I was with you until you started to hate on Chrome GUI. In my opinion, Chrome's GUI is the best thing that could happen to browsers.
But for people with large monitors and the need to push a web browser hard, they've merely managed to strip out or hide a lot of very useful functionality, with essentially no benefit. What's left over is non-standard and awkward to use (like Chrome's menu).
The vast majority of users.
Changing humanity on the kind of broad scale that requires is a much broader and longer term project than any commercial entity could survive in the short term if its commercial success relied on it.
Its certainly the kind of thing I can see Google being interested in, but not the kind of thing they would be around long enough to do if they didn't have a business strategy that did better at reaching the masses of people that actually exist now as they are than that could ever do.
A little more on topic: one person's "crappy hipster redesign" is another person's "wow this is so much better" and it's really difficult to guess ahead of time which will be the dominant reaction. Having said that, most of the frustrations about Maps here seem to be more on the implementation side than the design side.
Sure it is, as long as you only want to look at one page above the fold.
But sometimes I want to navigate between pages, and at that point I do want my bookmarks bar displayed.
Sometimes I want to scroll a page, and at that point I do want scrollbars that work the way my system is setup instead of some almost invisible, almost unclickable little rectangle at the edge of the window.
Sometimes I want to use developer tools, and that that point I do want concepts like whitespace and fonts larger than 5px and coloured icons that are easily recognisable to exist, instead of prioritising cramming so much information into the available space that all of it becomes almost illegible.
Ctrl+Shift+B.
> Sometimes I want to scroll a page, and at that point I do want scrollbars that work the way my system is setup instead of some almost invisible, almost unclickable little rectangle at the edge of the window.
Seems to use normal system scrollbars for me on KDE. Windows looks custom, but only wrt textures, sizes still seem to match.
Sure, or it's an option on the menu. I'm just trying to show that sometimes removing all possible chrome to maximise the content area isn't necessarily the most helpful thing to do.
Seems to use normal system scrollbars for me on KDE.
On Windows, they are just thin grey rectangles that don't even look like scrollbars (or anything else you might interact with) and don't even look the same between the main content window and supporting windows like the developer tools.
'Always show bookmark bar' is the top item on my View menu. Is it there for you?
> at that point I do want scrollbars that work the way my system is setup
I can't comment on this I've not used a scroll bar since I got trackpad scrolling. Just compared Chrome with Safari and the scrollbars seem identical to me.
> Sometimes I want to use developer tool
I'm not clear what your complaint is here. Dev tools is too crowded? I often need it to share space with content whilst I'm debugging. If you have dual monitors then I can understand you might prefer a less compact display. I work entirely on my laptop so I'm grateful for it's compactness.
Sure, you can change the default easily enough. I'm just giving an example where I do find it useful to have more Chrome displayed at the expense of a small amount of content area.
I can't comment on this I've not used a scroll bar since I got trackpad scrolling.
I'm usually working on a desktop PC, so I don't have a trackpad. I use a mouse scroll wheel all the time, but for long documents that's tedious (as is using a trackpad) and with most mice it's a one-dimensional scroll anyway.
I'm not clear what your complaint is here. Dev tools is too crowded?
Yes, and many things in it are far too small for comfortable use. The developer tools in both Chrome and Firefox are riddled with basic usability and design blunders, such as using tiny fonts and icons; using a flat design that blurs everything together and often gives no clues to what interactions are available; offering many different sets of tabs, icons and other controls; numerous inconsistencies in presentation, not just in the different behaviours from tab to tab but even from one set of tabs or icons to another that is visible at the same time; and forever moving things around, particularly making unnecessary minor changes every few weeks.
I've nothing against providing for developers who are using smaller screens, but I have a powerful computer on a real desk with nice big screens to make me as productive as possible, and the idea that everything must be crammed in to maximise the content area at all costs just isn't helpful in that context. Rather like the perversion of the original "mobile first" design idea to become "over-simplified least common denominator behaviour is good enough", it's throwing the baby out with the bathwater and actually making the software worse for some users. Of course the developers of these browsers are perfectly entitled to do that, but it's equally fair to point out the problems they are creating.
In Chrome, you take what Google gives you and you better like it. I'll admit, it's not a bad default.
Firefox, however, allows addons to fundamentally alter the appearance of the webbrowser. I can add stylish themes that do all sorts of awesome things. I can use vimperator with "set gui=nonavigation" and reclaim even more space for content.
This fundamental difference is the reason I think Chrome's UI is bad. Firefox, you can customize the gui to be good for any definition of good. Chrome's only works if your definition of good aligns with Google's.
Also, for an example of when Chrome's UI fails, simply try and half-screen it on a 1080p screen with 30+ tabs open. All the tab favicons vanish. There's no way to search for an existing open tab (akin to firefox's % Location Bar Search character[0]).
If you'd like, I could show you my firefox and chrome running side by side with firefox having dozen's of more pixels of content-viewing area. Even if you don't like my setup, the fact that I can change it at all makes it an obvious win for me.
[0]: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Location_Bar_search#Location_Bar_s...
All functionality I need to access quickly is accessible through shortcuts, so I don't typically need to access the "hamburger-menu" very often. The only thing I really use it for is to open the settings tab.
I mostly use web browser for browsing. Not for staying in this on that setup menu, not for looking at tabs and windows.
Chrome managed to move the bloat away and move the important thing to front.
I don't really see the parallel with the new Google Maps.
I was once in love with Chrome, but over the past few months I've started looking back at FireFox.