[HN Gopher] macOS Monterey Beta 3: Apple Redesigns Safari Tab In...
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macOS Monterey Beta 3: Apple Redesigns Safari Tab Interface
Following Complaints
Author : cpeterso
Score : 85 points
Date : 2021-07-14 19:04 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.macrumors.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.macrumors.com)
| _jal wrote:
| I've really had enough of the minimalist, whitespace-everywhere
| trend.
|
| I've been turning off most notifications, because since the
| controls were hidden, they're basically useless noise that just
| hides useful controls.
|
| I know many designer-types want to get rid of the URL bar, but
| either butch up and fucking do it, or leave it as a useful tool.
| Quit shrinking it, overloading use, making it jump around another
| otherwise trying to make people not want to use it.
|
| Iphone screens waste a ton of real estate, and (at least to my
| eye), it isn't even pretty, it frequently just looks unfinished,
| like the designer gave up on the job.
|
| And so on.
| PostThisTooFast wrote:
| Apple has long since given up on proper design. Instead of
| working through the necessity of presenting numerous options to
| the user and coming up with a proper hierarchical design, Apple
| punts to disgraceful shit like peek-a-boo UI, undisclosed
| hotkey combinations that reveal mystery menus, or "gestures."
|
| We were supposed to get a "total rewrite" of Finder years ago.
| What happened? And Spotlight is a clinic on shitty UI: WTF is
| the use of a search facility that doesn't show you WHERE it
| found things? How degenerated is design acumen (or even just
| basic sense) there that allows a design like this to not only
| make it out the door, but persist for a decade or more? Then
| again, Apple offered up a windowing GUI in which you couldn't
| resize windows from their edges... or even 3/4 of their
| corners... for 30 years.
|
| But Windows is far, far worse today. At least Apple is stepping
| back from the idiotic "flat" design fad and reintroducing a bit
| of proper GUI. Microsoft is just lost and flailing in the
| weeds.
| FabHK wrote:
| > Apple punts to disgraceful shit like peek-a-boo UI
|
| Just had to teach a relative how to save images attached to
| an email into Photos with macOS Mail: move around the mouse
| cursor somewhere above the email body and below the headers
| towards the middle, and a magic menu will appear with a paper
| clip on the right that reveals "Export to Photos".
|
| Why?
| dom96 wrote:
| wow, that design looks surprisingly Firefox-like.
| neilsense wrote:
| Arghh, they should have conviction and pushed this one through.
| The latest design wastes so much space.
| cbmuser wrote:
| It would have been nice if the article contained screenshots of
| the current and the upcoming design so non-macOS users can get a
| impression of the changes.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| Here's what tabs in Safari look like now:
|
| https://media.welsh.cc/2jGRw1
|
| And what the Monterey design was to start with:
|
| https://media.welsh.cc/ghhD24
|
| Worth noting that the tab bar in Monterey will adapt based on
| the site's `theme-color` meta tag.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| That's unfortunate. I liked the new design and it made sense for
| saving vertical space. Whatever happened to "think different"?
| angulardragon03 wrote:
| I think the biggest issue for me was that you couldn't
| consistently find your current tab in one single place - you
| could scroll away your active tab amongst the rest of them,
| hiding the address bar.
| seumars wrote:
| Same. I really liked the new approach, but from the
| screenshots I figured all tabs would stack from the left
| making their position more predictable. Instead the first
| starts at the center and moves to the left for each new tab
| making all tabs moving targets.
| wingworks wrote:
| I believe you can still select the old (well new/old design)
| design.
| robertoandred wrote:
| Note that the combined address/tab bar is the default, this
| separate bar redesign is now an option.
| skavi wrote:
| Why is there so much padding around each tab? I guess it makes
| for clear click targets. Honestly was a fan of the old initial
| design, though I do lean towards compromising for more screen
| space.
| npunt wrote:
| Your eyes deceive you. Prior MacOS versions have _more_ overall
| padding (50pt) but it 's put entirely within the tab itself.
| The new tabs have some margin between each tab and a much
| smaller padding within tabs, for overall what looks to be
| ~40pt.
|
| The new design sacrifices the 'X' hover-over on the left side
| of each tab, presumably in favor of an 'X' that overlaps the
| tab title.
| Austin_Conlon wrote:
| Maybe Apple designers tend to test on 32-inch Pro Display XDRs.
| amirmasoudabdol wrote:
| This is basically the side-effect of the rollback, and it
| really sucks. Now, they have to keep this wasteful design, and
| less tabs will _nicely_ fit into the bar. I don't think the
| initial design was great, but I like it more over this!
| samtheprogram wrote:
| An assumption, but it seems to me and many others that they've
| been slowly moving to make macOS more touch interface friendly.
|
| I'm typically anti-touch screen on laptops as it drives the
| price up for a feature I personally almost never use, but
| there's so many use cases particularly for a large portion of
| Apple's user base working with digital media.
|
| Aside: A Lenovo Yoga -like MacBook would be cool, although I do
| like the Touch Bar for quickly moving around in media I'm
| listening to in the background (but I don't think that's enough
| to justify it).
| basisword wrote:
| This thread is the perfect example of why you should mostly
| ignore internet "outrage". Some people disappointed because they
| liked the new (previous) design. Others bemoaning aspects of the
| new (beta 3) design. Others who have never used either bitching
| based on a couple of screenshots. You can't please...anyone.
| montagg wrote:
| When there are enough people, you'll see a plurality of every
| opinion.
| anthk wrote:
| Add slight 3D bezels and throw up that flat crap to the trash.
| beezischillin wrote:
| I might be alone with this but I really dislike Apple increasing
| the overall height / element margins on the top controls of
| Safari. They've been consistently doing it bit by bit with each
| new release and it constantly feels like I'm losing screen estate
| that could be filled with content to bits that are not and that I
| rarely interact with enough to justify it taking up so much
| space. I really liked the slim header part of Safari previously,
| especially switching from Windows and its set of browser design
| conventions.
|
| I rarely if ever use the cursor to do anything with these
| controls because macOS has great gestures and it also has
| keyboard shortcuts to make the process feel a lot more result-
| oriented, rather than process-oriented with extra steps.
| npunt wrote:
| I believe they've only increased the height once with the
| transition to Big Sur. And they reduced the height from
| Mavericks->Yosemite, so it's back to where it was during
| 10.1-10.9 days, just with one UI row + tabs instead of two +
| tabs.
|
| Are you thinking about something else?
| beezischillin wrote:
| Yes! The Big Sur change, it annoyed me a lot. This new design
| also looks like it's continuing the trend.
| psychometry wrote:
| Why do you use Safari then, the least extensible and
| customizable option for MacOS?
| gumby wrote:
| How extensible do I want a web browser to be? I have
| 1password and adguard but otherwise I'm not that interested
| in loading stuff in that can read all my browsing (e.g.
| grammar.ly...I just learnt to write instead). There's enough
| spyware as it is.
|
| Safari is pretty fast and very good on battery life. I like
| that it has the same bookmark store and accessible tabs
| across devices.
|
| And there isn't a lot of alternative. Firefox is slow. Chrome
| is a memory and performance pig; I run it only if I happen to
| use a google service for some reason and don't let it save
| any state.
| Razengan wrote:
| Because it inflicts the least cruelty upon my hardware.
| PostThisTooFast wrote:
| Because it syncs bookmarks and passwords through iCloud.
| ksec wrote:
| iCloud Keychain and Syncing with iPhone.
| beezischillin wrote:
| Yes, indeed. The keychain is kind of a big selling point.
| I'm planning to try and move onto BitWarden to keep my
| password management cross-platform and open source but it's
| not as well-integrated. It would be way better if it could
| sync the iCloud credentials instead of manually having to
| jump through hoops to get them in.
|
| The Apple lock-in with my passwords makes me feel uneasy
| and probably way less likely to consider using other
| platforms as often for daily tasks.
| handrous wrote:
| Those, plus battery life and noticeably more overall
| respect for system resources, here. FF and Chrom(e/ium)
| aren't even close. Which is too bad, because I'd like to
| have decent plugins again, but it's not worth the cost.
| gumby wrote:
| I'm a 1password user and apple has really allowed it to be
| a good first class, cross platform participant in login
| interactions on ios and macos. I disabled the apple-managed
| password and autofill options.
| beezischillin wrote:
| That's a great question!
|
| I switched to macOS around the time Yosemite came out and I
| didn't use it back then because it wasn't great but honestly
| it's improved a crazy amount to be a really nice daily driver
| as far as performance / battery use is concerned and it's
| integrated with iCloud which makes moving the browsing
| session onto mobile and back really convenient and also adds
| the keychain. On top of that the general browser experience
| with the way it implements gestures, etc. feels very cozy on
| the platform. So it's a case of compromises between good and
| bad.
|
| I sometimes use Chrome (well, Brave), too. Very rarely
| Firefox, which I don't really like using for much outside of
| development and testing.
| michaeljbishop wrote:
| This is a symptom of flat design. When you remove texture,
| shadow, and borders, you have to rely more on margins to group
| and distinguish items.
| brundolf wrote:
| That's actually pretty insightful (and more interesting than
| the usual "kids these days grrr" flavor this subject usually
| takes on)
|
| I could see this being a "pick two" scenario:
|
| 1) Low visual noise
|
| 2) High visual legibility
|
| 3) High density
|
| The industry used to pick 2 and 3, now they tend towards 1
| and 2, but it may genuinely not be possible to have all three
| leucineleprec0n wrote:
| Indeed. It's a tradeoff. I'm not sure how I feel overall on
| flat design, I just hate the transparency in software
| everywhere sometimes.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I might be alone with this but I really dislike Apple
| increasing the overall height / element margins on the top
| controls of Safari. They've been consistently doing it bit by
| bit with each new release and it constantly feels like I'm
| losing screen estate...
|
| I agree, but it seems like there's and (unwelcome to me)
| industry-wide trend towards less density and wasted screen real
| estate. At least Apple still ships 16:10 displays, unlike the
| 16:9 garbage that's ubiquitous nowadays.
| ChrisLTD wrote:
| I love the 3:2 displays on the Pixelbook and Microsoft
| Surface devices. So much better for productivity.
| ksec wrote:
| Yes. Safari 13/14 had the larger Address Bar design change, but
| at least they kept the Tab Bar slim. The new "walked back"
| design is now a thicker / taller Tab Bar.
|
| I really wish I could use Full Screen Safari with only the Tab
| Bar and not Address Bar. But this isn't an option, and Full
| Screen Safari has weird rendering bug and performance issues.
| gumby wrote:
| > But this isn't an option, and Full Screen Safari has weird
| rendering bug and performance issues.
|
| FWIW I'm a big user of full screen (in most apps that support
| it) and haven't noticed those issues on either Intel or M1
| MBAs.
|
| I wish more apps in full screen mode would hide the UI like
| Safari does. Most of the time the top bars of icons are
| simply dead space because most of the time you aren't
| clicking up there -- and when you do you're only clicking one
| icon.
| hultner wrote:
| Same here, I love full-screen and Safari is especially
| lovely. I wish chromium browsers had the ability to show
| the UI only when I move the mouse up top or hit CMD+L.
| Unfortunately this isn't the case we have to pick between
| all the UI or nothing at all.
| vptr wrote:
| On top of that add websites that take up half of your screen
| with adds and other marketing or paywall crap.
| juancampa wrote:
| Personal computing won't be truly "personal" until we, the users
| (not $BIGCO's lead UX designer) get to decide how things look and
| behave on an individual level
| kevindong wrote:
| One of Apple's core values is delegating very few choices to
| the end user. But the choices that are present are generally
| good.
|
| There is such a thing as too many choices.
| wilg wrote:
| You are welcome to build your own browser or computer or
| whatever! You can even modify an existing open source one.
| sxg wrote:
| There's a lot of value in NOT having to make those decisions.
| Most users don't want to think about how their computer or
| phone should work--they just want it to work out of the box.
| That requires sensible defaults and slowly introducing changes
| to adapt to evolving user behavior.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| To point a change I hate, Chrome on mobile now displays tabs
| as thumbnails instead of stacked like index cards:
| https://9to5google.com/2019/09/19/chrome-android-tab-grid/ ,
| a change I really dislike.
|
| I really wonder how that's adapting to evolving user
| behavior...
| juancampa wrote:
| In the current state of affairs everyone gets what's best
| for the average user. Not what's best for each individual
| users.
|
| Edit: actually, everyone gets what monetizes better, which
| frequently, but not always, is what works best for the avg
| user
| sxg wrote:
| I would argue that in order to prevent users from leaving
| your platform or from developing a reputation for being a
| stagnant platform (e.g. Internet Explorer/Edge, Windows,
| IBM) you need to be sensitive to new trends. Meaning you'll
| occasionally need to preemptively try new features before
| you can be sure they're a move in the right direction.
| Obviously, not everything you try will be a hit but the
| constant experimentation is key.
| juancampa wrote:
| Agreed. My point is that in the current state of affairs, 3rd
| parties dictate how we use our computers. In an ideal world,
| users should have _the option_ to customize behavior with
| relative low effort or cost.
|
| The root problem is that software is incredibly expensive to
| build.
| andybak wrote:
| I lived through the days of skinnable apps and I never want to
| go back there again.
| leucineleprec0n wrote:
| Thank God they did this, as is it was going to have me switch to
| chrome lol
| dilap wrote:
| Ah, too bad, I've grown to quite like the previous beta! I don't
| tend to have a gazillion tabs open though.
|
| I want my webpage to be as much page as possible, w/ as little
| chrome.
|
| I think there's some danger in listening to internet outrage as
| your design process -- _every_ big change generates a lot of
| dislike, but that doesn 't mean it's actually a bad change, or
| that _most_ people dislike it, or even that the people who hate
| it at first won 't come to like it.
| [deleted]
| robertoandred wrote:
| The previous design is apparently still the default. This new
| design is an option.
| syspec wrote:
| Opposite. The new design is the default according to the
| article, but the old one is available by unchecking a setting
| dilap wrote:
| oh, sweet!
| asdff wrote:
| All of these issues would be gone if companies like Apple offered
| the reigns for users to modify their software as needed. I'm
| running firefox with a competent ad blocker, no tab bar on top,
| and a sidebar of tabs that appears when I hover the mouse. Sure,
| it took some finagling with config files, but this sort of stuff
| should be possible and accessible on a computer. I really wish
| Safari and Apple in general took a different approach. Firefox
| shouldn't be the only game in town.
| cunthorpe wrote:
| This was obvious from the start. The new design was beautiful but
| it was an accessibility nightmare.
|
| This change looks pretty awful so I hope they just reach the
| Chrome v1 style and be done with it. Let's be honest, Chrome v1
| was the peak of browser design and browsers are still trying and
| failing to improve it.
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(page generated 2021-07-14 23:01 UTC)