Compact tabs
Primary - 2 because it is closest to safari compact tabs.
Secondary - 1 because of simplicity and minimalism.
1 or 2 for me
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1 - i think it looks the cleanest
5 - i think it looks nice that the tab name is part of the whole ui related to the tab
I'd say 1, feels the most 'native'.
1 makes the most sense to me. It looks balanced with the icons to the left. On that note, I feel like there's way too much wasted space on the left side of the toolbar for a "compact" mode.
I'd say 2 and 5 feels best. If I have to pick just one, it's 2 because it's the most clean and simple.
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Definitely Option 1, probably followed by option 4.
The main factors that influenced my rating:
- They shouldn't look like static buttons — tabs are dynamic and can be added and removed frequently, unlike the other buttons in the toolbar. Options 2 and 5 fail this criteria, IMO.
- Should feel like it belongs in the toolbar — Option 3 doesn't feel right to me (the toolbar is otherwise quite flat on the Z axis; adding a drop shadow is weird to me), and option 5 looks fine except that the "tab" visual metaphor doesn't make as much sense when it's disconnected from the page's contents like this).
- Should feel self-consistent and contiguous — In Option 6, the currently selected tab causes the tab bar to feel like two discontiguous sections to its left and right, rather than a single bar. Rather than "This tab, of n tabs, is selected" it feels like "You are here, but these are some tabs you could click on instead. Also, here are some other tabs." Option 2 also feels like the tabs are quite disparate: they are each self-contained, with gaps in between them, rather than feeling like a single row.
Voting for 3, makes it easier to see the active tab and it looks clean.
My vote goes to 1! I think that is the cleanest and the one that feels more native.
First choice is 6: It feels a little unique and gives the browser its own identity.
Second choice is 3: It is one of the easiest to know which tab is active.
In general, I like the ones that have the active tab highlighted and the inactive tabs shadowed, rather than the other way around.
1 - clean / more MacOS like
I would go with 4 that reminds me of the shadow effects of Safari 4 but in the same time it feels oldish.
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Primary vote - 3
Secondary vote - 1
Vlad 5 holds the most water for me because of its similarity with the current tab theme in its normal horizontal display. However, I am not digging the specifically designated shaded space for the tabs. It makes them feel detached from everything else. And I understand the importance of allocating the space for them, but the way it is done in this instance feels inappropriate. It's hard for me to put my finger on what it is that puts me off. But a part of me thinks that cutting out the toolbar so that there is like, a pocket of which the tabs can occupy instead of being another thing that the toolbar so happens to have.
I have absolutely no graphic design talent so I will have to describe what I am talking about.
So, I imagine lowering the bottoms of the tabs so that they are flush with the border of the toolbar. this will cause these tabs to be misaligned with everything else. so, with that extra headspace above the tabs, that can be for folders or similar to lay right on top of the tabs so to allow quick navigation between batches of tabs for organization with the now limited space.
Vlad 2 or 4
7thripr I was thinking about this earlier. As it stands, having both "www.google.com" in the address bar and "Google" in the current tab is a bit redundant, so I like this idea in principle. However, implementing it in a way that feels natural would be tricky... For most layouts I've been able to think of, it's overall worse — i.e. the weirdness is increased more than the redundancy is decreased.
The only thing I can think of that might work: Remove the address bar from the toolbar entirely, and only have it appear (replacing the current page's favicon and title) when you click on the currently-selected tab (or hit ⌘L). This would potentially work quite well with Option 2, actually, since they already use the same border style as the address bar…
Kagi team, if you'd like a mockup of this, let me know, and I'll see what I can do!