Ok so I have been using Orion for a few months at this point, and I made the switch from Safari quite early on. In the beginning, I too found Orion's way of having a separate address bar in compact tabs mode unintuitive. However, it seems that was just a result of me being used to the Safari way, and now I have become accustomed to Orion's implementation and have no issues with it. In fact, the address bar not moving around is much better. Therefore I believe there is no need for Orion to try to adapt Safari's style of compact tabs when its own implementation is superior.
43
Improvements to compact tabs
laptudirm Yes for many users it is a question of habit, not realizing that Orion's imlpementation follows Apples own HIG while Safari's doesn't. URL bar is the most important piece of UI in the browser and as such should not change position which it does in Safari's implementaiton of compact tabs. This was our design goal from step one.
@Vlad I'm here to voice out the same sentiments as @MrFrank just to make it clear that his opinion on this matter is not singular - both his appreciation for you and your team's dedication, but also his views on the compact tab layout.
Why not give users a choice between Orion's way and Safari's implementation? That was another feedback mentioned earlier in the thread. This would also give you a concrete metric on what layout users prefer.
albertcsanjuan Quoting Vlad from another post:
Making features opt-in is the worst thing we can do from a development standpoint. It take more time to build (you are now doing 2x, 3x... work),it produces more bugs and and it makes it harder to maintain (Orion works on macOS 10.14!). This is why we are looking for reasonable defaults and options only if we have to.
To put things in perspective:
Arc - built on top of Chromium so got the browser app framework for free. Only option for the user is vertical tabs. That's it, if you do not like you are out of luck. Team size >100.
Orion - building with WebKit, browser app needs to built from scratch (no Chromiuim equivalent for WebKit). Orion supports Horizontal tabs, Vertical tabs, Compact Tabs... Multiple other customizations avaialble. Built as fully native Mac app. Team size 5.
Let's not ask us to add more options, but find ways to remove existing options instead and have good constructive discussions that will produce sane defaults. Thank you
I would also like to note that both the vertical tabs and standard tabs layouts have a separate address bar, so that would make the compact tabs layout the only one that doesn't have one.
- Edited
Why not give users a choice between Orion's way and Safari's implementation?
Simply put, choices are expensive to give. Why doesn't Chrome have native vertical tabs? Or Safari? Trillion dollar companies are not able to produce and maintain a choice yet it is expected from a team of five, financed by about 1000 Orion+ subscriptions.
And despite that, Orion has more choices than almost every other browser. We are truly doing our best here. We appreciate your support 
5 days later
MrFrank I appreciate you and your teams' work and dedication to design principles, but it warrants repeating that those principles are intended to provide what users want. I would add that the Safari team must have done their research and arrived at their design for a good reason, especially if it contradicts their design principles.
I would like to know what you think of the quote above from my post. Why is it more important to follow Apple's HIG design principles than to provide what your most supportive users want?
albertcsanjuan Why not give users a choice between Orion's way and Safari's implementation? That was another feedback mentioned earlier in the thread. This would also give you a concrete metric on what layout users prefer.
@Vlad , I understand your argument against this, and I generally agree with you. However, we have good examples of divisive design decisions ending in user choice.
I think this feature request thread alone shows that this design decision warrants such a choice. Then, we can all have the compact tab bar we want, and this can be put to bed!
- Edited
Kudos on implementing one of the most requested feature.
However, I have certain issues with the present implementation like - current tab is repeated twice, not sharp visual distinction between all tabs, when only 1 tab it is shown on left, etc.
Moreover, I’ve used safari’s implementation for a considerable time and so I am more used to it. Also I find it more intuitive and easy to understand. Implementing it would also make transition from safari to Orion less cumbersome for others.
If Orion plans to keep both, it can done via flag in developer tools (like pdf.js).
- Edited
Tabs are not repated twice. In every tabs mode whether horizontal tabs or vertical tabs there is the tab and the address bar. We are being consistent. Address bar is the most important element in the browser and it should not jump around, shoud be visible at all times and should have resonable width to be able to host all the UI elements
8 months later
Merged 5 posts from Safari style compact tabs.
2 months later
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.
a month later
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)
Merged 2 posts from Fix compact horizontal tabs -> use safari pattern.
25 days later
- Edited
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.
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.
Maybe merge my suggestion into here too: https://orionfeedback.org/d/9670-can-we-break-down-the-toolbar-into-smaller-components
15 days later
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".
No one is typing