It depends on who you are, and how you use the browser. Maybe the Chrome UI is good for somebody with a tiny screen and a near-complete lack of technical ability.
But for people with large monitors and the need to push a web browser hard, they've merely managed to strip out or hide a lot of very useful functionality, with essentially no benefit. What's left over is non-standard and awkward to use (like Chrome's menu).
I have a large monitor, but I have no idea what you mean by "push a web browser hard". Chrome's UI is great because it recognizes that what is important in a browser UI is the content area, not the, well ... chrome. I have no concept of what you could possibly be doing with the menu so often that it bugs you.
A little more on topic: one person's "crappy hipster redesign" is another person's "wow this is so much better" and it's really difficult to guess ahead of time which will be the dominant reaction. Having said that, most of the frustrations about Maps here seem to be more on the implementation side than the design side.
My issue with Chrome's UI is that it is inflexible. I agree that the content area is important; as such, my firefox displays much more content (while also displaying more useful icons IMO).
In Chrome, you take what Google gives you and you better like it. I'll admit, it's not a bad default.
Firefox, however, allows addons to fundamentally alter the appearance of the webbrowser. I can add stylish themes that do all sorts of awesome things. I can use vimperator with "set gui=nonavigation" and reclaim even more space for content.
This fundamental difference is the reason I think Chrome's UI is bad. Firefox, you can customize the gui to be good for any definition of good. Chrome's only works if your definition of good aligns with Google's.
Also, for an example of when Chrome's UI fails, simply try and half-screen it on a 1080p screen with 30+ tabs open. All the tab favicons vanish. There's no way to search for an existing open tab (akin to firefox's % Location Bar Search character[0]).
If you'd like, I could show you my firefox and chrome running side by side with firefox having dozen's of more pixels of content-viewing area. Even if you don't like my setup, the fact that I can change it at all makes it an obvious win for me.
Chrome's UI is great because it recognizes that what is important in a browser UI is the content area, not the, well ... chrome.
Sure it is, as long as you only want to look at one page above the fold.
But sometimes I want to navigate between pages, and at that point I do want my bookmarks bar displayed.
Sometimes I want to scroll a page, and at that point I do want scrollbars that work the way my system is setup instead of some almost invisible, almost unclickable little rectangle at the edge of the window.
Sometimes I want to use developer tools, and that that point I do want concepts like whitespace and fonts larger than 5px and coloured icons that are easily recognisable to exist, instead of prioritising cramming so much information into the available space that all of it becomes almost illegible.
> But sometimes I want to navigate between pages, and at that point I do want my bookmarks bar displayed.
'Always show bookmark bar' is the top item on my View menu. Is it there for you?
> at that point I do want scrollbars that work the way my system is setup
I can't comment on this I've not used a scroll bar since I got trackpad scrolling. Just compared Chrome with Safari and the scrollbars seem identical to me.
> Sometimes I want to use developer tool
I'm not clear what your complaint is here. Dev tools is too crowded? I often need it to share space with content whilst I'm debugging. If you have dual monitors then I can understand you might prefer a less compact display. I work entirely on my laptop so I'm grateful for it's compactness.
'Always show bookmark bar' is the top item on my View menu.
Sure, you can change the default easily enough. I'm just giving an example where I do find it useful to have more Chrome displayed at the expense of a small amount of content area.
I can't comment on this I've not used a scroll bar since I got trackpad scrolling.
I'm usually working on a desktop PC, so I don't have a trackpad. I use a mouse scroll wheel all the time, but for long documents that's tedious (as is using a trackpad) and with most mice it's a one-dimensional scroll anyway.
I'm not clear what your complaint is here. Dev tools is too crowded?
Yes, and many things in it are far too small for comfortable use. The developer tools in both Chrome and Firefox are riddled with basic usability and design blunders, such as using tiny fonts and icons; using a flat design that blurs everything together and often gives no clues to what interactions are available; offering many different sets of tabs, icons and other controls; numerous inconsistencies in presentation, not just in the different behaviours from tab to tab but even from one set of tabs or icons to another that is visible at the same time; and forever moving things around, particularly making unnecessary minor changes every few weeks.
I've nothing against providing for developers who are using smaller screens, but I have a powerful computer on a real desk with nice big screens to make me as productive as possible, and the idea that everything must be crammed in to maximise the content area at all costs just isn't helpful in that context. Rather like the perversion of the original "mobile first" design idea to become "over-simplified least common denominator behaviour is good enough", it's throwing the baby out with the bathwater and actually making the software worse for some users. Of course the developers of these browsers are perfectly entitled to do that, but it's equally fair to point out the problems they are creating.
> But sometimes I want to navigate between pages, and at that point I do want my bookmarks bar displayed.
Ctrl+Shift+B.
> Sometimes I want to scroll a page, and at that point I do want scrollbars that work the way my system is setup instead of some almost invisible, almost unclickable little rectangle at the edge of the window.
Seems to use normal system scrollbars for me on KDE. Windows looks custom, but only wrt textures, sizes still seem to match.
Sure, or it's an option on the menu. I'm just trying to show that sometimes removing all possible chrome to maximise the content area isn't necessarily the most helpful thing to do.
Seems to use normal system scrollbars for me on KDE.
On Windows, they are just thin grey rectangles that don't even look like scrollbars (or anything else you might interact with) and don't even look the same between the main content window and supporting windows like the developer tools.
Completely agree. Hide as much as possible that isn't annoying on a regular basis then learn the keyboard shortcuts for everything else if you're such a power user.
I use chromium with a 5760*1080 resolution, and I frequently have > 150 tabs open across 3 browser windows, and I really have no complaints. I also occasionally peruse or develop WebGL/ASM.js/emscripten applications, so I suppose I fit into your description as someone who is "pushing the web browser hard".
All functionality I need to access quickly is accessible through shortcuts, so I don't typically need to access the "hamburger-menu" very often. The only thing I really use it for is to open the settings tab.
And that continuous pandering to them is what will bring the downfall of the information age. We are dumbing down our technology, where we should be forcing people to get smarter instead. But unfortunately, dumber is always easier to sell. I fear that, as the world depends more and more on technology (and people actually thinking straight), this feedback loop of progressing idiocy might one day undo us.
> And that continuous pandering to them is what will bring the downfall of the information age. We are dumbing down our technology, where we should be forcing people to get smarter instead.
Changing humanity on the kind of broad scale that requires is a much broader and longer term project than any commercial entity could survive in the short term if its commercial success relied on it.
Its certainly the kind of thing I can see Google being interested in, but not the kind of thing they would be around long enough to do if they didn't have a business strategy that did better at reaching the masses of people that actually exist now as they are than that could ever do.
That does not make sense. Newspapers are a primitive medium, that does not offer a lot of customization, yet in many ways they are superior in content to news websites. In any case it does not really matter how "dumb" the presentation of content is, if the content itself isn't "dumb".
It was until it starting generating errors on the backend when they break compatibility with auto updates. Or the fact that it doesn't render Java correctly in some cases. Or the fact that it auto places the cursor in certain places for you despite you attempting to click in a specific textbox. Or the fact that it no longer allows you to set the target page of new tabs.
I was once in love with Chrome, but over the past few months I've started looking back at FireFox.
