Published: June 29, 2008 in future » mobile by Thomas Baekdal
Aza Raskin, the user experience chief of Mozilla Labs, have published a video about how he envisions Firefox on a mobile phone equipped with a touch screen.
It is not really that innovative compared to all the experiments we see with multi touch. The principles in the concepts are actually very basic, but it is always interesting to see different experiments using touch.
Loading Video
(Note: You need Flash 9+ to watch these videos)
(via Aza's Thoughts)
They finally decided to collapse the address bar and search box into one- this is the direction that desktop browsers should move in as well. URLs are becoming more complex and hence harder to recall while the users common/frequent use URLs are already handled via the history feature so that leaves users searching for the site they want to go to or simply misspelling the URL. Finally users - even educated folks who don't use the Internet 7 hours a day- still don't understand how to use the Address Bar and often end up hitting the awkward Address Not Found page.
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Ariel, I agree that many people do not understand how to use the address bar.
But integrating search into the address bar itself is already a reality in most desktop browsers (although they do also feature a seperate search box). If you type in a search query (in the address bar) in IE 7/8 or Opera, you query is directed to whatever search engine you have setup by default.
Firefox 3 does something similar, although not perfectly. A search query from the address bar is always sent to Google - completely ignoring people's personal search preferences.
and Safari... well cannot search from the address bar.
Don't forget that the Mozilla Foundation makes a not inconsiderable amount of money from directing people to Google when they search using Firefox. I for one am happy that it's a non-configurable option (well, if you don't know about about:config that is) if it means that my favourite browser can cover the costs of its development.
Why can't we have the 2D infinite space on which to arrange tabs on a desktop or laptop? Add-on makers, anyone?
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Jun 30
2008
Jonathan
Much of this is a realisation of interaction principles formulated by the late Jef Raskin, Aza's father and probably the greatest of all interaction designers that have so far lived. The "zui," combined with the use of edges, for example, are originally Jef's ideas. There's much here that demonstrates the subtle, but very important distinction between usability rooted in rigorous application of HCI, and gratuitous eye candy masquerading as usability (that in my opinion infests appliances such as the iPhone).