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What I don't like about these Chrome UI's is that they don't respect my OS settings. I am on Windows 7 with the classic NT skin. iTunes and Chrome are one of th

What I don't like about these Chrome UI's is that they don't respect my OS settings. I am on Windows 7 with the classic NT skin. iTunes and Chrome are one of the few programs that don't respect this skin. While in this case it is simple user preference, in other cases it could mean an accessibility concern, or even give room to malicious attacks: With all these custom browser skins, pop-ups over the HTML body (link destination on hover) and no clear divide between window and application, users won't clearly know the difference between interaction with the browser, and interaction with a smart malicious website. With smart design one could make the bottom browser toolbar appear to be higher, and control the top half with your website. Fake plug-in install modal windows etc.

Silhouette 15y ago
> What I don't like about these Chrome UI's is that they don't respect my OS settings Hear, hear. On our new serious workstation, we mostly run a variety of developer tools and browsers, some basic office software, various graphics/DTP/modelling stuff from companies like Adobe and Autodesk, and a bunch of tools to automate things and join the dots. On a quick look, exactly none of the major products there uses the standard Windows 7 UI conventions. I, for one, am sick of: - not knowing which keyboard shortcuts perform frequent tasks like undo/redo, or more generally, not being able to navigate a UI using systematic and intuitive keystrokes; - every application's windows having different conventions for dealing with multiple documents, docking panels, and so on (and making the labels ever-smaller wherever they are, so your documents all look like "C:\users\Fred\..." and your web pages are all "Favourite Site | The S..."); - every application having different and increasingly obnoxious methods of giving you "important" notifications; - every application having different and increasingly obnoxious auto-update policies that break stuff; - every application having different ways to download and maintain plug-ins; - more and more applications trying to squeeze every last square inch of screen space by hiding commands behind a small number of tabs or, worse, meaningless menu-icon-things (we bought large, hi-res monitors for a reason, and having access to browser bookmarks within two clicks is worth far more to us than reading a web site at 2560x1400 instead of 2560x1370); - every application shoving its executables and config files in its own place (not helped by Windows 7's holier-than-thou "you can't put that in that directory" and "are you sure you want to do that" messages); - and many other things that just make day-to-day work horribly inefficient. I wish Microsoft would define a robust, standardised set of UI conventions again, based on usability rather than flashy stuff, and then at least stick to it themselves instead of inventing a whole new bunch of tricks for every new version of Office, IE, Visual Studio and so on. And then I wish other software, including everything I mentioned above and most definitely including Firefox and Chrome, would just follow the conventions or make some effort to collaborate and standardise in connection with Microsoft (or whoever else writes the platform(s) they run on).
- dpark 15y ago
  > I wish Microsoft would define a robust, standardised set of UI conventions again, based on usability rather than flashy stuff, and then at least stick to it themselves instead of inventing a whole new bunch of tricks for every new version of Office, IE, Visual Studio and so on. This, to me, is one the biggest pluses for Macs at this point. Microsoft keeps trying to reinvent the GUI, but they don't get rid of the old stuff, even in their own systems. I also wish Microsoft would adopt actual application bundles. 99% of applications should not actually need installers and uninstallers. Despite what Raymond Chen says, a simple folder is not the same thing.
  - wmf 15y ago
    Unfortunately the Delicious Generation (including some of its adherents inside Apple) threw out the HIG. And now we have the weird iOS-OS X hybrid that is Lion.
    - dpark 15y ago
      I haven't used Lion yet, but from what I've seen, it's still far more consistent than Windows.
      - shapoopy 15y ago
        This is undoubtedly true (with the flagrant exception of iCal and Address Book), but some of us old-timey Mac users remember a glorious past full of matte gray and a spatial Finder…
        dpark 15y ago
        That's true about iCal and Address Book. I don't use either of those, so I'd forgotten what they'd done to them. I'm not an "old-timey" Mac user by any stretch of the imagination, but I can't help wondering when Macs were "full of matte gray". Are you referring to pre-OSX days, because it seems that OSX is more gray now than ever before?
doctoboggan 15y ago
> users won't clearly know the difference between interaction with the browser, and interaction with a smart malicious website. If you remove the word malicious I think this very fact is the future of browsers. The browser should be designed to prevent a developer from doing anything malicious, but they should fade into the background and allow the web developer to make many (all?) the UI decisions.
MatthewPhillips 15y ago
That's because you mistakenly think Chrome is a Windows app, a Mac app, and a Linux app. It's not. It's an operating system that runs on top of those. They aren't going to, and shouldn't, waste their time trying to mimic UI decisions for various OSes. They aren't trying to be like Seesmic or Evernote (meaning, they aren't trying to be an "app").
- mikemaccana 15y ago
  More people use multiple apps on one platform than use the same app on multiple platforms. That said,a browser is considered an app platform itself these days. Also: you disagree with the poster. That doesn't mean he has been proven wrong. Your post comes off as unnecessarily rude.
- blauwbilgorgel 15y ago
  I'll admit I am not a good pick when it comes to computer semantics, so I might be mistaken. Trying to be an "app" or not: For me, it is about the courtesy of respecting my main OS settings. It is about introducing accessibility concerns by overriding system settings such as demonstrated in this active bug report from 2008: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=92 http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=92 > They aren't going to, and shouldn't, waste their time It looks like they are going to, and really should fix this bug report. Improving the usability, interoperability and accessibility of your "app" or "operating system" is not a waste of time. You'd have a hard time backing that up.
  - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
    My point wasn't that they shouldn't fix bugs; it's that they shouldn't prioritize fixing OS-specific bugs that impact 0.2% of their users. It sounds like you are a Windows power user and I suggest you use IE9 instead.
    - chimeracoder 15y ago
      I'm pretty sure more than .2% of Chrome users use Windows.
prawn 15y ago
And it's not like Microsoft haven't done the same - the ribbon and that bulbous Office button for saving and opening confuse me every time.

Silhouette 15y ago

> What I don't like about these Chrome UI's is that they don't respect my OS settings Hear, hear. On our new serious workstation, we mostly run a variety of developer tools and browsers, some basic office software, various graphics/DTP/modelling stuff from companies like Adobe and Autodesk, and a bunch of tools to automate things and join the dots. On a quick look, exactly none of the major products there uses the standard Windows 7 UI conventions. I, for one, am sick of: - not knowing which keyboard shortcuts perform frequent tasks like undo/redo, or more generally, not being able to navigate a UI using systematic and intuitive keystrokes; - every application's windows having different conventions for dealing with multiple documents, docking panels, and so on (and making the labels ever-smaller wherever they are, so your documents all look like "C:\users\Fred\..." and your web pages are all "Favourite Site | The S..."); - every application having different and increasingly obnoxious methods of giving you "important" notifications; - every application having different and increasingly obnoxious auto-update policies that break stuff; - every application having different ways to download and maintain plug-ins; - more and more applications trying to squeeze every last square inch of screen space by hiding commands behind a small number of tabs or, worse, meaningless menu-icon-things (we bought large, hi-res monitors for a reason, and having access to browser bookmarks within two clicks is worth far more to us than reading a web site at 2560x1400 instead of 2560x1370); - every application shoving its executables and config files in its own place (not helped by Windows 7's holier-than-thou "you can't put that in that directory" and "are you sure you want to do that" messages); - and many other things that just make day-to-day work horribly inefficient. I wish Microsoft would define a robust, standardised set of UI conventions again, based on usability rather than flashy stuff, and then at least stick to it themselves instead of inventing a whole new bunch of tricks for every new version of Office, IE, Visual Studio and so on. And then I wish other software, including everything I mentioned above and most definitely including Firefox and Chrome, would just follow the conventions or make some effort to collaborate and standardise in connection with Microsoft (or whoever else writes the platform(s) they run on).

dpark 15y ago
> I wish Microsoft would define a robust, standardised set of UI conventions again, based on usability rather than flashy stuff, and then at least stick to it themselves instead of inventing a whole new bunch of tricks for every new version of Office, IE, Visual Studio and so on. This, to me, is one the biggest pluses for Macs at this point. Microsoft keeps trying to reinvent the GUI, but they don't get rid of the old stuff, even in their own systems. I also wish Microsoft would adopt actual application bundles. 99% of applications should not actually need installers and uninstallers. Despite what Raymond Chen says, a simple folder is not the same thing.
- wmf 15y ago
  Unfortunately the Delicious Generation (including some of its adherents inside Apple) threw out the HIG. And now we have the weird iOS-OS X hybrid that is Lion.
  - dpark 15y ago
    I haven't used Lion yet, but from what I've seen, it's still far more consistent than Windows.
    - shapoopy 15y ago
      This is undoubtedly true (with the flagrant exception of iCal and Address Book), but some of us old-timey Mac users remember a glorious past full of matte gray and a spatial Finder…
      - dpark 15y ago
        That's true about iCal and Address Book. I don't use either of those, so I'd forgotten what they'd done to them. I'm not an "old-timey" Mac user by any stretch of the imagination, but I can't help wondering when Macs were "full of matte gray". Are you referring to pre-OSX days, because it seems that OSX is more gray now than ever before?

doctoboggan 15y ago

> users won't clearly know the difference between interaction with the browser, and interaction with a smart malicious website. If you remove the word malicious I think this very fact is the future of browsers. The browser should be designed to prevent a developer from doing anything malicious, but they should fade into the background and allow the web developer to make many (all?) the UI decisions.

MatthewPhillips 15y ago

That's because you mistakenly think Chrome is a Windows app, a Mac app, and a Linux app. It's not. It's an operating system that runs on top of those. They aren't going to, and shouldn't, waste their time trying to mimic UI decisions for various OSes. They aren't trying to be like Seesmic or Evernote (meaning, they aren't trying to be an "app").

mikemaccana 15y ago
More people use multiple apps on one platform than use the same app on multiple platforms. That said,a browser is considered an app platform itself these days. Also: you disagree with the poster. That doesn't mean he has been proven wrong. Your post comes off as unnecessarily rude.
blauwbilgorgel 15y ago
I'll admit I am not a good pick when it comes to computer semantics, so I might be mistaken. Trying to be an "app" or not: For me, it is about the courtesy of respecting my main OS settings. It is about introducing accessibility concerns by overriding system settings such as demonstrated in this active bug report from 2008: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=92 http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=92 > They aren't going to, and shouldn't, waste their time It looks like they are going to, and really should fix this bug report. Improving the usability, interoperability and accessibility of your "app" or "operating system" is not a waste of time. You'd have a hard time backing that up.
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  My point wasn't that they shouldn't fix bugs; it's that they shouldn't prioritize fixing OS-specific bugs that impact 0.2% of their users. It sounds like you are a Windows power user and I suggest you use IE9 instead.
  - chimeracoder 15y ago
    I'm pretty sure more than .2% of Chrome users use Windows.

prawn 15y ago

And it's not like Microsoft haven't done the same - the ribbon and that bulbous Office button for saving and opening confuse me every time.