3 ms·

It's sad that browser UI improvements came to an end. A number of innovative browsers never gained traction, and when mainstream ones try to improve UI it gets

It's sad that browser UI improvements came to an end. A number of innovative browsers never gained traction, and when mainstream ones try to improve UI it gets considerably worse. Every new browser has a short runway of new awesome ideas and then it's stagnant for decades.

realusername 9y ago
The UI of Firefox improved greatly, just remember how the old preferences screen looked like before.
- thriftwy 9y ago
  I've just opened preferences and I don't see much improvement. It's a page now, and there's less stuff, but it's what I had 15 years ago. Anyway, I still have to go to about:preferences all the time. I totally dislike their experiments with menu bar. I never wanted that. It's Ribbon all over again.
  - chrismorgan 9y ago
    I might have said that Preferences was much the same as ever, for most practical purposes, with only comparatively minor improvements; but one thing particularly stands out as a massive improvement: the search box. Now I don’t need to know where what I want to tweak is, if only I know what to search for, which I pretty much always do.
- einr 9y ago
  I remember when it used to look like a nice, compact native dialog box* instead of a full-screen, space-wasting abomination that follows no standards for anything. But consistency, visual coherency, discoverability and predictability are apparently all outmoded concepts in UI design, so opinions like mine -- that native applications should look and feel like native applications -- don't seem to be worth much among the cool crowd nowadays. * https://winaero.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/firefox-38-restore-old-preferences.png https://winaero.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/firefox-...
  - jakecopp 9y ago
    I disagree with you on this particular point, but in a wider scope I think you're spot on - it seems so little thought is given to the very basics of UI design. iTunes is the classic example!
minitech 9y ago
> A number of innovative browsers never gained traction, because they weren’t a net improvement > and when mainstream ones try to improve UI it gets considerably worse. Examples? Firefox’s recent UI improvements are pretty great.
- thriftwy 9y ago
  I didn't find any UI improvements in the roadmap, other than password manager. I also remember that password manager was added to Opera browser around 2000. It wasn't a great sucess since nobody figured out how that's different from regular "remember password".

realusername 9y ago

The UI of Firefox improved greatly, just remember how the old preferences screen looked like before.

thriftwy 9y ago
I've just opened preferences and I don't see much improvement. It's a page now, and there's less stuff, but it's what I had 15 years ago. Anyway, I still have to go to about:preferences all the time. I totally dislike their experiments with menu bar. I never wanted that. It's Ribbon all over again.
- chrismorgan 9y ago
  I might have said that Preferences was much the same as ever, for most practical purposes, with only comparatively minor improvements; but one thing particularly stands out as a massive improvement: the search box. Now I don’t need to know where what I want to tweak is, if only I know what to search for, which I pretty much always do.
einr 9y ago
I remember when it used to look like a nice, compact native dialog box* instead of a full-screen, space-wasting abomination that follows no standards for anything. But consistency, visual coherency, discoverability and predictability are apparently all outmoded concepts in UI design, so opinions like mine -- that native applications should look and feel like native applications -- don't seem to be worth much among the cool crowd nowadays. * https://winaero.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/firefox-38-restore-old-preferences.png https://winaero.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/firefox-...
- jakecopp 9y ago
  I disagree with you on this particular point, but in a wider scope I think you're spot on - it seems so little thought is given to the very basics of UI design. iTunes is the classic example!

minitech 9y ago

> A number of innovative browsers never gained traction, because they weren’t a net improvement > and when mainstream ones try to improve UI it gets considerably worse. Examples? Firefox’s recent UI improvements are pretty great.

thriftwy 9y ago
I didn't find any UI improvements in the roadmap, other than password manager. I also remember that password manager was added to Opera browser around 2000. It wasn't a great sucess since nobody figured out how that's different from regular "remember password".