A few days ago, Apple surprised everyone by releasing the first beta of Safari 4, the company’s latest version of their WebKit browser. While I generally love Safari on the Mac (my browser of choice on that side of the fence), I’ve never felt as comfortable with it on the Windows side of things. In any case, this latest beta has made a very bold move in the interface department, and I’m sad to say that it’s not for the better. Let me explain where it went wrong for Apple.
When Google pushed out Chrome, it had the tabs in a different place than most other browsers. Wait, let me correct that – it had the browser controls in a different place. Instead of the browser controls being located atop the tabs, they were placed inside the tab. The result was that each web page had its own set of controls. The difference between “moving the tabs” and “moving the browser controls” may seem arbitrary, but as it turns out, it seems to explain perfecty well why Safari 4 is such a UI disaster.
You see, everybody on the web focussed on the tabs in Chrome being part of the titlebar, while in fact, they are not. When you run a Chrome window in a non-maximised state, the tabs are actually underneath the titlebar; only when you maximise a Chrome window do they appear to be part of the titlebar. I specifically say “appear”, because the tabs are actually an overlay.
In Chrome, the browser controls have become part of the web page, which from a web application perspective makes perfect sense: the browser buttons and address bar, in essence, are part of the web application. In other words, each tab in Chrome is an “application”, one stacked atop another. In any case, there is a clear distinction between the titlebar and tabs, not only functionally, but also visually. The titlebar and window frame in Chrome are Aero Glass, while the tabs are content-coloured. This makes the distinction between the two perfectly crystal clear.
This is where it goes wrong for Safari 4. There, the tabs are the titlebar, leading to a rather schizophrenic UI widget: it has to act as a titlebar and a tab bar, and consequently, does neither of the two very well. Since you have to be able to drag the window via this new tabtitlebar widget, Apple had to create a special and small handle for moving tabs, while making the tabs themselves the place to drag the window. This design decision is something I expect from a 6 year old who writes his fist tabbed text editor – not from a company that prides itself on UI design.
Apple’s tabtitlebar also has other oddities. The “3D” effect on the tabtitlebar is too overdone, giving me the strange sensation that my monitor is a 10km abyss. Taking the right-hand window controls section into account (which is lower down in the abyss than the active tab), as well as the fact that even if you have ten million tabs, the deepest tab still has the same effect as the one just below the active one, and Apple’s tabtitlebar gives me the feeling I’m looking at an M.C. Escher sketch.
That’s not all, though. Because Apple wanted the tabs to make up the titlebar, they had to ditch this well-established concept of spatial memory, making tabs change size continuously, since even if you have one tab, it needs to be wide enough to cover the entire titlebar. This makes the resize handle and tab title move around like crazy. I thought that after the GNOME panel taskbar button width disaster we had learned that this is a Very Bad Idea ™.
To me, it seems like Apple had heard that “Chrome has tabs on top”, but instead of just being honest and admitting that Google got it right, they set a goal for themselves to make as many arbitrary and useless changes as possible so they could still claim they were innovating. All these changes resulted in this botched and confusing tabtitlebar abomination that not only looks horribly out of place on both Mac OS X and Windows, but is also a functional disaster.
I hope Apple’s Safari engineers recover from this monumental design frak-up quickly, because if this stays the way it is, I won’t be using Safari on my Mac anymore. Which is a shame, since Safari 4 comes packed with lots of other interesting and useful features. I also like the effort to make Safari more native on Windows, but it’s two steps forward, ten steps back.
But you can move tabs back to the bottom, which I did the second day of using Safari 4
Edited 2009-02-28 11:57 UTC
“But” the default joe user doesn’t know that and many joes can’t achieve that.
Then again the default Joe gives a crap about a perfect UI, which is quite a subjective topic nevertheless.
Article btw reads like a rant.
that’s because it is a rant. Not that there’s anything wrong with a rant.
Could you explain how to do it in details please?
I welcome the native Windows look and feel, especially on Vista. It looks nice.
But I also find the tabs on the title bar ridiculous. They should have left a small space for the title bar, like on Chrome.
And the “Close tab” button is on the left of the tab, even on the Windows platform, which is not done properly. On Windows, close buttons are on the upper-right corner.
The very wide tabs are really strange. They remind me the old Gnome taskbar (which was fixed later on). I’m surprised by so many GUI mistakes from a company like Apple.
And there is no status bar. I hope they fix these for the next version. If they do, Safari will be a nice little browser for Windows.
I don’t know how to do it in windows, but in Mac OS X:
Open Terminal.app
paste this:
defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TabBarIsOnTop -bool NO
Restart Safari.
You can edit it on Windows with this software:
http://www.ipodrobot.com/download.htm
On Vista, the file is com.apple.Safari.plist in
C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\Preferences
You just add
<key>DebugSafari4TabBarIsOnTop</key>
<false/>
somewhere in there.
It only kind of works, though. It gets the tabs out of the title bar, but the tab bar isn’t properly implemented, so it’s unusable, unless you like navigating your tabs sight-unseen with keyboard shortcuts.
Yeah, I tried the same thing, and that was when I decided Safari 4 on Windows was shite.
Back to Firefox for me.
I installed Safari 4 on my Windows machine and after I launched it, I was lost for a few seconds. I didn’t know whether I was looking at the title bar or the tab bar itself. Turns out it was both! WOW! What an incredibly stupid idea!
It looks hilarious!
I felt like I was dizzy or something and my screen looked so freaky. After a while you do kind of get used to it but no…that thing has got to go. Apple can’t be serious. They must have been drunk when they designed that thing.
Anyway…….I used the browser for a while and except for the tabs, I like it. I think they need to have their own independent proxy setting rather than relying on IE’s settings.
P.S. Have you tried dragging a tab towards the middle of the screen? Check it out
Edited 2009-02-28 12:22 UTC
I have…It acts as a title bar, it moves the whole window instead of moving the tab itself. This doesn’t make sense.
OK, OSGuy, I’ll bite. What is suppose to happen with I drag a tab to the middle of the screen?
The tab should slide in front of others. This is at least what happens in other browsers.
Says who? Who ordained this behavior as sacred?
Not sacred.. sensible.
To quote Yahtzee:
“It’s worth remembering that sometimes popular things are popular for a reason: because they’re good. Or because Will smith is in it.”
… but by the window manager. The window manager should take care of grouping windows together if the application requests that, so tabs can be handled in a consistent way.
In fact, all window management should be done by the window /manager/. Why should I have minimize a window manually if I want to start a drag&drop operation into another window? The window manager should automatically maximize the application’s document window I’m working in and reduce its size as soon as I focus on another document. Drag&drop operations should also reduce the application’s document window and present me – exposé-like – with a list of possible targets.
We’re in the twenty first century, and I still have to take care of window management myself? Heck…
Window manager? There isn’t such thing in Windows. The window border is part of the client area (the form) plus not every new window represents a “new form”. Sometimes they are just instances of controls and you would have to manage the show/hide and close functionality manually. Unlike X.ORG, each control (widget when speaking in Linux) does *not* have its own window and it has to have a parent like a form in order for it to be shown thus the “Window Manager” idea is voided.
Edited 2009-02-28 12:32 UTC
Err… Native controls in Windows certainly do have their own window, the same as they do in X.
In both systems, a window is simply a region of the screen, which can be drawn to, can receive events, and can have a parent window. The parent window may be the desktop itself (which is also considered to be a window).
The difference is that there are far more special cases in Windows than in X. Special cases in X only occur for top-level windows, or stuff like virtual desktops, and are all handled by the window manager.
In Windows, pretty much every type of control is a special case, which adds default behaviour and appearance. But they are all still windows.
Yes you are right, with Windows, every control IS a window (this excludes the menu bar) but unlike X.ORG, by default “visually” it does *not* live outside the parent form (which is the case with X when you show the widget) that created the control (widget). With X.ORG, each control/window/widget can live outside the parent window (form) that created the widget. The Window Manager gives it a border so it is treated like another form (when speaking with Windows terminology). Thus, the “window manager should handle the tab bar logic”.
With windows however it is a different story. Each newly created control must be assigned to a real window with borders or what we call a “form”. Thus, the “window manager should handle the tab bar logic” is voided because visually, it is not a form.
Because of the way X treats controls, it makes it a bit difficult to create an MDI and not just that but if things get messy, you may end up with a task bar button for each icon on your desktop because each object in X is treated as if it was a form equivalent in Windows. So you have to do a few extra steps to make it behave the way you’d expect to.
As far as Safari is concerned, I trully doubt that’s a real title bar. It’s probably a panel aligned to the top and masked to look like a title bar. With Windows you can make the entire form behave like a title bar so it’s not that hard.
Edited 2009-02-28 22:43 UTC
Generally putting tabs into titlebar is not a bad idea IMHO, all browser bars/toolbars are one less, but they should do that that way for example:
[X] [-] [+] Safari (taskbar) | New Tab (tabbar) | …
This way roles of tabbar and taskbar are clear and exlusive.
Oh, no, vermaden, this would hardly be better. No one would expect the task and tab bars merged horizontally that way.
There would still be no boundary between the tab bar and outside the application. And the tab bar would not start on the left-border of the browser, but in the middle, which would be rather strange visually.
I had the same idea today. It’s illustrated here: http://ezrakatz.net/ezra/tiki-view_blog_post.php?blogId=3&postId=11…
Edited 2009-03-02 04:50 UTC
I’m sure they’ve thought of that one too at Apple’s. There’s just that one problem: it’s shit.
I myself never had any problems adapting to the new model. It’s clear as sky, the tab bar’s gone but there’s a new grabber in the corner of one. My only problem with it is it brings distortion to the before so elegant and clean OS X interface. So much buttons and stuff in the title bar. Well, I don’t actually even own a Mac yet so no big deal.
If I was a Windows-user, I’d use Chrome. Safari doesn’t look that good. Plus I don’t use nor need a graphical history so the eye-candy doesn’t catch me.
If I was a windows user, I’d find chrome unusable. The interface is horrid. Looks like a bunch of 6th graders designed it way back in 1988. I installed it this weekend, and there are no saving graces in the UI. Honestly don’t understand what the stink is about as I have far more problems with Chrome’s interface than I do Apple’s.
Problems I have with Chrome Tabs: 1. When the tabs stack up there is no quick way to see a listing of all tabs. 2. Depending on the number of tabs and the horizontal width of the window, the tabs can quickly become unusable as you don’t know what they contain (see point 1). 3. The vertical target to drag/move a window is small. Apple’s solution retains the vertical target size while still providing a large horizontal target, even when tabs are at their minimum width. 4. Chrome’s interface and color scheme makes my eyes bleed.
To me it looks like Apple put far more thought into their implementation than the summer interns at Google did.
Not saying Apple’s interface is perfect, but if I had to choose between the two, I’d pick Apple’s. Though I’d probably keep using Firefox or Opera, to be honest.
I agree with the article. When I first installed Safari 4 I was expecting to find ‘Chrome on the mac’, without having to wait for Google to release it. But the way tabs are handled turned out to be really annoying. Most of the time I end up dragging the whole window when what I want to do is just to grab the tab handle and move it.
And it looks even weirder when you click a link that opens a new window. The way Safari puts the new window below the existing one makes the whole lot look like a series of stacked rows of tabs. Impossible to figure out which tab belongs to which window… example: http://tinyurl.com/b7cuam .
Nonetheless, raw html and js performances are really impressive.
I’ve already switched to Safari 4 as my main browser on my Mac at home and on my Vista machine at work. I was using Chrome before that. Safari just rocks now – the new features are slick. Chrome looks sort of weak in comparison.
I do agree that on the Mac version tweaks need to be made. But this is a beta. I like it a lot.
I have read the suggestion that moving the New Tab + to the left side would be helpful. I don’t know about that. I think we will probably see some different iterations of this ideas as Apple responds to feedback. Interestingly, one commentator over at MacWorld did say that with the tabs at the top, it does bring Safari on the Mac more in line with Safari on the iPhone/iPod touch. Interesting observation. I wonder if that was their thought.
I like the tabs – this may also be a sign of things to come in Snow Leopard.
Edited 2009-02-28 13:45 UTC
I’m not a big fan of the tabs on top. However, Safari 4 on Windows is still a huge improvement over Safari 3. Apple no longer uses its Aqua skin on Windows. Safari now does not look out of place any more.
When I booted into Vista to have a look at Safari 4, the first thing I noticed was: “Damn, Safari looks and feels more native that IE.”
With the Safari team learning a lesson about not forcing Mac skins on Windows users, I hope the iTunes/QuickTime teams learn from their colleagues and release QuickTime X + iTunes with a native GUI.
PS: Why is this article even on the front page while real OS news get demoted to Page 2…???
I am not a fan of Safari browser but it is wicked fast. I used it for a day, couldn’t get used to the new UI changes but I did like fact that it is super fast. As far as webkit browser goes I am going to stick with Chrome, but Firefox is my default and favorite browser thus far.
“Let me explain where it went wrong for Apple.”
Sure you better now than Apple when it comes to software design.
“Chrome, the browser controls have become part of the web page, which from a web application perspective makes perfect sense: the browser buttons and address bar, in essence, are part of the web application. In other words, each tab in Chrome is an “application”, one stacked atop another. ”
That makes zero sense, what are you talking about?
“This design decision is something I expect from a 6 year old who writes his fist tabbed text editor – not from a company that prides itself on UI design.”
Oh really, why don’t you stop your arrogance? Did you ever design a software or a user interface? The answer is no, so what makes you think that you can tell you know better than some professionals with such arrogance? You don’t write software, so you would not be better than a 6 year old in doing it, would you?
Let me get it straight. You are neither a software expert nor a professional in designing user interface nor even a software evangelist. You have absolutely no record on software UI design and engineering, so why are you pretending that you know about it? In other words, this means that when you allow yourself to judge about someone else work on software, please have the humility to do it in accordance to your competence.
That’s ok to give your point of view, given that it is well balanced. Stop to make it sound that all you are saying is correct and necessary what everyone should think, again given your little professional competence in the matter. I do believe that there are good and bad aspects on this design (and come one trying to say that Chrome makes it better is totally stupid as the same fundamental problems arise with Chrome), but that should be said, not your collection of non-sense. Also you are certainly not old enough to
have such arrogance towards some people who certainly were coding when you did not realize that you were on Earth yet.
Here is a good review of the feature which professionally written
http://www.macworld.com/article/139026/2009/02/safari4tabs.html
Learn!!!!!
“The “3D” effect on the tabtitlebar is too overdone, giving me the strange sensation that my monitor is a 10km abyss. Taking the right-hand window controls section into account (which is lower down in the abyss than the active tab), as well as the fact that even if you have ten million tabs, the deepest tab still has the same effect as the one just below the active one, and Apple’s tabtitlebar gives me the feeling I’m looking at an M.C. Escher sketch.”
Crap, does not make any sense, you are saying nothing that makes your argument to be considered. Why the 3D effect should change when you have more tabs? Making it lighter would render the tab difficult to locate among a lot of them and it would certainly be not consistent.
“That’s not all, though. Because Apple wanted the tabs to make up the titlebar, they had to ditch this well-established concept of spatial memory, making tabs change size continiously, since even if you have one tab, it needs to be wide enough to cover the entire titlebar. This makes the resize handle and tab title move around like crazy.”
What? Read yourself…..　Again you fail to explain what you mean by spatial memory, spatial memory of what, tab title, location, content, what? And why it does not wok on this design. You are just expressing your personal feeling without to explain why the implementation is flawed by design. And by the way, tabs size has always change as you add them, that’s not new in this design albeit being more obvious. But is it bad? Couldn’t we argue that such behavior gives more feedback on what it is going on to the user? And what is the resize handle you are talking about? The handle does not serve for resizing the tab, but only to move it. And why you bother that they move, of course they move as tabs are added, and what? They belong to each tab, so the user does not need to follow their displacement every time he/she adds a tab.
Also the handle for tabs in background only appears when you move your mouse over it, so how it moves does not matter because the user anyway sees what he/she has on the active tab.
“To me, it seems like Apple had heard that “Chrome has tabs on top”, but instead of just being honest and admitting that Google got it right, they set a goal for themselves to make as many arbitrary and useless changes as possible so they could still claim they were innovating.”
You are bitching now… keep going.
“ll these changes resulted in this botched and confusing tabtitlebar abomination that not only looks horribly out of place on both Mac OS X and Windows, but is also a functional disaster.”
Functional disaster, why? All the crap that you wrote does not give any credit to such a statement.
“I hope Apple’s Safari engineers recover from this monumental design frak-up quickly, because if this stays the way it is, I won’t be using Safari on my Mac anymore. Which is a shame, since Safari 4 comes packed with lots of other interesting and useful features. I also like the effort to make Safari moe native on Windows, but it’s two steps forward, ten steps back.”
Yeah talk about engineers, you are not one, so you purely understand what you trying to talk about. Give yourself some air, come back to Earth, read your own personal description (http://www.osnews.com/user/uid:5/), you are claiming to be/become a journalist (well i try to keep myself laughing for this one too but anyway), not a software engineer nor a UI designer.
Again that’s fine to express what you dislike in something, but don’t make it as you were absolutely right in your argument and don’t do it without a properly balanced argumentation.
By the way what a real UI designer thinks about Safari 4?
http://blog.cocoia.com/2009/02/24/safari-4-ui-breakdown/
Read it and don’t pretend that you know better than him.
Edited 2009-02-28 15:21 UTC
Can you, for once, make a point in plain English, as well as without any insults or nasty words? I cannot possibly take you serious this way. I’m sorry.
I did find that link of yours interesting. I don’t think you read it very well, because the author actually agreed with me about the tabs. Edit: In fact, BOTH of your links agree with my position, and bring forward similar arguments! Did you really read those links, or what?!?
What’s interesting is that that link of yours focusses on the new functionality in Safari 4, not the UI per se. And yes, I do consider myself knowledgable on this subject. I’ve spent a hell of a lot of time reading, studying, and writing about UI design.
No, I’m not claiming that I’m “right”, or that my opinion is all that matters. That’s why this is an editorial – as in, a personal opinion. I suggest that for your next comment, you try to come up with counterarguments, in understandable English, without insults or nasty words.
Then we’ll see if you actually have anything to contribute. Because right now, you’re just flying insults around.
Edited 2009-02-28 15:37 UTC
“Let me explain where it went wrong for Apple.”
O RLY!?
Speaking of user interfaces, the parent that Thom was responding to was modded down to -1 which makes it less noticeable. But Thom’s response was modded up making it more noticeable. The net effect on the UI made it seem as if Thom was replying to the post above the one he was. I re-read it over and over for a while to figure out what the heck Thom was reacting to.
Maybe Im crosseyed, or maybe just tired and have a form of post dsylexia not yet classified by scientists, but that’s what I saw.
While I’m not saying your wrong in this instance, usability is not a scholastic discipline, its a scientific discipline. Reading about usability only makes you knowledgeable about things which have already been studied, so unless you’ve got an empirical study on Safari’s tabs your opinion on it isn’t really any better than that of some one who doesn’t have a usability hobby.
A couple of flaws in your “analysis” jumps out particularly: the idea that reordering tabs is an important enough behavior that it needs to be supported from anywhere on the tab (this is really the sort of thing that needs to be backed up) and the “10km abyss” effect, the inclusion of which assumes that it isn’t isolated to yourself.
This is an especially bizarre way of trying to give your opinions weight which isn’t isolated to this thread either. You frequently link your usability terms articles as a way to argue your case. Let’s think about that: you use your own opinions to prove your opinions.
Thom, the saddest thing is how far OSNews has fallen that all these plonkers here agree with your rambling, moronic crap.
Edited 2009-03-05 18:35 UTC
This is an article about User Experience. Who would know better about User Experience than..oh I don’t know, a user?
The “Apple knows best” argument is silly when you think about the amount of people who use their program.
Perhaps they did some usability testing, maybe they put some of the best guys in the field on the product, but your sort of blanket statement is misleading at best.
Chrome puts the Tabs on Top as a UI overlay, as opposed to a weird frankenstein mashup of Tab and Title Bar.
If you look at Chrome on Vista, they extend the Glass into the Client Area, and overlay the tabs ontop. You still have a region which you can interact with in the form of a title bar. Tabs are tabs and the title bar is a title bar.
First off, that’s a logical fallacy. You can’t flatly say that because X believes that Y is true, then Y has to be true.
It’s ridiculous to think like that, what is so wrong about someone else forming their own opinion about a product, and writing an article on it?
Again, he’s the user. One of those who ultimately has to deal with the product on a day to day basis, if his opinion is to be rendered useless, then what is the point of even making a product like this available to the general public?
You’re being incredibly dense.
Chrome does not suffer from such problems, at least not to the glaring, and in my opinion, embarassing extent that Safari 4 does.
You’ve said arrogance many times in your post, but the only one coming off as arrogant is you.
For all the ranting you seem to do about UI design, you seem to be unable to grasp the concept of using color contrast to focus attention. The way Apple is doing it (At least on Windows) works, but it’s not the best way to do it.
He pretty clearly says that it’s the size of the tabs.
You’re rushing through his words and losing your objectivity.
Look up the concept of spatial memory, and muscle memory. Basically, it boils down to the user not having to constantly readjust where his mouse should go to.
If you have a stationary target, you are more efficient, but if you have a moving target, such as a variable sized tab, and to add ontop of that, additional variable targets such as the Close Button and Move Tab button, it further complicates interaction.
Sure you can, you can also argue that the moon is made of cheese. It does not make it a good argument.
Doesn’t really matter if the size of tabs are constantly changing. Safari definitely has the more erratic behavior when it comes to this, as opposed to every other browser.
You mean, there’s an article written by a person. An authoritive subject on a completely subjective matter? Irrelevant.
Well no. He’s _a_ user. One among millions, no more important or significant than most. There is no reason why his experience should be representative, or for his opinion to carry any absolute weight.
And that would be fine, had he presented his ideas as opinion. He doesn’t. He makes absolutist statements leaving no room the concept of opinion. He is Right and Apple “got it wrong”. Now that is certainly his prerogative and no doubt did it precisely to be provocative and generate comments, but that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be called on the inanity of his rant.
No one is claiming it does, merely that the exact opposite also is not true. Perhaps I worded it wrongly, but that’s the point I was trying to convey.
I think a lot of what he wrote was written more like “X is Y in my opinion” or “I think X is Y”, adding that tagline disclaimer after every thing he says, especially in what obviously is an opinion article, is impractical. To me, it seemed perfectly valid.
He even clarified, to calm any remaining doubts, that this was an opinion piece, specifically his opinion, I happen to agree, but like I’ve stated, UI design is extremely subjective so no one can ever be “Right”.
For heaven’s sakes– this is all splitting hairs. This is an editorial. An opinion. One opinion. Take it and agree with it or take it and disagree with it. That’s really the point of the comments feature– to agree, disagree, discuss, add more information. Commenting on the fact that he’s just one user and that one user’s opinion doesn’t matter is all subjective. So what if OSNews stopped publishing editorials– which are essentially the opinion of one person? I imagine life would get pretty boring around here at times. If you don’t like the opinion, don’t try to discredit the person whether arrogant or not– use your own opinion to counter it, and even throwing in some facts to support your opinion is a great idea.
Huff. I wouldn’t have said anything to feed the fire except this often happens here whether it’s the opinion of an editor or the opinion of another commenter that sparks the tempest.
Edited 2009-02-28 20:01 UTC
f–kING LOL. You guys are hilarious.
I feel stupider for reading your outlandishly long and horribly written attack on what was an article I enjoyed reading.
While I certainly don’t care to comment on the UI arguments as proposed by Hakime, I do agree with him in regards to the arrogance inherent in Thom’s writing. The holier-than-thou attitude is readily apparent in many of his articles, especially those on those UI design. At the very least, it is annoying. Writing on subjects such as OS and UI design can be done in a manner which is informative and without being arrogant.
Eugenia’s article, for the most part, are very informative and without the presence of arrogance as exhibit by Thom’s writing. In any case, it’s a minor issue which is only, to put it simply, annoying.
After the 12th paragraph, I started getting light-headed, and had to stop and set up a base camp to rest while the Sherpas went ahead to scout out the rest of the post. But after a long nap and some serious re-hydration, I was able to push through and finish my ascent. I don’t know that I’ve ever been more proud of myself.
Seriously, well said.
I like reading usability reviews, but not from people who have no idea what they are talking about. Especially when they think they do. And even more especially when they are so unnecessarily sensationalist.
Read this too
http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/02/24/hierarchies/
Again, this is not about saying that what Apple did is perfect, it is not. There is certainly room for a lot of improvements and tweaks. But nothing in what you wrote makes sense to say if this design is bad or good or somewhere between.
You know what? All this whining about Safari 4 is so tired. It’s so much like the “Apple vs. Microsoft” crap from years ago.
I use IE, FireFox, and Safari on both my Windows machines and my Macs. Fact is, Safari is much faster on both, but I also like the familiarity with IE and FireFox on both operating systems.
Too many people get caught up in a specific platform that they lose the capacity to be both objective and honest about their user experience.
It’s time to grow up. No company is responsible for our pleasure in using their products. That’s something that each of us is responsible for. If you don’t like a particular product, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the prouduct sucks, no matter how much you shout it out in this web site and web sites like it.
Do I like things about IE? Yes. Is Safari 4 fast? Damn yes. I don’t care how much you know or what your experience is, these two things will remain true. Get over it. And get over yourselves.
You have trouble navigating because you don’t know where everything is and find it difficult to find things? Take a class. Consult a therapist. Talk to your Mommy. But please, stop complaining about your own failures.
I don’t really see the problem… there is a lot of wasted space the the Aero theme and Apple is just using the screen wisely and give priority to the actual pages.
Well, it would be good if it were implemented wisely. The paradigm is a working one, and Chrome gets it working quite well. I like it, and I agree with it.
However, Safari 4’s implementation in my opinion leaves a lot to be desired. I like Safari, I liked Safari 3 on Windows, and I hope that by the time this ships as a final version, they can iron out some of these problems.
I don’t think the point of most people here is to say: Safari does this wrong, therefore it’s terrible and no one should use it.
The attitude I take is, they did a lot right (It’s really fast and does standards very well) but it could use some tweaking before it ships.
Edited 2009-02-28 16:49 UTC
Simultaneously screwing up two well established interface components because Google did it?
I can understand the reasoning that in a browser title bar and tab title are sort of redundant, but instead of making title bar a tab bar, there should be an option to get rid of the title bar.
It is interesting how supposedly artsy and usability savvy Apple keeps making stupid OS interface decisions:
– OS X window controls are basically o , o and o.
– iPod and iTunes have an o that means you have not started to listen a podcast marked with it. Not that it says so anywhere.
– The sort of slider with two positions for on and off I have seen on iPhone and OS X makes it pretty much impossible to to tell if it is on or off.
– Resizing from only one corner. WTF?
– The global menubar is good according to Fitt’s Law, but absolutely wrong considering Gestalt Laws and despicable MODALITY it brings.
– Dock. No matter who implements it, it sucks.
I could go on, but I’ll just end by saying that Apple hardware design is way better than their software interface design.
They are colored. After you hover over them, you know what each one does.
Logic says so. You wouldn’t mark with an o a podcast that was already listened to, would you?
I think a lot of people can tell quite well. When it says Off it’s off and when it says On (and it even turns blue) it’s on. What’s so hard to grasp?
It’s quite good in my opinion, maybe you’re just accustomed to the taskbar. A Windows 7-like Dock would be neat though.
Just got me thinking…while personally I don’t have particularly anything against this setup, what about people that are colour-blind to one degree or another?
BTW – I’d like to have a mainstream, polished interface that depends on colour as little as possible, is mostly just neutral b&w (or perhaps a toggle switch that does that, also with, for example, activating some user style in the browser that assures things will remain contrasted)
One corner resizing in OSX is an abomination of UI design. Amount of resize/move/resize again is unbearable, even more so in a floating windows paradigm that is so central to OSX window management.
Is there an utility that allows users to resize OSX windows from all sides and corners?
Yes. It’s called NuclearMouse. http://628weeks.com/projects/NuclearMouse/ You might also try MondoMouse, http://www.atomicbird.com/mondomouse or WindowDragon http://windowdragon.sourceforge.net/
Personally, I like MondoMouse the best. You can resize w/o clicking.
Thanks! Those aren`t exactly what I would expect, but that`s not your fault 😀 I guess there aren`t ways to mimic Windows behaviour
Thom has posted his opinion as the ‘true guru of interface design’ and since Safari does not fit his world view, it must be a disaster. His opinion is irrelevant – just let users decide ..
I don’t believe in ‘all interfaces must look the same’. I believe in ‘all interfaces should use the same underlying concepts’ which users can learn and apply to any new application. Safari 4 on the Mac is not a problem in that respect. I. e. I don’t see the problem where the title bar and the task bar can be mixed up. And as a public beta, I believe it is a good application to test new UI concepts.
BTW: I’d like to read an interface rant from Thom about some of the really annoying disasters in Windows (but I guess Thom is too much of a Windows fan for that). Ever stumped upon the “widget mode” of task manager? Or the situation where the ‘up’ in Explorer behaves like ‘back’? Or the annoying ‘we don’t like to show menu entries that you didn’t use often enough – go searching for them, idiot!’. Or .. (I could list countless other annoying interface faults and misfits in Windows – all done by MS itself).
He exposed his arguments and I think they are strong and convincing arguments that make sense.
No, you can’t say that. If you were an OSNews veteran you would know that if Thom likes an OS, it’s OS X (and the Apple products). Not Windows.
I couldn’t agree more with you. But the point of this article isn’t critisizing Windows, it’s critisizing Safari 4 for Windows. Thom didn’t say Windows doesn’t have GUI issues.
I tried safari 4 beta ,is just a so so browser, not that bad, not that great, I didn’t really saw a reason to leave my current browser for it (Chrome), but I’ll give it another try once its out of beta.
I can’t speak on Chrome since I haven’t used it. But I find Thom’s article a bit on the snobbish side (but his opinion pieces typically come off that way). The new UI is definitely different and I’m still getting used to it. From what I can tell by comparing screenshots is that Apple’s tabs are easier to recognize and take up less screen space (which I appreciate).
I haven’t decided if I like it or not yet as I’m still becoming accustomed to the changes. I wonder if we’ll be seeing tabs like this in more of Apple’s apps (or as an element of 10.6’s UI)?
No using a browser (correctly IMHO) will NEVER make your eyes bleed. And if I drop a # defaults write… command in the shell then I have the tabs where they used to be. But once I start to tweak system defaults then I open the door to a lot of other behaviors that as a Developer I cannot have. I sort of need my system to be the same as ‘Mom’ and ‘Pop’. Yes it is different for me since I have no real need to run _anything_ on vista then I cannot offer a real opinion on if it is as bad as anyone says.
On the other hand omniweb is now *free* – http://www.omnigroup.com/download/latest/OmniWeb.dmg and I think it spanks the stink off of just about any browser out there.
and camino _finally_ has a new build, but I find that one a little bit ‘cluttered’. But not enough to warrant any sort of rant.
EITHER way good use and normal states do not make news. ‘Got up, Ate breakfast, went to work, etc…’ will not make news. ‘Got face eaten by chimp…’ will I think that Thom’s POV is is exactly that. His point of view. And while it is a little shrill for my taste it is his point of view. It is not gospel. And it still ignores that Safari(BETA 4) is good enough for the ‘Mom’ and ‘Pop” users out there. BTW is it fast? does it render cleanly? Does it ask more than once if it can be the default browser? Is it good and useful without a lot of extensions?
AND if it passes those tests, but still does not meet your (not Thom’s) requirements then move along. I like Omni wife likes Opera, we don’t even notice the difference or try to extoll how this is better than that.
defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TabBarIsOnTop -bool NO
defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeToolbarRedesign -bool NO
defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4LoadProgressStyle -bool NO
The first command puts the tab bar in the right place, the other two enable the progress bar.
Safari 4 rocks. 🙂
I love the new Safari for its speed and compliance but am not totally sold on the UI changes. Does this mean they are bad? No, it means that I’m not yet sure I like them – I haven’t used them long enough to have made an informed decision about whether they are better and more productive for my application or not. I actually like the fact that with the new tab layout I can immediately see which window is Safari in that mountain of Windows I have open. But there are other things about the tabs on top I’m not so sure of.
So rather than make half-baked snobservations I have made these suggestions through the bug reporting mechanism in Safari…
In Safari’s “Preferences… -> Tabs” pane add an element that allows the user to decide where they want the tabs – default it to the new way if they believe its the right path, but give the option.
In Safari’s “Preferences… -> General” pane give the user the option of changing the progress indicator.
When clicking on a Safari window’s titlebar do not change tabs unless it is the active front window – just make it the active window.
There is one more suggestion that goes with the ones above, and I know it will get lots of people screaming about privacy and the like – probably the same ones who want to have a whinge about the new UI design. As users make these changes report them back to an anonymous database to track what users are choosing so that Apple can continue with development in the direction chosen by the users. Of course we’ll now get the usual posts about “if they track this what else are they going to track from my computer” and all that junk, like I said it generally comes from the same “tin hat with optional ergonomic propeller” brigade who will whinge when they make these types of UI changes. Give the users the choice, tell Apple what users are selecting and then Apple can decide which path they take in the long term.
So Thom, do tell us, other than having a big vomit on a once respected industry news site what did you do about your suggestions? A number of my colleagues and I have used the bug reporting mechanism to send suggestions on a number of other UI and functionality issues we have had, including the UI design of the Top Sites display – its a wonder you didn’t have a huge whinge about that one Thom because there are some elements in there that in my personal opinion need some work, which is probably why it is a BETA.
Maybe some day Thom will realise that most people will only try a few times to fix a scratched CD, then they’ll throw it out and buy a new one…
Some people are so resistant to change!
Speaking of change, Safari 4 was the first browser in over 2 years that got me to ditch Firefox on my Mac.
I love the new UI, love tabs on top, love the extra 20 pixels of screen space.
The “Title Bar” was the biggest waste of space on a browser, any browser. I love what Apple did with that wasted space.
I am no Apple fanboy, and often try and rain on Apple’s parade, but they got it right this time.
Change and progress are *not* synonymous words.
Change become progress only when it’s better after than before. Resisting a change that make things worse make as much sense than embracing one who does improve them. You can’t say resistance to change is wrong until you’ve enough proof this change is better than before.
It’s not like human history lacks example of change that was promoted like the best thing since fire and were in the end disaster…
Back to topic, Safari’s UI strongness or weakness will never rank very high in human history biggest changes, so…
Doesn’t make automatically Safari 4 on Windows the best browser change in the recent period, maybe because on *this* platform people saw another one recently, called Chrome, against they made comparison. In particular when these browsers both share same WebKit engine below, it make much sense to compare its user interface experience…
Since long and among pretty much every windows managers, the “Title Bar” space/value rate is very, very low. The fact people see it more obviously today with the browser title bar is only because that’s more and more pretty much the only app they open…
you can make the menubar visible on Windows by pressing Alt. I wondrered if anyone else had noticed. Oh, that’s right. We’re supposed to be arguing about tabs.
I really could not agree with this article more. They botched it. The fix is easy though.Take the tabs off the title bar (Move them down ~20 or so pixels), and make the tabs a fixed width.
Why is everyone so up-in-arms about these changes? It is a public beta. Beta software is put out not only to gather errors in code, but to gather feedback on usability issues. So, perhaps this will become a preference option or it will be removed.
Plus, you didn’t have to install it. You can easily uninstall it.
One thing I do like about the ugly tabs in the title bar is that it does save about 5% of my of screen space If you think of the logical aspect of it, a tab is a title bar. So, they are technically where they belong. Though, again, it is a bit ugly.
> Let me explain where it went wrong for Apple…
Let me explain where it went wrong for OSNews.
In a nutshell, Thom ran out of interesting things to write about. Eventually, Thom decided he would just start posting garbage that was ultimately troll bait. Anything to bulk up the comment count eh Thom? Who needs quality content as long as you can cause arguments and keep people coming back for the next episode of “As the OSnews Site Turns?”
This is especially true when Thom doesn’t do his research first and figure out that there are solutions to all of the things he complained about (as sergio pointed out)
Edited 2009-02-28 22:41 UTC
The Apple guys seem to like how they’ve moved things around and exploring the consequences. They’re basically having fun.
I said that as soon as I could, I used the Terminal window to configure the Safari 4 beta to put the tabs where I’m used to seeing them, and I did. They don’t provide nearly enough configuration programmability in Safari, but I support their experiments with the UI.
I’d like the bookmark toolbar list to wrap to the next line instead of spilling out into hierarchical menus off the right side of the window, like the way the Camino browser does it, but Safari doesn’t support that capability.
Finally someone that stands up and calls apple BS. Safari 4 is really a UI mess. And that’s coming from a guys who thinks Vista is okay… Even I couldn’t take it
I disliked tabs on top initially, but only because it felt so foreign. After living with it for a few days, I like it. Tabs on top makes logical sense, it saves space without compromising functionality or making anything feel cluttered, and visually it’s not at all bad. There could be some improvements to the algorithm that decides the width of the tab. I’m sure that change will come.
IMO there are more issues with “Top Sites”. To me the button that starts it should be treated as a toggle, like the bookmarks button right next to it.
And Thom, please stop using this place as your soapbox. Sometimes when I come here I feel that I’m reading your blog.
Tabs on top do make sense. The google implementation is the best tab implementation I have seen in any program ever. Apple’s implementation sucks compared to it.
That being said, I would use safari 4 over firefox any day, but it is a shame that right on the heels of someone doing the same thing so right, it got copied so poorly.
I concur; Safari 4’s tabtitlebar doesn’t look or work too good on WinXP (it looks better on Vista and best on OS X, as far as I’ve seen from photos), while Chrome works well on that same platform.
However, I wish that Firefox’s unscrunching of tabs for tabscrolling made it into Chrome’s or Safari’s tabtitlebars. That could’ve been a major saving grace for Safari 4, instead of maximizing the current page’s tab at the expense of the other tabs within an already tight space.
The tabtitlebar is not the disaster in Safari 4, just how Apple makes it work.
Now, I don’t think the tab behaviour of new Safari is perfect (that would be for me somewhere between Chrome and Opera), but…gods, please no, let us all forget the abomination that is FF tabbar; it works only for dozen tabs or so, if you’re used to much more than that (than again…FF resource usage doesn’t really allow this) you’re totally lost when it comes to relation between tabs/where in them you are at the moment. They even managed to break list view of tabs – you’re expected to wait for it to scroll! (vs. Start menu-like behaviour (minus hiding of course) in Opera, which also has nice tree view in the sidebar and “hold RMB & scroll” view)
reading this rant put a few thoughts into my head.
1) Before I even read the author, I thought: wow, either OSnews is really lowering the standards of what it takes to publish an article, or some 13 year old accidentally hacked the site. When I saw it was a regular poster I then wondered what sort of lacking editorial process the site must have, and how freakishly lucky I’ve been to have no been exposed to such trash on this site before (and I’ve been reading for years).
2) Did you actually use the Safari beta? Do you understand what the word Beta means? Typically it’s because the software isn’t done, but they want to test it. You criticize the fact that the tabs are there and that they aren’t perfect, but instead of actually writing a coherent and informed article, you just trash the work they’re doing. Nobody from the Apple camp has claimed they are perfect. Sure the feature is in there and there’s a hidden option to turn it off, but why would htey roll out a beta with all of the new testing features disabled? that’s why they have Safari3.
Now, I will clarify, I’m somebody who keeps daily updates of webkit, and developer version of Firefox as my two main browsers. I’m used to buggy, incomplete and promosing software. Perhaps this venture into ‘non-released software’ was too much for you to handle, but I would think it would be more embarrassing to whine about how you can’t handle change than to just shut up and use non-beta software.
3) Did you even use Safari4 beta on OS X? I really can’t associate with half of what you’ve written here, and when you gave examples, I’m totally unable to find what you’re talking about on my OS X install of it – if you are in fact using the Windows version, had you considered that maybe the problems are windows specific?
4) Lets see your suggestions – come on now, lets mockup, animate, or actually code up a better solution – or is that too far beyond you overly developed skillset of whining and complaining when people try to make current software? Where’s your solution to it – or are you too afraid that if you tell us what you think is better, there will be far to many people who are more qualified than you who will use evil and means things like ‘Logic’ and ‘Rational Thought’ to pick apart the flaws in your design?
—–
Now, I’ve been reading your posts for years, and I’ve seen the transition from just a poster here to a self-appointed UI consultant, but what I have never seen is a single shred of actual UI work you’ve done. I dont’ mind if you say: hey, I’m a UI thinker and this is what I think as a critical user of this software. But when you roll in here and assume Apple has hired total idiots who obviously don’t have training or industry experience, and that you, somebody whose only experience is writing on a blog, has FAR more wisdom than a team of industry professionals, it comes across as a little arrogant. Sure, even the best teams make mistakes, but we all know this is a work-in-progress, and please wait until the end to judge.
If you have anything CONSTRUCTIVE to say about how they can solve the issues you as a mere mortal user feel are problems, I’m sure they would love to hear your ideas about solving those issues or finding better ways to present the same information. IF you are not prepared to offer anything constructive or helpful, please, don’t insult the intelligence and education of your readers by writing more articles.
I’m sorry to have read this – I lost a lot of faith in you.
I have been holding my tongue for quite some time now, but I can’t hold back my opinion any longer. The only disaster I see here is you, Thom. This website went from a respectable source for OS and Technology news to a second rate personal blog upon which you vomit your half baked opinions on a daily basis. If it wasn’t for page 2, I’d abandon this site entirely.
I understand Eugenia left her honored position as editor due to her weariness of dealing with trolls and zealots in the comments section of this site. Too bad, then, that one of those same people has become her successor.
Perhaps you should consider applying for a job at Fox News. Your editorial style of bias, hyperbole, and poorly researched propaganda would be much more suited for their audience’s unique tastes.
Thom, cut these people some slack. Your article is a rant, and after immediately installing it on Win 7 in VBox after reading your.. rant, I don’t find it so bad which was also my initial impression just after seeing the screenshot. It’s a little confusing first, but they simply did away with extra space that is not needed and I don’t think it’s practically bad (whether it is a “bad idea”.. well, people doing theoretical, not practical usability speak of whether something is a “bad idea”. What matters is whether it works or not. Maybe it doesn’t for you, but that shouldn’t make you post a personal rant as an article on OSNews…)
The one BIG minus is the extra handle for moving tabs. Maybe this will actually kill it for most users who realize that it works like this after all.
Edited 2009-03-01 03:53 UTC
“To me, it seems like Apple had heard that “Chrome has tabs on top”, but instead of just being honest and admitting that Google got it right, they set a goal for themselves to make as many arbitrary and useless changes as possible so they could still claim they were innovating. All these changes resulted in this botched and confusing tabtitlebar abomination that not only looks horribly out of place on both Mac OS X and Windows, but is also a functional disaster.”
I think this is a clear example of the patent litigation driven mode of operation in which it is not desirable to have identical implementations of ideas. Its just like being afraid to bring to light flaws and short comings due to an overly sensitive politically correct cultural environment.
with XP SP3 installed.
extension forward.
Give me a browser that meets or surpasses W3C specs and when I develop I get the most rich browser view experience possible.
This GUI bitch makes my ass ache. So far we’ve had nothing but fractured support for standards and now we are on the verge of having those met people turn to rant about a Tab View?
Guess what? It’s a f’n beta.
Hell, it won’t even look like this for 10.6.
I just wonder…how do imagine this “surpassing of W3C specs” would work??…
This is best GUI I ever saw on any browser!
First of all, it should be said that Safari 4 is still in beta, which means this IS the time for feedback.
There seems to be a lot of fuss about the new tab bar. But it does have the advantage of using up less vertical space.
It is not a coincidence that many Windows users still use a 4:3 aspect ratio for their screens. They are used (or condemned) to rows and rows of title bars, menu bars, window status bars and tool bars (cf. some MSWord screens that occupy more than 1/3 of the window height).
Those users obviously do not understand the benefit of saving space in the vertical direction. But wide screen owners do appreciate such a benefit.
Edited 2009-03-01 18:39 UTC
*sigh*
This has nothing to do with tabs on top. Tabs on top is good, it’s just that Apple’s implementation sucks.
I find the new Tabs less comfortable then the old ones.
What bugs me the most is that quite often I click on a Tab just to find the entire window moving. That’s of course due to the fact that the new Tabs function also as the caption bar of the browser.
That is completely annoying.
The other thing that I do not like is the removal of the blue progress bar from the address bar. Instead, there is now a spinning wheel indicator that does not show how much loading time is left. I had to manually change this using Unix commands in the Terminal. Now I have the blue progress bar back, but when a page loads the spinning wheel is shown on the right side of the loading Tab which is quite ugly. It looks broken.
I agree with the post writer (Thom). Apple didn’t quite think this UI through.
On the other hand, the browser itself is wicked fast and stable. It performs better then Safari3 and crashes are quite rare. Safari3 used to crash on me at least once a day, Safari4 PB crashed only ONCE since install and I installed it the moment it was released to the public.
I guess it’s more than a week by now.
In short, it’s the best browser on the Mac albeit with some UI issues.
Cheers.
Seriously, how often do you move windows around? The titlebar is far bigger a target area than it needs to be. The f–king back button should be that size if you’re only going to design things in terms of Fitt’s law.
The titlebar should title the document. The tab should title the document. What Apple are doing is really how tabs should have been developed in the first place.
I agree it feels wrong, but I think we are just resisting change. There is not really much wrong with this. It’s in fact, awesome to make more use of those otherwise wasted pixels at the top.
Edited 2009-03-05 18:43 UTC