Thanks Glen. That is the sort of answer I was looking for. While I feel that I broadly understand the principles by which most features fit together in Chrome: light-weight, content-priority, speed, etc. It would be really nice if we got some more concrete guidelines to design features that the UI would more likely consider and therefore optimize time used by both the UI team and people making feature proposals.
- Itai On Jan 16, 4:24 pm, Glen Murphy <[email protected]> wrote: > Generally, the UI team looks at ideas for new user-facing features and > decides whether to proceed with production of designs, mocks and > implementation. Sometimes people disagree and develop the feature in a > branch in their own time, which is sometimes useful for those ideas > that are hard to communicate. > > Frequently features get approved and implemented to perfection, but > then get ripped out if its felt that the feature doesn't fit. > Historically, many of these features have been developed by the UI > team, so we do feel our own pain. > > I don't think anyone has any objection to the development of a richer > tooltip infrastructure as you describe, though layout tests are > (unfortunately for feature development) taking overall priority. > > ~ Glen > > > > > What is the way to proceed from here? > > > So far we have: > > - A number of people asking for a feature that is useful to them. > > - A number of people who don't see the point, which is OK since not > > everything is useful to everyone > > (Personally I don't see the point in a Home button but that doesn't > > mean we should not have one). > > - A number of people who are concerned with accidentally hovering over > > an inactive tab which would > > result in covering part of the active page until the mouse pointer > > is moved either up or down a few > > pixels. > > > Counting votes is probably useless here because we are probably not a > > representative sample of anything. > > The feeling is that the present objection is not that strong compared > > to the benefit to those who use this > > feature. The obvious third option is to make the feature optional, > > just like the home button or the bookmark > > bar being permanently displayed. > > > Having looked at the code involved - and the feeling that this could > > be reused in other useful places like > > bookmark previews - code size and complexity will be minimally > > affected if at all. What is needed is > > basically a tooltip subclass that optionally accepts an image as well > > as text. > > > - Itai > > > On Jan 15, 7:35 pm, Glen Murphy <[email protected]> wrote: > >> I'm generally opposed to image-based tab preview - the amount of time > >> it takes for the image to come up, for me to parse it, and then for me > >> to decide to click is generally greater than just clicking on the tabs > >> I need to look at. > > >> That said, I think a good starting point is the implementation of > >> proper tab title tooltips - we shouldn't be using the Windows ones > >> we're currently using, as they take too long to show up in the case > >> where you are rolling over multiple tabs. Our tab tooltip behavior > >> should be closer to OSX dock tooltips: > > >> - Same Windows-default delay to show up > >> - Position is anchored to the tab, not the mouse (with some kind of > >> pointer) > >> - If the tooltip is being shown and you move your mouse directly to > >> another tab, the new tooltip shows up instantly. > > >> We do need this functionality (it's been a TODO for well over a year), > >> and it forms a good basis for further tab preview-like experiments. > > >> Enhanced tooltips like this will be useful in other areas where we > >> would want to show richer information, like the download shelf. I > >> imagine the infobubble class would be a good place to look for anyone > >> interested in working on this, as it does a lot of the display work > >> already (though I would hope that we could use a layered window for > >> the tooltip system). > > >> ~ Glen > > >> On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 12:28 PM, Itai <[email protected]> wrote: > > >> > We have a number of discussions which mention Tab Previews as a > >> > desirable feature. To get everyone to the same page: A Tab Preview is > >> > a small image which shows the contents of a tab and appears when the > >> > mouse is placed over any non-selected tab. The present state is that, > >> > when the mouse pointer is over a tab, Chromium shows the title of the > >> > page in a standard tooltip. > > >> > Tab Previews are useful for identifying tabs without selecting them > >> > when either tab titles are not descriptive enough or when enough tabs > >> > are opened that their titles cannot be read. At its simplest > >> > implementation, the Tab Preview feature simply adds a the thumbnail > >> > within the tooltip which is shown for non-selected windows. A Tab > >> > Preview is not shown when hovering over the selected window's tab > >> > because it would be redundant and may hide portions of the viewed web > >> > page. In Chrome, the thumbnail added could easily be the same > >> > thumbnail we use for the most visited pages in the New Tab Page. > > >> > The most important question is: Can someone find a reason why this > >> > would hinder usability? That is, if we added this feature, would there > >> > be a compelling reason to turn it off? > > >> > The second question, which is something we can do even after > >> > implementing the simple approach, is can we do better and make tab > >> > previews even more useful? > > >> > Being partial to Tab Previews, my personal take is that the preview > >> > itself is extremely useful because titles quickly become too small to > >> > display with 10 to 20 tabs and that this feature helps identify tabs > >> > quickly. It would be nice if we could take this further and offer > >> > previews elsewhere too. > > >> > For previously visited links for example. It happens that I go back to > >> > a page and forgot which link had what I was looking for. If hovering > >> > over a visited link, it would be a lesser problem. It would not be > >> > done for non-visited links for latency issues and not to trigger > >> > unwanted requests. > > >> > Bookmarks are another place where previews would be very useful, if I > >> > don't bother editing bookmark titles, a lot of bookmarks end up with > >> > similar titles like 'homepage' or 'welcome'. Yahoo's bookmarking > >> > service offers such previews based on when they last crawled the site. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Chromium Discussion mailing list: [email protected] View archives, change email options, or unsubscribe: http://groups.google.com/group/chromium-discuss -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
