progrock's comments

How about the manufacturers providing a back door? Their own code.

What happens in the event that you loose your fob?

Thanks for that! Actually it still introduces the scroller at some point, but is slightly better.

Misleading title. Refined theme, rather than a UI overhaul.

Beautiful! Hardly. Just de-cluttered on the face of things. Trying to select an encoding is about as difficult as pinning the tail on the donkey.

I find I sometimes need to right click my title bar on Linux, to do things like move my window to another workspace. And other window functions, I have to have it on with Chrome.

I'd actually rather there was a simple meta key in each application, that you could use to just show you the vital data about a page. Meta data in webpages can be human readable - title, author, summary etc. How about an overlay? And how about have this for every app? Looking at an image - activate meta key, to see copyright info etc, listening to a tune, activate meta key to see tag info etc. Far better than hiding it under some menu item and distant properties tab.

Opera has an info bar, but it's not that user friendly.

That doesn't particulary address whether the title is necessary, it's great for window management, using windows instead of tabs. But you'll need a good window manager. I'd rather windows than tabs - though I fear that Opera introduced tabs as they were cheap windows more than anything else.

If you get tab happy, tabs are really difficult to navigate in Firefox without and extension, and I've tried most of the popular tab extensions - and have yet to find anything I like (that works without some bug).

Chrome and Opera squeeze the tabs, but list them all, whereas Firefox forces a scroll after so many, which feels horrible. Also Opera has let's you list and switch open tabs with CTRL+TAB, or lets you reposition your tabs.

Really though managing tabs should be left to the window manager. Otherwise you just get inconsistant behaviour between applications.

That's when the title comes into it's own.

One rough edge is that it totally ignores my keyboard layout for keyboard shortcuts. It appears to use the Qwerty layout for shortcuts, even under a different layout.

(That's Opera next 12.50 on Linux, with Presto)

Pick any of the main browsers, the main advance in the UI is the slimming down of controls. Even Opera went from a g'zillion toolbars down to a slim default interface. The rendering engines receive loads of attention while the basic browser UI is just plain boring and out dated. Camino doesn't really look that out of place even today.

Has Firefox gone completely native then on OSX? From what I can tell on Linux is that Firefox and Opera stand out (and even Chrome that shuns your system title bar..) These three apps are out of place on my desktop. At least Camino blended in.

You are right of course, I doubt there would be a scene, only me embarrassing myself by probably dragging out some kind of justification of not wanting to hand over my details. Perhaps it's down to being schooled in implicit compliance, and it feels a little weird!

It drags you down though. Every supermarket you go to asks for your loyalty card - which I refused to opt-in to for years, but you still are confronted with the question everytime - it gets tiresome.

I do my shopping by proxy, through a partners' loyalty card, and I've been pretty surprised at how sophisticated these systems have become.

There's a desperate battle between outlets now for custom. Loyalty cards now lead to offers (coupons) on items from the weekly shop, and our shopping basket is quite anormal I'd say. We are actually recouping some worthwhile savings, for once. Rather than being offered some promotional discount on something I have no interest in. I feel a little wrong about it, but I no longer can resist the enticement.

Funny you say that. A lot of retail chains in the UK, ask for your postcode as you make a purchase, and basically identify you. I'm never comfortable with that arrangement, but hand out the data anyway, basically because I don't want to make a scene in public.

I like the way you've phrased it: not a conscious choice. I wouldn't say that ignorance is an active part in choice making. But it certainly feels less complicated.

I was going to suggest it could have been something as simple as a name. Posterous is a proposterous name. It's horrible. Tumblr is an equally shitty Web2.0 crap name, in the same vain as the ghastly i prefix. iYahoor!

Sure.

If you are worried about email mistypes then you could always provide a confirmation. However I'd have thought we'd be pretty good at getting our email address right, and the browsers a lot of the time provide a magic autocomplete for email addresses. I guess it just sees a form input name attribute of 'email' and goes by that.

Multiple email addresses are a pain I'll grant you that. But no worse that a multitude of user names.

Perhaps a better message might be:

'If your email address is registered, then we will attempt to send out an email containing a reset code. Please check your inbox.

If you do not receive an email to your given address, then you may not have registered with given email.

Allow time for the arrival of email, and please check your spam folder.'

But it gets a little long winded... I'd almost rather not have a password, and be sent a new code each time (albeit transparently).

I invariably forget passwords and logins frequently. So go through this process like you as a matter of routine.

Bad times potentially though for when your email service is down or when your email address has expired. Or your email account has been exploited.

I think using an email address (and/or a uniquely generated username), as an identifier is the best comprimise. Then a generic 'credentials invalid' => retrieve your account: 'enter email' page to reset passwords. And require a confirmation click from your email for two step sign up.

You could always sniff out if someone has an email address on a lot of systems by visiting the 'forgot your password' page. So perhaps on the account rescue page, just ask for a valid email address, then give a generic thank you message. If the email address exists, send out an email, if not don't bother - but don't give feedback of the sort 'that email address does not exist on the system' etc.

Really I was just suggesting trying the one tab approach as an experiment. You can't read in parallel, but I do understand the idea of backgrounding links to visit later - so you don't necessarily break the flow of the page you are currently on.

Back in the day of dial up, I'd use Opera and disable images - to make page loads quicker. I would connect the modem, go online, open as many links as possible in different tabs, and then disconnect. And read at my leisure.

It would force me to think upfront at what I wanted to look at, and in the main it was a pretty good system.

Pages back then would take a long time to load, especially with images - so background loading your next link, was a habit that you just got into.

I forget which browser has which behaviour with new tabs. Some place the tab on the end. Which makes sense in terms of using a stack. Your last link being opened being on the end. Firefox as it does tab scrolling, makes it hard to see what you have open. So I think now the default is to open the new tab next to the current tab. Which highlights another inconsistency in between application tab behaviour.

I used to have loads of tabs open of stuff, that I'd get around to reading at some point - but I'd basically never read, or it would become overwhelming - and I'd just periodically shut all the tabs and start again. Later I thought I'd bookmark anything that grabbed my attention, and go back to it later. Recent bookmarks can help there.

I don't see much difference between a bookmark and a tab, a tab though just feels a little more accessible but it's more expensive. Better bookmarking tools could make tabs easily redundant.

The 'group your tabs' feature of Firefox, just doesn't work for me, and other tab plugins haven't worked for me either. Opera has tab stacks, but I can't say I'm that fond of them either. I'd rather something a little more automated.

Anyway - way off the original topic...

> My browsing is like a tree, pages branch off every which way. I used to have to keep track of that entire tree structure in my head, now the browser does it for me!

And how does it do that? Have you got some pictorial representation of the paths? Do you use a plugin? When you have opened a link in a new tab, how do you then find out where that tab originated from, or rather where you spawned it from? How do you organize them? A tab is just a cheap window isn't it?

I don't really get the text-only web browser comment.

An aside... If W3m was as fast as Firefox - I'd most likely use it. Bizarre really as you wouldn't expect it to be slower.

I understand how easy that is to do. But when do you have the time to read them? Part of the fun of the web, is getting a little lost in it. But I totally loose focus. Have you ever tried limiting yourself to one window and the judicious use of the back button?

I've been championing the same issues, or rather bemoaning them on HN repeatedly.

I never see much innovation with the actual browser UIs. The rendering engines get plenty of love, while something like the UI for Firefox has barely changed at all.

I used to have an aging powerpc, and Firefox would bring it to it's knees. But I think I was abusing it. Firebug, Flash, JS and too many tabs were the main culprits. And I have sinced tried to change my habits.

I think tabs are heavily used and abused! I personally believe that they are so popular because the bookmark UIs are so sucky. Most tabs could be replaced by a bookmark.

Tabs bring other problems, resizing the browser window in one tab, effects all the others. Tabs have inconsistant behaviour between different applications. Windows should be left to a window manager IMHO.

Now I try and keep my tabs to a minimum. Two or three. Any page I think I might want to read later I once bookmarked (to one day sort through...), but now I send to readability to read later at my leisure.

My main browser I have configured to make reading on it more pleasurable. I've throw away the page author's styles, and instead opt to use my own font, font size and colour scheme. I block adverts. And block flash. Layouts can suffer, but if I have to, I resort to using another browser. I did have JS turned off completely, but I am finding that increasingly difficult.

In terms of design trends - responsive web pages are quite welcome in my world. I think people will soon hunger for simpler pages and simpler sites. Something that's far easier to use. And I welcome the day that I can actually surf web pages comfortably on my TV when sitting on my arse.

Some sites are still very difficult to use, and the browser UIs could really lend a hand here.

At least with Chrome there is the built in Task Manager.

Problem I've found is that there aren't any simple GUIs for creating/tweaking GTK3 themes. You could configure the colour scheme slightly (5 colours) with Gnome 2 and the older GTK engine. The other thing, is that you still have a mix of GTK3, GTK2 and non GTK apps, well at least I think that's true. OpenOffice being an example. It's an annoying problem for any distro, but the end result is that you end up with loads of inconsistency.

In short it's more of a pig for a user to configure their desktop style than it was in Windows 98.

So yes you could swap your theme, but I have yet to find many professional themes, and even the better ones like Bluebird, have issues.