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. | ||
* '''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. | |||
= References = | = References = | ||
Revision as of 07:27, 26 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. Having looked at a couple folk's screens they often and two or more sites which look almost identical (multiple WordPress logins), sites hidden because of failed logins, and sites indistinguishable because they all approach white.
- The one thing thumbnails give is a visceral feeling. That's lacking in the current design.
- Polite. We've tried a number of ways to make the new tab page polite -- to stay out of your way. In particular, we tried the right side of the screen and the bottom of the screen. Both felt weird, and people remarked on them.
- 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.
- 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.