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Redesigning the browser window

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Re: Redesigning the browser window

#81

Post by mun2mun »

shapoopy wrote: post #38
jokermatt999 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably possible through some extensions and Firefox. The much loved TreeStyleTabs already has an option for "autohide the tab bar". If Pentadactyl/Vimperator don't already have an option for autohiding, it's probably pretty easy to script something up.

Pentadactyl/Vimperator do absolutely have that (set showtabline=never). I use Pentadactyl, and a Shift-B (show buffers) followed by a gt will get me to wherever I need to go. This is, of course, not discoverable, and therefore not really suitable for the demographic whose problems this article is hoping to solve, but for someone who's willing to put some time into learning a program (or who already uses vim), it's pr…

Pressing b also opens show buffer window and you can select tab by pressing tab. You can also filter by title which is not possible in shift+b way.

Re: Redesigning the browser window

#82

Post by Joeri »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #76
ja2ke wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most people moved away from it before they knew they had it, when their copy of Microsoft Works for Windows 3.1 opened up in a maximized window. Apple is heavily promoting use of gestures, multiple desktops, and other OS features to promote fast switching and passing of data between running full screen apps. It's different than the pile-of-windows approach of the last few decades but the intent is still to ha…

I'm not sure gestures are ever going to be more than a power-user feature. They are the keyboard shortcut of touch devices. My girlfriend still uses the browser scrollbar even though I've showed her the awesomeness of two finger scroll many a time.

The ipad disproves your claim about gestures. Gestures work just fine, as long as you do them on the screen itself and make them tightly correspond to real-world behavior. The usability problem occurs when the display and the touch interface are decoupled. The intuitive aspect of direct manipulation hinges on the manipulation actually being direct.

The trouble with mice is that they are a double proxy. You move the mouse in absolute terms, the mouse moves relative to a surface, and that relative movement is translated to the screen. The mind after a while abstracts away the mouse into a piece of your hand, so touchpads aren't really an improvement over mice, because you're just making relative movements on a proxied surface in both cases. In my experience the big usability issue with touchpads vs mice is that the area for relative movement is too small, requiring frequent repositioning. Apple gets it right by making the touchpad surface huge, so that you reposition your fingers less.

I expect that the current form factor is just an in-between until most computing devices look like ipads with external keyboards, with the mouse reserved for precision work (or perhaps we'll have dual finger/pen touchscreens).

Re: Redesigning the browser window

#83

Post by Joeri »

beaumartinez wrote: post #4

The real problem isn't the browser. It's the screen. Large horizontal 16:9 screens are great for video but poor for text and pages. In similar iOS style, screens should be rotatable and shift their content accordingly. Watching a video? Great, put the screen to horizontal. Browsing the web? Writing a letter? Coding? Put the screen to vertical.

I've tried that, and I have a few issues with it:

* For good ergonomics you need to align the top of the screen with your eye level. I couldn't figure out a way to make this happen, so I always had one non-ergonomic aspect.

* Making big saccades (window-to-window) is easier for me when the windows are side-by-side than top-to-bottom. Windows 7's dock-to-edge feature is really convenient, and I don't know of a good alternative for vertical arrangement of windows.

* As someone else points out, the screen is unwieldy to rotate.

Re: Redesigning the browser window

#84

Post by kragen »

I've thought for a while that we need to switch to multicolumn views for web browsing:

http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2006-Novembe..., "multicolumn web browsers":

> So the solution generally adopted --- in newspapers, dictionaries, and research papers --- is to lay out the text in multiple columns.

> With Apple's 30-inch-diagonal 100dpi display widely available and > multiple-screen solutions becoming common, it's well past time to > adopt this solution for web browsers as well.

http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2000-August/..., "Phone browsers suck":

> On the other front, ever-growing screens on PCs present the opposite problem --- how to usefully use a screen the size of two sheets of A4 paper side by side? Interface idioms that worked well on smaller screens --- a menubar along the top, single-column text filling the screen, icons sized by pixels --- become clumsy.

I agree that moving tabs to the left side of the screen is a good idea, too. --enable-vertical-tabs doesn't seem to work for me in Chromium. Tree Style Tabs in Firefox gives you both tabs on the left and tab groups.

Re: Redesigning the browser window

#86

Post by plainOldText »

To be honest, I don't like this setup with the tabs on the left side. It is not a good way to make efficient use of the the real estate on your screen. If you have opened only a few tabs there is so much more unused real estate below the tabs, which is just a waste of space IMO.

Re: Redesigning the browser window

#87

Post by abdullahkhalids »

kragen wrote: post #84

I've thought for a while that we need to switch to multicolumn views for web browsing: http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2006-Novembe... , "multicolumn web browsers": > So the solution generally adopted --- in newspapers, dictionaries, and research papers --- is to lay out the text in multiple columns. > With Apple's 30-inch-diagonal 100dpi display widely available and > multiple-screen solutions becomi…

Agreed. He isn't saying something that isn't already present in firefox with a simple extension.

Re: Redesigning the browser window

#88

Post by inconditus »

albertzeyer wrote: post #22
derefr wrote: post #11

Regarding the use of horizontal space: This is what the Reading List feature of Safari 5 is for. (Example for comparison: http://i.imgur.com/x2tkl.png ) Tabs are really only supposed to be used for things you're actually looking at simultaneously ; any time you're just middle-clicking everything on a page (e.g. the HN frontpage), in order to queue those pages up for reading after you close the index page, you should…

This sounds interesting. I use Chrome. Does somebody know if there is a similar feature there?

Interestingly enough, Chrome had this option in the developers page, but they removed it. I believe it was called horizontal side tabs.

Re: Redesigning the browser window

#89

Post by tjoff »

You don't run applications maximized. You just don't.

Sure there are exceptions, such as photoshop and similar but for browsing there is a reason for why the only thing you might miss with a width of no more than 1024 pixels (or even less) are commercials, and for why we have columns in newspapers...

Thats why, even with widescreens, the horizontal real estate is very important and why you can't waste it. Sure, the vertical real estate is _very_ important as well (and boy is it neglected) and sure that has become a real problem with 16:9 but not enough to start wasting real estate just for the sake of it. Buy a 16:10 monitor (or 4:3) and you basically get that adress-bar, tab space and other goodies for free.

Even on a widescreen the browser-window really shouldn't be wider than it's height.

Or maybe it's just me...

Re: Redesigning the browser window

#90

Post by WesleyJohnson »

inconditus wrote: post #88
albertzeyer wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds interesting. I use Chrome. Does somebody know if there is a similar feature there?

Interestingly enough, Chrome had this option in the developers page, but they removed it. I believe it was called horizontal side tabs.

I have this option with Chrome 13.0.782.109 beta-m. If you right click a tab, the context menu option is "Use Side Tabs". I just can't remember what I did to get that option to appear in the context menu. I thought I used "about:labs", but that is no longer showing anything. Maybe the feature is baked into this build?
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