OT: getting IE 11 to display TITLE in its title bar

[tlvp]

(OT)Testing the appearance of one of my web pages in IE 11 yesterday, I
noticed that the page's TITLE element wasn't showing up in IE's title bar.

I sought in vain for an IE 11 setting to Display Title in Title Bar. What
am I missing? How do I get IE 11 to display a TITLE in its title bar?

(Yes, the page validated, and other browsers show the TITLE.)

Thanks, -- tlvp
--
Avant de repondre, jeter la poubelle, SVP.

[Jukka K. Korpela]

2014-12-05, 20:55, tlvp wrote:

> (OT)Testing the appearance of one of my web pages in IE 11 yesterday, I
> noticed that the page's TITLE element wasn't showing up in IE's title bar.

What title bar are you referring to? Normally IE 11 shows the content of
the TITLE element, or rather the start of it, in the tab control only.

> I sought in vain for an IE 11 setting to Display Title in Title Bar. What
> am I missing? How do I get IE 11 to display a TITLE in its title bar?

By disabling tabs I suppose. I won’t try that right now, since the
change seems to require system reboot.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

[tlvp]

On Fri, 05 Dec 2014 22:27:46 +0200, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

> What title bar are you referring to?

I'm referring to the region along the upper border of the IE 11 browser
window, to the left of the Minimize, Restore/FullScreen, and Close icons,
by which one can move the browser window by click/holding and dragging, and
where, in earlier incarnations of IE (7, for example) the words

: Microsoft Internet Explorer

appear, preceded by the content of the current web pages TITLE attribute
and a hyphen/m-dash/n-dash (not quite sure which of these it is).

> ... Normally IE 11 shows the content of

> the TITLE element, or rather the start of it, in the tab control only.

Yes. I find that wholly inadequate -- what, only the first half-dozen
characters of the TITLE element? -- I've been spoiled by Firefox, earlier
editions of IE, Opera, and Safari, to expect the title bar to show much
more of the TITLE text.

After all, if the TITLE element is an *obligatory* part of an HTML page's
HEAD (from the perspective of the Validator), shouldn't a browser treat it
with enough respect to show more than only its very first few characters?

Is there no way you're aware of to restore the earlier IE behavior?

Thanks for entertaining this OT query. Cheers, -- tlvp

[tlvp]

On Fri, 05 Dec 2014 22:27:46 +0200, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

Elsewhere, someone pointed me to software found at <www.quero.at> that can
restore IE7-like titlebar behavior to IE 11 and its immediate precursors.
I've not tried it yet, but I have high hopes ... :-) . Cheers, -- tlvp

[Jonathan N. Little]

tlvp wrote:
> On Fri, 05 Dec 2014 22:27:46 +0200, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
>
>> What title bar are you referring to?
>
> I'm referring to the region along the upper border of the IE 11 browser
> window, to the left of the Minimize, Restore/FullScreen, and Close icons,
> by which one can move the browser window by click/holding and dragging, and
> where, in earlier incarnations of IE (7, for example) the words
>
> : Microsoft Internet Explorer

IE11 Just doesn't. It is only in the TAB.

>
> appear, preceded by the content of the current web pages TITLE attribute
> and a hyphen/m-dash/n-dash (not quite sure which of these it is).
>
>> ... Normally IE 11 shows the content of
>> the TITLE element, or rather the start of it, in the tab control only.
>
> Yes. I find that wholly inadequate -- what, only the first half-dozen
> characters of the TITLE element? -- I've been spoiled by Firefox, earlier
> editions of IE, Opera, and Safari, to expect the title bar to show much
> more of the TITLE text.
>

Firefox now doesn't show the title in the window title bar either. Only
in the tab, just like Chrome IIRC.


--
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

[Swifty]

On 06/12/2014 05:22, Jonathan N. Little wrote:
> Firefox now doesn't show the title in the window title bar either. Only
> in the tab, just like Chrome IIRC.

This piqued my curiosity, so I took a look at various browsers. On my
Win7 system, all the browsers are using the new window style (with
rounded corners). There seems not to be a title bar in this form of
window. If there is one, it would be very shallow, and could accommodate
only tiny fonts.

For comparison, I tried my editor - EdipPadPro. This uses the
traditional (rectangular) window, and here there IS a title bar.

One solution to the title bar disappearance would be to use a simpler
browser. Try Off By One from http://offbyone.com/offbyone/
You'll get your title back in the title bar, if nothing else.

P.S. Even the "rectangular" windows seem to have rounded corners. The
way to differentiate between the to styles seems to be whether or not
there is a title bar, but we risk a circular argument.

--
Steve Swift
http://www.swiftys.org.uk/

[Stan Brown]

On Sat, 06 Dec 2014 00:22:10 -0500, Jonathan N. Little wrote:
> Firefox now doesn't show the title in the window title bar either. Only
> in the tab, just like Chrome IIRC.
>
>

It's really quite annoying -- all the browsers seem to be working
hard to make the UI more busy but less useful.

At work, I maintain an internal-use-only Web page that changes every
couple of days. Naturally, the last-revised date is part of the
title, but now you can no longer see it.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2.1 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
Why We Won't Help You: http://preview.tinyurl.com/WhyWont

[Jukka K. Korpela]

2014-12-06, 11:51, Stan Brown wrote:

> On Sat, 06 Dec 2014 00:22:10 -0500, Jonathan N. Little wrote:
>> Firefox now doesn't show the title in the window title bar either. Only
>> in the tab, just like Chrome IIRC.
>
> It's really quite annoying -- all the browsers seem to be working
> hard to make the UI more busy but less useful.

It's a moot point. There is much to be said in favor of the simplicity
principle; in UIs, less is more. I am pretty sure that future browsers
will have automatically adapting UIs: functions that the user uses often
are automatically moved into the toolbar that is always present.
increasing font on many pages causes the default zooming factor to
become longer, etc.

But to make this more on-topic, I think the conclusion from the browser
practices is that when writing <title> elements, the very start of the
content should be emphasized much more. There is an old recommendation
that the content should be at most 63 characters. This is still a good
guideline. But in addition, the 20 or so first characters should contain
the most essential information that helps to distinguish the page from
all other pages that the user might have open in other tabs.

So <title>American Company Manufacturing Everything - Contact
info</title> does not work that well. While <title>ACME - Contact
info</title> might be better, <title>Contact info for ACME (American
Company Manufacturing Everything)</title> would probably be best.

> At work, I maintain an internal-use-only Web page that changes every
> couple of days. Naturally, the last-revised date is part of the
> title, but now you can no longer see it.

If that date is essential, maybe it should appear first in the title. In
*headings*, it is normally poor style to start with a date, but a title
is not a heading. You could have <title>2014-06-12: Our
organization</title>, if your organization changes far too often than it
should. :-)

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

[Ben Bacarisse]

It's a system issue not just a browser one. Every browser that I've
just tried on my Linux laptop (Firefox, Midori, Chromium and Web --
Epiphany as was, all under the Gnome desktop) shows the title content
(of the currently selected tab) as the window name. But the very idea
of a window title is slowly being eroded on many systems. Web
(Epiphany) for example now makes it do dual service. It shows the title
but it includes some tool-bar function and the whole title strip becomes
the "location" input box when you click on it. Odd at first, but since
it buys you another line of actual content I've grown to like it very
much.

--
Ben.

[Jonathan N. Little]

Stan Brown wrote:
> On Sat, 06 Dec 2014 00:22:10 -0500, Jonathan N. Little wrote:
>> Firefox now doesn't show the title in the window title bar either. Only
>> in the tab, just like Chrome IIRC.
>>
>>
>
> It's really quite annoying -- all the browsers seem to be working
> hard to make the UI more busy but less useful.
>
> At work, I maintain an internal-use-only Web page that changes every
> couple of days. Naturally, the last-revised date is part of the
> title,
but now you can no longer see it.
>

I use SeaMonkey...in the legacy of Communicator!

[Jonathan N. Little]

Swifty wrote:
>
> One solution to the title bar disappearance would be to use a simpler
> browser. Try Off By One from http://offbyone.com/offbyone/
> You'll get your title back in the title bar, if nothing else.

And get to experience the Internet just like 1995, how retro!

[Ed Mullen]

Jonathan N. Little wrote on 12/6/2014 8:58 AM:
> Swifty wrote:
>>
>> One solution to the title bar disappearance would be to use a simpler
>> browser. Try Off By One from http://offbyone.com/offbyone/
>> You'll get your title back in the title bar, if nothing else.
>
> And get to experience the Internet just like 1995, how retro!
>

Not to mention ...

Most Recent:
V3.5.d
2-Jan-06

--
Ed Mullen
http://edmullen.net/
"I would travel all my life if loneliness was not the price." - Gordon
Lightfoot

[Ed Mullen]

Stan Brown wrote on 12/6/2014 4:51 AM:
> On Sat, 06 Dec 2014 00:22:10 -0500, Jonathan N. Little wrote:
>> Firefox now doesn't show the title in the window title bar either. Only
>> in the tab, just like Chrome IIRC.
>>
>>
>
> It's really quite annoying -- all the browsers seem to be working
> hard to make the UI more busy but less useful.
>
> At work, I maintain an internal-use-only Web page that changes every
> couple of days. Naturally, the last-revised date is part of the
> title, but now you can no longer see it.
>

You could use SeaMonkey. The page title displays in the program's
window title bar.

<http://www.seamonkey-project.org/>

[John W Kennedy]

Safari, too.

--
John W Kennedy
"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and
Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes.
The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being
corrected."
-- G. K. Chesterton

[Jonathan N. Little]

John W Kennedy wrote:
> On 2014-12-06 05:22:10 +0000, Jonathan N. Little said:
>
irefox now doesn't show the title in the window title bar either.
>> Only in the tab, just like Chrome IIRC.
>
> Safari, too.
>

Yes all part of this trend of peekaboo controls. Hover, wave, touch, or
poke at various secret-areas-with-no-discernible-visual-clue and voila!
An far as I am concerned it is bad as web design with mystery-meat
navigation.

[Scott Bryce]

On 12/6/2014 10:55 AM, Jonathan N. Little wrote:
> Yes all part of this trend of peekaboo controls. Hover, wave, touch,
> or poke at various secret-areas-with-no-discernible-visual-clue and
> voila! An far as I am concerned it is bad as web design with
> mystery-meat navigation.

So, I'm not the only one who feels that way?

[dorayme]

In article <m5u3po$fib$1...@dont-email.me>,

"Jonathan N. Little" <lws...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Firefox now doesn't show the title in the window title bar either. Only
> in the tab, just like Chrome IIRC.

Although it is often some default of modern FF not to have a title bar
- it's taken up by space for tabs, actual or potential. The content of
the title element is displayed on a wide browser up to 25 characters
and truncated even further according to how many tabs are open or
users' narrowing of viewports - in fact it is possible to make it show
following a procedure under the view menu, customise.

--
dorayme

[dorayme]

In article <m5vic4$bci$1...@dont-email.me>,

You will hate any browser that goes into this modern development in
the biggest possible way: when the browser is launched, nothing at all
will appear, it is all potential. If you want to type in a URL, the
only thing that will appear on your screen will be the typed letters.
When the webpage comes, you just get the content. Want to make it
bigger or smaller, the text bigger or smaller, fine, it is doable but
not by overt visual clues.

--
dorayme

[Jonathan N. Little]

Yep there she be: View Title Bar. As I confess, my default is SeaMonkey,
no Australis.

[Ed Mullen]

Dear God, I fear you are presaging the near future!

--
Ed Mullen
http://edmullen.net/

"A conscience is like a boat or a car. If you feel you need one, rent
it." - J.R. Ewing

[Ed Mullen]

Would you like to explain how that is done? Firefox 34.05 Beta 1.

[Ed Mullen]

Jonathan N. Little wrote on 12/6/2014 5:09 PM:
> dorayme wrote:
>> In article <m5u3po$fib$1...@dont-email.me>,
>> "Jonathan N. Little" <lws...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Firefox now doesn't show the title in the window title bar either. Only
>>> in the tab, just like Chrome IIRC.
>>
>> Although it is often some default of modern FF not to have a title bar
>> - it's taken up by space for tabs, actual or potential. The content of
>> the title element is displayed on a wide browser up to 25 characters
>> and truncated even further according to how many tabs are open or
>> users' narrowing of viewports - in fact it is possible to make it show
>> following a procedure under the view menu, customise.
>>
>
> Yep there she be: View Title Bar. As I confess, my default is SeaMonkey,
> no Australis.
>

Hmm. Perhaps Classic Theme Restorer is preventing me from seeing that.
But there is no View - Title Bar in my FF 35.0 Beta 1.

--
Ed Mullen
http://edmullen.net/

"Who so loves believes the impossible." - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

[Jonathan N. Little]

Ed Mullen wrote:
> Jonathan N. Little wrote on 12/6/2014 5:09 PM:
>> dorayme wrote:
>>> In article <m5u3po$fib$1...@dont-email.me>,
>>> "Jonathan N. Little" <lws...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Firefox now doesn't show the title in the window title bar either. Only
>>>> in the tab, just like Chrome IIRC.
>>>
>>> Although it is often some default of modern FF not to have a title bar
>>> - it's taken up by space for tabs, actual or potential. The content of
>>> the title element is displayed on a wide browser up to 25 characters
>>> and truncated even further according to how many tabs are open or
>>> users' narrowing of viewports - in fact it is possible to make it show
>>> following a procedure under the view menu, customise.
>>>
>>
>> Yep there she be: View Title Bar. As I confess, my default is SeaMonkey,
>> no Australis.
>>
>
> Hmm. Perhaps Classic Theme Restorer is preventing me from seeing that.
> But there is no View - Title Bar in my FF 35.0 Beta 1.

It is not under View (which would be intuitive) it is under the "touch"
menu thingy on the far right that looks like the equivalency symbol ≡.
Then click (tap) customize to find it...

[tlvp]

On Sat, 06 Dec 2014 13:02:33 +0200, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

> the 20 or so first characters should contain
> the most essential information that helps to distinguish the page from
> all other pages that the user might have open in other tabs.

Correction, if I may be so bold: not "20" but "6 or 7". That's all that fit
in before the " ... " marking the end of the TITLE extract in my IE11 tabs.

[tlvp]

On Sat, 06 Dec 2014 21:15:22 -0500, Jonathan N. Little wrote:

> the "touch"
> menu thingy on the far right that looks like the equivalency symbol ≡.

Hah :-) ! I always thought that was an upper case, sans serif, Greek Ksi.
"Equivalency" is it, now? OK, thanks. Cheers, -- tlvp

[Hot-Text]

"Jonathan N. Little" <lws...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:m5u3po$fib$1...@dont-email.me...

> tlvp wrote:
>> On Fri, 05 Dec 2014 22:27:46 +0200, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
>>
>>> What title bar are you referring to?
>>
>> I'm referring to the region along the upper border of the IE 11 browser
>> window, to the left of the Minimize, Restore/FullScreen, and Close icons,
>> by which one can move the browser window by click/holding and dragging,
>> and
>> where, in earlier incarnations of IE (7, for example) the words
>>
>> : Microsoft Internet Explorer
> IE11 Just doesn't. It is only in the TAB.
>

about: blank IE 11 browser TAB

>> appear, preceded by the content of the current web pages TITLE attribute
>> and a hyphen/m-dash/n-dash (not quite sure which of these it is).
>>> ... Normally IE 11 shows the content of
>>> the TITLE element, or rather the start of it, in the tab control only.
>> Yes. I find that wholly inadequate -- what, only the first half-dozen
>> characters of the TITLE element? -- I've been spoiled by Firefox, earlier
>> editions of IE, Opera, and Safari, to expect the title bar to show much
>> more of the TITLE text.
>>

Opera

Private browsing is enabled in this tab

Browser activity within this tab is private.
When you close the tab,
Opera deletes all information connected with it.
Learn more about private browsing

Do not show again

>
> Firefox now doesn't show the title in the window title bar either. Only in
> the tab, just like Chrome IIRC.
>

Jonathan 100% Right

[tlvp]

On Sat, 06 Dec 2014 20:48:28 -0500, Ed Mullen wrote of dorayme's words:

>> Although it is often some default of modern FF not to have a title bar
>> - it's taken up by space for tabs, actual or potential. The content of
>> the title element is displayed on a wide browser up to 25 characters
>> and truncated even further according to how many tabs are open or
>> users' narrowing of viewports - in fact it is possible to make it show
>> following a procedure under the view menu, customise.
>>
> Would you like to explain how that is done? Firefox 34.05 Beta 1.

Dorayme's "make it show", referring to the title bar, is done as follows,
in both FF 33.1.1 and FF 34.0:

FF > View > Toolbars > Customize > Title Bar (toggles between Show & Hide)

Toggling the title bar to "Show" not only shows the title bar, lowering by
one row the row of tabs (and the Menu Bar, if that was showing too), but
allows the content of the TITLE element to populate the title bar.

I've not found anything comparable for IE 11 -- only some Austrian add-on
to IE called Quero (cf. <http://www.quero.at>) that not only enables titles
to display where they should again, but does a whole lot (perhaps much too
much) more.

Again, my apologies for having turned so many from so much with so little.
Still it's heart-warming to see how many bemoan the loss of visible Titles.

Thanks. Cheers, -- tlvp

[tlvp]

On Fri, 5 Dec 2014 21:09:07 -0500, tlvp wrote:

> Elsewhere, someone pointed me to software found at <www.quero.at> that can
> restore IE7-like titlebar behavior to IE 11 and its immediate precursors.

> I've not tried it yet, but ...

Installed now, and "does what it says on the tin" :-) : restores display of
TITLE text to the title bar area in IE 11 (and others?) under Win 8.1 (and
earlier?) -- and a whole lot more, if you wish.

A dialogue box complaining about file error 65535 when trying to run the
installer is a red herring: it should say: "Close IE before installing me."

[dorayme]

In article <81t16s....@news.alt.net>,

Ed Mullen <e...@edmullen.net> wrote:

> dorayme wrote on 12/6/2014 4:27 PM:
> > In article <m5u3po$fib$1...@dont-email.me>,
> > "Jonathan N. Little" <lws...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Firefox now doesn't show the title in the window title bar either. Only
> >> in the tab, just like Chrome IIRC.
> >
> > Although it is often some default of modern FF not to have a title bar
> > - it's taken up by space for tabs, actual or potential. The content of
> > the title element is displayed on a wide browser up to 25 characters
> > and truncated even further according to how many tabs are open or
> > users' narrowing of viewports - in fact it is possible to make it show
> > following a procedure under the view menu, customise.
> >
>
> Would you like to explain how that is done? Firefox 34.05 Beta 1.

My version is latest for Macs View/Toolbars/Customise and bottom left
corner a button that says and depicts Title Bar

--
dorayme

[dorayme]

In article <18q6pah5whczk$.1u4hhbj5...@40tude.net>,

tlvp <mPiOsUcB...@att.net> wrote:

> On Sat, 06 Dec 2014 20:48:28 -0500, Ed Mullen wrote of dorayme's words:
>
> >> Although it is often some default of modern FF not to have a title bar
> >> - it's taken up by space for tabs, actual or potential. The content of
> >> the title element is displayed on a wide browser up to 25 characters
> >> and truncated even further according to how many tabs are open or
> >> users' narrowing of viewports - in fact it is possible to make it show
> >> following a procedure under the view menu, customise.
> >>
> > Would you like to explain how that is done? Firefox 34.05 Beta 1.
>
> Dorayme's "make it show", referring to the title bar, is done as follows,
> in both FF 33.1.1 and FF 34.0:
>
> FF > View > Toolbars > Customize > Title Bar (toggles between Show & Hide)

Oy! That is how it is done in the Mac version. There is nothing you
Windows guys won't steal! <g>

*D*orayme? Hmmf!

--
dorayme

[Jukka K. Korpela]

2014-12-07, 5:08, tlvp wrote:

> On Sat, 06 Dec 2014 13:02:33 +0200, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
>
>> the 20 or so first characters should contain
>> the most essential information that helps to distinguish the page from
>> all other pages that the user might have open in other tabs.
>
> Correction, if I may be so bold: not "20" but "6 or 7". That's all that fit
> in before the " ... " marking the end of the TITLE extract in my IE11 tabs.

What I see, in IE 11 on Win 7, when visiting http://www.w3.org is
World Wide Web Consortiu...
preceded by their favicon. If I make the browser window narrower, the
title display shrinks to
World Wide Web Con...
but not shorter than that.

I have no idea what might explain the differences of our observations.
In the IE settings for tabbed browsing, I cannot see anything that would
affect this. (Earlier I though there was a setting for disabling tabs,
but I was mistaken. There is just a checkbox for enabling/disabling tab
*groups*.)

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

[Stan Brown]

On Sat, 06 Dec 2014 13:02:33 +0200, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

> But to make this more on-topic, I think the conclusion from the browser
> practices is that when writing <title> elements, the very start of the
> content should be emphasized much more. There is an old recommendation
> that the content should be at most 63 characters. This is still a good
> guideline. But in addition, the 20 or so first characters should contain
> the most essential information that helps to distinguish the page from
> all other pages that the user might have open in other tabs.

In other words, titles shouldn't be longer than about 20 characters
since people using the most popular browsers won't be able to see
them anyway.

I wonder if Google is giving less weight to <title> tags these days.

[Stan Brown]

On Sat, 06 Dec 2014 11:03:31 -0500, Ed Mullen wrote:
>
> Stan Brown wrote on 12/6/2014 4:51 AM:
> > On Sat, 06 Dec 2014 00:22:10 -0500, Jonathan N. Little wrote:
> >> Firefox now doesn't show the title in the window title bar either. Only
> >> in the tab, just like Chrome IIRC.
> >>
> >>
> >
> > It's really quite annoying -- all the browsers seem to be working
> > hard to make the UI more busy but less useful.
> >
> > At work, I maintain an internal-use-only Web page that changes every
> > couple of days. Naturally, the last-revised date is part of the
> > title, but now you can no longer see it.
> >
>
> You could use SeaMonkey. The page title displays in the program's
> window title bar.
>
> <http://www.seamonkey-project.org/>

That's nice, but how does it help? I know what date I revised the
file. It's everybody else who needs to know at a glance, and can't.
I'm sure you are not suggesting that I tell them to install a
different browser for this, even if I had the authority (which I
don't).

[Stan Brown]

On Sat, 06 Dec 2014 12:55:33 -0500, Jonathan N. Little wrote:
> John W Kennedy wrote:
> > On 2014-12-06 05:22:10 +0000, Jonathan N. Little said:
> >
> irefox now doesn't show the title in the window title bar either.
> >> Only in the tab, just like Chrome IIRC.
> >
> > Safari, too.
> >
>
> Yes all part of this trend of peekaboo controls. Hover, wave, touch, or
> poke at various secret-areas-with-no-discernible-visual-clue and voila!
> An far as I am concerned it is bad as web design with mystery-meat
> navigation.

Very well put!

[Stan Brown]

Oh? I just clicked View in the current Firefox for Windows, and
there is neither a Customise nor a Customize option.

[Molly Mockford]

At 05:36:52 on Sun, 7 Dec 2014, Stan Brown <the_sta...@fastmail.fm>
wrote in <MPG.2eedf7cb1...@news.individual.net>:

>Oh? I just clicked View in the current Firefox for Windows, and
>there is neither a Customise nor a Customize option.

View -> Toolbars -> Customise. Title Bar is a toggle switch in the
bottom left-hand corner.
--
Molly Mockford
Nature loves variety. Unfortunately, society hates it. (Milton Diamond Ph.D.)
(My Reply-To address *is* valid, though may not remain so for ever.)

[dorayme]

In article <MPG.2eedf73ac...@news.individual.net>,

Stan Brown <the_sta...@fastmail.fm> wrote:

> On Sat, 06 Dec 2014 12:55:33 -0500, Jonathan N. Little wrote:
> > John W Kennedy wrote:
> > > On 2014-12-06 05:22:10 +0000, Jonathan N. Little said:
> > >
> > irefox now doesn't show the title in the window title bar either.
> > >> Only in the tab, just like Chrome IIRC.
> > >
> > > Safari, too.
> > >
> >
> > Yes all part of this trend of peekaboo controls. Hover, wave, touch, or
> > poke at various secret-areas-with-no-discernible-visual-clue and voila!
> > An far as I am concerned it is bad as web design with mystery-meat
> > navigation.
>
> Very well put!

It is not just a trend in browsers: today I was looking through my
lounge room window and trying to make out the name of a boat passing
by (I live on the harbour), but it was too small to read at the
distance. So I just did some open sesame with fingers and thumb on the
window pane and sure enough, the text enlarged.

--
dorayme

[Jukka K. Korpela]

2014-12-07, 12:30, Stan Brown wrote:

> On Sat, 06 Dec 2014 13:02:33 +0200, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
>> But to make this more on-topic, I think the conclusion from the browser
>> practices is that when writing <title> elements, the very start of the
>> content should be emphasized much more. There is an old recommendation
>> that the content should be at most 63 characters. This is still a good
>> guideline. But in addition, the 20 or so first characters should contain
>> the most essential information that helps to distinguish the page from
>> all other pages that the user might have open in other tabs.
>
> In other words, titles shouldn't be longer than about 20 characters
> since people using the most popular browsers won't be able to see
> them anyway.

No, that’s not at all what I meant. I wrote that you should have the
most important part of the message in the 20 or so characters.

The title element is used for many purposes. Its use in tab controls or
title bar is just one of them. A long title element may well be useful
for those other purposes; but if it fails to have key content at the
start, it does not work as a good identification of the page in tab
controls.

> I wonder if Google is giving less weight to <title> tags these days.

Who knows? But it certainly shows their content in search results. The
way it does this might not be stable, but at present it seems to use
about 50 characters from the start. If it is longer, it is truncated and
an ellipsis "..." is appended.

This means that the user may see a title like

The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer ...

as a title for a page in the search results. Not very informative, is
it? The title element continues with "Absolutely, Positively Must Know
About" and then says what it is really about. So even when the user sees
the entire title element content, he needs to read quite a lot before he
knows whether the page is relevant to his purposes.

It is not a problem to have a title element that is, say, 145 characters
long. But it is a problem if it does not get to the point in the first
20 characters, or even in the first 50 characters.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

[Jonathan N. Little]

Stan Brown wrote:
> On Sat, 06 Dec 2014 11:03:31 -0500, Ed Mullen wrote:
>>
>> Stan Brown wrote on 12/6/2014 4:51 AM:
>>> On Sat, 06 Dec 2014 00:22:10 -0500, Jonathan N. Little wrote:
>>>> Firefox now doesn't show the title in the window title bar either. Only
>>>> in the tab, just like Chrome IIRC.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> It's really quite annoying -- all the browsers seem to be working
>>> hard to make the UI more busy but less useful.
>>>
>>> At work, I maintain an internal-use-only Web page that changes every
>>> couple of days. Naturally, the last-revised date is part of the
>>> title, but now you can no longer see it.
>>>
>>
>> You could use SeaMonkey. The page title displays in the program's
>> window title bar.
>>
>> <http://www.seamonkey-project.org/>
>
> That's nice, but how does it help? I know what date I revised the
> file. It's everybody else who needs to know at a glance, and can't.
> I'm sure you are not suggesting that I tell them to install a
> different browser for this, even if I had the authority (which I
> don't).
>

Simple. Don't rely on the TITLE element for essential information. Put
it in the page contents.

[Stan Brown]

Well, of course I do that already. But as soon as they scroll the
page, the revision date scrolls off the top edge.

And yes, I could put the date first in the <title>, but imagine if
even one other Web page did the same thing.

[Ed Mullen]

Stan Brown wrote on 12/7/2014 5:32 AM:
> On Sat, 06 Dec 2014 11:03:31 -0500, Ed Mullen wrote:
>>
>> Stan Brown wrote on 12/6/2014 4:51 AM:
>>> On Sat, 06 Dec 2014 00:22:10 -0500, Jonathan N. Little wrote:
>>>> Firefox now doesn't show the title in the window title bar either. Only
>>>> in the tab, just like Chrome IIRC.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> It's really quite annoying -- all the browsers seem to be working
>>> hard to make the UI more busy but less useful.
>>>
>>> At work, I maintain an internal-use-only Web page that changes every
>>> couple of days. Naturally, the last-revised date is part of the
>>> title, but now you can no longer see it.
>>>
>>
>> You could use SeaMonkey. The page title displays in the program's
>> window title bar.
>>
>> <http://www.seamonkey-project.org/>
>
> That's nice, but how does it help? I know what date I revised the
> file. It's everybody else who needs to know at a glance, and can't.
> I'm sure you are not suggesting that I tell them to install a
> different browser for this, even if I had the authority (which I
> don't).
>

Ahh. You want other people to see it. Why put it at the top of the
page in a CSS fixed line so it doesn't go away when people scroll? You
could even use PHP or other scripting language to get the date
automatically and put it on the page.

--
Ed Mullen
http://edmullen.net/

If you mixed vodka with orange juice and Milk Of Magnesia, would you get
a Philip's Screwdriver?

[Ed Mullen]

Wow, a Smart Window! ;-)

[Ed Mullen]

Thanks!

--
Ed Mullen
http://edmullen.net/

Too many freaks, not enough circuses.

[tlvp]

On Sun, 07 Dec 2014 10:34:26 +0200, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

> 2014-12-07, 5:08, tlvp wrote:
>>
>> Correction, if I may be so bold: not "20" but "6 or 7". That's all that fit
>> in before the " ... " marking the end of the TITLE extract in my IE11 tabs.
>
> What I see, in IE 11 on Win 7, when visiting http://www.w3.org is
> World Wide Web Consortiu...
> preceded by their favicon. If I make the browser window narrower, the
> title display shrinks to
> World Wide Web Con...
> but not shorter than that.

Have *many* tabs up, in each of a variety of browsers. Notice how often the
tabs shrink to the point of being able to hold no more than "World W..." .

[tlvp]

On Sun, 7 Dec 2014 10:44:01 -0500, Stan Brown wrote:

> Well, of course I do that already. But as soon as they scroll the
> page, the revision date scrolls off the top edge.

Well, back to frames, I guess :-) . Or put the date in a DIV that you
position in a fixed way relative to the borders of the viewport rather than
within the flow of the page. HTH. Cheers, -- tlvp

[Ed Mullen]

dorayme wrote on 12/6/2014 4:27 PM:

> In article <m5u3po$fib$1...@dont-email.me>,
> "Jonathan N. Little" <lws...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Firefox now doesn't show the title in the window title bar either. Only
>> in the tab, just like Chrome IIRC.
>
> Although it is often some default of modern FF not to have a title bar
> - it's taken up by space for tabs, actual or potential. The content of
> the title element is displayed on a wide browser up to 25 characters
> and truncated even further according to how many tabs are open or
> users' narrowing of viewports - in fact it is possible to make it show
> following a procedure under the view menu, customise.
>

In FF 35 beta1 I showed the title bar, built a quick test page whose
title is 266 characters long. When I stretch FF across both of my
displays even though there is ample blank space on the right of the
title bar FF truncates the last 6 characters. Same thing in SeaMonkey.

<http://edmullen.net/!junk.php>

--
Ed Mullen
http://edmullen.net/

I can't remember if I'm the good twin or the evil one.

[tlvp]

On Sun, 07 Dec 2014 19:31:09 +1100, dorayme wrote:

> *D*orayme? Hmmf!

Sorry, there, dorayme ... I capitalized the first letter of the sentence --
rule I imbibed with my mother's milk. Must I flout that rule, now, when
that first letter arises as the initial of your name? Or may I carry on?

Thanks :-) . Cheers, -- tlvp

[dorayme]

In article <81upic....@news.alt.net>,

In my FF, there's plenty of space left on the right of your Title, no
truncation.

Here's how I saw it:

you open the browser and put your page up. You then move the whole
browser window to the left so only the right bit is showing (on a Mac
you can do this by clicking in the the window Title bar and dragging
the whole show).

Then you widen the window by dragging (on the Mac:) the little bottom
right corner to the right of your screen.

You can repeat this to the limit of your graphics card or whatever...

--
dorayme

[dorayme]

In article <iwzbnvy53dj6.zwam9cr40dlh$.d...@40tude.net>,

tlvp <mPiOsUcB...@att.net> wrote:

> On Sun, 07 Dec 2014 19:31:09 +1100, dorayme wrote:
>
> > *D*orayme? Hmmf!
>
> Sorry, there, dorayme ... I capitalized the first letter of the sentence --
> rule I imbibed with my mother's milk. Must I flout that rule, now, when
> that first letter arises as the initial of your name? Or may I carry on?

If necessary, yes. But it is not as if I am some special case, if that
is what you are implying. My name is my name, I can't help it - do you
honestly think I would have willingly given myself such a name?

Would you say: "DkwKLS37X is my password" when you know very well that
your password is 'dkwKLS37X'? A name is like a password, you can't
mess with it.

And, just btw mind you, just like how passwords groan and suffer when
people forget them or get them wrong, so it is with me.

Did you know there is a clinic for forgotten passwords, staffed by all
manner of people, professional psychologists, psychiatrists, special
nurses? In some cases there is 24hr supervision to individual
passwords when they threaten suicide.

I hear you: can they be cured? Yes! Patients are released when someone
remembers them correctly.

--
dorayme

[Swifty]

On 06/12/2014 16:00, Ed Mullen wrote:
> Not to mention ...
>
> Most Recent:
> V3.5.d
> 2-Jan-06

But you can fit the executable onto a standard 1.44Mb diskette, which
you can carry around in your shirt pocket! Oh, more 1995 stuff.

--
Steve Swift
http://www.swiftys.org.uk/

[Swifty]

On 06/12/2014 11:02, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> I am pretty sure that future browsers will have automatically adapting
> UIs: functions that the user uses often are automatically moved into the
> toolbar that is always present.

I've always advocated something similar. A newly installed program
should default to a simple UI. Once you've shown competence in its'
use, the UI would progresss to a more advanced UI.

The other UI feature that I've always wanted is for it to be mandatory
for greyed out controls to have a rollover popup saying WHY the control
is disabled, and how you'd go about getting it enabled (where relevant).

Incidentally, I wonder why it's a "rollover" popup when my laser mouse
has no ball. Maybe this is a skewomorph?

[Jonathan N. Little]

Swifty wrote:
> But you can fit the executable onto a standard 1.44Mb diskette, which
> you can carry around in your shirt pocket! Oh, more 1995 stuff.

Whose computer has a 1.44Mb disk drive?

[Ed Mullen]

The last six characters in the title are: " end!!" no quotes. Are you
seeing them in the title bar? I'm not even if I widen the browser
across two screens.

--
Ed Mullen
http://edmullen.net/

An oyster is a fish built like a nut.

[Stan Brown]

On Sun, 07 Dec 2014 11:55:01 -0500, Ed Mullen wrote:

>
> Stan Brown wrote on 12/7/2014 5:32 AM:

> Ahh. You want other people to see it.

Yes, that's what I said at the outset.

> Why put it at the top of the
> page in a CSS fixed line so it doesn't go away when people scroll?

How'd you get so smart? :-) I should have thought of that myself,
and I shall implement that suggestion.

> You could even use PHP or other scripting language to get the date
> automatically and put it on the page.

I do -- AWK, actually. This is an internal file, accessed via
file:///servername/..., so there's no server to do any kind of
rewriting.

Thanks again for the position:fixed suggestion!

[Ed Mullen]

Stan Brown wrote on 12/8/2014 6:33 PM:
> On Sun, 07 Dec 2014 11:55:01 -0500, Ed Mullen wrote:
>>
>> Stan Brown wrote on 12/7/2014 5:32 AM:
>
>> Ahh. You want other people to see it.
>
> Yes, that's what I said at the outset.
>
>> Why put it at the top of the
>> page in a CSS fixed line so it doesn't go away when people scroll?
>
> How'd you get so smart? :-) I should have thought of that myself,
> and I shall implement that suggestion.
>
>> You could even use PHP or other scripting language to get the date
>> automatically and put it on the page.
>
> I do -- AWK, actually. This is an internal file, accessed via
> file:///servername/..., so there's no server to do any kind of
> rewriting.
>
> Thanks again for the position:fixed suggestion!
>

Ah, yes, an occasional moment of lucidity in an otherwise meandering
life! :-D You're lucky, I had either had just the right amount of
bourbon or none at all!

For those who might want an example:

<http://edmullen.net/test/fixed_footer_example.php>

It's a footer example but easily changed to position it elsewhere.

--
Ed Mullen
http://edmullen.net/

Is it time for your medication or mine?

[tlvp]

On Mon, 08 Dec 2014 11:34:45 -0500, Jonathan N. Little wrote:

> Whose computer has a 1.44Mb disk drive?

My little Win 31 For Pen Computing GRiD laptop does; also my Aptiva desktop

[tlvp]

On Mon, 08 Dec 2014 06:30:29 +0000, Swifty wrote:

> I wonder why it's a "rollover" popup when my laser mouse
> has no ball

You'd rather call it a "flyover" popup? a "mouseover" popup? a "driveover"
popup? Or how about a "passover" popup? Feel free :-) . -- tlvp

[tlvp]

On Mon, 08 Dec 2014 06:56:24 +1100, dorayme wrote:

> If necessary, yes. But it is not as if I am some special case

Fine, dorayme: I'll vow to treat your name in the same way I treat
passwords, viz., as something to refrain from starting a sentence with,
lest it suffer when capitalized. HTH. Cheers, -- tlvp

[Jonathan N. Little]

tlvp wrote:
> On Mon, 08 Dec 2014 11:34:45 -0500, Jonathan N. Little wrote:
>
>> Whose computer has a 1.44Mb disk drive?
>
> My little Win 31 For Pen Computing GRiD laptop does; also my Aptiva desktop
> :-) . Cheers, -- tlvp
>

I have a couple of 8088 PCs up in the attic with dual 360K 5-1/4, but I
am not currently *using * them. Also networking let alone the Internet
is not an option.

[John W Kennedy]

On 2014-12-11 08:40:07 +0000, tlvp said:

> On Mon, 08 Dec 2014 06:30:29 +0000, Swifty wrote:
>
>> I wonder why it's a "rollover" popup when my laser mouse
>> has no ball
>
> You'd rather call it a "flyover" popup? a "mouseover" popup? a "driveover"
> popup? Or how about a "passover" popup? Feel free :-) . -- tlvp

Most people nowadays seem to use "hover".

--
John W Kennedy
"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and
Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes.
The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being
corrected."
-- G. K. Chesterton

[dorayme]

In article <821dbh....@news.alt.net>,

Yes, I am seeing them in FF.

<http://dorayme.netweaver.com.au/justPics/end!!!.png>

In my Safari, the truncation gets done in *the middle* of the title
text, which is another reasonable way to go I guess?

--
dorayme

[dorayme]

In article <mmyov8fdkjup.4...@40tude.net>,

tlvp <mPiOsUcB...@att.net> wrote:

> On Mon, 08 Dec 2014 06:56:24 +1100, dorayme wrote:
>
> > If necessary, yes. But it is not as if I am some special case
>
> Fine, dorayme: I'll vow to treat your name in the same way I treat
> passwords, viz., as something to refrain from starting a sentence with,
> lest it suffer when capitalized.

No, that is a bad policy. There is no reason at all not to start
sentences with passwords or my name. There is a touch of petulance in
your attitude! Trust me, nothing bad will happen if you begin all your
sentences on any subject at all with my name, you and your readers
will get used to it.

--
dorayme

[tlvp]

On Thu, 11 Dec 2014 23:05:56 -0500, John W Kennedy wrote:

> On 2014-12-11 08:40:07 +0000, tlvp said:
>
>> On Mon, 08 Dec 2014 06:30:29 +0000, Swifty wrote:
>>
>>> I wonder why it's a "rollover" popup when my laser mouse
>>> has no ball
>>
>> You'd rather call it a "flyover" popup? a "mouseover" popup? a "driveover"
>> popup? Or how about a "passover" popup? Feel free :-) . -- tlvp
>
> Most people nowadays seem to use "hover".

Rats! I'd so much prefer a "popover" just about now :-) . Cheers, -- tlvp

[Ed Mullen]

Odd. Is your Firefox on Mac? Or Windows?

--
Ed Mullen
http://edmullen.net/

Assphasia- a condition where your face looks so much like your butt your
bowels don't know which way to move.

[Jukka K. Korpela]

2014-12-12, 6:05, John W Kennedy wrote:

>> You'd rather call it a "flyover" popup? a "mouseover" popup? a
>> "driveover"
>> popup? Or how about a "passover" popup? Feel free :-) . -- tlvp
>
> Most people nowadays seem to use "hover".

The terminology confusion has been carved into stone: CSS has the :hover
pseudo-element, but the DOM has the mouseover event and the HTML
attribute for handling that event is onmouseover. And since these are
identifiers used in millions of lines of existing code, they will
probably, and hopefully, not change.

“Mouseover” is illogical, since you are not really moving your mouse
over an element. Rather, you control your pointing device, SO funnily
called “mouse”, and the pointer, so confusingly called “cursor” in CSS,
follows that movement and may move over an element.

It will be even more illogical in non-distant future, when we can
control things with our eye movements. (It will take more time before
people can control things with their brain activities.)

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

[dorayme]

In article <82apst....@news.alt.net>,

Ed Mullen <e...@edmullen.net> wrote:

> Odd. Is your Firefox on Mac? Or Windows?

What do you think? How many years have we been here?

--
dorayme

[Jonathan N. Little]

Yes with a little butter and a cup of coffee.

[tlvp]

On Fri, 12 Dec 2014 09:43:12 -0500, Jonathan N. Little wrote:

>> ... much prefer a "popover" just about now ...

>>
> Yes with a little butter and a cup of coffee.

Mmm ... and a modest dab of strawberry preserves :-) . Cheers, -- tlvp

[David Postill]

In article <18q6pah5whczk$.1u4hhbj5...@40tude.net>, on Sat, 6 Dec
2014 22:36:57 -0500, tlvp wrote:

| On Sat, 06 Dec 2014 20:48:28 -0500, Ed Mullen wrote of dorayme's words:
|
| >> Although it is often some default of modern FF not to have a title bar
| >> - it's taken up by space for tabs, actual or potential. The content of
| >> the title element is displayed on a wide browser up to 25 characters
| >> and truncated even further according to how many tabs are open or
| >> users' narrowing of viewports - in fact it is possible to make it show
| >> following a procedure under the view menu, customise.
| >>

| > Would you like to explain how that is done? Firefox 34.05 Beta 1.
|
| Dorayme's "make it show", referring to the title bar, is done as follows,
| in both FF 33.1.1 and FF 34.0:
|
| FF > View > Toolbars > Customize > Title Bar (toggles between Show & Hide)
|
| Toggling the title bar to "Show" not only shows the title bar, lowering by
| one row the row of tabs (and the Menu Bar, if that was showing too), but
| allows the content of the TITLE element to populate the title bar.
|
| I've not found anything comparable for IE 11 -- only some Austrian add-on
| to IE called Quero (cf. <http://www.quero.at>) that not only enables titles
| to display where they should again, but does a whole lot (perhaps much too
| much) more.
|
| Again, my apologies for having turned so many from so much with so little.
| Still it's heart-warming to see how many bemoan the loss of visible Titles.
|
| Thanks. Cheers, -- tlvp

Hmm. What's strange is my IE 11 *is* displaying the title in the title
bar. With no extensions.

Maybe it's because I'm running Windows 7 with the "Windows Classic" theme?
--
David Postill
Dance your Life - Biodanza in Alkmaar, Holland - <http://www.danceyourlife.eu>

[Jukka K. Korpela]

2014-12-24, 0:29, David Postill wrote:

> Hmm. What's strange is my IE 11*is* displaying the title in the title

> bar. With no extensions.
>
> Maybe it's because I'm running Windows 7 with the "Windows Classic" theme?

Apparently it is. I just tested by switching to the Windows Classic
theme, with no other changes, and the title now appears in the top bar
(title bar) of IE 11.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/