Making the URL bar useful again: Where the Breadcrumb should have been all along
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Re: Making the URL bar useful again: Where the Breadcrumb should have been all along
#2Actually, one needn't extend anything in order to accomplish this sort of device.
There already exist link element relationships for next and previous, a user agent need only keep track of those and render the URI bar accordingly if it was desired.
Re: Making the URL bar useful again: Where the Breadcrumb should have been all along
#3This UI would be similar to Windows 7 Windows Explorer's location bar, which shows "breadcrumbs" of libraries or folder directories by default, but changes to actual filepath upon click.
Re: Making the URL bar useful again: Where the Breadcrumb should have been all along
#4I would just eliminate the URL bar and the back button entirely. These concepts are relics from the Internet 1.0 age and no longer have the correct meaning. Some sort of bookmark/search/wiki replacement navigation system needs to be developed.
Re: Making the URL bar useful again: Where the Breadcrumb should have been all along
#5This UI would be similar to Windows 7 Windows Explorer's location bar, which shows "breadcrumbs" of libraries or folder directories by default, but changes to actual filepath upon click.
I have to admit that I and most programmer types that I know hate that feature but maybe its helpful for those less tech savvy.
Re: Making the URL bar useful again: Where the Breadcrumb should have been all along
#6I would just eliminate the URL bar and the back button entirely. These concepts are relics from the Internet 1.0 age and no longer have the correct meaning. Some sort of bookmark/search/wiki replacement navigation system needs to be developed.
I totally disagree, the back button is the single greatest UI improvement of the web.
There are a lot of non tech savvy people out there who are so afraid of breaking things that they won't even open context menus in Word without saving their document first. All of those use facebook and the web like champs because they can never totally screw up because the back button takes them to safety. Don't forget, many grew up during times when using technology wrong meant that you would loose an arm. Back button fixes that anxiety.
Re: Making the URL bar useful again: Where the Breadcrumb should have been all along
#7Just make sure I can still copy a link, give it to a friend, and let him get to the same page.
Re: Making the URL bar useful again: Where the Breadcrumb should have been all along
#8It's not a bad idea and possibly even worth pursuing. One of my little favorite things about frameworks like rails is how much effort was put into making human readable URIs: http://www.foobar.com/products/kitchen/blenders/1, in most cases working your way up say to foobar.com/products/kitchen "does the right thing".
I also like how easy this guy's idea would be to implement in a framework like rails. By that I mean generating the required elements would be trivial for rails to figure out.
Re: Making the URL bar useful again: Where the Breadcrumb should have been all along
#9I would just eliminate the URL bar and the back button entirely. These concepts are relics from the Internet 1.0 age and no longer have the correct meaning. Some sort of bookmark/search/wiki replacement navigation system needs to be developed.
(this comment is aimed at you, but it's sort of pertinent to the article also)
You simply can't rip out a UI convention like that. Think about how many browsers there are. Virtually all of them use the back button and an URL bar. Say you made a browser without those, with an innovative new navigation system. Think it'll catch on? Extremely unlikely.
When you take out one of the oldest conventions in the book, people are going to use it for five seconds, 95% of them will decide they hate it, and will simply use what they're used to.
Consider iTunes 10. iTunes 10, released only a week or so ago, changed the UI in a minor way. Somewhat minor, anyway. Here's a screenshot: http://cl.ly/2OWb
Now, this looks a little different to your average Mac OS X app. Judging by my twitter feed, about 80% of my followers changed the window controls back to the old style (http://cl.ly/2ODf) as soon as the option became available.
They did this despite the fact that it makes sense. Having the controls vertically saves space and provides an extra thirty pixels (or so) to view their music.
Making sense doesn't matter in even rather minor UI changes like that. Like the old adage, a frog put in boiling water will jump straight out, but a frog being boiled will never notice.
Consistency is key when it comes to UI conventions, and it's _extremely_ hard to change the tide. The only way to do it is if other leading people do it also.
For example, Opera started using tabs on top at about the same time as Chrome did (don't quote me on that, I'm trying to make a point). Then Safari tried it, and now Firefox 4 has tabs on top as well. The only way to facilitate change is to not be alone in making it.
Furthermore! "Some sort of bookmark/search/wiki replacement navigation system needs to be developed." Do you have any ideas as to how to implement that? (I'd honestly love to hear them, I'm not trying to bee too much of a sanctimonious dick. ;))
Re: Making the URL bar useful again: Where the Breadcrumb should have been all along
#10This UI would be similar to Windows 7 Windows Explorer's location bar, which shows "breadcrumbs" of libraries or folder directories by default, but changes to actual filepath upon click.
I have to admit that I and most programmer types that I know hate that feature but maybe its helpful for those less tech savvy.
Well, count me as a programmer type that enjoys the feature and is having a hard time figuring out what there is to hate about it.