Firefox's 5% will drop below Opera's 4%. If some of these former Firefox users switch to Opera, it will be even worse for Firefox.
When you factor in how UC Browser for Android has about 9% of the market, and IE and Edge have about 5%, Firefox may soon be behind Chrome, Safari, UC Browser for Android, IE/Edge, and Opera in terms of market share.
Yes, Firefox could easily become the 6th place browser in the very near future! If that happens, I think it's safe to consider it to be "dead". It wouldn't be as irrelevant as Servo, mind you, but it would still be quite irrelevant.
Without taking sides on whether this justifies the design decision (there are many factors to consider), I have heard some point to phishing as a rationale for hiding the icon. If a phishing site had a convincing lock icon or copied a logo (e.g., Facebook's) as its favicon, some users could mistakenly believe the site had TLS or was associated with a different company. Hiding the icon and defaulting to the base URL helps users know that if they see a lock in the browser UI (not in the page), it's encrypted and encourages them to check the domain to ensure they're on the correct site.
You want people to pinch their non-touch laptop display?
I want them to pinch on their multi-touch track pad or their multi-touch mouse. Or, if they happen to be using some other input device push cmnd-shift-\.
If you collapse your tabs to the left hand side you get favicon to identify each tab. I think you are just not using tabs correctly. Grab the edge of the tab on the right hand side and push it to the left, it will collapse to a small square tab. Like this
That's be your screenshot of the favicon mess?
It's a mess on its own, unless it's about the flying dog!
Meh!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
From the earliest days of Apple, I had always thought that Apple was more about Icons than Text. What has changed?
If this is the biggest complaint that they have about Safari, then they are one of the happiest Safari users out there.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I've heard of First World Problems before, but for the love of all that is holy, would you people please go outside occasionally?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Now only if Apple had been shipping a trackpad that can use multitouch gestures for like 6 years now. Oh wait, they have. Basically any Mac model still in use in any quantity can "pinch to zoom."
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
The bigger question is why the OP is still using Safari while he/she is clearly aware there are better browsers available. It's like the patient telling the doctor that it hurts when they push here.. doctor says then don't push there. Duh?
If only there was a button in Safari you could click, and it would show you a thumbnail of all your open tabs that would be extremely helpful.
Extra points if it even lets you click a little "X" to close certain tabs!
That would be a lot more helpful than a tiny favicon....
But nah, having a ton of favicons that give you no context as to the content of the page is way more useful....
"If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet"
Apple is no longer capable of maintaining its own software under Cook.
So, let me get this straight. A user of a proprietary browser is unhappy about a basic feature that has been missing for the past 15 years, yet he CONTINUES to use said piece of shit proprietary browser all this time? Really? If you're not happy with the product, STOP using it. It couldn't get any simpler. The fact that their is not one, but TWO vastly superior, open-source browsers out there should be a clue that you're on the losing team. John Gruber is an idiot.
Agreed completely.
There are even three ways to get to this tab overview:
1) pinch to zoom out, as you've mentioned
2) the little button in the top right of the default toolbar
3) cmd-shift-\
How much easier can it get? I get the info I need when I need it.. and when I don't need it there's no clutter.
Even if these favicons (which seem like silly noise to me.. but to each their own) were important to me.. they wouldn't be important enough to switch to Chrome. Good god. I can't even set all new tabs to show a blank page in chrome without an extension. No thanks.
I actually hate this icon mania, especially in IDEs.
Most icons are random coloured bollocks which I don't care to memorize.
OTOH I'm a 'whole word / half sentence' reader. Scanning a bunch of tabs takes no time.
Then again I also use AppleScript(s), just google for FindTab AppleScript.
And finally, stop implying that your usage of a computer is in any way professional when you can not adapt to its features. Hint: more windows (e.g. one per search) and less tabs, e.g. one per search result.
What really is anoying in all browsers that the windows menu display the title of the window with the URL added to the right. I want At least the domain first. It takes ages to find the single window that is displaying slashdot.org (but well that is why I got a FindTab-script :P )
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Who needs tabs? Still rocking stacked windows Netscape 1.1N style ... OpenApple-N for new window, OpenApple-` to cycle through them.
Been browsing this way for 20+ years, since my TCP/IP gateway ran Banyan VINES ... not changing now.
(and let's not talk about the fact that I don't use bookmarks either ...)
Apple knows what you need. Shut up!
Some settling may occur during posting.
Howabout two separate Safari Preferences to:
1. Allow Favicons (which I personally hate)
2. Change the Tabs to a Pull-out Side-Tab list, so longer names can be displayed in a Vertical Tab-List (didn't someone do this at one point? FireFox?). And/Or have a button/Keyboard Shortcut to temporarily display a vertical Tab-List.
There. Done. Ship it!
safari lol...
or do you mean a real african safari?
Gruber's article also says most Chrome users on Macs would switch to Safari if they showed favicons in tabs.
Apple no longer has anyone who understands what a good UI is, that's the problem. Every damn thing that company has done post 10.6 and IOS 6 has been to the detriment of usability, visibility, and consistency. Both Mac OS and iOS have simply turn into a bunch of random crap you have to memorize. Basically, at this point, using a Mac or iThing is basically the same continuous struggle that using Windows has always been.
There is room for someone else to move in and create the next great thing(s); things that actually function the way normal people need and expect them to. Apple no longer shows any ability to do so, Microsoft never has, and Linux (etc.) no matter how pretty the wrapper is still far, far, far too technical for the majority of the human race to use it.
I fucking hate favicons
Which piece of turd thinks it's useful in the first place?
It's the shittiest idea ever.
They like to take features away. Just look at how they killed Final Cut Pro and turned it into basically iMovie Pro. Everyone uses Adobe Premier now. Except for me, I use Sony Vegas (because I'm cheap)
If you need that many tabs, use this. It has a vertical tab dock that scrolls when you open more tabs than you have real estate, and each tab is a live tile of the page. I've used it since 10.1, and that feature alone is what keeps me using it.
BTW, in that mode you can also Cmd-F to search in the tab titles. How do you do that in other browsers again?
...y Things - A porn site.
News from T...he Porn Factory.
'msmash' is right - that desktop IS a mess!
[qs]For those of you who don't use Safari, just have a look at this mess I had earlier today when I was using Safari on a MacBook.[qe]
How many tabs can you realistically read at a time?
Yet an other one sided Apple Rant. However if you don't like safari then don't use it. If you like safari for everything, except the favicons then choose how important favincons are. If you like every thing in safari, then all means use it.
I use Chrome, mostly due to better HTML 5 support, however if others are using a different browser. All the power to them.
We are no longer in the Bad old days of IE 4-6 Dominance. We can use different browsers and for the most part the page will render properly and things will work. Plug ins and OS particular features are no so common anymore.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Or press the top left icon on the window bar (the one with the two overlapping squares),
BTW, in that mode you can also Cmd-F to search in the tab titles. How do you do that in other browsers again?
Firefox: type "% searchterm" in the address bar – there are several other useful operators as well.
If you shrink the tabs the favicon shows up. Safari used to show favicons in the address bar, but that stopped.
I don't see why this merits any headline at all. Safari seems to be some legacy apple browser that is used by only a small number of people, and only on very proprietary and locked down Apple platforms. Outside America, which seems to have a general technology backwardness, there is very little use of this browser. If users are having some problem with it, they will just switch to something that isn't subject to the crazy Kim Jong Un Apple dictatorship. Even the Microsoft controlled world looks like a positively liberal compared the the Apple controlled dictatorship these days.
I did a quick search to find this, but I had a suspicion that it was possible. https://stackoverflow.com/ques...
As someone who was wholly accustomed to chrome, and then got an iPhone, I hate Safari. In every way the browser reminds me of a re-skinned Internet Explorer in that it is profoundly basic and not user friendly. I admit, I don't have a Mac, so maybe the Mac version of Safari is passable. But from a mobile standpoint, it's a garbage browser; at least in my honest opinion it is.
Yet an other one sided Apple Rant. However if you don't like safari then don't use it.
I personally wasn't even sure that there were any remaining safari users, but then I saw this article and realized that there are somewhere around 5 or 6 of them.
Pinned tabs in Safari use favicons to provide stuck, minimized tabs THAT SHOW THE FAVICON.
http://www.idownloadblog.com/2015/06/22/pin-safari-tabs-os-x-el-capitan/