Safari 4 Beta was released on February 24, 2009, with a huge amount of improvements (they really had a lot to fix). I have been following the web browser interfaces for some time but I would specially like to point out the use of tabs.
In June 2008 Firefox 3 was released and with it a step back on design was achieved. Mozilla copied Safari’s interface without even analyzing if that UI design was the best one. (I wrote a full article about Firefox 3 and tabs).
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Firefox 3 interface mimicking Safari 3, tabs are not attached to pages, they are "hanging" from bookmarks.
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On the other side, Apple recently noticed that the best and logical way to handle tabs is to place them on top of the window, attaching them to pages.
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Safari 4
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It’s true that most users will need to get used to this change on tabs design but at the end this is the most logical solution. There is a good reason for this…
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User comment about Safari 4 and tabs.
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Attaching tabs to pages is a very old idea coming from the real (material) world, this is a very successful and simple design that people understand. So why not following user’s mental models?
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Picture by Takashi |
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Hi Alexis,
Good points. I believe you are right: tabs on top of the ‘page’ make most sense. I would hesitate to reference the users ‘mental models’ in this context, however, because (clearly) tabs in browsers(!) have mostly (always for 99% of people) NOT been on top.
The result is that most people today would have to ‘search’ for the tabs in safari 4. Even I had to get used to it (and I have been using a myriad of browsers, including Chrome, for a long time). So while it is true that people would have no doubts about the location of tabs on folders, I feel they would still look for tabs in browsers below(!) the addres bar.
People get used to it quickly, I guess, though.
One other thing: while I see the logic behind ‘tabs on top of pages’ I wonder if the location bar should not be on top. Isn’t the location bar a Interface Control, belonging to the application, rather than part of the specific page? Of course the URL _in_ the bar is specific for the page, but the bar itself (just as the home-button and bookmarks button) belongs to the browser application and not(!) to the current page. I would think they should, therefor, be detached from the page.
More logical would be:
[application icons and controls, including addres/search/awesome bar]
[tabs tabs tabs]
[page]
Anyway, good thoughts!
Hi David,
Thank you for your great comment.
I think you are right about the order of elements (app icons -> tabs -> page). That makes a lot of sense now. But I don’t know why I have the feeling that this new order on Safari 4 could be the preparation for something bigger: what if web sites would be allowed to customized the browser’s icons and controls to make web services/sites look like applications? In that case an arrangement like this would make sense:
[tabs tabs tabs]
[browser icons and controls, website-specific icons and controls]
[web page, content]
Of course, I’m just imagining the future…
Thanks a lot for you comment!
Alex
I am about to switch over to Safari 4, hearing alot of good things in terms of its speed.