> It seems as if the people in the design team are all working exclusively on 32-inch Apple XDR Pro Displays.
Makes me think of the complaints in video game text over the past few years and how it had become so small as to be nearly unreadable on normal TVs at normal viewing distances. The natural assumption here is that the game devs were doing all their work inches away from large fancy monitors not thinking of the so-called 10’ experience most people use to consume the content.
At least many console games now have text size sliders (with varying levels of usefulness).
The majority of these are better explained as "PC game ported to console". The same problem has long existed in reverse, console game ported to PC with enormous UI.
There are a vanishingly small number of games that actually do this properly - a scalable UI that has some good default assumption for the platform it is currently on. Of course games rarely make significantly more money because the text is perfectly sized vs the 1,000 other things that are competing to get done before the release date.
Nah. Console exclusives have had this problem for a while too. It was really dreadful on 360 where some devs assumed everybody played on HDTVs despite the console supposed to be SD friendly as well. Some text was literally unreadable in Mass Effect on my 20" CRT TV at ANY distance and was just barely readable on the 20" 480p LCD I was able to upgrade to a little later.
Like the "attract" screen when playing on a console which previews the game in a loop. (guess it came from arcade games, or maybe like DVD menu screens)
No need for that with a PC game - you're launching it manually, why add a "click to continue"?
I am amazed by those reaaaaallly wide displays - developers in the 1990's might have predicted 16:9, but 32:9??
Size of UI text in general is an issue IMO, especially since it's often hard to configure. Sometimes I just want slightly larger text. Why can't I just set that in Firefox? I need to use some userChrome CSS hack (which, of course, breaks some UI elements), and for other applications it's even harder (I tried looking it up for GIMP and couldn't find an easy solution, but I didn't spend a very long time on it).
Recently I've been playing Baldur's Gate (the Enhanced Edition), and while it does allow resizing the text size it becomes so large that it doesn't fit in many UI elements (most notable, the dialog box). I guess it's better than nothing, but with just a very small amount of effort it could have been much better.
Say about the web what you will, but the ability to resize almost any text is a great feature.
Also I think Windows actually manages all of this much better, where you can just set a text size in settings (I think? It's been years since I used Windows, so not sure).
Why do browser updates keep fucking with the basic interface design? None of these changes are ever necessary.
If designers need to justify their jobs, fine. They should design the interface layout with modular components that can be entirely customized by the user.
IMO no user should ever be forced to use designs that are the product of meaningless fads in the design world.
From what I understand, the question is similar to “why do developers keep inventing new frameworks and new programming languages?”
Maybe developers are justifying their jobs. Maybe younger developers are excited about ditching the old crufty frameworks and languages, and exploring something new. Maybe every 10 years they reinvent the old wheels, and older developers are grumpy that the change was not needed in the first place.
Creating new browsers doesn't bother me at all. I think the appropriate analogy is something closer to changing the spelling of a language's keywords arbitrarily. Change for the sake of change, which is easy enough to adjust to, but introduces a transition period that costs time, for no good reason.
The backward compatibility effects aren't quite as bad in the browser context... except when the plugin API is affected.
Right: every profession does stupid stuff I am sure, and developers certainly waste a lot of time throwing away good code to start over again; but I think today we are talking about designers?
Toolbars in mac apps tend to be really good about this. I didn't realize (coming from Windows) that many apps (Notes, Safari, Mail, Finder, others) are using the built-in toolbar system, which gives you a very large degree of customization. That experience seems to be the default, and even third-party apps like Fork often use it.
Browsers like this exist, but require configuration you're probably not willing to set up. If that's the case, then perhaps it's safe to say that most people just don't care enough.
I vehemently disagree that vertical space used is negligible. Due to standard aspect ratios, the vertical space of the display is at a premium. 1920*1080 means you have 840 less vertical pixels than horizontal - it makes a lot of sense to me to try to reclaim some of that space for actual content instead of widgets.
Things like the tab bar and the reload button are not mere "widgets"; they are the core UI elements. They are the single most important part of the app. This is simply a bad call.
I'm all for saving vertical space whenever possible. But this is a bad call.
The single most important part of the app is the content.
I would be interested to see a version where the tabs and url bar roll up to one line if you have the space (few tabs, large monitor), but wrap to two if you don't (lots of tabs, small monitor).
But the tradeoff here isn't between a few dozen pixels vertically and a few dozen horizontally. It's 28 vertical pixels in exchange for cutting the horizontal space for the address bar and tab bar each in half, roughly.
Who really needs an address bar spanning the entire width of their screen? If you run into an URL that long then it's highly unlikely to contain useful information anyway. Or do you regularly notice yourself scanning through 400 characters of query string gibberish and thinking "that information was so useful that I always need all of it on screen"?
Which is why it makes it so strange that no browser designers seem to get that the way to go is to stack tabs in a vertical list instead of horizontally. It would use more space but the space is in less demand so it wouldn't matter anyhow.
So until the browser designers get a clue I will be stuck with Firefox and the Treestyle tabs plugin which is the least horrible solution for people that use a lot of tabs.
I've tried tree style tabs a few times but it always ends up being too much.
The implementations of vertical tabs I've liked best so far are OmniWeb's (perhaps one of the original vertical tab browsers), Edge's, and Firefox with Tab Center Redux and custom CSS to hide Firefox's frustrating mandatory sidebar header.
Granted, it seems that nobody at the Edge team thought of actually giving the vertical space used by the horizontal tab bar back once you flip to vertical tabs mode, but the feature itself is there.
Exactly. Which to me is why the parent complaint is a bit silly. If vertical space is at such a premium on Mac laptops supposedly, why then does the default Apple UI [1] consume such an enormous amount of vertical space? This is many, many pixels more space than on Windows, where you only have the taskbar at the bottom. Apple's dock is much larger than the taskbar, in addition to having a global bar on the top!
So I conclude that Apple's designers are in fact not attempting to maximize vertical space, or at least that to the extent they do care about this, they're willing to make absurd compromises in apps like Safari while not fixing the glaring issue with the overall UI.
I find that horizontal space to many times be more constrained. If I toss and IDE and browser window side-by-side so I can code while looking at docs I need to at least close the vertical tabs on my browser to have a sane amount of space left for content. Usually also collapse one of the sidebars in the IDE to get a decent width for the code.
I dont agree with getting rid of "widget", but I do agree vertical space are very limited. Your example of 1080P will be on a 16:9 Screen or iMac. MacBook uses 16:10, but even that, vertical space are still at premium. Once you have Dock at the bottom, and all web design has another layer of navigation at the top, you are quickly looking at 480 out of 1600 gone [1]. That is 30% of my vertical screen space. Leaving effectively 2560 x 1120 for content at Aspect Ratio of ~21:9 ultra wide.
I would have used Full Screen Option if I could have Tab Bar showing instead of Address bar + Tab Bar. And Safari for some reason has strange GPU / CPU usage problem with full screen usage which hasn't been addressed for years.
May be instead of software design, hardware should have adopted to it. Microsoft Surface Laptop has a 3:2 Aspect Ratio. On the same MacBook Pro 13.3", that would have been an additional 120 pixel.
Another point worth mentioning, the Big Sur redesign actually have the Safari ( and macOS )Toolbar "thicker" as in taking more vertical space.
[1] I tend to hide the Dock Bar, without the Dock it is only 340 of vertical space.
More than aspect ratio or physical pixels the real metric is "inches of screen space". You can put 8k in a 13" laptop but if you want to read the window title and url bar and dock you're still eating the same amount of physical real estate as if it were a 1080p laptop. You can change the aspect ratio sure but outside of desktop setups the space constraint is already in depth so all you're doing is chopping off width that wasn't a problem while keeping the same depth profile. I.e. very few are buying a 13" laptop because 15" is too wide rather than too deep.
I agree. I'm running the new OS. There were some UI changes that frustrated me. But when I thought about why I was frustrated, the reason was simply because the UI was new and my old habit patterns didn't work. When I took the time to learn the new UI, I liked it more. The event was a learning experience in why people hate change. It takes effort to realize the benefit (if there is one), otherwise without the effort just frustration (unless the change is bad).
Does anyone else not just use spatial browsing on OS X with Safari? Its the best browser for that. I almost never use the tab bar but will have multiple windows open and I can just three-finger swipe down on my touchpad to get exposé for all my open Safari windows and can visually identify a page versus the sliver of nothing Chrome for example gives you with tons of tabs open
Yes. One of the first thing I do when I set up a new Mac for myself is to move the bottom dock to the right side. Then the vertical space feels much more comfortable. This is applicable for both 15 inch and 13 inch macbook pros.
This is why tree-style tabs make sense. It puts the tabs on a sidebar, where their content can be read, and leaves maximum vertical space for the actual page content.
Am I the only person who likes this change? Normally, I’d have 4-5 tabs that I keep switching between fairly often and then 20-xx most of the time useless, de facto bookmarks. I use a keyboard shortcut with fuzzy find to pick the right one.
Reclaiming the address bar space to cram more tabs on the screen is a marginal gain, at least in my case.
What I find most interesting in this discussion is that it implicitly hinges on how each of us organises and browses information. For example, some people are good at recalling stuff that they have seen before, so bookmarks and search will work well for them.
At the same time, other people can handle a lot of information but only as long as it is readily present in front of them. Hide that information away and it is as if it never existed. Tools that depend on their ability to recall information will fail them. Tools that give them the ability to keep that information available and visible will make them shine.
It seems to me as if some OP/commenters fail to realise that not everyone uses browsers the same way, in turn making assumptions that things make no sense on that basis, e.g tabs as history va tabs as actively used documents, vertical tabs saving space when fullscreen-ish but not with side by side windows, or having multiple windows each with a few tabs vs a single window with hundreds, single display vs multihead, browser as quasi-OS vs browser as web browser (!) with OS as OS and native apps, laptop vs desktop, or anything in between or beyond that I could not think of right now.
Personally I'm glad Safari isn't yet another Chrome-like UI. I did not upgrade to the beta, but it seems to me the choices made would make sense for the way I use a browser on a laptop or desktop.
It just feels like another flamewar, which I can safely ignore while I continue enjoying my daily driver browser.
I like it as well, for the same reason: I usually only have 2 to 4 browser tabs open and the new display works very well for users like me. I usually focus on some task or activity, and like to keep my working environment tidy. I have worked with many people who keep a huge number of tabs and perhaps browser windows open - that would bug me, but each to their own…
So, I didn’t like the new interface at first, but now I really like it. On my M1 MacBook Pro I really like the ability to run a few iPadOS apps, and the watch/phone/iPad/laptop handoff experience is also very good. I am very happy with the beta OS releases from last week.
I’ve not tried 15 yet, but I really like the idea of named groups of tabs. I have groups of stuff in windows for things that I’m researching and i hate having to open and look at every minimised window to see if that is the group of tabs I’m looking for as it’s often hard to tell from whatever tab url I left that window at before i minimised to the dock.
I like this change as well. I don't use tabs at all, I use pinch to show all tabs and switch more often than having to align my mouse along the top of the screen to switch to a tab after reading the text. It's similar to the KonMari method for laying out your things.
I'm with you. Here's what it comes down to: I use an internet browser maximized, usually. All monitors are wider than they are tall. Thus, vertical screen real estate is at a higher premium than horizontal real estate. Thus, control/chrome elements of the operating system, browser, etc should minimize vertical pixel usage in favor of horizontal usage in order to allow content to assume as many pixels as possible. E.g, move the operating system application/task bar from the default bottom of the screen to the left or right, integrate the address bar and tabs into the same vertical pixels, etc.
The reality is, I've never seen anyone stay productive with more than 5 or 6 tabs, not to mention battery and CPU utilization issues. The brain can only multitask so much, and none of the browsers are good at managing more than, say, a dozen tabs, so why not reclaim some vertical real estate and drop that number to six or so? If you really need the extra tab space (or, to see the full web address at all times, which is even more strange), I think that should be behind a Preferences option. Safari's design makes sense to me.
Of course, Safari probably wont make it configurable, but I hope we see this design trend also happen in Firefox, and while I won't opt for it, lets make it opt-out.
I'll have to give it more time but so far I like the change.
Typically I have dozens of tabs open, so at first blush it might seem that the redesign wouldn't work for me at all, and that would be true if I didn't adjust my tab habits.
What I've done is swept those dozens of tabs into a handful of purpose-oriented tab groups. I don't really need all of those tabs open at all times, all I really needed is somewhere to put them that's more ephemeral and has less management overhead than bookmarks. As a result, most groups only have a few tabs open and pose no problem with the new UI.
Theoretically, this approach may also have the benefit of improving focus. Because online message boards and the like live in my "general" tab group, when I'm switched to my "programming" tab group I'm soft-locked out of those sites by way of reduced accessibility, making it harder to drift off of my current task when googling for documentation, etc.
I’ve started to shift to this workflow too. There is content that I use once a week yet the tabs don’t always stay the same so the tab group paradigm is much better than committing everything to bookmarks and having to keep them updated.
The updated Safari has had a baffling UI update. It does not make any sense at all, on THE most important application that's shipped with the operating system.
It's those kind of UI ideas that look great on a mockup, but do not work in reality with real data and real users, those that open 35 tabs—behaviour encouraged by macOS windowing system by the way—and now all of those are crammed into a ludicrously small space that's constantly moving around.
I don't know what Apple were thinking there. Let's not call it UX, this is designers changing for change's sake at the expense of user experience. I'm struggling to see how is it justifiable in any way.
I think their hoping tab groups will reduce the 35 tab situation, but it’s too hard to organise when in information gathering mode. I hope they put a preference option to go back to the current interface. I’ll be filing a bug report.
It’s hard to judge something that’s constantly changing, to make a final decision anyway. They exploit our good nature and milk the benefit of the doubt with military precision, leaving us confused, powerless and hooked on the update system of their products and services.
I don't know what they were thinking either. It's a horrid change. Can't see the tabs any more, the URL is no style hidden now, and the URL bar is now jumping around like crazy.
> However I think, but don’t have data to confirm it, that they should be catered for and that “those that open 35 tabs” are a vocal minority.
This is the first time I’ve ever even considered the possibility that someone is capable of using a browser with only one or a few tabs open at a time. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure they exist, but having a million tabs open is so ingrained in how I consume information on the internet I suppose I kind of forgot it’s possible to do it any other way.
It makes me wonder if I’ve ever had only one tab or window open at a time? Maybe in the 90s? I don’t remember AOL having “tabs” the way browsers do now but I think you could have multiple windows open.
What? I'm saying there's a ton of people opening a lot of tabs, nowhere in my comment I was disparaging towards them. Please don't make assumptions. I'm just saying their use case has been ruined by this update, a use case that is seldom represented in neat and oversimplified designer mockups.
This weird user interface décisions also completely negate all that talk about speed. On iOS you now have to tap through a submenu with animations to do anything. (Share, Private Mode, Reading list…) the tab groups are useless as they are also hidden behind more taps (on Mac having multiple windows makes way more sense anyways, maybe let people name those or somehow see them grouped in the current open pages view on the bottom). Every action now feels slower, because even if the page loads 10ms faster than in another browser, any useful interaction will end up in hundreds of milliseconds of animations.
I found that to just change the animations to fade instead of scale/pan. The duration is unaffected, it just makes it flatter and uglier. I wonder how fast things would feel if you could disable all animations, Windows XP style.
I believe this new design is the best Safari design 'in the constraints of the new Big Sur design language'. I'm liking it mostly because the Big Sur's new toolbar is too thick.
With the menubar, toolbar, and the tabbar, 106px of my total 800px height display gets to display non-content information, much of which is clutter when I'm trying to focus on the webpage. It's a whopping 13.3%! Most of this comes from the thick toolbar that Big Sur has started.
But since Apple won't be changing that thick toolbar (as we all know), the 30px vertical height (which translates to 3.6%) that I get by hiding the toolbar is precious. So I appreciate the new Safari 15 design. Really, the only problem I'm finding is the refresh button, which I'm like 99% sure will come back with all of this fuzz, and the other functionality in that (...) button needed multiple mouse clicks in Safari 14 anyway. Like... disabling the ad blocker required a long-click on the refresh button, it's now more discoverable.
Shifting address bars... I can see how that might make people freak out; Personally I've had zero problems, so YMMV.
About tab management – I can't disagree more than the article. Creating group of tabs is very much useful, it's much more helpful than having a group of windows each with different topics and prevents idle windows eating memory and CPU when only one window gets used for a long time.
I have five tab groups, one about my school, two on my personal hobbies, one on generic development-related information (including HN) and one on my work, each with 10~20 tabs. I'm guessing the writer doesn't use tabs pervasively – that's fine. But I would like to point out that it is not rarely efficient nor overall unconvincing. Thanks Apple for that tab group feature, I'm seriously getting a ton of mileage over it.
Imo, the new address bar is better because it attached to the current tab. This is how it already works, but the design never reflected that. Previously, the address bar was a global UI element which doesn’t modify the global state. I think this could easily be clearer for new users. (And possibly clearer for technologically challenged existing users.) To me, the big complaints are just reacting to it being different. I don’t think that’s fair.
Linked article refers to the changes in Safari as "thoughtless UI", which is a fairly common argument used against changes that people don't like. Against Apple, Microsoft, WinAmp, Reddit, etc.
But let's be fair and note that there quite certainly a lot of very proud, considerate, intentional designers and developers who are behind this change. People who probably put thousands (millions?) multiples of "thought" in considering the changes, versus someone saying "Whoa...this is different and I don't like different." The whine about site colors bleeding into the chrome seem particularly subjective, yet they're presented as if they're objective truths.
I use a macOS beta 15 device beside a 14 device, all day every day. At first install it was jarring, but then I became acclimated to it and it's fine. Tab groups are fantastic. I appreciate the aesthetics of chrome bleed, but that's just my subjective opinion. My only complaint about the browser is that it's crash-prone right now.
It's fairly common because it's commonly true; people don't like the changes for good reasons. Actual innovations in design are fine, but too often changes to user interfaces are arbitrary or are a response to the latest fad or some bright idea marketing or management cooked up.
There is a strong argument for user interface stability. People don't just learn user interfaces, they seep into people's unconscious and muscle memory. It can take a while to learn the idiosyncrasies of a user interface and making changes should have a string justification.
It should be noted that people who are paid to design user interfaces are not paid to use them. Their incentives are to create and tinker. This is a disincentive to do what is often needed: nothing or very slow change.
This. I work on a website where a new ui was rolled out every 2 years? Why? We (the developers) finally figured out it was because it gave the business people work to do that was more interesting than what they were really supposed to be doing. They got to go to all these catered meetings with 3rd party design consultants. They got to report to their higher ups that they were doing all this very important work. And every 2 years they could roll out the new ui to great fanfare while patting each other on the backs. It had absolutely nothing to do with improving the experience for our customers.
The worst part was, often functionality that was well loved was scraped because there wasn’t time to work it into this redesign. It turned out they would do that on purpose so people would complain so they could go to their higher ups with complaints in hand to justify budget money for a new round of ui design work. Rinse repeat.
I think the role of the aesthetic of a product is a bit under appreciated. If Safari was exactly as functional but still looked like Netscape navigator, it would negatively impact people’s opinion of the browser.
It’s just like the idea that you first eat with your eyes. For example, eggs with yellow yolks and orange yolks taste the same in blinded tests, but when people can see the eggs they usually go for the orange ones. Periodic UI design updates are needed so that people don’t associate a dated GUI with a dated product.
UI changes are only good if they improve usability. By far most UI changes these days are only done for the sake of looking different and "fresh", UI design has become purely fashion driven. Where's the scientific research and white papers going along with the Safari UI changes which clearly justify point by point why every single change makes sense, all backed by user studies? All I usually see is "emotional bullshit", not rational facts when UI designers talk about their work.
This used to be different during the 80's and 90's and I'm convinced that this change (turning UI design from science/engineering into fashion) is why we are deep in a UX crisis.
> Where's the scientific research and white papers going along with the Safari UI changes which clearly justify point by point why every single change makes sense, all backed by user studies?
Are you being hyperbolic, or is this your actual position? That’s a ridiculously high bar that most organizations could not muster (and there’s no way Apple would release that stuff publicly anyway).
“Emotional bullshit” is so needlessly negative. We’re not machines — we have emotions! If a UI designer can change an interface to please me a little more, that’s a good thing.
S/UI/clothing; your argument suggests the move to add color to fabric doesn’t make sense because it is simply fashion and has aught to do with the interface presented by a shirt. I think the parent comment nails it on subjectivity; the form of a thing is as much a part as its function. The luxury goods industry attests as much.
“People who probably put thousands (millions?) multiples of "thought" in considering the changes”
In my experience it’s usually one person’s vision behind major design changes (good or bad). It may be “discussed” so long as the discussion doesn’t deviate from boss’s vision (or you’re not a fit for the project).
One I've learned from grim experience is that most of the time, 1 person with a strong vision and the willingness to fight for it is better than 10 or more people just kinda doing their own thing in their own sandbox. Sure, the former might turn out bad. The latter is almost guaranteed to.
> Linked article refers to the changes in Safari as "thoughtless UI", which is a fairly common argument used against changes that people don't like. Against Apple, Microsoft, WinAmp, Reddit, etc. [...] someone saying "Whoa...this is different and I don't like different."
Back in the 90s Microsoft did put some research effort into Windows 95 and i do not really remember much of a blowback to the new UI despite being radically different from Windows 3.1. There were a lot of people complaining for the higher system requirements, how Win95 felt slower and even how "infantilized" DOS by forcing a GUI on them, but as far as the Windows UI itself goes pretty much everyone agreed was a big improvement to the point that other UIs started copying it to a functional level (ie. not just the window theme). There were even projects that recreated it on Windows 3.1 (Calmira).
To this day a lot of people consider Windows 95 to be one of the best and most well thought UIs.
(and honestly even though i think that overall Win2K is peak Windows, i do believe that ever since Win98 Microsoft started taking a form-over-function approach - see the toolbar buttons losing their relief and becoming shapeless elements indistinguishable from any other icon despite having different interaction with the user)
Sure, some reactions in UI changes tend to be "i do not like different" but that doesn't make all reactions so. And even then, do not dismiss the pure "i do not like different" reactions either: people spent time and energy to learn the UI they use, unless a change is a radical improvement (e.g. Win3.1 -> Win95) they are very justified to be pissed off at how the designers of the new UI wasted all that effort and nullified their knowledge for marginal gain (assuming there is any at all... or even worse, becoming harder to use like many overpadded mobile-first UIs look on desktops).
(the same applies to changes programmers often dislike too, like languages, APIs, frameworks, etc - for many users UI changes are the equivalent of Python2 to Python3, except as users are often powerless to do anything about UI changes, they happen way more often)
Reminds me of how almost any corporate logo redesign works. Company makes a new logo, everyone is outraged by how awful and horrible it is, then we get used to it.
The Discord logo redesign was one of those logos that elicited a very odd amount of outrage for what it was. Multiple video essays were made about just how terrible the logo is [0].
It's really not a bad logo at all. It's a minor change. But once you get used to something, any change seems to be perceived as a threat. After a few months, I bet most people will get used to the new Safari UI and forget what they were even mad out.
And the new one appeals to a different market - personally I thought the old one was pretty ugly, especially with how it would shatter into a ton of spinning fragments when it was loading. It said "hello this is a safe space for Gamerz", and I am very much not a Gamerz.
Now it doesn't say that. And now I'm less inactive on the various discord chats I've been invited to. Most of which are not really full of Gamerz anyway - but staring at that very Gamerz logo for a few seconds every time I opened the thing made me not want to open it.
I don't think the logo is bad myself, it is a tiny change overall.
However, it's worth noting it was shown alongside wordmark, and the font used by that wordmark (a modified version of Ginto Nord Black) is... not great, in particular I think the letter "i" looks somewhat off in relation to other characters in word "Discord" - I don't know what's wrong with it, I'm not a typographer.
That said, because the wordmark is not seen often (pretty much the main page and the page announcing new logo), in practice it's fine. After logging in to Discord there is no real reason to go back to the main page.
Also, out of curiosity, I checked the videos you linked to, pretty much all consider the logo to be fine, but they all criticize the font or the letter "i" specifically (even the video called "discord's new logo is alright").
A simple question. Why change something that already works for everyone? To solve which problem exactly?
I understand redesigning UIs when that redesign affords you some new capabilities for new features you want to add. I don't, however, understand redesigns that just move things around without adding anything new.
Android 12 is the prime example of this right now. Android 11, which I currently have on my phone, works fine. Its UI is well thought out. It's mature enough. The best thing you could do to it is leave it alone. But then someone at Google wanted a promotion, which meant redesigning an existing product, and now everything is opaque and has huge paddings for no good reason. And when they say "material you is customizable", I really hope it's so customizable I could just make it look like it did before they released this mess.
I have the opposite question: why do people let themselves get upset over UI changes? Why don’t people seem to take pride in their ability to adapt to change?
Change is inevitable. Even if we stipulate that change sometimes happens for bad reasons, like someone wanting a promotion, it’s not like bad reasons are suddenly going to disappear. People are still going to want promotions a year from now, or 10 years from now.
So designs are going to change. Why not take the approach of “let’s see how I can adapt to this”?
> People who probably put thousands (millions?) multiples of "thought" in considering the changes
Thoughts maybe, but did they ask users what they wanted? Did they run usability studies to verify that these changes make sense? I can't imagine that they did. Certain UI changes in macOS, Windows, etc. are so obviously bad (and are eventually changed) that no matter how much they thought about it, they didn't care to check what users thought.
Every user thinks they're the aggregate "users", though. That their personal opinion and take is universal.
For instance the address bar on here is a canonical truth and is the linchpin of the experience. See how every time a browser touches it (e.g. Chrome truncating the address) is met with mobs of the angry. Many users -- including even "power" users -- seldom interact with the address bar. Nor is it verification of anything much. It simply isn't that important anymore.
Another comment mentions that the reload button is two clicks away, which is a fair point but that everyone who actually uses reload (generally developers -- zero web apps should ever require the user to hit reload) use a keyboard shortcut.
Eh.
"Certain UI changes in macOS, Windows, etc. are so obviously bad (and are eventually changed)"
True. At the same time, every UI change of anything ever has yielded a firestorm of criticism and pushback. And more times than not the new design was better and people acclimate to it and eventually prefer it. I judge nothing on initial reception.
This is Apple we're talking about, the last time they asked users about something is when they failed to litigate Corellium for virtualizing their software.
Someone's casual opinion about "readability" is not objective. It is the very definition of subjective. I mean, if you've been on HN at all you've seen massive debates about fonts, colors, contrast, and so on, where people have profoundly different opinions about readability.
Run a study and then talk. Otherwise it's just subjective observations.
Further, we're talking about page theme spreading to the chrome of the browser. It makes the chrome less important than the page contents. It seems they're putting "readability" focus exactly where it should be.
There is zero reason to eliminate the tab bar and combine it with the address bar. It's idiotic and there should at least be an option to undo it.
I have accidentally close more tabs than ever before - and that's with me actively being aware of it and trying to be careful. It's a HORRIBLE user design.
Um, you don't need to waste copious amounts of dollars on designers and developers to know that it is a terrible idea to mix the address bar with the tabs.
It's a mess, and the vertical space you save is nominal compare to the increased frustration you will create for users when they have a tougher time being able to read their URL (something that's already an issue for everyone) and relegating the tabs to about half the horizontal space they could have had.
This is utterly pointless. It's not about being an old person resistant to change, it's about "fixing" something that was not broken and not even doing a lateral move, but totally regressing the utility it served.
Apple has always been like that with the exception of the Apple IIe.
Lately things have been taking even more of a nose dive though. Have you ever used Apple Music? There is no excuse for that product to be as bad as it is. It’s probably the worst mainstream consumer app in the market.
This one is a particularly bad idea. Regular people don't always understand the difference between the browser and the contents of a web page. This blurs that line even more for people who already have trouble seeing it in the first place.
Multiple people putting several hours of though behind a feature is what we call design by committee. It doesn't matter how much time was spent if the committee is not capable of finding a unified direction to the proposed changes.
Way too late to edit this, but please note that I erroneously referred to macOS 14 and 15...not sure how I didn't notice that before, but it should be macOS 11(.4?) and 12. My mind was thinking of iOS 14 and 15.
Alas, don't want anyone perpetuating that mistake. Cheers!
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Makes me think of the complaints in video game text over the past few years and how it had become so small as to be nearly unreadable on normal TVs at normal viewing distances. The natural assumption here is that the game devs were doing all their work inches away from large fancy monitors not thinking of the so-called 10’ experience most people use to consume the content.
At least many console games now have text size sliders (with varying levels of usefulness).
https://kotaku.com/the-year-in-tiny-video-game-text-2019-184...
There are a vanishingly small number of games that actually do this properly - a scalable UI that has some good default assumption for the platform it is currently on. Of course games rarely make significantly more money because the text is perfectly sized vs the 1,000 other things that are competing to get done before the release date.
Like the "attract" screen when playing on a console which previews the game in a loop. (guess it came from arcade games, or maybe like DVD menu screens)
No need for that with a PC game - you're launching it manually, why add a "click to continue"?
I am amazed by those reaaaaallly wide displays - developers in the 1990's might have predicted 16:9, but 32:9??
Recently I've been playing Baldur's Gate (the Enhanced Edition), and while it does allow resizing the text size it becomes so large that it doesn't fit in many UI elements (most notable, the dialog box). I guess it's better than nothing, but with just a very small amount of effort it could have been much better.
Say about the web what you will, but the ability to resize almost any text is a great feature.
Also I think Windows actually manages all of this much better, where you can just set a text size in settings (I think? It's been years since I used Windows, so not sure).
If designers need to justify their jobs, fine. They should design the interface layout with modular components that can be entirely customized by the user.
IMO no user should ever be forced to use designs that are the product of meaningless fads in the design world.
Maybe developers are justifying their jobs. Maybe younger developers are excited about ditching the old crufty frameworks and languages, and exploring something new. Maybe every 10 years they reinvent the old wheels, and older developers are grumpy that the change was not needed in the first place.
The backward compatibility effects aren't quite as bad in the browser context... except when the plugin API is affected.
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You can see it in this article: https://9to5mac.com/2021/06/16/safari-in-macos-monterey-what... (image: https://9to5mac.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2021/06/how-s...)
Hopefully, they add back some of the missing customization options in a later release.
I'm all for saving vertical space whenever possible. But this is a bad call.
I would be interested to see a version where the tabs and url bar roll up to one line if you have the space (few tabs, large monitor), but wrap to two if you don't (lots of tabs, small monitor).
So until the browser designers get a clue I will be stuck with Firefox and the Treestyle tabs plugin which is the least horrible solution for people that use a lot of tabs.
The implementations of vertical tabs I've liked best so far are OmniWeb's (perhaps one of the original vertical tab browsers), Edge's, and Firefox with Tab Center Redux and custom CSS to hide Firefox's frustrating mandatory sidebar header.
Granted, it seems that nobody at the Edge team thought of actually giving the vertical space used by the horizontal tab bar back once you flip to vertical tabs mode, but the feature itself is there.
I really loved that. All my tabs (with mini pictures of them) were on side, which made them easy to see and didn't take up vertical space.
(OmniWeb was a great browser in other ways).
https://browser.kagi.com
So I conclude that Apple's designers are in fact not attempting to maximize vertical space, or at least that to the extent they do care about this, they're willing to make absurd compromises in apps like Safari while not fixing the glaring issue with the overall UI.
[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/98/MacOS_Montere...
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I would have used Full Screen Option if I could have Tab Bar showing instead of Address bar + Tab Bar. And Safari for some reason has strange GPU / CPU usage problem with full screen usage which hasn't been addressed for years.
May be instead of software design, hardware should have adopted to it. Microsoft Surface Laptop has a 3:2 Aspect Ratio. On the same MacBook Pro 13.3", that would have been an additional 120 pixel.
Another point worth mentioning, the Big Sur redesign actually have the Safari ( and macOS )Toolbar "thicker" as in taking more vertical space.
[1] I tend to hide the Dock Bar, without the Dock it is only 340 of vertical space.
Safari 15's design is so odd I'll have no idea what to make of it until I can actually test it out.
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Worse than that, high end PCs are going to ultrawide monitors. I'm on 3440x1440 right now, and 3840x1200/5120x1440 panels are dropping in price.
Of course, you almost never fullscreen a browser window on a monitor like that, but it is what the OS would default to.
Reclaiming the address bar space to cram more tabs on the screen is a marginal gain, at least in my case.
At the same time, other people can handle a lot of information but only as long as it is readily present in front of them. Hide that information away and it is as if it never existed. Tools that depend on their ability to recall information will fail them. Tools that give them the ability to keep that information available and visible will make them shine.
Personally I'm glad Safari isn't yet another Chrome-like UI. I did not upgrade to the beta, but it seems to me the choices made would make sense for the way I use a browser on a laptop or desktop.
It just feels like another flamewar, which I can safely ignore while I continue enjoying my daily driver browser.
So, I didn’t like the new interface at first, but now I really like it. On my M1 MacBook Pro I really like the ability to run a few iPadOS apps, and the watch/phone/iPad/laptop handoff experience is also very good. I am very happy with the beta OS releases from last week.
The reality is, I've never seen anyone stay productive with more than 5 or 6 tabs, not to mention battery and CPU utilization issues. The brain can only multitask so much, and none of the browsers are good at managing more than, say, a dozen tabs, so why not reclaim some vertical real estate and drop that number to six or so? If you really need the extra tab space (or, to see the full web address at all times, which is even more strange), I think that should be behind a Preferences option. Safari's design makes sense to me.
Of course, Safari probably wont make it configurable, but I hope we see this design trend also happen in Firefox, and while I won't opt for it, lets make it opt-out.
Typically I have dozens of tabs open, so at first blush it might seem that the redesign wouldn't work for me at all, and that would be true if I didn't adjust my tab habits.
What I've done is swept those dozens of tabs into a handful of purpose-oriented tab groups. I don't really need all of those tabs open at all times, all I really needed is somewhere to put them that's more ephemeral and has less management overhead than bookmarks. As a result, most groups only have a few tabs open and pose no problem with the new UI.
Theoretically, this approach may also have the benefit of improving focus. Because online message boards and the like live in my "general" tab group, when I'm switched to my "programming" tab group I'm soft-locked out of those sites by way of reduced accessibility, making it harder to drift off of my current task when googling for documentation, etc.
There's so much empty space on the address bar, and vertical space is typically expensive real estate.
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yes
It's those kind of UI ideas that look great on a mockup, but do not work in reality with real data and real users, those that open 35 tabs—behaviour encouraged by macOS windowing system by the way—and now all of those are crammed into a ludicrously small space that's constantly moving around.
I don't know what Apple were thinking there. Let's not call it UX, this is designers changing for change's sake at the expense of user experience. I'm struggling to see how is it justifiable in any way.
That is close to stating that those that open fewer than 35 tabs aren’t real users and, further between the lines, that those people can be ignored.
However I think, but don’t have data to confirm it, that they should be catered for and that “those that open 35 tabs” are a vocal minority.
This is the first time I’ve ever even considered the possibility that someone is capable of using a browser with only one or a few tabs open at a time. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure they exist, but having a million tabs open is so ingrained in how I consume information on the internet I suppose I kind of forgot it’s possible to do it any other way.
It makes me wonder if I’ve ever had only one tab or window open at a time? Maybe in the 90s? I don’t remember AOL having “tabs” the way browsers do now but I think you could have multiple windows open.
With the menubar, toolbar, and the tabbar, 106px of my total 800px height display gets to display non-content information, much of which is clutter when I'm trying to focus on the webpage. It's a whopping 13.3%! Most of this comes from the thick toolbar that Big Sur has started.
But since Apple won't be changing that thick toolbar (as we all know), the 30px vertical height (which translates to 3.6%) that I get by hiding the toolbar is precious. So I appreciate the new Safari 15 design. Really, the only problem I'm finding is the refresh button, which I'm like 99% sure will come back with all of this fuzz, and the other functionality in that (...) button needed multiple mouse clicks in Safari 14 anyway. Like... disabling the ad blocker required a long-click on the refresh button, it's now more discoverable.
Shifting address bars... I can see how that might make people freak out; Personally I've had zero problems, so YMMV.
About tab management – I can't disagree more than the article. Creating group of tabs is very much useful, it's much more helpful than having a group of windows each with different topics and prevents idle windows eating memory and CPU when only one window gets used for a long time.
I have five tab groups, one about my school, two on my personal hobbies, one on generic development-related information (including HN) and one on my work, each with 10~20 tabs. I'm guessing the writer doesn't use tabs pervasively – that's fine. But I would like to point out that it is not rarely efficient nor overall unconvincing. Thanks Apple for that tab group feature, I'm seriously getting a ton of mileage over it.
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But let's be fair and note that there quite certainly a lot of very proud, considerate, intentional designers and developers who are behind this change. People who probably put thousands (millions?) multiples of "thought" in considering the changes, versus someone saying "Whoa...this is different and I don't like different." The whine about site colors bleeding into the chrome seem particularly subjective, yet they're presented as if they're objective truths.
I use a macOS beta 15 device beside a 14 device, all day every day. At first install it was jarring, but then I became acclimated to it and it's fine. Tab groups are fantastic. I appreciate the aesthetics of chrome bleed, but that's just my subjective opinion. My only complaint about the browser is that it's crash-prone right now.
There is a strong argument for user interface stability. People don't just learn user interfaces, they seep into people's unconscious and muscle memory. It can take a while to learn the idiosyncrasies of a user interface and making changes should have a string justification.
It should be noted that people who are paid to design user interfaces are not paid to use them. Their incentives are to create and tinker. This is a disincentive to do what is often needed: nothing or very slow change.
The worst part was, often functionality that was well loved was scraped because there wasn’t time to work it into this redesign. It turned out they would do that on purpose so people would complain so they could go to their higher ups with complaints in hand to justify budget money for a new round of ui design work. Rinse repeat.
It’s just like the idea that you first eat with your eyes. For example, eggs with yellow yolks and orange yolks taste the same in blinded tests, but when people can see the eggs they usually go for the orange ones. Periodic UI design updates are needed so that people don’t associate a dated GUI with a dated product.
This used to be different during the 80's and 90's and I'm convinced that this change (turning UI design from science/engineering into fashion) is why we are deep in a UX crisis.
Are you being hyperbolic, or is this your actual position? That’s a ridiculously high bar that most organizations could not muster (and there’s no way Apple would release that stuff publicly anyway).
“Emotional bullshit” is so needlessly negative. We’re not machines — we have emotions! If a UI designer can change an interface to please me a little more, that’s a good thing.
I think the problem is everyone on here hates it when stuff they use changes and that’s all.
This is true only if usability is all you care about.
In the real world people like things with good aesthetics, and like beautiful things, and it’s important for Apple to make things that users like.
If looks didn’t matter every user interface and website would be plain and high-contrast.
In my experience it’s usually one person’s vision behind major design changes (good or bad). It may be “discussed” so long as the discussion doesn’t deviate from boss’s vision (or you’re not a fit for the project).
Back in the 90s Microsoft did put some research effort into Windows 95 and i do not really remember much of a blowback to the new UI despite being radically different from Windows 3.1. There were a lot of people complaining for the higher system requirements, how Win95 felt slower and even how "infantilized" DOS by forcing a GUI on them, but as far as the Windows UI itself goes pretty much everyone agreed was a big improvement to the point that other UIs started copying it to a functional level (ie. not just the window theme). There were even projects that recreated it on Windows 3.1 (Calmira).
To this day a lot of people consider Windows 95 to be one of the best and most well thought UIs.
(and honestly even though i think that overall Win2K is peak Windows, i do believe that ever since Win98 Microsoft started taking a form-over-function approach - see the toolbar buttons losing their relief and becoming shapeless elements indistinguishable from any other icon despite having different interaction with the user)
Sure, some reactions in UI changes tend to be "i do not like different" but that doesn't make all reactions so. And even then, do not dismiss the pure "i do not like different" reactions either: people spent time and energy to learn the UI they use, unless a change is a radical improvement (e.g. Win3.1 -> Win95) they are very justified to be pissed off at how the designers of the new UI wasted all that effort and nullified their knowledge for marginal gain (assuming there is any at all... or even worse, becoming harder to use like many overpadded mobile-first UIs look on desktops).
(the same applies to changes programmers often dislike too, like languages, APIs, frameworks, etc - for many users UI changes are the equivalent of Python2 to Python3, except as users are often powerless to do anything about UI changes, they happen way more often)
The Discord logo redesign was one of those logos that elicited a very odd amount of outrage for what it was. Multiple video essays were made about just how terrible the logo is [0].
It's really not a bad logo at all. It's a minor change. But once you get used to something, any change seems to be perceived as a threat. After a few months, I bet most people will get used to the new Safari UI and forget what they were even mad out.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=discord+new+log...
Now it doesn't say that. And now I'm less inactive on the various discord chats I've been invited to. Most of which are not really full of Gamerz anyway - but staring at that very Gamerz logo for a few seconds every time I opened the thing made me not want to open it.
However, it's worth noting it was shown alongside wordmark, and the font used by that wordmark (a modified version of Ginto Nord Black) is... not great, in particular I think the letter "i" looks somewhat off in relation to other characters in word "Discord" - I don't know what's wrong with it, I'm not a typographer.
That said, because the wordmark is not seen often (pretty much the main page and the page announcing new logo), in practice it's fine. After logging in to Discord there is no real reason to go back to the main page.
Also, out of curiosity, I checked the videos you linked to, pretty much all consider the logo to be fine, but they all criticize the font or the letter "i" specifically (even the video called "discord's new logo is alright").
I understand redesigning UIs when that redesign affords you some new capabilities for new features you want to add. I don't, however, understand redesigns that just move things around without adding anything new.
Android 12 is the prime example of this right now. Android 11, which I currently have on my phone, works fine. Its UI is well thought out. It's mature enough. The best thing you could do to it is leave it alone. But then someone at Google wanted a promotion, which meant redesigning an existing product, and now everything is opaque and has huge paddings for no good reason. And when they say "material you is customizable", I really hope it's so customizable I could just make it look like it did before they released this mess.
Change is inevitable. Even if we stipulate that change sometimes happens for bad reasons, like someone wanting a promotion, it’s not like bad reasons are suddenly going to disappear. People are still going to want promotions a year from now, or 10 years from now.
So designs are going to change. Why not take the approach of “let’s see how I can adapt to this”?
Thoughts maybe, but did they ask users what they wanted? Did they run usability studies to verify that these changes make sense? I can't imagine that they did. Certain UI changes in macOS, Windows, etc. are so obviously bad (and are eventually changed) that no matter how much they thought about it, they didn't care to check what users thought.
For instance the address bar on here is a canonical truth and is the linchpin of the experience. See how every time a browser touches it (e.g. Chrome truncating the address) is met with mobs of the angry. Many users -- including even "power" users -- seldom interact with the address bar. Nor is it verification of anything much. It simply isn't that important anymore.
Another comment mentions that the reload button is two clicks away, which is a fair point but that everyone who actually uses reload (generally developers -- zero web apps should ever require the user to hit reload) use a keyboard shortcut.
Eh.
"Certain UI changes in macOS, Windows, etc. are so obviously bad (and are eventually changed)"
True. At the same time, every UI change of anything ever has yielded a firestorm of criticism and pushback. And more times than not the new design was better and people acclimate to it and eventually prefer it. I judge nothing on initial reception.
This is Apple we're talking about, the last time they asked users about something is when they failed to litigate Corellium for virtualizing their software.
Readability is objective. It can be measured. They keep bending themselves backwards to get out of a problem they inflicted upon themselves.
A web browser should be readable first.
Run a study and then talk. Otherwise it's just subjective observations.
Further, we're talking about page theme spreading to the chrome of the browser. It makes the chrome less important than the page contents. It seems they're putting "readability" focus exactly where it should be.
Your opinion is objective. Opinions you don't like are subjective.
Sorry but this is how I read it. In my late years, there's little I fear more than such authoritarian claims.
Not everyone sees things the same way. And I mean that in the most literal sense possible
I have accidentally close more tabs than ever before - and that's with me actively being aware of it and trying to be careful. It's a HORRIBLE user design.
It's a mess, and the vertical space you save is nominal compare to the increased frustration you will create for users when they have a tougher time being able to read their URL (something that's already an issue for everyone) and relegating the tabs to about half the horizontal space they could have had.
This is utterly pointless. It's not about being an old person resistant to change, it's about "fixing" something that was not broken and not even doing a lateral move, but totally regressing the utility it served.
Early Mac OS X had exactly these criticisms leveled at it, for years.
Also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brushed_metal_(interface)
Lately things have been taking even more of a nose dive though. Have you ever used Apple Music? There is no excuse for that product to be as bad as it is. It’s probably the worst mainstream consumer app in the market.
This one is a particularly bad idea. Regular people don't always understand the difference between the browser and the contents of a web page. This blurs that line even more for people who already have trouble seeing it in the first place.
It had far more affordances and consideration than even modern Mac OS, and it showed by (lack of) this commentary against it.
Also, why does it matter how much time, money, brain power they spent on the changes? The only thing that matters is the outcome.
Alas, don't want anyone perpetuating that mistake. Cheers!
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