Firefox/Projects/About:newtab: Difference between revisions
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
m (About:newtab moved to Firefox/Sprints/About:newtab) |
|||
| Line 24: | Line 24: | ||
** [http://hg.mozilla.org/users/dmills_mozilla.com/about-tab Sources on mercurial] | ** [http://hg.mozilla.org/users/dmills_mozilla.com/about-tab Sources on mercurial] | ||
** [[About:newtab/VersionHistory|Version History]] | ** [[About:newtab/VersionHistory|Version History]] | ||
= History = | |||
We've been iterating frequently to find a good balance for the new tab page. Below are an outline of a couple of the major decisions and why we made them. | |||
* '''No Thumbnails'''. This is the largest departure from the original mockups and other browsers. After trying a number of different layouts we reached a couple realizations: | |||
** Thumbnails are a high-noise, low-information-density medium. Few people have a strong association between a site and it's zoomed-out view. The association to name and fav-icon is much stronger. | |||
** In small-scale tests, the upper-left corner of a site was much easier to identify a site by than the full site. That's because the upper-left is where the site's logo normally resides. | |||
** Safari's implementation shows a number of the pitfalls. | |||
= References = | = References = | ||
Revision as of 23:48, 25 March 2009
Overview
Drivers: Dan Mills (thunder), Aza Razkin (aza), Edward Lee (Mardak)
Get involved: by hopping onto #labs on irc.mozilla.org or clicking on Discussion and leaving your comments
- Description
- Instead of a blank page, the new tab page should present useful task-centric navigation options based on the user's history.
Goals / Use Cases
- be perceptibly as fast as about:blank to load
- allow user to re-open previously closed tabs
- offer navigation targets that are likely to be of use to the user
- do not break the user's mental "flow" or otherwise interrupt a user task
Non Goals
- act as a content aggregator for "new" material
Download
- Install the latest Firefox 3.1 beta (required)
- Install the latest about:tab extension
History
We've been iterating frequently to find a good balance for the new tab page. Below are an outline of a couple of the major decisions and why we made them.
- No Thumbnails. This is the largest departure from the original mockups and other browsers. After trying a number of different layouts we reached a couple realizations:
- Thumbnails are a high-noise, low-information-density medium. Few people have a strong association between a site and it's zoomed-out view. The association to name and fav-icon is much stronger.
- In small-scale tests, the upper-left corner of a site was much easier to identify a site by than the full site. That's because the upper-left is where the site's logo normally resides.
- Safari's implementation shows a number of the pitfalls.