Primary: 3 - It's clean, tidy and you can see the existing tab easily at a glance.
Secondary: 2 - It's similar to Safari and provides a cohesive native experience.
295
Compact tabs
2 because it is similar to Safari, which is mainly why we're all here
5 because it is similar to everything else out there
@Vlad you should propably have given each sketchs names or posted screenshots bellow the link. i opened all 6 of them at once which makes them apear in different order. so i was about to vote for the completly wrong ones
I think for me, as said earlier it depends on if theese design are also considered to be for a color/merge with website mode.
For a normal compact tab mode without color and merge i think 5 is the best, as it follows the logic of normal none compact the most
For a color mode with website merge i think 1 is the best and most in line with MacOs in other places
with 2 and 3 being my least favorite for any mode as they kinda make it seems like its safari where they are also adress bars
Primary - 2. It's the closest to Apple's design to my eyes.
Secondary - 1. Similar to 2, the one thing I don't like is that the tabs aren't clearly clickable. It makes the toolbar look like it's cluttered with a bunch of random words instead of being full of tabs.
Things I don't like about the other designs:
3 - The 3D look just doesn't fit in with the rest of macOS aesthetics.
4 - The inactive tabs fusing together is 
5 - I just hate how the tabs aren't attached to anything. When that design style is used with tabs underneath the toolbar, it looks like they're hanging off the toolbar, which makes sense. Here they're just attached to nothing.
6 - The active tab becoming indistinguishable from the toolbar isn't great. Also the inactive tabs fusing together like 4.
Primary - 2 because it is closest to safari compact tabs.
Secondary - 1 because of simplicity and minimalism.
1 or 2 for me
- Edited
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.
- Edited
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.
- Edited
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.
