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> We’ve enlarged the address bar anytime you want to do a search and simplified it in a single view with larger font, shorter URLs, adjusts to multiple sizes an

by s9w 7y ago

> We’ve enlarged the address bar anytime you want to do a search and simplified it in a single view with larger font, shorter URLs, adjusts to multiple sizes and a shortcut to the most popular sites to search. Almost every single point in that sentence is a negative change. Which is +1 for my personal pet theory: all software gets worse over time

nullc 7y ago
Many pieces of large software are like a Shepard tone. It's constantly getting improvements yet doesn't get better (or even gets worse) in the long run.
- jonny_eh 7y ago
  > A Shepard tone, named after Roger Shepard, is a sound consisting of a superposition of sine waves separated by octaves. When played with the bass pitch of the tone moving upward or downward, it is referred to as the Shepard scale. This creates the auditory illusion of a tone that continually ascends or descends in pitch, yet which ultimately seems to get no higher or lower.[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_tone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_tone
51Cards 7y ago
Agreed, really disliking all of these new behaviours. I too subscribe to that theory, in that developers keep looking for ways to "make it better" and end up layering so many useless UI items on top of each other software becomes messy over time.
hn2017 7y ago
For what it's worth, my parents like the new address bar.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  So do I. So do the vast majority of people, I bet.
untog 7y ago
Almost every single point in that sentence is a positive for the vast majority of users. We're power users, not the majority.
- anonymousab 7y ago
  A statement I'm sure many of their product managers have made about many "features" that have whittled away at their power userbase. IMO if they want to be slightly different Chrome, they should just take a full leap and cut out the functionality not used by or confusing to the users they're trying to target. Drop the pretense of control or customization. They're only hurting themselves in the long run by trying to slowly drag one userbase into the other and satisfying both poorly as a result.
- DavideNL 7y ago
  Well they could've at least made a setting to permanently disable it...
  - fernandotakai 7y ago
    firefox used to be known as a highly configurable browser. now, mozilla is just pushing changes that can't be configured. there are some about:config tweaks to change the url bar back to the old one, but they are going to go away for sure.
    - The_Colonel 7y ago
      FF was never particularly configurable. Actually it started its life as bare-bones, stream lined variant of larger Mozilla Suite. But perhaps you meant FF was heavily extensible which is true, but it was also very costly.
- url00 7y ago
  But Chrome already has a stranglehold on the majority market. In my opinion, Mozilla should put the vast majority of their energy and resources towards targeting power users and developers - they've already lost the other battle.
andrepd 7y ago
Some things are just good as they are, but then designers and developers keep tinkering with it for its own sake. If you've used android you've perhaps noticed that for the last 4 or 5 releases google keeps changing core parts of interface the every, single, time (button navigation, notifications, quick toggles... you name it). Think of a gradient descent optimizer that after hitting a maximum just... keeps going.
voxl 7y ago
Have you ever considered that you just don't like change?
- dan-robertson 7y ago
  I think there are absolute negative effects to just about every change because of reasons like invalidating muscle memory, unintended consequences, documentation synchronisation, config options, and the chance of introducing bugs. If one cares about certain things a lot, these effects may be larger than developers expected. For example, if you are blind, user interface changes may suck a lot more than for sighted people. Changes can still have net positive effects, however.

by s9w 7y ago

nullc 7y ago

Many pieces of large software are like a Shepard tone. It's constantly getting improvements yet doesn't get better (or even gets worse) in the long run.

jonny_eh 7y ago
> A Shepard tone, named after Roger Shepard, is a sound consisting of a superposition of sine waves separated by octaves. When played with the bass pitch of the tone moving upward or downward, it is referred to as the Shepard scale. This creates the auditory illusion of a tone that continually ascends or descends in pitch, yet which ultimately seems to get no higher or lower.[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_tone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_tone

51Cards 7y ago

Agreed, really disliking all of these new behaviours. I too subscribe to that theory, in that developers keep looking for ways to "make it better" and end up layering so many useless UI items on top of each other software becomes messy over time.

hn2017 7y ago

For what it's worth, my parents like the new address bar.

hombre_fatal 7y ago
So do I. So do the vast majority of people, I bet.

untog 7y ago

Almost every single point in that sentence is a positive for the vast majority of users. We're power users, not the majority.

anonymousab 7y ago
A statement I'm sure many of their product managers have made about many "features" that have whittled away at their power userbase. IMO if they want to be slightly different Chrome, they should just take a full leap and cut out the functionality not used by or confusing to the users they're trying to target. Drop the pretense of control or customization. They're only hurting themselves in the long run by trying to slowly drag one userbase into the other and satisfying both poorly as a result.
DavideNL 7y ago
Well they could've at least made a setting to permanently disable it...
- fernandotakai 7y ago
  firefox used to be known as a highly configurable browser. now, mozilla is just pushing changes that can't be configured. there are some about:config tweaks to change the url bar back to the old one, but they are going to go away for sure.
  - The_Colonel 7y ago
    FF was never particularly configurable. Actually it started its life as bare-bones, stream lined variant of larger Mozilla Suite. But perhaps you meant FF was heavily extensible which is true, but it was also very costly.
url00 7y ago
But Chrome already has a stranglehold on the majority market. In my opinion, Mozilla should put the vast majority of their energy and resources towards targeting power users and developers - they've already lost the other battle.

andrepd 7y ago

Some things are just good as they are, but then designers and developers keep tinkering with it for its own sake. If you've used android you've perhaps noticed that for the last 4 or 5 releases google keeps changing core parts of interface the every, single, time (button navigation, notifications, quick toggles... you name it). Think of a gradient descent optimizer that after hitting a maximum just... keeps going.

voxl 7y ago

Have you ever considered that you just don't like change?

dan-robertson 7y ago
I think there are absolute negative effects to just about every change because of reasons like invalidating muscle memory, unintended consequences, documentation synchronisation, config options, and the chance of introducing bugs. If one cares about certain things a lot, these effects may be larger than developers expected. For example, if you are blind, user interface changes may suck a lot more than for sighted people. Changes can still have net positive effects, however.