Redesigning Chrome Android. Part 1 of 2 | Hacker News Reader

Redesigning Chrome Android. Part 1 of 2

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37 pointsZweihander18 comments

I'm just going to comment on the first aspect of this, the "Merge Tabs and Apps" option.

The first thing I do with the "Merge Tabs and Apps" is to disable it and use the in browser tab switcher.

I usually have many tabs open and I usually have many apps open. Merging the two lists just creates more noise in the app switcher. Imagine if they did this on desktop and suddenly alt-tab gave me (right now) an extra 26 things to switch through! I don't even think I am a heavy open-tabber.

My non-techie spouse wanted me to change it back immediately after the update with no prompting from me. I'm sure some people must prefer it but I find it way too busy in the switcher.

Thankyou I didn't know you could revert back to the old behaviour

Oh, gosh, I didn't know either, what a relief. Well, the old one wasn't a log better, but a bit more usable (tab count, and [+] to open a new tab).

I never had the reflex to use the omnibox as an url bar and wished the main screen icons would allow some kind of contextual menu (as in win7+), swiping on it would give me option to open a new tab etc etc.

TIL

> The first thing I do with the "Merge Tabs and Apps" is to disable it and use the in browser tab switcher.

That was also my reaction. However I started to wonder "Maybe it's just a experience-reinforced habit to mentally separate the content of the web and content of the other apps?" After all it's not the only possible paradigm. Computers used to be simple terminals and current web apps trend resembles that. Just think about Chrome OS. For me (a a person who has spent most of his life in local files, directories and applications realm) both Chrome OS and browser tabs mixed with other apps seem to be weird, unnatural and cumbersome. But for someone without the baggage of such experiences, this solution could actually appear more useful and logical.

Tabs are way more transitory. Their lifetime is pretty limited in that I will usually close them after I read its content. Apps are slightly more permanent. Also, on a more practical side, it is currently way faster to switch tabs because of those useful touch gestures in Chrome.

For me it's the opposite. Apps are transitory, tabs are long-lived.

Agreed - android app tabs is already an ever-growing sprawling wasteland of old google searches. Dumping browser tabs in there isn't helpful.

The first thing I did is disable it too. This article worries me because it sounds like this is the direction they're going in, and maybe that option won't exist in the future.

The problem with the merged approach is that tabs and apps aren't equivalent, and this way you get a problem with 'losing' tabs in a way you're never going to with an app.

For pretty much everything else, one running app in the switcher maps to one icon in the menu. You're never going to 'lose' an app because it's always on your homescreen as well. You never have to go through the switcher you can always locate the program. Tabs though are ephemeral, and are multiple instances of a single installed app.

If I open a page to read, then get distracted by a facebook notification, I might forget it's there. With a proper tab switcher, I will rediscover it. With the merged approach, I'll probably never see it again (I don't know what actually happens here, does it eventually disappear?). There's no discovery in the process like there is with a normal app.

It's really depressing, how skim these posts on UI are. The keyword is user, not interface. And yet - as almost all posts on UI/UX - zero references on how they got to know what the users want, or how they use the product.

Really, it's getting ridiculous: we get thousands of words on how to design an icon family, and zero on user research. What does this mean? Do we really think we "know" our users? Are we stupid enough to keep fiddling with icons while the foundations of our work - deciding what we build and design, and why - are hunch-based?

Its nice of them to dive into their decision to redesign the tab switcher, and I utterly disagree with their reasoning. "Merge tabs and apps" is something I turned off right away and something my non-tech-savvy android using friends constantly ask me for help in disabling.

The thing about UX is that you don't need all that reasoning (so to speak). I would even say that if you're reasoning too much, then you're doing it wrong! You would be indulging in giving your opinion too much credit, instead of taking a truly user-centric approach.

Really, there's no need to invoke usability in vain or talk about philosophical standpoints [1]. you just need to know what the users wants and needs, and then design fundamented on said wants and needs. Focusing on your philosophy or principles [2] is a sign that you don't care about your users, you just care about your ego.

[1] "This situation is not optimized both from an usability standpoint as well as from a more philosophical standpoint.

[2] Information, whatever its source is, should be as easily accessible."

>"The omnibox: Now that the switcher is fully integrated to Android’s, the Chrome omnibox relationship with the Google search box will become more obvious and friction-less. Before this change, entering a search in the system Google search box opened a tab inside Chrome. Now, triggering a search will open an activity in the Android recent stack, at the same level of any other app, not buried inside one."

I can appreciate how much Google wanted to fix that "search buried inside an app" problem, seeing as how they are a search company.

>"Another step toward making our Chrome invisible."

Dammit, I think they have gone too far in making Chrome invisible!

I was scrolling up and down, comparing the picture of the old version of Chrome with the picture of the new version of Chrome.

But I didn't actually have to scroll up and down to compare the old with the new, because there was the new version of the Chrome interface running in the window frame around the web page about Chrome that I was scrolling up and down!

But Chrome is so invisible, it took me a while to actually break the frame and see it there...

It's funny how much they subtitle their post here "Content, not Chrome", yet in the most recent version of Chrome they removed the ability to disable the "People" menu. The bug for this [0] has been marked wontfix, saying it's "working as intended". Depending on how long your profile name is, that's an awful lot of chrome taking up space from your content...

[0] https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=496829

I don't know what it is with Google. Some of their products have great UX (yeah, like Chrome - don't forget what desktop browsers looked like when it first came out) while at the same time some are just horrible (Wave, Hangouts...)

I wish they would still take the “content, not Chrome” priority on the Desktop. I know that removing the URL bar is something that breaks the web for less savvy users, so I get the choice to make that option hard to find. But, a minimalist experience (e.g., cVim, a vimperator/penta alternative for chrom{e,ium}) almost requires this feature.

Since its complete removal, there is essentially no way to have a truly minimal browsing experience on chromium…

For me the Chrome tabs merged with the app is one of the most confusing UI choices I have ever witnessed. Glad to hear that it can be switched off though.

can they make it not so sluggish too... more like Firefox Android?

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