Will tabs in IE7 confuse users? | The Coffeehouse

Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...

DMassy wrote:
I'll say again - THIS USER INTERFACE IS NOT FINAL.

I heard you the first time. Smiley

I'm just trying to make sure the final version will be better.

brussell

Sven Groot wrote:

DMassy wrote: I'll say again - THIS USER INTERFACE IS NOT FINAL.

I heard you the first time.

I'm just trying to make sure the final version will be better.

And if you didn't get feedback (even/especially feedback that does understand it isn't final) then you wouldn't know what wasn't well recieved and what should be changed. It would get left as-is thinking nobody complained, so they must have liked it. we understand it isn't final and that is why it is good to talk about it in hopes it can change for the better.

DMassy
Driving!

Sven Groot wrote:

DMassy wrote: I'll say again - THIS USER INTERFACE IS NOT FINAL.

I heard you the first time.

I'm just trying to make sure the final version will be better.

Sorry. Maybe I'm a bit grumpy this morning and just a little tired of people saying they don't like it and assuming that this reflects the final design Smiley

.
I think the feedback will be most useful when we feel we are closer to the final user experience.
In the meantime feedback on compatibility with web sites, applications and extensions is amongst the most useful for this first beta.

Thanks
-Dave

brussell

DMassy wrote:

Sven Groot wrote:

DMassy wrote: I'll say again - THIS USER INTERFACE IS NOT FINAL.

I heard you the first time.

I'm just trying to make sure the final version will be better.

Sorry. Maybe I'm a bit grumpy this morning and just a little tired of people saying they don't like it and assuming that this reflects the final design .
I think the feedback will be most useful when we feel we are closer to the final user experience.
In the meantime feedback on compatibility with web sites, applications and extensions is amongst the most useful for this first beta.

Thanks
-Dave

Well, if it makes you feel any less grumpy and tired of people saying they don't like it, I do like some of the changes. Like I said before, I've come to really like the tabs and I like the ability to move the menu bar AND put other tool bars on the same row. I'm just hoping something happens to make the transition easier (I'm not sure what you could really do) so I'm not getting calls from all my relatives asking what happened to their IE Smiley

As far as compatability, I haven't really seen much different from all the other people. Certain sites, such as www.hp.com show up in really small text that I can't read. Other than that I'm really liking the new IE. I don't do much in the way of web development anymore, so I can't really comment on that area. I just do a family site in ASP.NET and that site still works great in IE 7.

dentaku

The way the tabs look at the moment, it's VERY confusing. Tabs are supposed to look like the tabs at the top of file folders. That's why they're called TABS.

A good example of tabs that actually look like they're supposed to is to go into Display Properties.
The tabs there are part of the particular window you have open (or "on top").
Macromedia DreamweaverMX 2004 has great tabs. They look exactly like file folder tabs and are a good visual clue as to which window is on top.

irascian
Irascible Ian

DMassy wrote:

Tabs are on by default in IE7 so I'm not quite sure what irascian is referring to.

I was being dense! Very few of the sites I go to open links in a new window so I hadn't seen any tabs unless I explicitly used the menu command to say open in new tab. My bad!

irascian
Irascible Ian

DMassy wrote:

Any change to the user experience in any product does tend to be greeted with mixed reactions. Some users are more resistant to change even when the change actually benefits productivity. Others embrace change as something new and exciting. One thing that is clear to me though is that we need an updated user experience for browsing the web. It may take a few releases to get there but what should the browsing experience be in ten years time? I hope it isn't identical to what we have in browsers today!

Aside from the fact it runs like treacle (this may be a Vista networking problem, all I know is that IE6 on XP on the same laptop ran fast, IE7 on Vista beta 1 takes forever to open a new site) I'm getting to like IE7 more and more. I don't like the tab design - confusing as hell until there's more than one, but of course that can change. I've grown to like the switching between Stop and Refresh, the tabs and perhaps most importantly of all "Print to fit".

To be honest it felt confusing and wrong (downright ugly in parts - yeah, I know, I know it's just an early beta!) until I read the white paper where some of the reasons things were done started to make sense. But I don't think you can expect members of the public to read white papers to "get" the new browser experience.

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

Oooh, question!

Will IE7 allow the user to change font-size for "px"-sized fonts?

Maurits
AKA Matthew van Eerde

W3bbo wrote:
Will IE7 allow the user to change font-size for "px"-sized fonts?

+1 on that... increasing text size should work on a "virtual ppi" level to be at all useful.

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

And just a question on tabs... will there be an option to disable target="_blank" for anchors and to get the Javascript "open window" function to be ignored and to open them in tabs instead?

Maurits
AKA Matthew van Eerde

W3bbo wrote:
will there be an option to disable target="_blank" for anchors and to get the Javascript "open window" function to be ignored and to open them in tabs instead?

Something like this? (screenshot from Deerpark, last night's build)

The image “http://www.geocities.com/mvaneerde/deerpark-tabs.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

The image “http://www.geocities.com/mvaneerde/deerpark-tabs.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...

That's allready in IE7, in fact, it's the default in beta 1. It works for target="_blank", not sure for window.open though. That'd be kinda hard to do if parameters are passed to customize the window.

Maurits
AKA Matthew van Eerde

In Deer Park, the pref does work for window.open() calls (tested)
Right-clicking on a link offers Open in New Window and Open in New Tab - Open in New Window works even if the pref is against it. Could this be considered a bug?

Here's a properly-themed version of that pref dialog:

The image “http://www.geocities.com/mvaneerde/deerpark-tabs-pzilla.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

The image “http://www.geocities.com/mvaneerde/deerpark-tabs-pzilla.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

bsilby

DMassy wrote:
In the first beta we are mostly interested in feedback from the technical community around compatibility.

Dave, I'm wondering if a beta release will be made available for developers who do not subscribe the MSDN. I do a lot of dhtml work and would like to test my stuff in IE7, but I am not an MSDN member.

Cheers,
Brent.

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

Maurits wrote:
In Deer Park, the pref does work for window.open() calls (tested)
Right-clicking on a link offers Open in New Window and Open in New Tab - Open in New Window works even if the pref is against it. Could this be considered a bug?

Here's a properly-themed version of that pref dialog:

Yay for Pimpzilla!

Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...

bsilby wrote:

DMassy wrote: In the first beta we are mostly interested in feedback from the technical community around compatibility.

Dave, I'm wondering if a beta release will be made available for developers who do not subscribe the MSDN. I do a lot of dhtml work and would like to test my stuff in IE7, but I am not an MSDN member.

It's likely that beta versions of IE will be made publically available, much like XPSP2. I suspect this will be either beta 2 or the first RC.