Improvements to compact tabs

Coolkie

I know this thread is kinda old, but this is the most struggling thing I'm trying switching to the Orion browser. The elevation between the tabs and the URL bar is too similar, so I often mistake the URL bar for a tab. Additionally, since the active website tab and the current website URL are displayed on the same row, it usually draws my attention away.
Safari solves this problem by combining the URL bar and the tab into one element, which I think is great. Another benefit of Safari’s design is that the URL bar doesn’t take up static space. When you have many tabs open and scroll, the URL bar minimizes, allowing you to see more tabs at the same time. When users are scrolling and looking for a tab, they usually don’t access the URL bar. Because they're looking for tabs. so minimize the URL bar doesn't really affect user experience.
When users want to access the URL bar, they usually want to edit the URL or search for something, so they naturally look at the URL bar. I guess HIG made this rule because users can rely on muscle memory to access the element. But in this case, they always put their eye on it.

If the static URL bar couldn't be changed. I think adding more contrast and elevation could still improve current tab design significantly.

lkjhfgds

ISSUE

horizontal tabs are VERY confusing by having input and active tab separate
active tab is barely recognizable visually from the non active

SOLUTION?
why not copy the Safari design pattern (tab + input field merged)? that would fix both of the issues

safari compact tabs design pattern

Version 0.99.130.2-beta (WebKit 621.1.2.111.4)

Sequoia (15)

whatisdelicious

Vlad This is probably the source of disagreement with users then. The URL bar is not that important to me; if it was, I wouldn't select a "compact" mode at all so it could have its own dedicated row.

The comments about Safari's design are really overblown in my opinion. I have never had any difficulty in Safari with finding the URL bar even though it "jumps around." It's exactly where I would expect it to be: attached to the relevant tab. And it's highlighted, no less.

But in Orion, I find compact tabs unusable. The active tab is darkened rather than highlighted (why?) but not even to a dramatic enough degree to make it stand out anyway. So I'm constantly having to scan "wait, which tab is this?" It also still makes zero sense to me when you have the URL bar on one side of the screen and the active tab on the other with several tabs between. The whole thing just feels like it was designed - like so many things these days - by a developer who has an ultrawide monitor.

At this point, I'm just giving up. It's been two years of waiting and periodically checking in for a sane approach to compact tabs. If the rest of the browser was just unimpeachably good, maybe I could deal with it, but in checking in this time, the first thing I did was try out vertical tabs and the browser crashed when I was trying to shrink them down into just favicons (yes I reported the crash), then when it reopened I went to reddit as a test and videos won't play. I don't know, man. I respect what you all are doing here but we clearly have different ideas what makes a browser good. All the best.

madks

whatisdelicious completely agree, the Safari implementation is vastly superior and I don't particularly get why the "design principles" of Apple are more important than UI and UX when ultimately, improving those is the end goal.

Hybrid

madks We actually had this conversation with Apple back in 2013 when I was leading design for an app that was featured on the App Store banner.

Apple said something along the lines of "HIG Guidelines are easy review, and known patterns that work. Partners can break the HIG if the end result provides an intuitive and better experience than the HIG provides, as long as it continues to provide a native feel"

So, at the time, this meant the skeuomorphic design was out (iOS 7) and as long as the design language was native feeling, we could break the rules, and they welcomed it. Because we could provide reasoning for our deviance, we were still able to become a partner and receive the front page banner slot.

HIGs are really there specifically to cater to the general population of developers without User Experience... experience?

If you can provide something better, you are welcomed and encouraged to disregard the HIGs provided the design looks "Apple".

JSiu-Dev

Maybe merge my suggestion into here too: https://orionfeedback.org/d/9670-can-we-break-down-the-toolbar-into-smaller-components

Zeezus

Hybrid That can be true at the same time as this: a key point being argued is that in the case of Compact Tabs: Orion actually does not provide something better; what it provides is simply a differently opinionated interpretation. Those are not the same thing, and just as arguments can be made for "here are the rules, breaking them to improve upon them works best", they can be made for "here are the rules and following them works best".

But no amount of pointing to guidelines and rules will provide validation to users approaching Orion and seeing it runs on WebKit, seeing it looks like Safari, seeing that it's known colloquially as "Safari with better extension support", and having not-unreasonable expectations that Orion will maintain a Safari-like user experience as opposed to a different and more opinionated user experience - and then for those users to find out that the Compact Tabs feature has been approached differently enough for users to experience friction with their expectations, and for them to then take issue and provide feedback in hopes of reducing that friction.

Yes, Orion did it a different way than Safari and the team has reasons. Yes the Orion team appears to think those reasons are good reasons. Does everybody agree? No. If I try to use Orion and experience too much friction in a key feature, I'm not going to stop each time I experience that friction and ponder about how the team thinks their implementation of rules and guidelines in the key feature is better, what I'm going to do is seek a different tool with less friction.

madks

Hybrid i think you misunderstood. what i was referring to is how Vlad was arguing previously that it was more important to follow Apple's HIG, and how Orion did that better than Safari.

my argument here is that the HIG should not stand higher than user experience, which your detailed response seemingly agreed with.

i agree with many others in this and previous threads that keeping address bar in a static place, at least to most people, is less important than effectively utilizing screen real estate, which this design clearly does not, as illustrated by others already.

this is an objective drawback that limits navigation on small screens, the ease of which should be one of the key focuses of browsers.

and there is of course all the subjective stuff like ease of use and intuitiveness but that could be debated ad nauseam.

galacticmice

I don't know anything about UI/UX design, so just an anecdotal feedback about my experience with this:

I like compact mode because I'm using this on a smaller sized Macbook 13". As such, I want as much screen real estate as possible. I have compact + mini toolbar turned on just because I want to min-max space WITHOUT going into fullscreen. Orion has one of the slimmest design for toolbars currently, which I am grateful for.

But sometimes I go into split screen to take down notes, Orion on left half and maybe a Doc on the right.

It is so incredibly hard to navigate through my tabs with that gigantic address bar. This is what it looks like

See how small the tab navigation area becomes? This is only with 3 tabs open. I can't even see which tabs are before and after this one to effectively use keyboard tab navigation.

I rarely need a dedicated address bar--in fact, I never ever do. Maybe power users might need it, I don't know. But Safari's compact tab design works really well for most people's needs, under most circumstances. Can't say the same in this particular case.

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