Remove tab switch motion, allow users to disable it, or make it consistent

cgottsch

im guessing yall added this because safari does it, but this is one i think should be thinked about a bit more: changing tabs shows the tab being moved into position as if its been swiped in (sorta).

my criticisms:

doesnt help with navigation. having the webpage move into place when swiping the tab in is less jarring than it magically replacing the current wepbage, thus improving navigation. but when i select a tab from the tab menu, i am not doing such a motion, thus the animation (and its wait time) dont improve the experience as im expexting the tab/page to just be there already.
inconsistency leads to disorientation. when swiping a tab in, the webpage AND the tab is moved into place (as seen in the vid attached, altho this animation is strange itself as theres parallax for some reason). this is logical and makes sense; the metaphor here is that youre moving a big scroll of pages from one page to the adjacent. the animation when selecting tabs from the tab bar doesnt match this. the tab header doesnt move; the url is simple replaced with the currently selected tab's url. not only does this break the metaphor, but it occasionally makes for a bizarre and nauseating animation where as the tab drawer is moving back into place, the currently selected tab's webpage moves into place in the opposite direction (this can also be seen in the video). and what happens when a tab is selected from the top of the list when the current tab is at the bottom? does it scroll all the way thru, like how discord scrolls thru its emoji pages? i havent tried this yet, but if it doesnt, the metaphor is broken again, and if it does, youre nullifying the benefit of being able to tap a tab and go directly to it instead of swiping thru all ones tabs.

i applaud orion for being a browser that takes all that is good (and neutral, for consistency's sake) from safari and discards or fixes the bad. many companies like to put visual metaphors into their software. i posit that a visual methaphor's purpose is to help the more visually/spatially thinkers to navigate their computing devices by helping them build visuospatial maps in their mind while navigating. i also posit if you break your own metaphor, you not only throw away any benefit, but you make it harder for these persons to use the software. this is why i urge the orion team to either improve the animations, remove them, or allow us visuospatial users to disable them.

jeanetienne

Hi cgottsch, thank you for your detailed suggestion.

If I understand correctly, the animation you're talking about is the sliding animation the web content does when you select a different tab in the side menu?
I don't think we have intentionally added this animation, and it's probably an artifact of the underlying architecture of the screen.

We'll have a look into it and see what are our options to improve it.

Thank you for your help in making Orion a better browser!

cgottsch

jeanetienne in "the underlying architecture of the screen", what does "screen" refer to?

jeanetienne

Sorry, I wasn't very clear, when I say "screen," I'm talking about a view or page in the app.
In that specific case it's the main "navigator" view with the sliding side menu.
I think that view may have some quirks that result in this undesirable sliding motion.

anime6nature

Hi, did anyone add a way to disable this? I’m not asking for it to be gone completely, but it would be nice to not come out with a headache just for surfing the web for too long. Should I make a new suggestion about this?

I literally just want the motion gone. It makes me so dizzy. I don’t care for aesthetics and I understand people like it because it looks cool, but it would just be so nice to have it do an abrasive cut from one tab to the next instead. I don’t even need the tab link to slide.

The same goes for your tabs list. I love the idea of swiping up. I hate how it moves my entire screen. I want it to ugly jump-cut to the tab list because every time I open my list of tabs my head starts to hurt

jeanetienne

Hi anime6nature, would you be able to provide a video of which animation(s) are causing this discomfort, to make sure I understand it well?

Thank you for your help in making Orion a better browser!