6 ms·

Often the best ideas are those that make you wonder, "why hasn't anyone done this before?" and in retrospect seem completely obvious and intuitive. Like this!

mtdewcmu 13y ago
I thought the same thing. I had a simple and obvious idea to make the browser history a timeline, rather than a list of links that changes when you revisit something. Then I looked at the Chrome history and I saw that it already worked this way. It was only not obvious to Firefox, I suppose.
gcb1 13y ago
pandora.com had this on their login form wince they launched. on the flash version. press tab from the username field and the 4 L-shaped corners flown from there to password. was neat, but they removed it recently... at least I'm not getting it anymore.
- taternuts 13y ago
  I definitely remember seeing that as well - I told a few people about it because I thought it was a cool effect and good idea
edwinyzh 13y ago
Sorry, but I've done similar before, although it's for desktop UI :) Check the first video on http://liveditor.com http://liveditor.com. To be specific, once the user want to "inspect" a html element, I use a flying animation to jump from the web preview window to the corresponding source code in the html/css/js code editor.
- mtdewcmu 13y ago
  It's still a good idea to put it in web browsers. Simple and obvious ideas get continually reinvented until they take hold.
  - deathanatos 13y ago
    If it's a good idea, and we're going to discuss the proper level of the software stack to situate it, this should go in the UI toolkit for the desktop environment. (Why should the web browser be special?) Alas, the state of the web today is that every website should feel the need to ignore my desktop settings and re-invent the UI — to some degree of success. I have a beautiful theme, and it seems to me a shame that web browsers (and sites) ignore it. We should not be re-inventing the UI for each web site we design. (And it should not be the websites implementing basic UI elements.) Better, I think, would be a way to hook into the user's UI toolkit and UI preferences, and theme them. That way, the web site behaves like the rest of the UI environment, but can be themed to match your corporate style. (If you've ever seen FreeCiv on Linux, that might be a good example: it uses GTK, and the settings, but themes the widgets for the game.)
- fyolnish 13y ago
  That's not the same interaction.
dspillett 13y ago
I have seen this (well, something very similar) done before: newer versions of MS Excel (or at least the web based version) slide the cell focus indicator around instead of just removing it from one place to another. I didn't like it at first but probably because it was different and seemed unnecessarily showy, but after a couple of minutes to get used to the change it does make the interaction feel smoother and a little more natural.

mtdewcmu 13y ago

I thought the same thing. I had a simple and obvious idea to make the browser history a timeline, rather than a list of links that changes when you revisit something. Then I looked at the Chrome history and I saw that it already worked this way. It was only not obvious to Firefox, I suppose.

gcb1 13y ago

pandora.com had this on their login form wince they launched. on the flash version. press tab from the username field and the 4 L-shaped corners flown from there to password. was neat, but they removed it recently... at least I'm not getting it anymore.

taternuts 13y ago
I definitely remember seeing that as well - I told a few people about it because I thought it was a cool effect and good idea

edwinyzh 13y ago

Sorry, but I've done similar before, although it's for desktop UI :) Check the first video on http://liveditor.com http://liveditor.com. To be specific, once the user want to "inspect" a html element, I use a flying animation to jump from the web preview window to the corresponding source code in the html/css/js code editor.

mtdewcmu 13y ago
It's still a good idea to put it in web browsers. Simple and obvious ideas get continually reinvented until they take hold.
- deathanatos 13y ago
  If it's a good idea, and we're going to discuss the proper level of the software stack to situate it, this should go in the UI toolkit for the desktop environment. (Why should the web browser be special?) Alas, the state of the web today is that every website should feel the need to ignore my desktop settings and re-invent the UI — to some degree of success. I have a beautiful theme, and it seems to me a shame that web browsers (and sites) ignore it. We should not be re-inventing the UI for each web site we design. (And it should not be the websites implementing basic UI elements.) Better, I think, would be a way to hook into the user's UI toolkit and UI preferences, and theme them. That way, the web site behaves like the rest of the UI environment, but can be themed to match your corporate style. (If you've ever seen FreeCiv on Linux, that might be a good example: it uses GTK, and the settings, but themes the widgets for the game.)
fyolnish 13y ago
That's not the same interaction.

dspillett 13y ago

I have seen this (well, something very similar) done before: newer versions of MS Excel (or at least the web based version) slide the cell focus indicator around instead of just removing it from one place to another. I didn't like it at first but probably because it was different and seemed unnecessarily showy, but after a couple of minutes to get used to the change it does make the interaction feel smoother and a little more natural.