Is a title bar really necessary, though? The vast majority of the time, the exact same sentence is repeated again in the page as a h1. More prominently. With better styling. When I have the browser open, the favicon and the few characters on the tab are usually enough to figure out what the page is, and when it's minimized, the text shows up in the taskbar and alt+tab... I'm curious, what's missing?
It's often repeated again in the page as a H1, but that's only visible if you're scrolled to the top of the page. If you're part-way down a long HN discussion and want to quickly double-check what the topic was again, where do you look?
How does having the page title in the title bar help with that, though? It only shows the full title of the currently selected tab, but can't you usually tell which tab that is from its content?
No, not if they're all the same website. Take 3 comment pages on hacker news, for example, you'd have to look around the page for context to know which was which if you had several open at once.
Use a tab manager add on like Tab Mix Plus. It is the first thing I install on any new installation of FF. You can rename tabs or set a minimum width to see more of the title.
When the solution to a problem that nearly every user will have is, "Use an add-on", then that's clearly a time when the design/dev team should go back and re-think their implementation. I can see the phone calls now, "Yes, mom - you need to go install an add-on. What's an add-on? Well, maybe they call it an extension - depends which screen you're on. What's an extension?" Ugh - awful idea.
And then you end up with the old Netscape Communicator suite, until someone wants a "fast" minimal browser, maybe by moving some of the features out of the main browser into extensions....
recently sites seem to be inverting the useful info to the beginning of the title, but this is still a problem. Especially considering that even when you only have a few tabs, the space given for the title is way too small (at least in Chrome, firefox is better about it)
Why do you have to "figure it out" when it can easily just be made clear. This is one of the reasons why I am very sceptical of the Chrome trend towards absolute minimalism.
I find myself installing addons to cut or move parts of the UI back to where it was when I was used to it. Starting with the location bar ending with status bars. Additional fumbling around in the config became the normal thing to do after an major update...
I know it's nice if your are the developer and you can force stuff on your users because most of them can't do anything about it and will accept it in the end but remember one thing: you will cross a border for another part of your custormers and then somebody will come up with something new just because you forced us and then you'll lose customers.
The reason why X Windows was so much more popular than Mac OS X or MS Windows was because it was so configurable, right?
As a matter of good design, configuration options should be used very sparingly. Yes they diversify the UX, but they also diversify the UX! Some decisions just have to be "made," like losing the title bar.
> you will cross a border for another part of your customers and then somebody will come up with something new just because you forced us and then you'll lose customers.
If the overall design is good, the customers loss are negligible vs. the customers gained. No one bothers chasing the miniscule emacs market.
It's more of a case of good defaults vs bad defaults. When 90% of your customers will never know how to change the defaults (or never like your system enough in the first place to bother) then being served up something weird by default doesn't help your popularity.
I think that is why Firefox is ditching the title bar. It just seems weird now (but I've been using Chrome for way too long).
But configurability is not on many consumer wish lists. Ya, power users love to have it there way, but most consumers just want a good experience out of the box.
I went away from software because of that for so many times. I can't remember the names of the software of companies anymore. I'm pretty sure they are not there anymore.
Sure YOU say the decision to make something go MUST be done. You don't even bring a reason for it here. I don't see it. Why does it HAVE to be made? Is the title bar going to be forbidden or something? Is it banned in some countries? I don't understand. I don't understand even more why I shouldn't have the CHOICE to make such irrelevant decision by myself. Why not? Give me at least one real reason...
Most of the time (like here) I have the feeling we are in some kind of Fashion Show. Some design guru decides: this will be like that now. All the big fashin designers jump on the train. But the fact remains that people on the street won't dress like that...and sure you push it here and there through the discounters and you may reach a mass where it becomes a thing. But initaly nobody wanted that. It may be even a worse kind of clothing. It may be a shoe that hurts your leg muscels in the end but nobody is interested in that because it is Fashion.
I see it the same way here. Don't take me wrong. I appriciate changes that are useful. I appriciate it even more if there are options but I don't see any reason to force Fashion moves on me in software.
A word on Win8? Nah I guess you already know ;)
@X Windows: are you kidding me? Do you want to start a discussion about marketing methods now and then? I guess you've just missed the point on that one. I can sell you the most ugly crap software if I have the money or the right marketing strategy but it has nothing to do with the topic.
I find I sometimes need to right click my title bar on Linux, to do things like move my window to another workspace. And other window functions, I have to have it on with Chrome.
I'd actually rather there was a simple meta key in each application, that you could use to just show you the vital data about a page. Meta data in webpages can be human readable - title, author, summary etc. How about an overlay? And how about have this for every app? Looking at an image - activate meta key, to see copyright info etc, listening to a tune, activate meta key to see tag info etc. Far better than hiding it under some menu item and distant properties tab.
Opera has an info bar, but it's not that user friendly.
That doesn't particulary address whether the title is necessary, it's great for window management, using windows instead of tabs. But you'll need a good window manager. I'd rather windows than tabs - though I fear that Opera introduced tabs as they were cheap windows more than anything else.
Your absolutely correct in my mind. I get more from the favicon then anything else, and since moving to Linux and losing the title bar I have not found myself missing it or lost.
