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Chromeless App Tabs and Home Tab - why it's not going to work

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Tiago Sá

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May 31, 2010, 9:29:47 AM5/31/10
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Hello everyone. I would just like to say this, regarding chromeless
tabs... I already posted this somewhere I shouldn't have, so here's
hoping this is the right place, and a place where we can all discuss
this in depth and have some kind of influence over Firefox's
development.

Chromeless tabs? In a nutshell: don't do it. Reasons? Here's a few:

# There is no logic behind chromeless tabs, and no benefit (that I can
see);

# Home pages are usually a whole site, not a single page, and the same
goes for app tabs! You will definitely break functionality, and scare
away people from the home page and app tabs, creating all kinds of
support problems. I'm all for opening a new tab when opening links on
the home tab, but make that domain dependent, and not page dependent.
Imagine people who have to navigate inside their home page to access
content. Nightmare! And implementing domain-dependent new tab behavior
will mean you will have to include some way to go back to base on the
home tab, because people will want a substitute for the home button
inside the home tab (because some sites still are not easy to
navigate, and the browser shouldn't rely on the sites: the sites
should rely on the browser!). The address bar is probably where you
need to put it;

# As it stands now, there is no reason for someone to use the new tab
button: you can just type an address and press alt+ENTER, same with
search, or middle-click links or bookmarks. Don't go and create a
reason, because, again, that will break usability for many people;

# They are hideous;

# There's the redundancy you would need to create in the default home
page (which would be nothing else that covering a huge design flaw
with a transparent sheet of A5 paper, because as soon as someone
changes the home page, there goes the redundancy out the window). You
would need to include a search field (that would open on a new tab), a
location bar (that would open on a new tab), and of course all the
buttons the user would have put in the toolbar to have easy access to,
INSIDE the home tab. As you can see, this is a nightmare.

Conclusion: DO NOT USE CHROMELESS TABS! As an option, sure, but if you
make this the default behavior, it will be a nightmare for many
people, and I think you'll just be wasting time because you'll
eventually get them out of Firefox in beta stage...

If you need a few study cases that will tell you, right away, that
this will never work, think about these:

# A user who has Google (or whatever search engine that navigates away
from the main page to display results) as his homepage. His normal
routine is to open Firefox, see his homepage, type in some stuff, open
the results in the same tab, middle-click a few links, press the home
button, go back to the home page in the same tab, type in some stuff,
and so on. Then when he's full of it, he'll go check the tabs he
opened in the background to see the results. Imagine how much loose
would there be for this user with chromeless tabs, that open a new tab
as soon as you navigate away from them (in this case, display search
results);

# A user who uses a forum as his homepage, where he checks on using a
single tab while he does the rest of his browser in the other tabs.
Imagine how impossibly irrelevant (as with the previous example) the
homepage would be if it would open a new tab on each clicked link;

# A user who doesn't care about his homepage and only types in an
address to go somewhere. And just to make things more interesting, he
doesn't have the default home page, but some ad-page that some random
application fooled him in set as his homepage;

# A user who doesn't care about his homepage and opens Firefox (on
this occasion) just to access some extension he has installed, for
which he has a button on the toolbar;

# A newb going «FIREBOX AS NO TOOLBATTONS!!!!!1»;

# A geek going «WHERE HAS MY INTERFACE GONE!!! I WANT AN EXTENSION FOR
THIS!»;

# A user has a homepage that he uses for a while after he launches
Firefox, and then navigates away from when he doesn't want it anymore,
inside the same tab, because he's all «oh, my son says I should have
more than one tab open at a time, but I'm a self-righteous pedantic
moron so I'll keep using one tab just to show him that "you can only
read one thing at a time!».

Also, about chromeless apptabs, here are a few reasons why we may want
chrome in them:

# We need some way to keep track of where we are inside the appsite (I
assume we will be able to navigate inside the appsite, because that's
the logic thing to do);

# We need to be able to open a new tab when looking at an appsite if
we (like myself) I don't like the new tab button on the tab bar, and I
keep it in the toolbar;

# We need easy access to extensions controls in the toolbar (again, I
assume extensions won't be disabled on appsites like they are - were?
- in Prism, because that wouldn't be very logical - or very doable);

# Some users will not want to be forced to open a new tab, when
looking at an appsite, to open a new site (using the address bar plus
ALT+ENTER, or just ENTER in the apptab, since it would open a new
site, so it would just open in a new tab) or use a search engine
(using the search bar plus ALT+ENTER, or just ENTER, for the same
reasons as before).

Mike Beltzner

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May 31, 2010, 9:59:30 AM5/31/10
to Tiago Sá, dev-us...@lists.mozilla.org
Hi Tiago,

I'm assuming you're referring to the proposal that for the upcoming support for App Tabs? Do you have any details on the proposal itself, since I haven't seen it, to be quite honest.

Some of your reasons are sensible, but reasons like:

> # They are hideous;

show a lack of critical thinking which isn't really welcome in this newsgroup. It's fine to say that you don't like the look of things, but strong words like "hideous" make it hard to take the rest of your arguments seriously.

In response to some of your other points:

> # There is no logic behind chromeless tabs, and no benefit (that I can
> see);

I fully agree that dropping browser chrome off of certain tabs has a strong potential for confusing a user, and without making it clear as to what's happening, could cause alarm and have bad results on the overall user experience. At the same time, there are indeed benefits. If a web application has it's own navigation/toolbar UI (like, say, Google Documents) then the standard browser chrome isn't very helpful. In fact, it gets in the way. Dropping browser chrome will provide a more streamlined and "native application" feel for the web application.

Much of your argument seems to believe that we're considering dropping browser chrome for all tabs, which isn't the case.

cheers,
mike

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Tiago Sá

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May 31, 2010, 10:16:39 AM5/31/10
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On May 31, 2:59 pm, Mike Beltzner <beltz...@mozilla.com> wrote:
> Hi Tiago,
>
> I'm assuming you're referring to the proposal that for the upcoming support for App Tabs? Do you have any details on the proposal itself, since I haven't seen it, to be quite honest.

Hello Mike. Blair McBride is in charge of the implementation and he
has a recent post about them: http://theunfocused.net/2010/05/31/status-update-apptabs-extension-manager-ui/

On May 31, 2:59 pm, Mike Beltzner <beltz...@mozilla.com> wrote:
> Some of your reasons are sensible, but reasons like:
>
> > # They are hideous;
>
> show a lack of critical thinking which isn't really welcome in this newsgroup. It's fine to say that you don't like the look of things, but strong words like "hideous" make it hard to take the rest of your arguments seriously.

I will refrain from using such words in the future. I'm sorry. But I
will point out that even Blair thinks they are ugly. Still, no excuse
for my part.

On May 31, 2:59 pm, Mike Beltzner <beltz...@mozilla.com> wrote:
> I fully agree that dropping browser chrome off of certain tabs has a strong potential for confusing a user, and without making it clear as to what's happening, could cause alarm and have bad results on the overall user experience. At the same time, there are indeed benefits. If a web application has it's own navigation/toolbar UI (like, say, Google Documents) then the standard browser chrome isn't very helpful. In fact, it gets in the way. Dropping browser chrome will provide a more streamlined and "native application" feel for the web application.

Oh, I see the logic now. I was having a discussion at bugzilla (wrong
place, as it turned out), and I was arguing that we should show chrome
by default, but notify the user that, should he want to hide it, he
could do so. Peter (another bugzilla user) was arguing that we should
hide chrome by default, and notify the user that he could make it
visible. Therein laid our big disagreement, in the end.

On May 31, 2:59 pm, Mike Beltzner <beltz...@mozilla.com> wrote:
> Much of your argument seems to believe that we're considering dropping browser chrome for all tabs, which isn't the case.

No, I wasn't under that assumption. I know what the current objectives
are, and I've see the mockups. May arguments are made knowing full
well it's only app-like tabs (include the home tab) that are supposed
to be chromeless.

Blair McBride

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Jun 1, 2010, 2:01:43 AM6/1/10
to dev-us...@lists.mozilla.org
I want to clarify and put some context into this discussion.

In my last status update blog post [1], I mentioned that I had discussed
the idea of showing less chrome when an AppTab is selected. That was it
- just a discussion about an idea. There's no concrete plans for either
direction yet. I do however want to experiment with the idea (due to the
reasons Mike mentioned) - which is why I mentioned it.


On 1/06/2010 2:16 a.m., Tiago S� wrote:
> But I will point out that even Blair thinks they are ugly.

Umm, I never said this.

What I did say is that toggling chrome would look awkward if the user
has tabs-on-bottom enabled (as opposed to the default tabs-on-top). This
is because the tab strip would jump up and down depending on whether an
AppTab or normal tab was selected. There are various ways around this,
such as doing it anyway, hiding chrome only for tabs-on-top, disabling
those controls, never hiding any chrome, or simply disabling tabs-on-bottom.


[1]
http://theunfocused.net/2010/05/31/status-update-apptabs-extension-manager-ui/


- Blair

sabret00the

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Jun 1, 2010, 5:52:09 AM6/1/10
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There were some mockups floating about the place at one point, I don't
seem to be able to locate them now.

also @mike: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Projects/Home_Tab

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