The value of addresses/locations/paths/URLs in Safari, and of title bars in general

[grahamperrin]

A few links to relevant parts of other topics

Most discussion of presentation of titles has been in relevant parts of topics elsewhere. (Much of it has been repetitive e.g. repetition in response to repetition, but that's part of the territory where a topic is broad, contentious and extraordinarily long.)

Maybe timely to link to just a few of those parts:

• Tabs are no substitute for a title bar (2014-08-08)
• Difficult to see web site title … a critical, high priority bug (2014-08-11)
• Tabs are no substitute for a title bar (2014-08-12)
• Adjustment to Yosemite: not always as easy as people imagine (2014-08-27)
• Thought-provoking … keywords dyslexia and saccades (2014-10-26) – there's a link to an Apple Support Communities topic 'Yosemite has a terrible UI for dyslexics'.

 

[grahamperrin]

The domain alone can not be treated as synonymous with the HTML <title> of a page

… what's the big deal about the titlebar?

… the address bar takes care of that now, look at my previous image again. Since they moved it up it now has the same function as a title bar … and it would be a redundant and useless waste of space to have a title bar above the address bar.

It's too often impossible to know the title from an address alone.

More often impossible to know the title from a domain alone.

http://www.forum-3dcenter.org/vbulletin/archive/index.php/t-460905.html

– that was not not a title. And so on.

 

[grahamperrin]

Yosemite title bar visibility

Comments in Stack Overflow

"… where an app has been designed to hide the title, might there be any way for an end user to override – to show the title (presumably in a traditional title bar)? A third-party hack, maybe? Thanks."​

– http://stackoverflow.com/questions/...4026771?noredirect=1#comment39351978_24026771​

"There is no override for users. It may be possible to hack/patch Cocoa to disable the titleVisibility property."​

Whilst I'd happily pay for a third party hack to the OS, I'd prefer Apple to fix things.

WebKit

I'll ask in irc://chat.freenode.net/#webkit

 

[grahamperrin]

A title bar with a non-native version of Safari

Seeing that Mavericks Safari screenshot makes me miss it even more. Look at the difference! Having the forward/reverse arrows on the same line as the minimize/close buttons is idiotic and I really miss the longer bar to enter website http

One thing I can say for sure-Jony Ive sucks at software design.

steve333, I think that we should go easy on Sir Jonathan. (I ranted, then expressed some regret at making it so personal against an individual … it took a few days for the distaste of Yosemite to wear off. I do not regret the essence of the rant against the design.)

The following screenshot of Mavericks Safari in Yosemite, from October 2014, is intriguing. I never managed to get a title bar for titled content with any version of Safari or WebKit nightly:

 

[grahamperrin]

Weird, if the problem is not realised

Few people realise the problem with abandonment of the title bar for titled content. To people who don't realise the problem, the subject might seem weird.

The content here is quite specific. It is, amongst other things, an occasional point of reference from things beyond MacRumors, not all of which are public.

An alternative would be posting these specifics within the much broader 'Yosemite looks terrible!' topic but at seventy-seven pages (approaching two thousand posts), that's less easy to digest, especially if a reader has not much time. The specifics will be too easily lost amongst the noise.

I considered editing the title (the subject line of the opening post) to reflect the pre-release improvement to Safari 8 – Apple added a preference to show something more than the domain – but there remains a lack of space to show the URL, relative to Mavericks. So I decided to leave it unchanged.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

While I don't like the look of Yosemite in general, I'm absolutely baffled by this thread. WTF am I looking at with those "impression" comparisons???

The first one looks identical to the second. I see NO DIFFERENCE. I appear to be looking at a stack of Finder windows with an empty documents one at the top. Are you trying to say that as you click on each succeeding sub-directory it automatically opens and stack new windows??? If so, that would be mind blowingly asinine. I mean that's what browsers used to do when you opened a new link (as opposed to TABS which was an obvious improvement to not making a giant stack of windows which is a visual mess).

However, I'm also baffled by the Mavericks Finder as well because all I see is a green highlighted documents file and a list of folders. I can't tell directly where that documents folder is located (I'm going to guess it's your home directory) and I don't know why I see sub-folders and files in the Mavericks one while the Yosemite one is BLANK/EMPTY yet it looks like a few posts down you're trying to say they're showing the exact same thing. Hence, BAFFLED.

I think I missed something. The start of the thread seemed to be whining that Yosemite likes to use addresses as a title bar and that you seem to miss title bars. I'm using Firefox in Mavericks right now and the "title bar" says "MacRumors Forums - Reply to Topic" not "Firefox". I know it's Firefox. I started it and it LOOKS like Firefox. To be honest, I don't even remember which version or when Firefox put the current tab title at the top. I never even noticed.

Personally, I think the highlighted window should cause the "light" by the dock icon to change color (say from white to blue or better yet from black to white or yellow to indicate that program is the current window selected). As it is, the white little line (was better when it was a circle) just says that program is RUNNING. It doesn't say which app is currently the active window. It would be absolutely trivial to make that line change color to indicate the active window. Then you could tell at a glance what program is selected by just looking at the dock. They could even make a blink option to make it stand out even more (I'd probably find that annoying, though). That would largely eliminate the need for any kind of title bar, IMO. They could even have it change as the mouse just focuses on a different window (3rd color perhaps). You could tell what app you were using by just hovering the pointer over the edge of the given window. The title bar would be moot at that point and yet you'd not lose any real functionality except perhaps for those that hide their docks.

So basically, I'm not fixated on title bars, but I don't like stacked windows. Do those windows stack? I haven't USED Yoesmite so I really don't know. I refuse to install its ugly arse on my computer at this time since it's not necessary and I don't see any improvements in other areas of the OS (like Mavericks had with multiple monitor support improvements) to attract me to put up with UGLY just for ugly's sake.

 

[grahamperrin]

Clarification

What app is displaying the top window? It sort of looks like an open dialog window. …

… baffled … WTF am I looking at with those "impression" comparisons???

My thoughts at the time, when I first observed the problem, were pretty much the same: WTF?

The first one looks identical to the second. I see NO DIFFERENCE.

… I took great care with the images … The difference is subtle.

… The centres of the images differ. …

The differences in perception are subtle but significant. With emphasis:

… Maybe timely to link to just a few of those parts:

• Tabs are no substitute for a title bar (2014-08-08)
• Difficult to see web site title … a critical, high priority bug (2014-08-11)
• Tabs are no substitute for a title bar (2014-08-12)
• Adjustment to Yosemite: not always as easy as people imagine (2014-08-27)
• Thought-provoking … keywords dyslexia and saccades (2014-10-26) – there's a link to an Apple Support Communities topic 'Yosemite has a terrible UI for dyslexics'.

Appearance and perceptions

I appear to be looking at a stack of Finder windows with an empty documents one at the top. …

The front window was not a Finder window.

That's not a problem with your perception. It was a pre-release problem with appearance.

That's a pretty terrible experience. I hope they'll iron out a lot of these issues. They seem to be making fairly substantial changes from beta to beta.

I know as a UX professional I'd never let something like that ship. …

I assume that the terrible user experience was simply the result of a pre-release bug (in other words, it wasn't designed to look like that) and that it was fixed in good time.

Retrospective

… As things turned out, what's in the screenshot above was probably simply a bug. Only probable; I can never be certain because I did not bother to send feedback. My loss. I made some noise, in public, that was almost entirely unjustifiable. When I realised the probability of it being a bug I was quietly embarrassed (lessons learnt – better respect for agreements with Apple, and so on) but I didn't draw attention at the time. Now, I don't mind people knowing about the embarrassment.

In a normal situation I should have deleted the images immediately after I realised my mistake (I should have not posted them in the first place).

In this case I chose to keep the images, because this type of discussion helps to demonstrate that – amongst other things – where I see differences, some other people see no difference.

… tell at a glance what program is selected by just looking at the dock … would largely eliminate the need for any kind of title bar … The title bar would be moot at that point …

Please see above, saccades in particular.

For content that is titled, the operating system should present that title – in the title bar – in the expected place within that bar.​

Related

Highlights from Hands-on with OS X Yosemite: Safari slims down | Macworld (2014-10-16)

https://twitter.com/jsnell/status/496674966432399361 reminds me that an earlier edition of that Jason Snell article included additional/alternative criticisms of Safari.

Evolution of Mac OS X (Pics) – Apple Rhapsody – Workspace Manager, Finder and columns in particular – the first two quotes in that post are relevant now. Critics in 1999 placed great emphasis on the importance of Apple respecting its own Human Interface Guidelines (HIG); guidelines with what was then a twenty-year history.

 

[jbarley]

where I see differences, some other people see no difference.

The other half of that statement could read...

while others might envision you wearing a "tin foil" hat,
you are not even aware you have anything on your head.

 

[grahamperrin]

jbarley, please explain

The other half of that statement could read...

while others might envision you wearing a "tin foil" hat,
you are not even aware you have anything on your head.

jbarley, I know what tinfoil hats are but I have no idea what you meant. …

 

[jbarley]

definitely not derogatory, more an attempt at levity.

 

[Nermal]

I think I missed something. The start of the thread seemed to be whining that Yosemite likes to use addresses as a title bar and that you seem to miss title bars. I'm using Firefox in Mavericks right now and the "title bar" says "MacRumors Forums - Reply to Topic" not "Firefox". I know it's Firefox. I started it and it LOOKS like Firefox. To be honest, I don't even remember which version or when Firefox put the current tab title at the top. I never even noticed.

You can see "MacRumors Forums - Reply to Topic" in Firefox. You can't in Safari; that's his point. Nothing to do with whether or not it says "Firefox".

 

[grahamperrin]

A few points

You can see "MacRumors Forums - Reply to Topic" in Firefox. You can't in Safari; that's his point. Nothing to do with whether or not it says "Firefox".

There are a variety of points.

For me, probably the most troublesome point is not having the title in the expected place. A place that has been learnt, established from using titled web browser windows since the earliest days, and more generally from using titled windows since the late 1980s.

Firefox with a title in the title bar on Windows; without a title in the title bar on Mavericks

Maybe not previously mentioned in this topic, developers of Firefox offer users a more suitable range of preferences so, for example:

… Not only is there a title bar in Firefox 31, the user is also allowed to prefer titles in title bars. Still, it could be better: in this case I would have preferred the title of the tab without the name of the app. …

Side note: the preference browser.tabs.drawInTitlebar can be set to true in Firefox 34.0.5 on Mavericks, but the effect can be confusing:



Safari with a title in a title bar

… screenshot of Mavericks Safari in Yosemite, from October 2014, is intriguing. I never managed to get a title bar for titled content with any version of Safari or WebKit nightly:

Image

… If you find a way to manage this please post your sources! I am worried that tampering with the system may cause instability which is more important to me than aesthetics. …

That particular intrigue, that particular worry can end.

For a couple of weeks I was carelessly but happily fooled … surely a mock-up, not a screenshot – in the Dock there's an icon for Safari, but no indication of the app running.

Apple failed to deliver on the design … the design of Yosemite holds me back. I really don't think you'll see any major adjustments in 10.11, I hope I'm wrong though. By OS X 10.12 I think you will start to see a shift in design again along with an iOS refinement. …

I hope Apple can allow its customers more reasonable choices, sooner than OS X 10.12. In the meantime there's Flavours 2 to look forward to but I can't guess when a beta will become available, neither am I hopeful of any third party fix for the title bar of Safari …

… and the longer I wait for Apple to fix things such as title bars in Yosemite, the less inclined I am to bother with Apple stuff in general. (For months now there's been an opportunity to have a new Mac purchased for me … I'm just not interested enough to draft a requisition.)

definitely not derogatory, more an attempt at levity.

jbarley, thanks for clarifying

(My up-vote from a week ago will probably disappear, I wouldn't want you to think that your post went unnoticed.)

 

[grahamperrin]

Neither screen shot of Safari in the preview page for El Capitan shows a relevant improvement to the title bar, an update to this topic is timely.

At https://twitter.com/interactolabs/status/546983128439750656 (2014-12-22) Interacto Labs described the suggestion of a title bar for any Safari on Yosemite as "kinda out of scope". Fair enough; Flavours is not intended to restore lost functionality and/or add elements to the GUI.

In the OS X 10.11 beta space of Apple Developer Forums, on Saturday: Safari and/or WebKit.app (nightly): display the marked-up title in the title bar. Then I began drafting this post. This morning, coincidentally:

... (keyword: saccades) years of no longer finding a part of the UI to windows have not caused me to cease looking for that part, for that lost ideal.

I expect little or no interest in the Apple Developer area. I might take things to Stack Exchange.

 

[Paulk]

I added my weird to wolf, but you are starting to get others reading this thread. I don't have firefox, Mavericks, or Yosemite, way out of my depth, so I'll bow out

 

[redheeler]

That Tiger theme for Mountain Lion looks nice

 

[Paulk]

Hmm, but is it mountain lion? I bought an os x upgrade soon after buying the computer, and comparing the images of the two on apple, I still think the snow leopard is what I bought and installed: http://getintopc.com/softwares/operating-systems/mac-os-x-snow-leopard-free-download/

Yes it is a tiger-like theme.

 

[redheeler]

If you're referring to your late 2012 rMBP, those can't run Snow Leopard. If you want to see what version you're running, look at About This Mac.

10.6.x = Snow Leopard
10.7.x = Lion
10.8.x = Mountain Lion
10.9.x = Mavericks
10.10.x = Yosemite

Just for comparison, on the left is Snow Leopard and on the right is Mavericks, which reads "10.9.5" instead of "10.8.5" when running Mountain Lion.

 

[Paulk]

Thanks for that, redheeler, that was helpful.

 

[grahamperrin]

That Tiger theme for Mountain Lion looks nice

Maybe nice, but theming should be off-topic. Let's assume that the page was viewed in a browser that does not show the topic, the title, in the title bar …

 

[grahamperrin]

… general advice for anyone who becomes disoriented at a web site that uses trails of breadcrumbs:

1. first, glance at the title bar
2. then, the trail (beneath which, or alongside which, the title may be repeated).

…

In case you have forgotten, not everyone has a title bar in their browser anymore. …

I enjoy good-natured teasing – thank you @redheeler. Were Google Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox amongst the first that came to mind? Opera, Chromium? (Any other browser in particular?)

 

[grahamperrin]

Browsers

The following began in April (in a Yosemite area) as a list of web browsers that have the title at the top.

Now expanded to include some of the browsers that more generally use, or include, a title bar.

1. Arora (screenshot)
   
2. Avant Browser
3. Chromium
4. Conkeror
5. Dillo
   
6. Firefox
7. Google Chrome
8. iCab 5.5
9. K-Meleon
10. Konqueror
11. Lunascape
12. Midori
13. NetSurf
    
14. OmniWeb, including 6.0 test (v625 r219164) on Mavericks; I assume that outdated test build r232234 showed the title bar by default on Yosemite (when I last tested on Yosemite, the bar was shown)
15. Opera 12.16 (1860) on PC-BSD, amd64, 11.0-CURRENTJULY2015 (Opera/9.80 (X11; FreeBSD 11.0-CURRENTJULY2015 amd64) Presto/2.12.388 Version/12.16) with KDE; the title bar is used for the title even when browser.tabs.drawInTitlebar is true
    
16. QupZilla
17. rekonq
18. Safari 6.2.5
19. Safari 7.1.5
20. Safari 9.0
21. SeaMonkey 2.33.1 (20150626124248) on PC-BSD, amd64, 11.0-CURRENTJULY2015
    
22. Web
23. WebKit nightly Safari r183352 on Mavericks.

– I'll probably add to that list (edit this post) in due course.


Other apps with significant use of a title bar

Apple Feedback Assistant

• I haven't seen it recently, but I understand that it has regained a traditional title bar √

Apple Finder.


Further reading

Under Tabs in title bar: what's the secret? – Stack Overflow:

…

In Chrome, the tabs encroach upon the title bar so that there is not enough space for title text.

… I hate that they do this. Give me my "title" bar back!

Mozilla Firefox

941831 – On OSX, after Australis customization, with browser.tabs.drawInTitlebar=false, the window gets incorrectly drawn

Resolved (fixed). Amongst the comments:

It is currently one of the issues we have been hearing a lot about. So something to discuss, but not something we make a knee jerk reaction on.

… For people with tons of tabs open it's a life saver because you can't otherwise read the title bar.

Chromium and Google Chrome

chrome.app.window – Google Chrome – since Chrome 23. "… Windows have an optional frame with title bar and size controls. …"

As far as I can tell, nothing like Mozilla's browser.tabs.drawInTitlebar and so, for example:

• How do I enable title bar in Chrome? – the first response "Chrome doesn't have a title bar …" was unpopular and probably inconsistent with the API
• Title Bar
• Why is there no title bar?

https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=44106#c94

I want an option to display the system title bar. That seems to be what many of you want as well, but since the bug description focuses on moving the tab bar, the bug has apparently, sadly, been closed.

https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=101764 (a screenshot that proved the potential to show the title in the title bar on Microsoft Windows):

https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msg/chromium-discuss/ODlrv7aRU0M/-YgO2MEkbvIJ

… (as a preference for those w/ high-resolution displays). I want to have a full-size title bar at all times in the Windows version. That way, the Win7 AeroSnap feature would work correctly. As it is, I can't easily grab-and-drag or right-click the title bar of a maximized window...especially when I have a lot of tabs open or I'm working on a high-resolution display. If there was a full-size title bar, I could easily grab the title bar and drag down to restore windowed mode, or drag the maximized window left or right to snap to the side of the screen. I could also use the standard right-click accessibility shortcuts: R - restore, X - maximize, N - minimize, C - close, ... I haven't even mentioned the annoyance of not seeing the full title for the current tab. I'm OK with the default appearance having no title bar, but I need the option to have a true system title bar in the Windows version. It's especially irritating because the Linux version has this option and the Windows version does not.

https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=106256

… Tabs are in the title bar, and there is no way to move them. …
Tabs should be in the normal place, or I should be able to move them there. …

https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msg/chromium-discuss/st1l2q80WC8/1AdPTrXTNuEJ (a screenshot that proved the potential to show the title in the title bar on Linux):

https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msg/chromium-discuss/TP68vKO5QEQ/CCnJ0hrzjzUJ with added emphasis:

Finally I am able to show the title bar without the tab strip. Upon investigation inside the chromium code, I found that the title bar support was only available for OpaqueBrowserFrameView and NOT for GlassBrowserFrameView.

So, when I select "Windows7 theme", it invokes GlassBrowserFrameView & title bar was not working, but with "Windows7 basic theme", it invokes OpaqueBrowserFrameView & title bar is working. …

 

[Paulk]

Some browsers have the oddest names: DuckDuckGo.

 

[redheeler]

Some browsers have the oddest names: DuckDuckGo.

That's a search engine, not a browser

 

[grahamperrin]

Weirdness

@Paulk if you thought that word was weird, wait for some even weirder names of web browsers to be added to the list above


Attention and positioning

@redheeler in return for your presence in this topic, and for your attention to detail here and elsewhere (not least your hilarity at my earlier listing of Safari), I'm now present at https://forums.macrumors.com/members/redheeler.926659/followers

Now, just checking that you're still paying attention, this one thing –

– and with those two things in mind I have ! reported this topic – a request for moderators to move it away from the Yosemite area, to either:

1. Apple, Industry and Internet Discussion; or
2. OS X.

The first area is broad (and the range of browsers in this topic is broad) but as the opening poster, I'll prefer a move to the OS X area.

I could have begun this topic elsewhere, but eleven months ago I did not imagine finding so much additional information. The underlying wish was, still is, a wish for Apple to remake Safari, WebKit and related software e.g. frameworks more considerate of user preferences across all supported versions of OS X.

A side note, to anyone who views the screenshot in this post as a breach of confidentiality: it's not. It was, essentially, public knowledge before I posted.

Last but not least: WebKit r174650 was built on 13 October 2014 :-(

 

[redheeler]

@redheeler in return for your presence in this topic, and for your attention to detail here and elsewhere (not least your hilarity at my earlier listing of Safari), I'm now present at https://forums.macrumors.com/members/redheeler.926659/followers

Terrific! I have uploaded a new avatar for the occasion

Now, just checking that you're still paying attention, this one thing –

But, but, that's impossible! Safari is OS version specific!