Susan Kitchens, of Susan's 2020 Hindsight points to a great article by Carolyn Snyder called "Seven tricks that Web users don't know. After reading this article I'm reminded that most browser users aren't like us. They don't think about the tools the way we do. They don't think about the medium the way we do. They don't trim URLs :-)
As content creators and client developers, it's critical that we understand that they are different from us. In the open source world, we don't always have the resources to conduct solid usability studies and relying on bug reports and newsgroup postings (from people who are like us) for usability feedback will, in many cases, make the web page or the application less usable for most users.
I'm not knocking feedback from users like us. I've no doubt that the Mozilla layout engine's capabilities, stability, performance, and many other areas and features are much better because of the feedback from users savvy enough to participate in Bugzilla and the newsgroups or web forums. But I think it's that same participation that gave us features like Mozilla's entire "Privacy & Security" tree of preferences (heck, our entire Preferences window) and the six or so "Managers" available from the top level Tools menu. There's nothing inherently wrong with good privacy and security controls or UI for managing various bits of stored data or application policies but it's pretty clear to me that these hunks of Mozilla's interface are so esoteric as to be not only completely impenetrable to most users but in the way and very likely to lead to real confusion for many users.
Just read the article linked above and you'll hear of the blank stares of mystified users who can't figure out a second browser window. Imagine that poor fellow when he goes looking for the "turn on the pop-up blocker" preference in Mozilla's Preferences window, or when he accidentally clicks on the View -> Page Info menu item.
Now I don't believe that a browser should be completely stripped down to the most basic features of a scrollbar, an address field and a back button, and this is why I believe that Firefox has made such a positive impression; it's not stripped down in features. It blocks pop-ups just as well as it's older sibling, Mozilla, but Firefox presents this to the user in a way that doesn't blow her mind. Firefox gives the user tabbed browsing, but doesn't bury the best configuration deep in a preferences application.
Firefox takes Mozilla's powerful feature set and streamlines it so that more users can cope with it, while users like us will still have a powerful and extensible tool. Firefox's simplified UI should not be confused with a minimal feature set and Firefox's customizability and extensibility, through the use of extensions, certainly makes it the tool of choice for plenty of power users. But I believe it's the simplicity, not the extensibility, that will make Firefox a success because while thousands, or even tens, or hundreds of thousands of users like us may want to add features to Firefox through extensions, tens to hundreds of millions of users that will eventually adopt Firefox will find everything but the scrollbar, the address field and the back button to be in the way.
Posted by asa at May 25, 2004 11:14 PMIt took over 20 years of GUI existence to begin figuring that out. Oh well, right now is the right time anyway -;)
Posted by: Walter K on May 26, 2004 12:54 AMI wish there *was* an extension that would add the "Tools" menu from Mozilla back in FF...sure would make managing cookies heck of a lot easier for this power user ;)
Posted by: John on May 26, 2004 02:15 AMI've said for a very long time that links that open in a new window are evil. Now I have proof :P
Posted by: Darren Winsper on May 26, 2004 02:24 AMI don't want to blame ff for its cleaner UI. But there are also decisions which seem to be to me not very well thought over:
1) sidebar handling. It was so easy in Netscape and Mozilla to switch between Sidebar tabs by just clicking them with the mouse or use Alt+PgUp/Alt+PgDown, which fits perfectly with Ctrl+PgUp/Ctrl+PgDown for tab switch. Now I have two different menus: View -> Sidebar for Bookmarks and History and Bookmarks -> Sidebar for all other sidebars. Is this cleaner?
2) The missing "Edit Ciphers..." menu in the security settings is a security hole IMHO.
Though it might be not understandable by Aunt Emily, you could at least lead A.E. to the menu and let her deselect the ciphers which are known to be vulnerable.
Posted by: daniel. on May 26, 2004 05:32 AM"will find everything but the scrollbar, the address field and the back button to be in the way."
I've persuaded a few such users to use Firefox (and they like it) but on average two out of three of these found that one simple thing was alien to them.
The address bar, they expect to be able to make it drop down and list the last few places they visited, like a mini bookmarks system.
It doesn't do this, what it displays seems quite random. You need to tell them to start typing the url in, this is many cases is not good enough for them.
I know sounds a silly thing but it's the only complaint i've ever had from such people.
Never understood why one can't do either in app installation or in menu structure a very basic, default-style of process/menu, and either a check mark or one menu entry named "advanced operations" that will open the installer/operational menu up for the geeks in us.
Posted by: Kob on May 26, 2004 08:04 AMThe article was very interesting. In some ways it was at first a bit depressing because it seems to dampen the potential for innovation. But in reality it is all very common sense - new things take time to be discovered and understood. I wonder how many Firefox users actually don't bother with the tabbed browsing because they haven't explored its uses. It might be an idea to 'show it off' with a couple of default start pages using tabs - one explaining the feature.
Beyond that, as a Lotus Notes user - I couldn't help feeling there was a certain irony that the article came from IBM.
Posted by: Gavin on May 26, 2004 08:26 AMKob Spouted:
> Never understood why one can't do either in app installation
> or in menu structure a very basic, default-style of process/menu,
> and either a check mark or one menu entry named "advanced operations"
> that will open the installer/operational menu up for the geeks in us.
It can certainly be done - see the Tabbrowser extension's preferences - and I agree - it would be much better.
I think the tools > options dialog should be as it is by default, but with a "show advanced" button that switches to a tree view of all the prefs a la seamonkey (with the simple preferences on the top levels of the tree)
Posted by: Donald Noble on May 26, 2004 10:59 AMReally intersting artice, and I instantly thought of a way to improve firefox on the 'open in new window' issue:
In new windows (also tabs), the back button is greyed, because there is no previous page. Why dont return to the last (originating) window as last 'back' operation? Just what simple users would expect.
Quoting the article:
=
My favorite was the online shopper who said, "I'd take it as a sign that God doesn't want me to buy this." She was joking about the divine intervention part, but was sincere that she would abandon the site.
=
This is my attitude to badly designed sites that don't work without javascript (eg: bugzilla), so it's not just the non-technical that are affected.
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20040525.html
Posted by: Phil on May 28, 2004 02:37 AMThanks for the link to that article, I thought it was very interesting - quite an eye opener.
I have to admit that even as an advanced computer user, some of Mozilla's menus have confused me and still confuse me a bit. My confusion lies primarily in Mozilla's Tools menu. After having been an Internet Explorer for years now, I came to expect the Preferences option to be in the Tools menu, not the Edit menu, so I was initially rather confused when I didn't find it there. I think I'm still a little confused when I don't see it there, but it doesn't take me long to find it.
I can't comment on Firefox because I haven't tried it out yet. I should use tabbed browsing more often, but I'm used to Internet Explorer where that wasn't an option, so I just stick to browsing in multiple windows, which works for me.
Posted by: halfawake on May 28, 2004 05:09 PM