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Safari 15 on Mac OS, a user interface mess

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

#241

Post by IggleSniggle »

xvector wrote: post #216
aniforprez wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Hard disagree. The Safari change is a godsend for someone with a small laptop display. Every bit of space I can reclaim helps.

As someone else with a small laptop display, I run everything in fullscreen mode, and toggle out whenever I need to use the controls. If you’re hiding the controls anyway, why not just use fullscreen mode? Then, when you want the controls, you don’t need to have them hidden in a bunch of layers, they can just all be there.

Hey, whatever if we just made all the browser controls a modal or fullscreen context of it’s own?

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

#242

Post by rewgs »

This change to me feels very touch-oriented.

If you're touching a standard browser's URL bar, you might touch a tab instead (and vice-versa). But if you put them on the same horizontal plane, this problem is solved.

And from a touch perspective, the URL bar has a ton of wasted space; you don't need more than the length of your average URL as a touch target, so all the horizontal space that comes after it is essentially unused.

I think this is yet another way in which Apple is preparing to make macOS touch-enabled.

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

#243

Post by xvector »

IggleSniggle wrote: post #241
xvector wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard disagree. The Safari change is a godsend for someone with a small laptop display. Every bit of space I can reclaim helps.

As someone else with a small laptop display, I run everything in fullscreen mode, and toggle out whenever I need to use the controls. If you’re hiding the controls anyway, why not just use fullscreen mode? Then, when you want the controls, you don’t need to have them hidden in a bunch of layers, they can just all be there. Hey, whatever if we just made all the browser controls a modal or fullscreen context of it’s ow…

You can't always use full screen, often you need to have multiple windows open next to each other, and that's where minimizing chrome is especially important, because your windows are smaller now but the size of the chrome remains the same.

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

#244

Post by andrei_says_ »

irrational wrote: post #204
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fairly common because it's commonly true; people don't like the changes for good reasons. Actual innovations in design are fine, but too often changes to user interfaces are arbitrary or are a response to the latest fad or some bright idea marketing or management cooked up. There is a strong argument for user interface stability. People don't just learn user interfaces, they seep into people's unconscious and mu…

This. I work on a website where a new ui was rolled out every 2 years? Why? We (the developers) finally figured out it was because it gave the business people work to do that was more interesting than what they were really supposed to be doing. They got to go to all these catered meetings with 3rd party design consultants. They got to report to their higher ups that they were doing all this very important work. And e…

> We (the developers) finally figured out it was because it gave the business people work to do that was more interesting than what they were really supposed to be doing.

Did you get them to confirm this hypothesis? Or did you just figure it out by deduction and projection?

This is an honest question. I work on both sides - dev and design, and so am privy of the driving forces behind the projects.

Sometimes they could include personal agendas but are almost never limited to those.

And I have had cases where I had to ask questions in confidence to uncover the political forces.

Have you had the opportunity to ask such questions and confirm your suspicions?

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

#245

Post by yakubin »

AlexandrB wrote: post #217
yakubin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop patronizing casual users. Cmd+R isn't rocket science, just like Cmd+C. Casual users aren't monkeys.

Then why not remove ALL the buttons. Stick them in a hamburger menu. And present everyone with a list of keys they must memorize during OS first boot? This is how far UX discussion has fallen since the early 00s. We went from talking about affordances, discoverability, and "principle of least surprise" to fashion. "I like it to look clean. Less chrome, and let the users eat shortcut keys, hamburger menus, and gesture…

Your comment doesn't reply to anything in mine. I haven't written anything about hamburger menus, things looking lean, chrome or gestures.

The only thing my comment was about is the practice of imagining non-computer-expert people to be mindless zombies who don't know basic stuff. Cmd+C, Cmd+V, and Cmd+R are one of the most popular shortcuts in computers, known by people who aren't computer experts. Just because something is done with the keyboard, doesn't mean it's some l33t knowledge exclusive to "power users". But computer professionals often talk about "casual users" as stupid, probably to feel better about themselves, because they know all that oh-so-advanced-hard stuff.

So yes, just like a "copy" button would be a waste of space, when Cmd+C is so widespread, a "refresh" button is similar in that regard.

Apple would be the last company to optimize for power users.

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

#246

Post by banana_giraffe »

zamadatix wrote: post #122
maxwell wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't hide the start menu and task bar?

A lot get frustrated with the slide but if you disable animations the autohide becomes instant too.

For what it's worth, you don't need to disable all animations to stop this, just the menu ones.

https://superuser.com/a/1644831

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

#247

Post by Shadonototro »

threeseed wrote: post #39
nailer wrote: post #9

I’ve said this before on HN, but as a reminder the following are all verifiable facts: there is no dedicated macOS team anymore, Apple market iPads as a superior alternative to a laptop, and macOS as a percentage of revenue has over a long period dwindled in favour of iOS (with a few minor blips along the way). A reasonable conclusion is that macOS isn’t apple’s priority. Meanwhile with WSL and Terminal Microsoft is…

I am going to assume you are ignorant about Windows 11 then. Because the UI changes they have made there (new Start menu, centred task icons) make the OS look very similar to the so called abandoned macOS.

people who make that claim never used macOS for longer than a day

windows 11 feels like KDE made by a random tasteless trainee

they don't even support tabs on things like File Explorer, you have to swallow that useless and ugly Ribbon interface

and their taskbar-dock-wanabee is miles behind the mac's dock

and let's not talk about the top menu bar, mac os system tray is far more useful and customizable than the one on windows

and let's not talk about the notification center

and many more details that make the difference

windows still carry multiple generations of UIs, even on Windows 11

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

#248

Post by logbiscuitswave »

> It seems as if the people in the design team are all working exclusively on 32-inch Apple XDR Pro Displays.

Makes me think of the complaints in video game text over the past few years and how it had become so small as to be nearly unreadable on normal TVs at normal viewing distances. The natural assumption here is that the game devs were doing all their work inches away from large fancy monitors not thinking of the so-called 10’ experience most people use to consume the content.

At least many console games now have text size sliders (with varying levels of usefulness).

https://kotaku.com/the-year-in-tiny-video-game-text-2019-184...

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

#249

Post by saagarjha »

pcr910303 wrote: post #86

I believe this new design is the best Safari design 'in the constraints of the new Big Sur design language'. I'm liking it mostly because the Big Sur's new toolbar is too thick. With the menubar, toolbar, and the tabbar, 106px of my total 800px height display gets to display non-content information, much of which is clutter when I'm trying to focus on the webpage. It's a whopping 13.3%! Most of this comes from the th…

I mean Safari specifically chose to use a thicker toolbar on Big Sur. If they cared about vertical space, why didn’t the pick the thinner option?

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

#250

Post by Bud »

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.

Things like the tab bar and the reload button are not mere "widgets"; they are the core UI elements. They are the single most important part of the app. This is simply a bad call.

I'm all for saving vertical space whenever possible. But this is a bad call.

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