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Firefox/Projects/About:newtab: Difference between revisions
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** The most active attempt at being polite was the ill-fated '''cognitive shield''' idea. The cognitive shield hid the frequently accessed sites until you moved the mouse. Although the implementation got in the way of the idea (the shield looked clickable, and people got frustrated as it vanished as they tried to use it), it highlighted an interesting point: the ambient news part of the new tab page is actually very useful. | ** The most active attempt at being polite was the ill-fated '''cognitive shield''' idea. The cognitive shield hid the frequently accessed sites until you moved the mouse. Although the implementation got in the way of the idea (the shield looked clickable, and people got frustrated as it vanished as they tried to use it), it highlighted an interesting point: the ambient news part of the new tab page is actually very useful. | ||
** Grayscale. Originally, we thought that a fully grayscale display (especially of thumbnails) would be beneficial in being polite. The theory seemed to flag in practice: color is a main way of differentiating sites. The current design is mostly grayscale, with favicons in color. | ** Grayscale. Originally, we thought that a fully grayscale display (especially of thumbnails) would be beneficial in being polite. The theory seemed to flag in practice: color is a main way of differentiating sites. The current design is mostly grayscale, with favicons in color. | ||
** All of our attempts at adding animation, while sexy, seemed to distract if activation could happen inadvertently. | |||
* '''Automatic RSS'''. In almost all versions we've automatically shown RSS feeds from the sites you visit often. It enables a low-cost way of getting ambient-information updates on your sites. This often removes a navigation step of going to a site, finding what's new, and clicking. We originally showed RSS updates in light gray and right justified. Over time, we've made the text darker and left justified it for legibility. | * '''Automatic RSS'''. In almost all versions we've automatically shown RSS feeds from the sites you visit often. It enables a low-cost way of getting ambient-information updates on your sites. This often removes a navigation step of going to a site, finding what's new, and clicking. We originally showed RSS updates in light gray and right justified. Over time, we've made the text darker and left justified it for legibility. | ||
* '''Search'''. Search was added only | |||
* '''Whimsy/Visceral'''. The only design that had a sense of whimsy or viscerality -- that would cause people to fall in love -- was the cognitive shield animation, which we removed. Adding that whimsy may be as simple as putting in a water-mark logo of Foxkeh or a FF Robot. In the future, we should think about personal usage charts (think simple version of about:me -- did you know you spent 25% of your time on Facebook?, etc) and other forms of whimsy. | |||
* '''Personas Integration'''. The new tab page should integrate with personas so that the browser is, in fact, personal on all levels. | |||
= References = | = References = | ||