Not too long ago, Apple shocked the world with the release of the first beta of Safari 4. A refinement to an already very refined web browser. It brought interesting feature's such as the 3D top sites view (pictured below) and cover-flow history to the browser of choice on the Mac OS X platform.
Yet with this surprise release, came puzzlement and confusion by users as they became aware of several illogical aspects and rough edges of the Safari 4 user interface. A rarity from a company which prides itself on the ease of use and intuitiveness of its products. Most notable of these conceptual errors, is the new upward facing tabs (pictured below), which have drawn sharp criticism for detracting from the elegance and intuitiveness of the user interface.
In the final release of Safari 4, Apple has dispensed with the new tab design, and reverted to the tab placement present in earlier versions of Safari, a move welcomed by the Mac community. Here are the reasons that we believe caused the rethink.
There are several instances where the design of the upward facing tabs lend itself to some windowing confusion. While the tabs are very defined in a single window, the metaphor and design unity breaks down with the addition of multiple windows. Stacking them in the way pictured above can give the impression that a background tab has attached itself in a brain-slug like fashion.
The combination of this new tab design together with click-through behavior causes difficulty in window manipulation. Clicking a tab in a background window brings both that tab and window to the front. And in the example on the left, figuring out a safe place to click can be a problem.In addition, there are several conceptual errors relating to the implementation of the new tab design.
Safari 4 has taken a leaf out of Google Chrome's book, with the upward facing tabs. Unfortunately, that is where the similarities end. In Chrome, even though the tabs face upward, there is a clear distinction between the tabs and the title bar. The title bar and window frame are colored contrastingly with the tabs.
In Safari 4 however, the tabs are the title bar, with no distinction between the two. It is thus a rather schizophrenic UI element, that tries to do both things, but does neither very well. As the title bar area must be used for dragging the window, the rearrangement of tabs is done via a specially created small handle at the corner of each tab, a great inconvenience in itself.
Furthermore, making the tabs and title bar one and the same, results in the need for the tabs to constantly resize themselves to occupy the entire title bar space. A most inelegant design.
In summary, the new tabs make it seem as if Apple is merely putting these new tabs in just because Chrome has them. In the process, it has gone against its own design principles with a poor implementation of the idea.
The decision to revert to the traditional tabs, which have been working very well for the past years, was a smart one. A very smart one.
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