It's been a week or so now since Google released version 6 of Chrome and so I thought it would be a good time to take note of the improvements they've made to the UI.
I actually find it tantamount to genius that they have been able to yet further minimise the already minimal interface further - they have removed the "go" button (which was always pointless - for any browser, as they all seemed to have them at one point or another - once finished typing an address, people press enter, they don't switch to the mouse to press a gui button).
That leaves the stop button, which they have moved to the left of the address bar and integrated with the reload button. This comes as a welcome change to me, as all other browsers that I've known have had the stop button on the left and for some reason I've not been able to adjust to Chome's original placement of the control.
They've also combined the two different drop down menus that used to be to the right of the address bar into a single menu. I always found the separation of the options to be rather arbitrary and always ended searching the wrong menu anyway for the option I wanted, so again, points to the developers for recognising that.
The the bookmark star has moved to the other side of the address bar which I didn't understand at first until I remembered that due to it's previous proximity to the home button I was constantly creating bookmarks to pages I didn't want. I guess they suffered from the same problem.
The other changes are just subtle tweaks to the look and feel that they claim "make it easier on the eyes", but seeing as I don't think it was ever particularly hard on the eyes in the first place, it's a strange way of mentioning that you've updated the look slightly to make it feel fresh and new again (any product or company that has had a life span of longer than a few months is guilty of this - just take a look at this to see what mean).
So this all goes to show that there is always room for improvement if you know where to look.
Showing posts with label update. Show all posts
Showing posts with label update. Show all posts
Thursday, 9 September 2010
Wednesday, 25 August 2010
Social Divergence
Twitter and Facebook are essentially very similar social networks these days. The only real thing separating them is for which social groups they are used for.
So it is no surprise that their Android applications are close to identical in many respects. The desktop widgets are in fact identical, aside from a few aesthetic differences.
For both, each status update or tweet is sectioned off in it's own individual box. The profile pic for the original poster is in a column on the left with their name to the right along with the body of the post and any additional information, such as time it was posted and number of comments of likes (in the case of Facebook), at the bottom.
Now as you are probably already aware of it's very common for things like pictures, videos and URLs to be the main contents of a post, and it is in how they are treated that these respective apps differ.
Twitter treats it almost like you would expect a web page to work - tapping a person's name takes you to their profile, a URL to the respective web page (or application in the case of things like the Youtube app).
It also has a drop-down menu of sorts on the right that allows you to do standard Twitter actions such as @reply or retweet.
Facebook on the other hand, does something slightly differently. Instead of individual elements the whole box is one area that can be tapped on. A single tap takes you to the status update itself where you can comment on it if you want. A long press pops up a menu with a list of options related to the status update. For instance, any URL included in the message is given it's own selectable item in the menu.
This is much better than twitter's method, as the text is so small, my giant fingers often have difficulty tapping on URLs - especially if they're directly underneath the tweeter's username as that is also a link that takes you to their profile.
Unfortunately Facebook breaks it's own rules as any photos shared with the status update must be tapped directly if you want to look at them, and they're not included in the long press menu. So points will be deducted for breaking consistency here.
I think Facebook definitely have the right approach here - touch screens can't be designed expecting a high fidelity input. Large clickable areas should be the order of the day.
So it is no surprise that their Android applications are close to identical in many respects. The desktop widgets are in fact identical, aside from a few aesthetic differences.For both, each status update or tweet is sectioned off in it's own individual box. The profile pic for the original poster is in a column on the left with their name to the right along with the body of the post and any additional information, such as time it was posted and number of comments of likes (in the case of Facebook), at the bottom.
Now as you are probably already aware of it's very common for things like pictures, videos and URLs to be the main contents of a post, and it is in how they are treated that these respective apps differ.
Twitter treats it almost like you would expect a web page to work - tapping a person's name takes you to their profile, a URL to the respective web page (or application in the case of things like the Youtube app).
It also has a drop-down menu of sorts on the right that allows you to do standard Twitter actions such as @reply or retweet.
Facebook on the other hand, does something slightly differently. Instead of individual elements the whole box is one area that can be tapped on. A single tap takes you to the status update itself where you can comment on it if you want. A long press pops up a menu with a list of options related to the status update. For instance, any URL included in the message is given it's own selectable item in the menu.
This is much better than twitter's method, as the text is so small, my giant fingers often have difficulty tapping on URLs - especially if they're directly underneath the tweeter's username as that is also a link that takes you to their profile.
Unfortunately Facebook breaks it's own rules as any photos shared with the status update must be tapped directly if you want to look at them, and they're not included in the long press menu. So points will be deducted for breaking consistency here.
I think Facebook definitely have the right approach here - touch screens can't be designed expecting a high fidelity input. Large clickable areas should be the order of the day.
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