The Visual Identity and User Interface of Live Titles
Alex Faaborg
user interface of Live Titles. I think I've come up with a way to
streamline the bookmark UI in Firefox and I would love to get some
feedback:
http://blog.mozilla.com/faaborg/2006/12/04/the-visual-identity-and-
user-interface-of-live-titles/
-Alex
faa...@gmail.com
I like this idea very much. The obligatory suggestions, however:
The small feed icon tag appended to the bookmark's icon might be too
small to be distinct. How about an orange (rounded) border around the
icon instead?
If we're trying to blur the distinction between live feeds and
titles, then maybe the feed icon should be shown in the location bar if
there is only a microsummary available (and no feed).
In fact, live feeds and titles would now be integrated so deeply with
bookmarks that they would be essentially one and the same thing. So,
how about getting rid of the feed icon in the location bar altogether
and just showing the orange border (or the small feed icon tag) on the
page's icon instead?
There'd then be the question of what to create when the user dragged
the icon to the bookmarks toolbar/sidebar; I'd suggest the works -
live feeds and titles if available.
If "Single clicking on any item in the bookmarks sidebar always
navigates the browser the the URL associated with that item" means
that clicking a live bookmark folder would show the page from which the
live bookmark was created, the user could do that if all they wanted
was a simple bookmark.
Otherwise, they could open the bookmark's Properties dialogue and
switch it to a simple bookmark pretty easily. Or a group of radio
buttons mimicking the new top half of the Properties dialogue could be
added to bookmarks' context menus.
But to summarise, yes please.
-Greg K Nicholson
faa...@gmail.com
Alex -
There's some great stuff in here! A lot of progress towards
untangling a bit of a mess. A few thoughts (in no specific order):
* A clarification point: are you proposing to use the Feed icon in the
URL Bar to represent both feeds and microsummaries? It sounds that way
from your mention of dragging it to create either a Live Feed or Title.
* It seems to me like we might want to take a step back and consider a
bigger picture. Feeds are only now starting to get any kind of real
penetration into a wider market (we're finding that we can mention
RSS to less technical clients now and their eyes don't immediately
gloss over, so that's some progress). Is the world ready for a UI
that gives them a choice between a bookmark (which they almost all
understand), an RSS feed (which a minority get), and a microsummary
(which a tiny little percentage dig)? There's obviously a difference
between the words "Live Title" and "Live Feed", but I'm
unconvinced I could explain it to most of the people who I provide
casual tech support for.
* I really like your interaction diagram for how people can add
Bookmarks and I think the idea of making the Feed icon draggable makes
a lot of sense. Does it make sense that dragging a Feed to the
Bookmarks bar should try to take your Feed preferences into account or
should it just make a Live Title/Feed?
* I agree with Greg that the little RSS icon is probably too small and
would add that we want to be careful that we're not only
differentiating on something like colour as it will cause all kinds of
accessibility concerns. I think you're headed in the right direction
when you say that "the distinction between information retrieved from
microsummaries, and RSS / Atom is blurred" - I would suggest that we
consider going even further down that path. What if we just removed the
distinction entirely? Looking at your mockup of the Bookmark Properties
for Woot, it looks like the difference between a Live Title and a Live
Feed is just that the Feed has children and the Title doesn't. So
maybe the root of the distinction is really "Bookmark" and "Live
Bookmark" in which a Bookmark is static (i.e.: what it was when it
was defined), and a Live Bookmark has a dymanic title if a microsummary
is available and children if a feed is too?
* Undo is critical to feeling safe in your exploration of the UI -
I'm really glad to see it included.
Nice work!
-Jay Goldman
faa...@gmail.com
- First, having used URL bar for interaction (clicking or d'n'd-ing
icons), a better distinction between active and passive icons would
make it easier for non-geek users. I suggest to put both icons (favicon
and feed icon) to the left side of the URL bar.
- Second, I like the idea of applying live titles to live bookmarks
(live feeds). However, using a common icon for feed and microsummary
makes it more confusing and thus presents a potential problem they
won't be extensively utilized since the feed icon has been a standard
for feed channels only. Here, I suggest following the standard and use
the feed icon for feeds only.
- Third, highlighting availability of microsummaries for the displayed
page remains unsolved in your design unless you display the feed icon
for pages with microsummaries but without feeds. In such a case,
dual-meaning would add confusion. I suggest to draw a superimposing
small black triangle, now used for live bookmarks icon, over the site
favicon. Clicking on such a way modified favicon would display a
drop-down list of all available live titles. Clicking of such a title
then would create new bookmark featuring the corresponding live title.
-funTomas
faa...@gmail.com
In general, I really like the idea. It's definitely a work in
progress, yes, and probably has a few issues to iron out before making
it live, but in general, I think it's the right direction.
Some points:
- The RSS icon is a teeny bit small, and hard to spot, I agree that
something slightly more prominent is probably warranted.
- I'm also not sure about giving Live Titles the same status as
feeds. One describes a document, and the other describes many
documents, probably not including the document itself.
- In particular, I don't think the idea of showing a feed icon where
the page has a microsummary, then dragging it into the bookmarks but
only then providing a microsummary, makes sense.
- I'm also not sure if we need the feed icon any more, but we do want
some way to identify that a page has feeds. I think the best way to do
this would be that, whatever indication is given that the bookmark
contains a feed, should happen to (around/etc, however it is done) the
favicon for the URL instead. That's more consistent. For this, you
will need to have something outside of the icon itself, otherwise
people can create stupid icons that pretend this.
- You'll probably want text and/or tooltips explaining the concepts
of what each thing is in there.
- Yes the orange is too extreme. Also, as pointed out by others, you
need to be careful with accessibility.
- You need a little more clarification in the diagrams about how you
plan to handle multiple feeds and/or microsummaries.
- I slightly worry what a granny will do when presented with the
unified bookmarks interface. It might be a bit overwhelming. Perhaps it
could be hidden somewhat, or put the OK button also at the top. Just
ideas, you need to make sure it's powerful but not too cluttered.
In general, I love the idea though. I can see traces of my recent
suggestions to Myk mixed in there (e.g. clicking the favicon), that's
always good for personal geek points
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On a somewhat related note, this somewhat does break the potential idea
of having a centralised feeds system, along the lines of Sage or what
IE7 does (which is, unfortunately, easier to use than FF's Live
Bookmarks).
What might solve this could be something like OPML where you can tie a
bunch of feeds within Firefox itself into a single larger one, then
click on just that to see them all.
Also, what happens with regards to bookmarking more than one page from
the site? Because the RSS feed isn't really associated with the
single page on the site, the relationship gets a bit confused when
bookmarking multiple pages on the same site with the same RSS feed.
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Just another comment about your blog itself. I assume you are using
some sort of comment moderation, which is why the comments haven't
shown up right away. It might be nice for your visitors if you put a
little note about that.
Please feel free to delete this comment rather than put it up.
-Ian