Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Safari 15 on Mac OS, a user interface mess

morrick.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 374 posts

Re: Safari 15 on Mac OS, a user interface mess

#181

Post by giantrobot »

umutisik wrote: post #135

What I would like: Infinite tabs, they don’t get too small in the tab bar, newer ones to the right, older ones can be accessed by scrolling left. Older than last 15 don’t take up memory. Tabs get saved into disk/cloud and reappear when you restart the browser like on iOS. Basically so you can put off dealing with your open tabs indefinitely.

Safari already does this. Tabs begin by showing the page title and optionally the site favicon. Once you've got a bunch open they shrink down to just the favicon. After that point the tab bar scrolls horizontally. You can scroll it with two finger swipes on a trackpad or Shift + Scroll on a mouse. You can see all tab contents by hitting the tab view button (I don't know a better name).

Open tabs are synced between devices via iCloud. In the tab icon view you can see tabs open on other devices listed. You can click to open one or ⌘ + Click to open them in new background tabs.

Re: Safari 15 on Mac OS, a user interface mess

#182

Post by smoldesu »

defaultname wrote: post #115
1_player wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Run a study and then talk Have they? The base of your argument is a classic appeal to authority. They're "very proud, considerate, intentional" designers so they must be right and everybody else wrong. Where's the data? Aren't unhappy users valid enough data to demonstrate a downgrade in user experience?

> They're "very proud, considerate, intentional" designers so they must be right and everybody else wrong. Contriving a straw man to argue a position does no good. I specifically took issue with claims that it's thoughtless. That in no way says it's right or wrong [1], but I'm extraordinarily certain that a lot of people thought long about every detail of this, they probably argued and different people had different…

Nothing is thoughtless, if we're being pedantic assholes about the situation who only care about protecting Apple from mean words.

For the sake of conversation though, yeah, I'd argue that Safari is the most thoughtless among the mainstream browsers. Compared to Firefox, Edge, Chrome and even Brave or Vivaldi, Safari is a less compatible, less up-to-date, less secure and less cared-about experience.

Re: Safari 15 on Mac OS, a user interface mess

#183

Post by catchmeifyoucan »

> We need open tabs, we need to see what’s open at all times, and we need to be able to quickly jump to the tab we need in the here and now.

I’m working on Amna which tackles the too many tabs problem, and this is a huge generalization. I can have 22 tabs open just for single task. For example opening two HN articles in new tabs will bring the total to 3. Seeing what’s open all the time is overwhelming to most users. I’m a fan of the new tab groups and unlike chrome which puts a bunch of dots, Safari neatly sends tabs away to work with less clutter and a blank slate.

Re: Safari 15 on Mac OS, a user interface mess

#184

Post by smoldesu »

defaultname wrote: post #31
laurent123456 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People who probably put thousands (millions?) multiples of "thought" in considering the changes Thoughts maybe, but did they ask users what they wanted? Did they run usability studies to verify that these changes make sense? I can't imagine that they did. Certain UI changes in macOS, Windows, etc. are so obviously bad (and are eventually changed) that no matter how much they thought about it, they didn't care to ch…

Every user thinks they're the aggregate "users", though. That their personal opinion and take is universal. For instance the address bar on here is a canonical truth and is the linchpin of the experience. See how every time a browser touches it (e.g. Chrome truncating the address) is met with mobs of the angry. Many users -- including even "power" users -- seldom interact with the address bar. Nor is it verification…

> Every user thinks they're the aggregate "users", though. That their personal opinion and take is universal.

Because it is. Ultimately, your comfort is the only thing that matters when you're using a computer (particularly Macs). If something doesn't operate in the way that you want it to, why is that not a valid argument for replacing it?

Re: Safari 15 on Mac OS, a user interface mess

#185

Post by wintermutestwin »

pram wrote: post #134
wintermutestwin wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adguard is NOT free. Beyond that, it is the worst plague of the modern computing age - subscription. An ad blocker has access to extremely invasive data and Adblock wants me to pay them a subscription so they can get my PII and associate it with my browsing? It is also not Open Source so I can't rely on the hope that someone smarter than me would have caught its dirty tricks. I use Safari for a tiny subset of my brow…

Adguard for Safari is both free and open source https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardForSafari

You are right - I searched "adblock safari."

Re: Safari 15 on Mac OS, a user interface mess

#186

Post by aniforprez »

snowwrestler wrote: post #163
grishka wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A simple question. Why change something that already works for everyone? To solve which problem exactly? I understand redesigning UIs when that redesign affords you some new capabilities for new features you want to add. I don't, however, understand redesigns that just move things around without adding anything new. Android 12 is the prime example of this right now. Android 11, which I currently have on my phone, wor…

I have the opposite question: why do people let themselves get upset over UI changes? Why don’t people seem to take pride in their ability to adapt to change? Change is inevitable. Even if we stipulate that change sometimes happens for bad reasons, like someone wanting a promotion, it’s not like bad reasons are suddenly going to disappear. People are still going to want promotions a year from now, or 10 years from no…

If changes are going to actively hamper use, why wouldn't people get worked up? This very article is a prime example of bad design affecting usability. Same with what I've seen of Android 12. Huge quick shortcut buttons that take up half the screen in the notification shade. 2 toggles where now I have 5. This is terrible. "live with it"? No

Re: Safari 15 on Mac OS, a user interface mess

#187

Post by techpression »

yxhuvud wrote: post #145
rubyist5eva wrote: post #74

I vehemently disagree that vertical space used is negligible. Due to standard aspect ratios, the vertical space of the display is at a premium. 1920*1080 means you have 840 less vertical pixels than horizontal - it makes a lot of sense to me to try to reclaim some of that space for actual content instead of widgets.

Which is why it makes it so strange that no browser designers seem to get that the way to go is to stack tabs in a vertical list instead of horizontally. It would use more space but the space is in less demand so it wouldn't matter anyhow. So until the browser designers get a clue I will be stuck with Firefox and the Treestyle tabs plugin which is the least horrible solution for people that use a lot of tabs.

Vivaldi does what you’re asking for, natively without plugins.

Re: Safari 15 on Mac OS, a user interface mess

#188

Post by jdlshore »

flohofwoe wrote: post #168
jakelazaroff wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where's the scientific research and white papers going along with the Safari UI changes which clearly justify point by point why every single change makes sense, all backed by user studies? Are you being hyperbolic, or is this your actual position? That’s a ridiculously high bar that most organizations could not muster (and there’s no way Apple would release that stuff publicly anyway). “Emotional bullshit” is so n…

I'm dead serious. Almost every piece of software (and hardware) in a computer is driven by incremental improvements backed by research. Operating system kernels, file systems, databases, 3D-APIs, etc... there are tons of publications, white papers, discussions, all happening in public how those components are improved over the decades. There are dead ends from time to time, but those fail, and those failures are also…

> Almost every piece of software (and hardware) in a computer is driven by incremental improvements backed by research

Could you please point to the research in support of this statement? Specifically, the "almost every" part?

> Where's the research

Do a web search for "human-computer interaction research."

Re: Safari 15 on Mac OS, a user interface mess

#189

Post by aniforprez »

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #147
mahoho wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the tradeoff here isn't between a few dozen pixels vertically and a few dozen horizontally. It's 28 vertical pixels in exchange for cutting the horizontal space for the address bar and tab bar each in half , roughly.

Who really needs an address bar spanning the entire width of their screen? If you run into an URL that long then it's highly unlikely to contain useful information anyway. Or do you regularly notice yourself scanning through 400 characters of query string gibberish and thinking "that information was so useful that I always need all of it on screen"?

You don't. But why use that space to put the tab bar which DOES require the entire width? Chrome's and Firefox's compromise seems good enough where they stuff everything else to the right and left of the address bar except tabs. This Safari change is just awful
Post reply on HN