Sometimes it's the little things that count.
The most prominent feature of Firefox 3.6 is Personas, which let you reskin the browser with thousands of different looks. But my single favorite change is a subtler change to the open-source browser's user interface.
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Specifically, when you open a link in a new tab, it appears immediately to the right of the active tab. Before, the new tabs would appear to the far right of the strip of tabs.
Yup, that's it. For those of us who spend hours a day in a browser, though, the new tab behavior helps group related tasks together. I constantly shuffle among dozens of tabs, and the new approach automatically brings some organization to my cluttered life.
However, I know it's not everybody's favorite browser behavior. So along with explaining why I like it, I'll also take some potshots and share instructions on how to get the old way back.
Why it's better
The more things I do with a browser--and the number has increased steadily for years now--the more important it becomes to be able to find different tasks amid the chaos. Microsoft and Apple understand this, as evidenced by the new taskbar features in Windows 7 and dock expose in Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard. Those features make it easier to pluck out the one window you need from among the many you may have open.
There's a pattern to how I spawn the dozens of tabs I use as a day progresses. On a variety of pages--Gmail, Google Reader, Yahoo Finance, somebody's blog post--I'll encounter a host of links to other pages. I'll middle-click my mouse button to open interesting pages as background tabs, then use Ctrl-Tab to switch to the new pages when I'm ready. I repeat this pattern many times a day.
With the old behavior, each tab appeared to the far right of the tab strip. That's fine when getting started, but when I've moved halfway across the list and want to open another batch, I want the new ones--call them children--to open next to their parent tab. When I go away and come back, or when I lose place juggling tasks, it's easier to find my bearings again.
It's like being in a library. When you're in the European history section, you don't want to find books on rewiring your house and on vegetarian cooking.
As a longtime Firefox user, I didn't realize tab positioning could be better. When I started using Google's Chrome, which introduced the new tab behavior to me, the scales were lifted from my eyes. I immediately could get to the next tab with a quick press of Ctrl-Tab on the keyboard rather than have to use the mouse to click over to the far end of the list. I use both browsers daily, but until the Firefox 3.6 beta arrived, the new-tab position had become a sore point for me when in Firefox.
The change is actually a big deal in a couple ways. First, even seemingly minor changes in software can be disruptive. Old habits die hard, and computer users wrestling with constant change can get angry when more is foisted upon them.
Second, though, browsers are assuming an ever greater role in what people do in their personal and professional lives, and keeping one's bearings is commensurately important. That's especially true for those people for whom a gaggle of browser tabs represents a collection of chores going on in parallel.
Internet Explorer 8 categorizes related tabs by color.
(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET) How the competition handles it
Tabs are now universal among browsers, but new-tab behavior isn't. Firefox and Chrome handle it the way I like best, but how do others tackle the issue?
First, let's look at Internet Explorer 8. Microsoft showed it understands some of the challenges of tab management in its latest version of its browser by coloring child tabs the same hue as their parents, but I have a gripe with how it works. Specifically, although child tabs get the same color as their parents for easy grouping and arrive to the right, grandchild tabs are the same color as child tabs. Similarly, grandchild tabs appear to the far right of the whole group of child tabs.
In my mind, I consider grandchild tabs a separate group from the child tabs. But with IE, grandchildren get the same color and position treatment as children. The only way to get a new color is to start a fresh empty tab There's no easy way to give grandchildren a new color without causing some confusion, though--should the child be the same color as the original parent or change color to be grouped with the grandchildren?
Next is Opera, which gives users a choice. By default, it opens new tabs to the far right, which I don't like, but in the Advanced|Tabs section of the preferences dialog box, you can check "Open new tab next to active." Huzzah!
There's a subtle change here I don't care for, though. Tabs always appear immediately to the right of the active tab. I'd rather have all one tab's children appear in sequence to the right. For example, if a parent tab is in position 1, then the first child would be in position 2, the second in position 3, and the third in position 4. Opening three child tabs in Opera leaves the parent in position 1, the third child in position 2, the second child in position 3, and the first child in position 4.
Last, there's Safari. It does it the old way I loathe with no option to change. Too bad.
Firefox can show thumbnail previews of new tabs, but I find them hard to recognize in front of busy Web pages.
(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET) Why it's not enough
Most browser makers are excited about the fact that their software is subsuming more and more computing tasks that previously ran on computer operating systems. But as browsers inherit this central importance, they also inherit some of the hassles.
The new tab positioning behavior in Firefox is a step in the right direction, but there's more that needs to be done. Moving from one tab to a related adjacent one, whether through a keyboard command or mouse clicking, is a minor change. But things get harder when you need to switch from one group of tabs to the next.
There's work under way here. Opera is perhaps the leader with the ability to show thumbnails as you use Ctrl-Tab to cycle your list of open tabs.
Firefox has been noodling with the approach too. It tried then dropped tab thumbnail previews earlier, but the technology is still present. Using the about:config system for tweaking the browser (more on this later), you can change the "browser.ctrlTab.previews" setting to "true."
But for reasons that aren't clear to me, I don't find this effective either in Firefox or Opera. Perhaps I haven't used it enough, or the thumbnails are too small to be immediately recognizable, or they're just hard to see against the noisy background. There's a good reason that Apple dims the background most of the way to black when using Expose.
Aero Peek in Windows 7 lets the task bar show a glimpse of Firefox and IE tabs.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)Windows itself is helping, too. The new taskbar in Windows 7 can show individual tabs, once browsers support the feature. It's in Internet Explorer 8, and it's in the new Firefox 3.6 beta.
Add-ons such as Firefox Showcase can further tweak Firefox. (Indeed, for a wealth of options, check Mashable's handy Firefox tab management guide.)
More interesting to me, though, is work under way to expand Firefox's "awesome bar" abilities. Today, typing in it opens Web pages and retrieves ones you've already visited or bookmarked. In the future, it could be able to move you to another open tab, too. I'm a keyboard guy, so particularly appreciate this idea.
You can get a taste of the idea now. If you've enabled the "browser.ctrlTab.previews" option, hitting Ctrl-Shift-Tab will not only show you thumbnail previews, but will put a cursor in a search box.
Typing the letters of the Web page name will winnow down the thumbnails. For example, typing "netap" will cull my open tabs so only Net Applications and NetApp show. If you have a bunch of similar tabs all open, this might not help much, of course.
However, the feature only works with the tabs of one browser window, so if you can't use it to search among other browser instances.
How to get the old way back
Perhaps I've convinced you that the new approach is better. But perhaps not--in which case I encourage you to share your thoughts in the comments so people will hear more than my opinion.
For those who don't like the new tab positions, you can revert to the old method.
To get the old style back for new tab position, use Firefox's about:config system.
(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)First type "about:config" in the Firefox address bar. You'll get a warning that you're tinkering with Firefox's innards and you should be careful, but this isn't brain surgery, so don't be frightened. Click the "I'll be careful, I promise" button, and you'll see a big list of all the browser settings that can be tweaked.
Next, in the text box labeled "Filter:", type "tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent"; you should see just one entry below. In the column marked "Value," double-click on the word "true" to change it to "false." You're done.
But I'd encourage you to at least give the new way a try. If you don't like it, you can always change back.
In this screenshot from Gomes' video, the programmer shrinks and enlarges icons using a multitouch interface for an application running within Firefox.
(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)Multitouch interfaces are all the rage, for good reason, and a Mozilla programmer has been working to enable the technology for Web applications in the Firefox browser.
Firefox today can be controlled with multitouch gestures--a three-finger sweep up and down to go to the top or bottom of a Web page, for example, or two-finger pinch gestures to zoom out. But Felipe Gomes, a Brazilian computer science student who just finished a stint as a Mozilla intern, has demonstrated how Web-based applications, not just Firefox, can use multitouch.
His demonstration shows multitouch controls to shrink and enlarge icons, paint, select a region of a photo, and play Pong.
Multitouch interfaces, for example on the iPhone and Hewlett-Packard TouchSmart PCs, let the computer interpret the contact and motion of multiple fingers on the screen. And Apple MacBooks are equipped with multitouch trackpads.
One issue for multitouch, though, is standardizing the meaning of various gestures. Firefox and Safari on a Mac both move forward and backward in browsing history with three-finger sweeps right and left, respectively, but Safari doesn't follow Mozilla's example of three-finger sweeps up and down.
This issue gets even more complicated if Web applications get multitouch interfaces. What touch actions are controlling Firefox or the Web application? Or, for that matter, the operating system? The same two-finger gesture that draws a selection box to crop a photo in a Web app could also be a Firefox multitouch command to zoom in or out on the Web page.
Before we get to the conflicts and issues of interface standardization, though, we need more computers and applications that can take advantage of multitouch. Even I, who has yet to find a rival for keyboard controls when it comes to speed for most operations, am a fan of multitouch. So I look forward to seeing its potential realized even if that means a bit of chaos in the meantime.
The new prototype UI of OpenOffice.org.
(Credit: Sun)I am possibly the only one among my co-workers who hasn't moved to Office 2007. I just can't stand the ribbon toolbar, which makes working with documents require a lot of mouse clicking. The traditional menus have been working just fine and I prefer being able to move around with keyboard shortcuts.
It's sad that together with Windows 7, Microsoft is forcing this new user interface on all of us. Applications that come with the new operating system, such as Write or Paint, are also using the ribbon toolbar instead of menus.
And it seems Sun is doing the same thing with its popular OpenOffice.org suite, which offers free alternatives to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
According to a blog from Frank Loehman, a developer of OpenOffice.org, Sun is working on creating a new user interface for the open-source office suite. And from the screenshot, the new UI seems very much like the ribbons found in Office 2007.
However, fortunately, the menu bar is still there. Hopefully this means the suite will still offer the menu UI in addition to the ribbon bar.
According to Loehman, the new UI is still in the testing phase and the content of the toolbars and the group labeling are subject to change. Sun is looking for user feedback on the new UI and my feedback is this: just get rid of the ribbon or offer people the option to pick between the two of them.
I'd personally like to offer browser makers my gratitude for realizing that my screen isn't big enough.
I'm one of those people who wants every bit of display real estate I can get. The more I can see of the document I'm writing, the in-box I'm scanning, and the photo I'm editing, the happier and more productive I am.
The maximize button is my friend. Toolbars are my enemies.
So I'm happy to report that browser makers are paying new attention to the issue. It's important to me for reading Web sites, but it's really important to me for the new generation of Web applications. A row of pixels saved once in the browser is returned again with each Web-based application.
Mozilla's ultimate goal is to make the user interface step into the background as much as possible--indeed, the mobile-phone version of Firefox now under development has no visible user interface until it's needed. "Every time a user has to think about how to do something, instead of what we want to do, we as software creators have failed," said Aza Raskin, Mozilla's leader of user interface work.
But it's not simple to redesign the browsers. Users can be confused when interfaces change, some controls are essential, and hiding them can cause problems.
"The challenge to reducing UI (user interface) is in recognition versus recall. People generally use what they see," Raskin said. "How can we provide one-click access to everything possible on the Web without also cluttering the screen? That's a question we are still answering."
Microsoft's case is illuminating. Its Internet Explorer 7 hid the menu bar, though it could be revealed by pressing the Alt key, but IE 8 shows menus by default. (It can be hidden again by default if people choose, and I do.)
Reclaiming real estate
There's been some work in this area for years. For example, hitting the F11 key in Windows puts Firefox into a full-screen mode, hiding title, menu, address, and tab bars. And Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 hid the menu bar, though it could be revealed by pressing the Alt key; IE 8 shows menus by default again, though it can be hidden again by default if people choose, and I do.
But now the pixel reclamation effort is taking off in earnest. The big statement came in September 2008, when Google revealed its Chrome browser--ironically named because it aims to move the user interface elements, called chrome, as much into the background as possible.
Chrome wiped out the title bar altogether and arrayed its browser tabs in the newly freed space. It also wiped out the menu strip and tucked the options into two drop-down menu buttons to the right of the address bar. Information that would show in a status bar, such as the actual URL of a Web address you're hovering your mouse over, appear in a temporary box that appears on the lower left. When you search a Web page, another small window appears in the upper right. (Chrome looks somewhat different on Mac OS X, which always uses a menu bar at the top of the screen that's detached from the browser Window itself.)
An example of Chrome's latest interface on Windows.
(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)
Chrome on the Mac can't free up the menu bar real estate, so it looks different than on Windows.
(Credit: Screenshot by Josh Lowensohn/CNET)Missing at launch was a full-screen mode, but Google rapidly filled in that gap. This max-screen ethos is one reason that Chrome, at present at least, is my default browser.
Another change came with Safari 4 from Apple. Like Chrome, it added the two-button menu icons toward the upper right. Unlike Chrome, it sports a traditional menu bar as well, though with the Windows version it can be hidden to free up some real estate.
Safari 4 lets you hide the menu bar--but between the beta and final versions, Apple moved the tabs to the more conservative position immediately above the browser Web page.
(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)Unfortunately, in my opinion, Apple backed off from another change between the Safari 4 beta and final version. Initially, the browser sported tabs in the title bar, like Chrome, but Apple later moved them into the more conservative position immediately above the Web page.
The next move comes from Mozilla, which leads development of the Firefox browser.
With the dash to release Firefox 3.5 now over, developer attention again focuses on the future. Last week, mock-ups of Firefox 3.7 arrived to trigger discussions of what the final interface should look like. On display were two Chrome-like characteristics: the two menu icons and the missing menu bar.
Shortly afterward came the Firefox 4.0 mock-ups, moving the tabs to the title bar in one option that's even more Chrome-esque.
This Firefox 4.0 mock-up shows a very Chrome-like interface.
(Credit: Mozilla)One of the big assets Firefox has is its extensions system, which can be used to customize the browser. One I like is autoHideStatusbar, which reclaims the status bar real estate except when I need it in order to see where a link on a Web site leads. I also use Tree Style Tab to move tabs off to the left; I typically need vertical space more than horizontal.
In the same vein, those who were enamored of the Firefox 3.7 mock-up look can try it themselves in the real world with a three-step change LifeHacker put together.
The Web app era
How all these changes will shake out isn't clear yet. But what is clear is that influential developers believe thin frames are better than thickets of icons, menus, bars, and boxes.
The Web application trend is one reason this trend is important.
Consider for a moment Microsoft Word. Especially when the newer version's ribbon of icons is active, it requires a fair amount of area to house its controls.
Now consider Google Docs, which must add its word-processing user interface elements with those already present for the browser itself. Those using the application must bear a double burden. It's like going back to the era of 800x600-pixel displays.
Now factor in the Web application future--Picnik for photo editing, Zoho for office productivity, Bespin for programming, even Microsoft Office soon. These applications are increasing in number, sophistication, and importance, even if they aren't replacing desktop applications as soon as Google Chrome OS developers might hope.
A little bit of screen real estate saved in the browser is multiplied many times over across this range of applications. And of course, conventional Web browsing can benefit, too, offering the possibility of more information and less scrolling to get to it.
It takes real work to pare back a user interface without impairing software's utility. But until the day arrives when my screen is displayed on an entire office wall or directly on my retina, I'll hoard every pixel that browser developers can give me.
Opening a new tab in a Web browser shows a lot of prime but empty real estate, and now the programmers behind Firefox are following their peers at Safari and Chrome in trying to make it more useful.
Mozilla interface guru Aza Raskin posted screenshots of a new way to fill the new-tab screen with something useful but not too taxing for the computer.
Along the right edge is the "quick-access bar," a stack of thumbnail views of your popular pages selected on the basis of how recently and frequently you visited them. In the upper left are buttons that take various actions. For example, if you've selected some text on a Web page before opening the new tab, that text will be presented as a search that can be performed by clicking the button in the new tab.
Those with the latest developer build of Firefox 3.1 can try the new-tab behavior through a Firefox extension. To do so, see Raskin's three-step process described on the Mozilla Labs blog.
Mozilla has been testing new-tab options since January. "From the feedback from the last two rounds of new tab concepts, we know that the page needs to load instantly (even a small wait breaks user experience); that it shouldn't be visually distracting; and that it should be a launch point into your daily activities," Raskin said.
Safari 4, in beta, and Google Chrome both offer an array of popular Web pages when opening a new tab. Google's Toolbar can bring the Chrome behavior to Firefox and Internet Explorer.
Raskin explained Mozilla's thinking about relegating the Web page thumbnails to a right-side strip this way: "It may seem strange that the quick-access strip is along the right of the window. It's there in order to be polite. If you've got your mind on opening a new tab and just entering a url, it's outside your foveal vision."
Gmail forsook folders for a more flexible idea, labels, but Google has begun making a change acknowledging that the older interface idea has its place.
The drawback of folders is that you must decide which one is the best location for a message you want to file--"family" or "travel," for example. With labels, you can apply both, and in Gmail, clicking either label will show that particular message.
But Google concluded that folders have one nice feature: when you move a message out of the in-box and into them, the message is filed. With Gmail today, you have to first apply a label, then separately archive it. But with the new feature, "move to," those two steps can be combined into one, according to a blog post by Gmail engineer Emil Eklund.
"It's not always obvious how to use labels, especially for people who are new to Gmail and used to using folders, and it hasn't helped that some common tasks have been more complicated than they should be," Eklund said.
Gmail added new buttons for "Move to" and "Labels."
(Credit: Google)The Gmail interface is getting two new buttons across the top, starting Tuesday. One will be the "Move to" button, which lets people apply a label and archive the message; the other "Labels" button can be used just to apply one or more labels. If you have keyboard shortcuts enabled, the two buttons' functions are accessed with V and L, respectively.
Updated 12:47 p.m. PST to correct the "Move to" shortcut.
Google released a second beta of its toolbar software for Firefox that gives the browser a prominent feature of Google's own Chrome.
In Chrome, when you open a new tab, the browser displays a page with up to nine miniature versions of pages you visit often--a selection of what you've shown to be your collective home page. The new beta version of Toolbar 5 does the same for Firefox, including not just the miniature pages, but also the list of recent bookmarks and recently closed tabs that Chrome shows.
There are still no ads, though, which I wonder about given Google's new interest in improving its profitability.
Firefox can inherit Chrome's new-tab behavior using a new beta of the Google Toolbar.
(Credit: Google)According to Google toolbar programmer Sergey Ryazanov's blog post on the subject, you can select the specific pages you want, and none of the information is sent back to Google.
I've found the new-tab behavior of Chrome handy, especially when I first launch the browser. It presents me with nine pages, and I middle-click on the ones I happen to want at that particular moment. It's still probably not enough for me to install the toolbar, though, since I hate bloat and the lost real estate of browsers. And Firefox can be set with multiple-tab home pages anyway.
Ryazanov warns that the feature doesn't work with Firefox 2 and may conflict with other Firefox extensions. It's curious he didn't mention Chrome in the post, though, especially given how proud Google is of its Chrome user interface research.
Call me fickle, but I switched my default browser back to Firefox for the time being. In doing so, I discovered the features I really miss about Chrome.
Why did I switch back so soon after lavishing praise on Google's open-source Web browser? Well, when Google added the option to use a cutting-edge "developer preview" version, I signed up, and guess what--it's not as stable. Specifically, both 2.0.156.1 and the newer 2.0.157.2 that I now have installed inexplicably become unresponsive for long periods of time--at least 10 seconds, which is about 9.5 seconds longer than my tolerance limit.
But I like some of Chrome's new features, so I didn't want to downgrade to better-tested stable or beta versions. Instead, I thought perhaps I'd see what my second-favorite browser felt like again while waiting for the newer Chrome features to settle down.
I was a little surprised. What got me to switch to Chrome two months ago was performance, but what I missed most upon heading back to Firefox was Chrome's user interface.
More than once, I found that even after a few weeks of Chrome, my muscle memory had been reprogrammed to expect different behavior. Switching back to Firefox wasn't just different, though--I wanted the old features. Here's a list of what I didn't even know that I'd come to like.
The location of new tabs
When you open a link in a new tab with Chrome (I often middle-click to do so), the new page shows up in tab immediately to the right of the current tab. This naturally groups related tabs, and for me at least, eases the process of switching among many.
When you open a new tab in Firefox, it appears to the far right of the list, and it's harder to get to it. It takes just that little extra bit of time to locate and navigate to the tab.
Good news, though: Mozilla evangelist Chris Blizzard pointed me to a blog post by programmer Mike Beltzner, which says the same behavior is coming to Firefox:
• tabs that are opened from links will open to the immediate right of the current tab
• new tabs created by the New Tab button or keyboard shortcut will open at the end of the tab strip
• if multiple tabs are opened (in the background) from links, they will open sequentially to the right of each other; as soon as focus changes, this sequential opening behavior will stop, and tabs will go back to opening immediately to the right or at the end of the tab strip as per the above
After typing 'g' into Firefox's awesome bar, it takes two more keystrokes to load Gmail.
(Credit: CNET News)
After typing 'g' in Chrome, hitting the Enter key will load Gmail.
(Credit: CNET News)
Searching from the address bar
I think Firefox's awesome bar does a better job digging previously visited links out of my history, but searching directly from Google's Omnibox, which adds online search into the mix, is more useful. I search dozens of times a day, and now I have to remember either to visit a search page or head over to Firefox's special search box (to do the latter faster, I hit Ctrl-L, then Tab).
Some folks are concerned about sending lots of juicy personal data to Google's servers, which monitors what you type so it can supply suggested search results. But except for typing in Web sites, it's the same stuff I'd type into a search page anyway.
One less keystroke
When typing addresses into the address bar, both Chrome and Firefox offer a list of suggestions in a drop-down box. But Chrome highlights its top pick, while Firefox puts it one entry below the box.
That means if the pick is right, I just have to hit Enter with Chrome, but the down arrow, then Enter with Firefox. It's a tiny thing, but I do this hundreds of times a day.
Launch speed
Technically this is more a performance issue than a user interface issue, but responsiveness does matter. Loading Chrome feels like loading Notepad, a program that hasn't changed much from the era of 386-based Windows 3.1 machines; loading Firefox feels more like the grindingly slow process of hauling Outlook into my machine's memory.
Don't get me wrong--there are plenty of things I like better about Firefox, including RSS feed discovery, extensions, the full-screen mode, color profile support, about:config for tweaks, and, I discovered a couple weeks ago, compatibility with McAfee's e-commerce Web site.
But I give credit to Google for coming up with actual interface improvements.
Good news for Firefox users who have lusted over Chrome and Safari's option that lets you "tear" away tabs from an open window. The latest build of 3.1 offers it as a standard feature--and it works marvelously.
As in Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari browsers you simply pull away a tab from the interface and it turns into its own window. Likewise you can drag it back into an already opened window, just like you'd do to re-order your existing tabs.
While not a ground-breaking feature, tab tearing is a large step forward in changing the way we interact with our browsers. It's a cross between the idea of having multiple tabs and multiple windows, but does not relegate the user to being pigeonholed in either one permanently.
If you're feeling brave you can download the latest development build of 3.1 here. As mentioned before, this also comes with some nice JavaScript speed improvements and a new look for Windows Vista users.
Below is a quick demo of how the new tear-away feature works, both with dragging tabs and choosing to open them via contextual menu.
(via MozillaLinks)
Wake up! It's 2008. There are things we've become accustomed to doing and seeing on Web sites for years that really should have vanished by now. Five things come to my mind that are user interface disasters. When I am president I will make sure the Supreme Court outlaws them:
1. Refresh
This whole story came about because I was monitoring the Apple announcement this morning and had to struggle to find a site that didn't need me to press the reload button to see the latest. I just wanted to pull up a blog and see the updates stream in. The only reliable self-updating live blog I found was SlashGear.
I like what the Huffington Post does to highlight news when you're on the home page: It flashes changed items with yellow highlighting, without redrawing the page. CNN redraws the whole page every few minutes--old school, but at least you know what you're seeing is somewhat up to date. Of course, you should be able to turn off autorefresh if you're on a slow link or are a slow reader, but to my mind, news sites should always be new.
Refreshing a page to see what's actually new is an anachronism and needs to die. The world moves fast, and readers want to lean back and watch it. (That's why I continue to be a booster for CoverItLive.)
2. Save
The whole idea of pressing the "save" button on a site or app to lock in your updates is old-fashioned. It also exposes users to data loss from system or connection bugs. Google Docs saves as you type, making it superior to Microsoft Office. Quicken (the software version) saves each transaction as you go. Note-taking apps OneNote and Evernote don't have save buttons because they don't need them (although in a UI flaw, the Web version of Evernote does).
When systems are built correctly, everything you do can be undone and rolled back, and there should be no need for a save button per se (although many apps will still need a way to milepost versions of files).
3. Log-in
I have a password manager (RoboForm) on my system that remembers hundreds of individual log-ins and passwords for the sites I try. I hate this. Why can't I use one log-in that I trust, and then authorize (and, importantly, de-authorize) apps to use it as I wish? OpenID is a solution, although it's conceptually a bit too weird to get mainstream adoption right now. Facebook Connect is another good universal log-in.
Keeping track of passwords for all the sites we visit is becoming unmanageable. There are better solutions.
4. One-size-fits-all site design
Too many beautiful and useful Web sites are hopeless on mobile or non-computer devices (like game consoles and low-resolution TV browsers). The world is mobile, and I find it continually surprising that most Web sites don't recognize when a mobile browser is accessing them so they can automatically display a small-screen, low-bandwidth version. Or at least give users the option for a small-screen view.
Why don't Web designers give mobile devices access to their sites?
5. Blocker ads
You know things are backward when the advertising message is as big as the content. But that's what's happening on a lot of sites right now: You want to watch a 30-second video but there's a 30-second pre-roll ad in front of it. Or you want to spend 15 seconds scanning a favorite site for headlines but a giant blocker ad pops up in your way. What do you do? You go away, or at least you hesitate before you come back. Sites need to make money, but punishing users for viewing content is not just old-fashioned, it's medieval.
The message should fit the medium, and TV-style advertising for the Web is not the right model.
What do you think?
