Vlad added the Under Review tag .
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Programmable Buttons Folders
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@Vlad I expect that a lot of buttons will be created by the community. A bit like I've seen happening with Raycast. Hundreds of extensions in mere months.
Use cases are…
Folders for:
- UI modifications (like done with Tampermonkey)
- Specific AI prompts (to run on the website your visiting)
- Bookmarklets
- Menu items
The overflow menu is a good place if you use just a few action buttons.
In cases where you collect a lot of them you might want more granular organisation.
You could even use these for extensions (imagine you could put all sharing extensions like Notion, Roam, Obsidian, Bear into one folder).
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Maybe like this, it matches Settings dropdown
Longely
That looks really nice.
One thing we have to find a solution for, is how to differentiate different folders. Colors don’t fit the UI.
An option would be to use different icons (that represent the content for the user) but then you’d need something like a reversed caret under or besides it to indicate it can be opened.
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yes I was thinking the same thing, I'm not sure whats the best solution is for that
As I see it, everything in the browser is a button as well as a text. Let the browser treat buttons the same way as bookmarks in the bookmarks bar, where people already have folders and bookmarklets. Folders can live in the bookmarks bar.
@carl, yes that would work for some, but I don’t use the bookmarks bar. I use the sidebar with pinned bookmarks at the top. I like to save the extra screen estate for the webpages I visit.
janpeeters Doesn't it work the same way? Or do you mean you keep the sidebar hidden?
@carl I don't hide the sidebar. But do I understand you well that you mean to put the action buttons in the sidebar? I am not convinced that's the right place for action related stuff. I would think the toolbar is better suited for that.
Yes, that's what I was thinking, to let the user put action buttons in the toolbar as a button with an icon, or in the bookmarks bar as a text link. Then you could make folders just as usual.
What I'm not really grasping is what kind of user uses so many actions so frequently that they'd want to put folders for buttons in their toolbar?
carl in the toolbar as a button with an icon
I presume you mean sidebar? Because the toolbar is what I'm suggesting.
I might be totally wrong with my intuition that a lot of action buttons will be made and that there should be a way to organize these in the toolbar. Like 10 different ChatGPT prompts to do an action on your webpage. I mean even if you put all the currently available buttons in the toolbar it is already getting quite crowded. And then you would need place for extensions.
Maybe we just wait if Action Buttons as a concept take off. If they do, and lots of different ones are created by the community then people will come and ask for folders. Maybe it's too premature now.
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Im not sure i understand this conversation, like nobody is forcing anyone to use folders if they dont need/want them.
It can also be a simple matter of not wanting 3 different buttons that you use rarely, to take up 3 slots, but still want acces to them in the cases they are needed.
or to bassicly organize them into different function groups. AI etc....
Same goes for extensions as janpeeters also mentioned could be included
So essentially toolbar folders? It is a bit hard to differentiate between what would be a folder and what would be a button.
There's this design pattern for toolbar folders in the finder. A reverse caret beside an icon could make it clear that it's a folder. It would need user defineable icons though.
On the other hand, the overflow menu button also is a folder but uses only an icon. I could get used to just an icon.
Im also not sure you can call that dropdown arrow a "folder indicator". as in all your examples they are for a dropdown menu with settings
@Longely You looked deeper than what my example was intended for. I just meant it as an example of how you could indicate that it was something that had more content, more than just being an icon.
There is a lot of work to make this happen. I am wondering do you really think that programmable buttons will be such a big thing to invent a new paradigm in browser UX? Or can we just maybe allow programamble buttons to live in a menu (Under Tools -> Programmable Buttons).. but not sure how to achieve that either.
@Vlad As I suggested a few posts back it might be an idea to just wait and see how action buttons take off.
I saw a possible need, because the current action buttons already fill up my toolbar, and shared it.
Time will tell if I saw it correctly.
5 days later
What I'm talking about is that there is a lot of space in the Bookmarks bar and/or side bar and that would be a nice place to have these folders or other actions that are not used all the time. If you have 10 or 20 or 50 different actions you use sometimes, they are better represented by text, because you might not remember the icon.
