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Google Tests Curvy Chrome Tabs With Material Design Overhaul (cnet.com)

Posted by msmash on from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.

Google is trying out a new Chrome interface that for the first time in a decade presents a very different look for the tabs and address bar at the top of the widely used web browser, CNET reports. It adds: Since its public debut in 2008, Chrome has featured a trapezoidal tab for each website you have open. But tabs now look very different on Chrome Canary -- a very rough-around-the-edges version used to test changes before they reach a broader audience. The active tab has a slope-shouldered look with curved corners. The grayed-out inactive tabs merge with the the browser itself and are separated only by thin vertical lines. In addition, the address bar's text box is a gray oval against a white backdrop, instead of a round-cornered white rectangle with a hairline border.

54 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. Finally! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Slashdot is finally reporting about stuff that matters.

    1. Re: Finally! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Can you imagine the posts when Slashdot finally supports modern encoding? Itâ(TM)s going to be a party weâ(TM)re all invited too and youâ(TM)ll love it!

    2. Re: Finally! by mcswell · · Score: 1

      Right, the only more nerdy encoding is the one that the CDC Cyber 170 I once worked on had. Only upper case.

    3. Re: Finally! by LesFerg · · Score: 1

      If they change to a modern encoding, I will have to upgrade my dial-up modem to handle bigger words : (

      --
      If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.
    4. Re: Finally! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Fix your settings.... turn off Settings>Keyboard > Smart Puntuations ..... you can't write code properly on your iPhone if you don't do this....

      If you don't write code go reddit instead

    5. Re: Finally! by frank_adrian314159 · · Score: 1

      Oh come on, the Cyber series had two-byte lower-case characters, too. Now, the byte-size was six bits (when you used "bytes" - it was really a word-oriented architecture) and the word size was 60 bits - but it was a great machine.

      --
      That is all.
    6. Re: Finally! by mcswell · · Score: 1

      On the Cyber 170/750 that I worked on, lower case characters were indeed represented with two 6-bit bytes: an upper case character with a leading back-slash, \A, \B etc. I know, because I wrote my dissertation on it. The editor automatically converted between the two (i.e. you typed 'a', the editor converted to '\A' for storage, and the editor displayed 'a'), or it would have been a mess, but it was this sequence of two chars internally. I know because when I went to my first job and wanted to get a copy of my dissertation in ASCII format, someone had to write a C program to do the conversion. That was 1984.

  2. You know by ArchieBunker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    the next build of Firefox is going to make this exact same change.

    --
    Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
    1. Re:You know by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      They already did this 5 years ago and just removed it last year.

    2. Re:You know by EmeraldBot · · Score: 1

      This needs to be modded up. I have to laugh at the irony, 2 years ago people were complaining that Firefox's interface was too Chrome based and inefficient, and then they changed back to their old squarish design, and now Chrome is moving from the angular to a curvy look. Maybe Chrome thought their tabs look too similiar to Firefox's now :P

      --
      "Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
    3. Re:You know by Agripa · · Score: 1

      They already did this 5 years ago and just removed it last year.

      I removed it immediately.

  3. material design is an abomination by zr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    this is probably off topic, forgive me for that if you can but why on god's green earth would we want to give up on the dimension of texture and gradient in UI? also sharp corners make UI feel very unfriendly and unnuanced.

    full on skeuomorphism was too much, but this is just as too much albeit in the opposite direction.

    go on, get off my lawn..

    1. Re:material design is an abomination by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      It's the pendulum swinging too far each way.

      Management: I like skeuomorphism is great! All skeuomorphism:
      Designers/developers: "But see"

      Management: "NO. MORE. MORE SKEUOMORPHISM. DOUBLE DOWN. MOORE'S LAW DOUBLE DOWN. MORE MORE MORE!"
      Designers/developers: "Okay. Sure."

      Jump ahead

      Management: "I want a button so subtle you don't even know what to click. No color, no text, no nothing. I mean, and stay with me here because this is in my TEDtalk LIKE IF I BUILT A PRIVATE ROOM IN MY PARENTS' HOUSE SO I COULD WATCH TELETUBBIES INSIDE A REFRIDGERATOR BOX MY DAD THOUGH HE THREW AWAY BUT DIDN'T AND I HELD IT IN THE CRAWLSPACE SINCE THEN TO WATCH THE SHOW THEY FORBID ME TO SEE!!!! I WANT A BUTTON THAT IS SO SECRET JUST LIKE THAT ONLY A GENIUS LIKE ME COULD FIND IT ON THE PAGE TO PAY SOME STUPID BILL. ONLY A GENIUS! ONLY A GENIUS! I have to go to my box. SIMPLE! MINIMALISM! THIS IS LIFE!"

    2. Re:material design is an abomination by Peter+P+Peters · · Score: 1

      this is probably off topic, forgive me for that if you can but why on god's green earth would we want to give up on the dimension of texture and gradient in UI? also sharp corners make UI feel very unfriendly and unnuanced.

      Because styles and tastes change. We all used to like skinny jeans, then we liked flared jeans, then we like skinny jeans again, then we like baggy jeans, now we're back to skinny jeans. Don't go acting all surprised when non-skinny jeans are the next big thing...

    3. Re:material design is an abomination by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Visual depth queues like edges and shadows are useful and important for distinguishing UI elements.

      Edges and shadows are supposed to be in Material Design as well

    4. Re:material design is an abomination by Agripa · · Score: 1

      It may be dated, but UI designers today would do the world a favor by familiarizing themselves with Apple's HIG from the days of the original Macs.

      Apple (and Microsoft) would do the world a favor by familiarizing themselves with Apple's HIG from the days of the original Macs.

  4. Just different eye candy. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It still takes up the same amount of space. I wish they would start making more use of vertical space for content. For example the title bar. Why so much space used for so little? It's why I have all my tabs on the right now.

  5. OMG! by rnturn · · Score: 2

    I've been waiting with bated breath for something like this!

    ("The snark is strong in this one...")

    --
    CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
  6. Re:In the year 2000.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The web browser is a solved problem. Worrying about trivial bullshit like the shape of tabs is ridiculous. This is what happens when a company has too much money and too many employees. You spend your time on trivial bullshit, constantly trying to come up with something "new".

  7. Who cares? Give me security, speed, economy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    In that order. This kind of messing around with visual interfaces obscures that browsers are insecure, slow, and use too many computer resources. Pay attention to that, then try to impress me.

  8. Absolutely Awful by devslash0 · · Score: 1

    Who the hell needs so much padding around tab headers? It's really common for me to have 30-50 tabs open at the same time. How am going to fit them all now?

    The new search bar is even worse. I don't want things to look pretty. I want them to be functional. Does anyone know where are they going to stuff the per page privacy controls? (location, camera, microphone, etc)

    1. Re:Absolutely Awful by jenningsthecat · · Score: 1

      It's really common for me to have 30-50 tabs open at the same time. How am going to fit them all now?

      30-50 tabs? Amateur! I seldom have fewer than 200 open, and often the number is far, far higher than that. Of course, I'm using Pale Moon with Tab Mix Plus, not the botched abomination that Chrome misnames a UI; so for me, having a stupidly high number of tabs open at once is only marginally inconvenient.

      --
      'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
    2. Re:Absolutely Awful by James+Ray+Kenney · · Score: 1

      It's really common for me to have 30-50 tabs open at the same time. How am going to fit them all now?

      30-50 tabs? Amateur! I seldom have fewer than 200 open, and often the number is far, far higher than that. Of course, I'm using Pale Moon with Tab Mix Plus, not the botched abomination that Chrome misnames a UI; so for me, having a stupidly high number of tabs open at once is only marginally inconvenient.

      So I am not the only one with a stupidly large number of TABs open in Pale Moon with Tab Mix Plus !!!
      My current count is somewhere above 1500 !!!
      Why can Pale Moon handle it and other browsers seem to bog down at 30 or so???

      --
      James Ray Kenney mailto:jrkenney@swbell.net
  9. Professional assessment by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 4, Funny

    Looking at the image from the OP, I have the following notes:

    1) There is still a tiny bit of warmth in the color scheme. They should work to remove this last bit of friendliness to make the browser maximally cold and uninviting.

    2) There is still too much contrast between the white background and window elements. For example, using Chrome I can still see where the slider is in its rail on the right-hand side of a website. The white background should be made softer (lower luminance), and the window elements should be a bit brighter (higher luminance) to bring them closer together.

    3) There are only 12 incomprehensible icons on the address bar line, to the right of the address bar. The screen needs more googaws, curios, gimcracks, and oddities to function properly. Addresses and/or search fields are of less importance so make the address field narrower so that the search terms are never fully shown, in favor of more gizmos and thingamajigs.

    4) The red, orange, and green dots on the upper left are a nice touch. In reference to "Demolition Man", maybe change these to three seashells?

    Just trying to be helpful...

    1. Re:Professional assessment by jez9999 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      5) I don't want to know whether the browser has the active focus. There should be no distracting changes in titlebar colour, shadow, or cursors. That way it's a nice surprise where my text turns up when I type.

      --
      == Jez ==
      Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
    2. Re:Professional assessment by swillden · · Score: 1

      There are only 12 incomprehensible icons on the address bar line, to the right of the address bar.

      You know those are user-installed add-ons, not part of the browser, right? You can add as many as required to achieve your desired level of "googaws, curios, gimcracks and oddities".

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  10. Material and modern design, DIE. by AbRASiON · · Score: 4, Insightful

    My girl watches some awful youtube, I recently saw her watch this a week ago and I screamed YES at the television.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    That teenage girl says what half of us have been saying for about 5 or 6 years now, since they started making UIs WORSE instead of better.

    Less lines dividing / defining where you can click and what a button is.
    Less colours used (red stop / green go) - screw that, let's make it 'flat' colours
    No labelling on icons, it's ok there MIGHT be a tooltip if you hover (but try hovering a finger?)
    Bad animations slowing things down or not being smart (a great animation could be informative)

    The list goes on. My computer is now covered with unlabelled icons. If you were to wipe my memory and put me in front of a modern PC I suspect it'd be much much harder to learn than it was 10 to 20 years ago.

    Everything gotta be flat, one colour, LOTS AND LOTS of god damned white. Use shadows / shading / colour to define things. Who cares if it's gaudy? There's ways of doing it nicely.

    Modern UI is a shambles. Utter shambles.

    1. Re:Material and modern design, DIE. by AbRASiON · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Oh and while I'm at it.

      I know someone (kinda / tangentially) on the Chrome Dev Team and asked them to consider fixing the damn full screen mode.

      On FireFox, if you hit F11, it's beautiful and large, yet if you hit "CTRL-D" you can still DO STUFF, type in URLs, CTRL T works for a new tab, etc, you can browse in this giant beautiful relaxing window, without seeing your tabs most of the time. I don't use it often but sometimes it's nice.

      I said "Why does Chromes full screen mode have to render the browser, virtually useless" and the answer was very Apple-esque "our way, or the highway" kind of thing.

      Groan, not surprising though.

    2. Re:Material and modern design, DIE. by Stormwatch · · Score: 2

      The guy before her, who says "worst browser in history", is mistaken. IE5 for the Mac was not bad. It had its own rendering engine, Tasman, which was very W3C-standards-compliant. Unlike the infamous Trident engine of the Windows version. (Feels old, man.)

      Other than that, everything you say is right. I miss that 90s interface style. Strong lines, good contrast, definition, physical volume! You knew where one thing ended and another began.

      Let me give you an example of a disastrous modern interface: the current version of Windows Explorer. Look at it. See the separation between the file list and the preview pane? No? Well, look again, I swear it's there. A vertical line, just one pixel wide, in a very subtle light gray between two white areas. Depending on your monitor, it may be literally invisible.

      This truly irks and baffles me. Not because one moron had a stupid idea. One lone indie coder makes a shitty interface, you can forgive him. But that's Microsoft, a massive company with thousands of employees, whole teams of highly trained developers. And somehow NO ONE had either the brain or the guts to point at that stupid near-invisible separator and say, "that's a bad design, it should be changed."

      --
      Circumcision is child abuse.
    3. Re:Material and modern design, DIE. by houghi · · Score: 1

      Shut up. You are not their customer.

      That said, there are people who design slaughter houses to make the animals less stressed, because it makes the meat a better quality.
      But, as a /.-er, perhaps you know how to change to a different browser. That means you are more equal than others.
      (Yes, that was a reference to animal farm.)

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    4. Re:Material and modern design, DIE. by houghi · · Score: 1

      And still you get a large blue banner with nothing on it, followed by an almost emty white space.
      Why did they not do something about that? This is not just a Windows thing. On XFCE I use a theme that has no top bar, because I do nit need it. The information I will see somewhere else.

      I look at outlook at work right now and see the name of the folder and the name of the mailbox and the name of the program. I understand by looking at the program that it is not Notepad or Excell. I see what the selected mailbox is and thus doe not need this useless information.
      Other programs are even worse. At work we have IE 11 and the top bar just has the Minimize, maximize and close in the top right. The rest is blank. Why?

      There is a HUGE difference between ergonomics and design. A computer program should not be left to designers. It must be functional in the first place.

      Yes, this might lead to 'stupid meetings' where you talk about if the wording of a default setting should be 'not enabled' or 'disabled' depending on the rest. Because that way all the settings can look the same with 'on' (or all with off), what makes it easier to see if there is something that is changed.

      And it will be different per case, so there is no one good answer foir it all.

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    5. Re:Material and modern design, DIE. by cellocgw · · Score: 1

      there are people who design slaughter houses to make the animals less stressed, because it makes the meat a better quality.

      You might be referring to Temple Grandin, but I strongly recommend instead the Turkey Processing Room.
      (Apologies -that's obviously a camera pointed at a CRT)

      --
      https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
    6. Re:Material and modern design, DIE. by iampiti · · Score: 1

      Probably someone did point it ..but it was shut down by the marketing and or UX teams. Nowadays, everything must have soft colors and barely visible borders so... be awful to use. I hope this is just a temporary fashion but I'm losing hope day by day

  11. Who wants bland sterile UI?? I don't by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I saw glimpses of this in Canary and thought, can we get anymore bland and sterile. Well yes, we can says Google. Hopefully we will still be able to add a touch of customization with Chrome? Two things I dislike about Windows 10, it looks flat, and it looks bland, drab, sterile, cheap, not attractive or eye pleasing. I guess everything is going this way and maybe the solution is Linux desktop were at least people still offer ways to make a OS more then a cookie cutter UI.

  12. Why is this still a thing? by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 1

    Square tabs offer the most internal space for text and icons and efficiently utilize the surrounding space. Why does this need to be toyed with? Aren't there more important things to worry about and/or develop?

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    1. Re:Why is this still a thing? by Misagon · · Score: 1

      Not necessarily. By the edges of the tabs being diagonal they can be closer to the tab label without looking cluttered, but a trapezoidal tab shape is more distinguishable than a rectangle.

      This is actually several months old news.
      From earlier screenshots of the previous and new look of Chrome tabs, it has been have shown that tab labels are precisely the same distance apart. The "new" square look uses more vertical pixels though.

      --
      "We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
  13. Follow the HIG or eat shit by Stormwatch · · Score: 1

    A good developer will obey each system's Human Interface Guidelines to the letter. If you use non-standard interface elements, you are likely a shit developer. Fuck Chrome, and fuck everyone who does non-standard interfaces.

    --
    Circumcision is child abuse.
  14. So...Australis? by x_t0ken_407 · · Score: 1

    Did anyone else immediately think "FF Australis" when you saw the screenshot??

  15. Focus by mcswell · · Score: 3, Funny

    Re 5, Google hasn't done this because Microsoft Office does it; hence NIH. (And yes, that is one of my biggest beefs about MsOffice. Next to the ribbon, of course.)

    6) Get rid of the hamburger menu, who needs menus? Menus imply that the engineers did something wrong. The user should not be able to change anything about the browser's behavior, it's already perfect, and Google Knows Best.

    1. Re:Focus by Misagon · · Score: 2

      (7) No close button should ever be visible unless you hover over it.
      If you happen to use a pen or touch (for instance a MS Surface "laptop"), then controls should either close when you tap blank space or never be able to be closed at all. Mouse users should just be annoyed, and lose history and data after close buttons have suddenly appeared.

      --
      "We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
    2. Re:Focus by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      (7) No close button should ever be visible unless you hover over it.

      I'm sure Microsoft patented that feature for Sharepoint / Office 365.

  16. Er ... by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 1

    Er, didn't things have curved tabs like ... 20 years ago?

    Or am I just hallucinating from my expired Metamucil again?

    1. Re:Er ... by LesFerg · · Score: 1

      It could be hallucinations... how many papers are you rolling it in?

      --
      If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.
    2. Re:Er ... by Khyber · · Score: 1

      Yes, Simulbrowse had curved-bezel tabs back in 1998.

      Google has become Apple - innovation through copying old ideas and claiming them as new.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  17. Why hardcode the look? by Synonymous+Homonym · · Score: 1

    Shouldn't the presentation be themed by user preferences?

    The application (or program, or logic, call it what you will) itself should not need to care at all about how it is rendered. What matters is the functionality.

    And in that regard I would much rather have a proper hierarchical grouping of tabs that makes efficient use of screen real estate. Parent tabs, followed by the current tabd, followed by immediate child tabs, followed by sibling tabs, with separators or shapes or colours indicating the difference, on one line, direction determined by locale. That would make a real difference.

    Cosmetic differences are cosmetic.
    CSS can handle that, or the toolkit or the window manager or whatever.
    Visual integration by separation of concerns.

    1. Re:Why hardcode the look? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      And in that regard I would much rather have a proper hierarchical grouping of tabs that makes efficient use of screen real estate.

      Have you tried Tree Style Tab in Firefox? Much more useful than the horizontal tab strip browsers offer by default.

  18. Re:In the year 2000.... by Darinbob · · Score: 1

    Slashdot: Irrelevant Stories For Nerds Who Don't Care

  19. Re: In the year 2000.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Use Vivaldi. You can place resizeable tabs on any edge you want and/or you can use the collapsible sidebar which can contain a "window" tree hierarchy of windows and tabs, bookmarks, history, download and notes. You can even add sites to the sidebar if you want.

    All built-in, without the need for extensions and Vivaldi uses the Chromium HTML and JavaScript engines. The only downside to Vivaldi is that it does contain spyware which phones home to https://update.vivaldi.com/sta... once every 24 hours, even if you disable automatic updates. Just block it in your firewall or hosts and update by manually downloading and running new installers.

  20. Why Not A DYI UI Look? by Gnostic+Teflon · · Score: 1

    If I can remember back to the early days of windowed UIs, a lot of the bells and whistles could be user defined via simple scripts in config files. It seems that over the years with the Latest Features, a lot of this has been lost, a dumbing down so that your average noob doesn't go into brain freeze.

  21. Re:In the year 2000.... by Joce640k · · Score: 1

    The web browser is a solved problem. Worrying about trivial bullshit like the shape of tabs is ridiculous.

    But... there's still two millimeters on the title bar where the user can click the mouse to move the window around. We have to cover that up ASAP!

    --
    No sig today...
  22. What a breakthrough by OneHundredAndTen · · Score: 1

    With breakthroughs of this magnitude, Google keeps showing the world what it is capable of.

  23. FUCKING STOP IT! by sootman · · Score: 1

    Dear Google,

    Please indicate on the attached screenshot where I can click to drag the window around.

    https://cnet2.cbsistatic.com/i...

    I think I can carefully click between or around the stoplight buttons -- but not too close to the borderless left edge of the first tab! Thanks for not actually putting a visible indicator there. I *love* the challenge of trying to guess clickable zones in UI I use dozens of times a day. It looks like I can also click the fingernail-sized area at the far right, and perhaps I can very carefully click the few pixels you so generously left at the top. (Careful here, too -- there's not much room for error. A pixel off means I'll activate a random tab or activate whatever is behind it.)

    Also, thanks for making it so I always have to mouse over a tab to actually see the full title of a page. It's worth suffering through all this bullshit just so I can enjoy seeing another 20 whole pixels of the web page.

    This is basically like trying to play whack-a-mole *and* Operation at the same time. While blindfolded. Fun fun!

    Fuck you very much,
    - sootman

    --
    Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
    1. Re:FUCKING STOP IT! by Agripa · · Score: 1

      Dear Google,

      Please indicate on the attached screenshot where I can click to drag the window around.

      The next improvement will be requiring the user to reboot if they click wrong.

      http://dilbert.com/strip/1994-...

  24. Re:Fewer by AbRASiON · · Score: 1

    Shut up Stannis.