-1

I’m following all these new proposed concepts with excitement but this one I must say that I’m sorry but I don’t really see a lot of gains with it.

When I open a new tab today, the focus moves to the location bar and I’m able to get that awesomeness together with the whatever search if that’s how I have it configured. Why move the same functionality as you already have in the location bar to the new tab page?

Also if I want my selected content for an action I would much rather see a concept like operator or webchunks. Both of these will actually cut another step in the process, namely the one we are talking about, open new tab.

Finally if I want to get a lot of information/functionality when opening a new tab, then similar to other browsers, let me open my webpage of choice with plenty of options, like iGoogle or Pageflakes.

I like my new tab fast and lean, and I fail to see the point of replicating parts of the interface in other places, but others might see it differently.

Keep up with the concepts!!

Please keep the new tab screen empty, as it is now. Those who really want to swim in a flood of information can achieve this in other ways (like opening the home page in a new tab, etc.). The rest of us would just get a headache from this.

“If we detect that some text has just been copied in one tab, we can suggest some actions based on it in the new tab: mapping, adding it to the calendar, etc. We can autodetect what type of text is selected.”

How are you going to analyse this data in +50 languages? the ‘autodetect’. I think you are underestimating the technical challenge it is to semantically analyze plain text.

This is really incredibly stupid.

If you think that 90% of the time a new tab is opened for searching …

MAKE
THE
SEARCH
BOX
DEFAULT
TO
OPEN
A
NEW
TAB

!

Instead I have to install Tab Mix Plus to do this.

If those in Mozilla Labs have so much time on their hands that this is the best they can come up with, I’m worried about the future of the ‘fox.

Why not try fixing something that is really broken, like the lack of a native WYSIWYG editor in Firefox? 90% (well what they hell since we’re making up statistics and rolling them into assertions, I might as well join the party) of users on the web will type something into the web. I think there’s this thing going on now called bl .. ogging or something. Not sure that’s the right name, but it seems quite popular now. Have you heard of it? Thought you might have. How about a decent WYSYWIG text editor to enable stuff like … oh I dunno, standards supporting text editing? Or has Mozilla limited it’s standards support to whatever is compiled into the browser binary rather than the content spewed into the digital ether via Firefox?

See I wanted to make the “via” in the above paragraph emphasized. Can I? Who knows, this is a crappy little comment textarea, not a texteditor!

It’s funny how those in the Mozilla camp managed to wake up for a few moments and realise that enabling better contributions via Firefox is important enough to justify spell checking. Strangely enough every other application in the history of computing allows text input has provided cut/copy/paste/bold/emphasize/lists BEFORE they enabled spell checking.

Is that telling you something?

Please stop trying to cook up new ideas in the “labs” and build basic WYSIWYG editing into the browser; and just in case you’re wondering if JS WYSIWYG editors are good enough, the answer is clearly: hell no!

@pd
The lack of one feature is a stupid argument against developing something new. Mozilla has different people working on different topics. There are people who’s responsibility it would be to implement a native text editor. The problem: There is no standard this could be based on I know of – and obviously, it wouldn’t matter nearly as much as improvements to the work flow.
My suggestion is: Find other people who support your cause, explain a way to implement it in valid JavaScript and/or HTML (or whatever).

@Aza
The point of the new tab for me is speed. It’s about:blank because about:blank is fast. It’s not a search engine because a search engine is *not* fast.
If you do that, the most important thing is speed. If it slows down the creation of a tab, I will want to deactivate it.
Internet Explorer is a good example for bad behavior here: I go nuts when I open a tab and it takes 4 seconds before it’s actually usable!

I do think that this could be a useful addition to the browser, and I would develop that as a complementary feature, at an address like “about:fancy”.
I would love to see that being developed as an add-on.

Totally agree. about:blank is a wasted opportunity, browsers should reclaim the homepage! You could easily add searchable favourites, context-sensitive places, a link to preferences, a link to the add-ons website, a google link, webmail etc.
In fact you could replace most of the chrome menu in a much nicer homepage.

Some cool ideas here, but I’m not sure about putting the third command bar into the interface. Why not just give all these features to the awesomebar and be done with it? Then you get those features all the time, not just when opening a new tab. With the separate command bars, you would have three similar but slightly different interface elements to choose from.

I really like the automatic actions on cut and paste though.

Is it a common habit? when I encounter a serious problem and can’t solve it for some time, I try to escape (subconsciously) – check mail, read blogs, etc. I really would not like my browser offering me these blogs with each new tab :-)
Big monochrome Search would be ok, though.

Interesting concepts!

One thing I do feel though is that whatever is done, it needs to be computationally very quick. Having lag whenever opening a new tab will get old REALLY quick. For that reason, I think my favorite is the simple search box. I’d even suggest going with a bundled search page as opposed to pointing to someone like Google simply because it’s faster. Personally my activities in a new tab are pretty random and diverse, so keeping it quick is ideal.

A pref to disable might also be a good idea. I’m sure there are some that will always prefer about:blank as opposed to actual content.

I don’t think have a duplicated Awesome Bar on about:blank would be especially useful. And I think putting a search box there could only be useful if it detected what you were going to search for before you got there.

I know, for me, I rarely use the built-in search bar because it saves what I searched for for all eternity. Instead, I’ve configured Firefox to use the location bar for searching (type term, hit enter). The only time I may use the search bar would be when what I want to search for has things that the location bar might interpret as a location, rather than a search term.

As for the other things to do with the data, such as parsing what you’ve copied or highlighted for use in maps or calendars is a great idea. And if the browser can predict where you want to go next, that’s also great.

I use new tabs like Danielle Fong does and I agree with Henrik that your proposal adds little to the already awesome (and focused) awesomebar (except maybe having copied/selected text auto-appear). Unlike Ami Ganguli I think that most of your (cool!) new ideas would fit well in the existing awesome bar, to benefit anyone accessing it from tabs old and new. Shouldn’t the awesomebar always offer to map addresses and show Delicious bookmarks? I think the awesomebar can handle all those things, and more, and that it’s best to concentrate on extending it as the universal interface.

For instance, if 90% of new tabs are for search, and there are people clamoring to change the default selection to be the search field, why not at least add a search option to the awesomebar? Opera and IE behave that way, I think. Not only does this save tabbing over to the search field, it allows me to start typing, and then attempt a search if I don’t see the results I want from Places. The default “Feeling Lucky” is good for lots of searches, such as the common case of maps, but not good for the other common cases, like definitions.

And the search “row” in the Awesomebar could even be the basis for an action interface: Type or paste a string, button down to “Search for…”, then side arrow over to “Map” or “Define” or “Add to notebook” or “Search nondefault Provider-X” . Maybe icons or a suggestion might make this discoverable?

I have to admit, I’m terribly scared of someone taking away focus from my normal awesome bar when I open a new tab. I like the awesomebar. Its one tab away from the searchbar. And it doesn’t confuse me on whether I can type an actual address in if need be. I think the majority of the world is comfortable with it, and moving focus to something that says, “Search the web” instead is a big usability problem.

However, I DON’T think filling the blank tab with potentially useful actions is a horrible idea though. Leave the bar where it is. Leave my focus where its supposed to be. Either Mozilla or Addons can fill in the tab with stuff if they want. I have no faith in any code’s ability to determine my actions from context. Its been tried a million times. Its rarely worked. But as long as it doesn’t get in my way, its nice when it occasionally does.

Pre inserting the clipboard text is a great idea! Epecially into several various “outputs”. This is similar to the Hal’s example in The Human e Interface, where the entered numer is automatically converted to both F. and C. No delimeter is needed, or even needing to define what convertion you wanted. 100% effeciency!

Most of the time I create a new tab to go to a new url, second is to search, third is do a software package search. For everyone it will be similar with slight variances in detail. For me I would like prefilled copyboard text for; new url, wikia search, and a debian package search.

Hello. I’ve some suggestions about the concepts mentioned above.

Read http://shah.developer4ever.com/index.php/2008/08/26/new-tab-concepts-for-fx/

I hope the entry is interesting enough for you to consider.

Have a great remainder of the week. :)

Hi,

Really like your ideas, like you say the new tab is currently “wasted space”. I have a concern though as I am always highlighting urls and then CTRL + T and CTRL + V and ENTER very quickly, will the search box take the focus as opposed to the url bar?

Another thought I had goes along a similar line of highlighting if you highlight a postcode (as it is here in England) or a zip code could the browser detect that it is a postcode/zip code and on a right click offer your favorite maps service i.e. Google maps.

There could also be a “Special shortcut” key again if you did similar to the above but say you highlighted a phone number could you then get the browser to load your favourite phone service i.e. skype with a simple keyboard shortcut like CTRL + SHIFT + G or something.

Hope maybe my thoughts and opinions help and maybe spawn further ideas.

Regards

I sort of like it, i sort of don’t. when i open a new tab i just want to go to my homepage, which is a google’s main page. i’m am completely satisfied with that. i had to install a plug-in to do that becuase the mozilla guys decided to not include that feature in the newest edition of firefox. create a tab interface so we can do whatever the hell we want with the tabs.

@pascalc

“How are you going to analyse this data in +50 languages?”

You don’t actually need to do this in advance — you build this knowledge as the user makes use of the interface. Every firefox user could speak a different language but as long as they have repeatable patterns, it would be possible to learn the mappings.

The problem is how far do we want to go in terms of feature generation — we could use the actual words that are selected (that would likely not be very useful), the number of words selected, the urls of the pages in the immediate history, the unicode sets covered by the characters, characters n-grams… finding a set of appropriate features that are fast to compute and accurate at predicting the task is the challenge here.

Current behavior is that when you open a tab, your cursor focus is already in the Awesome Bar. It would actually slow you down to have to change focus from the Awesome Bar down to the search+awesome bar field in the new tab.

Like the Awesome Bar more generally, the contextual sequencing is going to be problematic for anyone that visits NSFW websites (4chan, porn, etc). Could end up exposing information that people would otherwise not want exposed if they’re letting a friend use their computer or have a significant other looking over their shoulder.

Is there anyway to filter the results returned from the AwesomeBar or contextual sequencing so that pages that match certain criteria (adult content) are not displayed?

1) The blank page loads faster than putting content there.
2) You have a search bar in the top right. instead of ctrl+t new tab use alt+d, tab and you can search.
3) it should be 100% plugin based, not default. I have speeddial set to my default new tab.

I dont think people open a new tab just to open a new tab.

The point is that there is a context for opening a new tab, that should ideally be transferred — for example shift enter in the search bar should open the search result in a new tab.

I would much prefer some way for the user to show their intent of — I’d like this to happen in the current tab, vs. I’d like this happen in a new tab. So maybe some way of doing the awesome bar that opens things in a new tab based on a modifier key?

The idea looks nice but I’m not really convinced I’d use it. In any case, as has been said before, it’d absolutely have to have an “off” switch because I’d very much prefer the tab to be usable right away to waiting even a second before it becomes responsive.

I very much dislike the idea of the browser trying to guess which page I want to visit (the “You usually visit…” links in the video). The pages I usually visit are in my bookmark toolbar (or in my memory). I’d really hate to have the browser tell my boss that I usually visit some news site during the office hours ;)

Another thing I’m skeptical about is internationalization and localization. Detecting American style addresses and appointments will be hard enough to do in as little time as I’m willing to give the new tab before I can start typing, but guessing the language and the microformat?

But I guess the people commenting on your idea aren’t really the target audience of this “new tab screen”. Maybe it would be more useful for a casual user whereas users who use Firefox everyday and know how tweak the settings and install extensions will at least be able to deactivate it. Most of the time I know what I want to do and I really don’t need the computer second guessing me ;) But as long as the implementation is fast and has an “off” switch, I’m willing to give it a shot.

What I saw, seemed like something I’d benefit from. Everything you did and described in the video, I use FF like that. I think it is a great idea, and if the user doesn’t like it, they can turn it off. Every example you described, I do it at least 4 times a week. Please add this as soon as y’all can.

I am your average websurfer, but I do know a pretty fair share of technology knowledge. I have never felt threatened by a blank screen when I open firefox because I know its going to be blank. I have never complained. The only thing I did to it was use stylish to apply a wallpaper to the blank, now the San Diego Chargers, page. No complaints, no hassles, & no crying here.

One thing that I *constantly* find myself doing is copying a URL from somewhere that it is not a hyperlink (text email, blog comment, whatever) and opening a new tab simply to visit that URL.

If a tab opens, and my clipboard has a URL in it, browse to that URL (or at least have a button/link for that URL).

Thanks for the vimeo!
mG.

Definitely include an OFF switch if you are going to implement this. We already use Tab Mix Plus so we can do things that we desire with our tabs. Context Search lets us highlight and search with the search engines available in our Search Bar. Why give us another place?

Now, Paste and Go, that’s one that needs to be implemented as a Default, although with Tab Mix Plus, we can add a right click option to Open in New Tab.

I don’t need the browser being bogged down with Guesses on what I want to do with my Highlights.
KyleSimpson has a good point about virus/malware writers as well.

Bright Idea for Tabs. When there are 50 tabs and the user has the tab scroll disabled the feature is that just hovering over each tab should automatically increase the width for just that tab and proportionally so for the neighboring tabs so the user can read the tab title. Sort of like the thing on the bottom with the icons and the whole hover over an icon and make it bigger thing on Mac OSX. I’m not a Mac user but that Idea should be used on Firefox tabs to make the tabs bigger as the user hovers over them.

I like your ideas… zero-config is nice for the masses, as long as it is not too complicated or confusing. I hope that you will still allow more advanced user configuration through the Options panel or perhaps an about:tabs page. I really like the way that the about:ubiquity page has been implemented.

Very interesting concept, but i think that the same functionality can be accomplished using the awesome bar and/or the search bar.
Opera browser, for example, accepts “commands” or “shortcuts” in the address bar.
If the awesome bar is selected by deafult when you open a new tab, you can perform actions with this predefined shortcuts. For example, you type g firefox and the browser search for firefox in gmail. And you can set up your own “commands” or “shortcuts”.
It would be awesome if you can make a combination of shortcuts. For example, g clipboard and the browser search in google the content of the clipboard. Or type map selection to search the directions for the text selected.
Another possibility is to do something in the current tab and when you create a new one, the awesome bar shows suggestions. For example, selecting some text, cmd+t and the new tab opens with the awesome bar expanded with suggestions.
A separate command bar plus a separate search are not necesary if you have an intelligent address bar. You can get rid of these elements and simplify the visual interfase.

I really liked the maps/calendar and you-normally-browse ideas

Another thing I would like is recognising a url from my clipboard and having it pasted in the location bar automatcally so that I can set off to that page just by pressing enter.
Actually I would rather prefer a shortcut (e.g. ctrl + alt + T) to allow me to do this, as this is one of the most common actions I perform after opening a tab other than search

I really like the concepts presented here, and hope to see something like this included with Firefox. Needing an Addon for this is asking too much for the “average user”.

I have lists and lists of Addons I use all the time, but the average joe isn’t so adept at finding and installing and using useful plugins.

However, the bottom line is, the new tab window needs some great improvements for usability.

Great things could come from this idea!!

You can do whatever you want to the about:blank page as long as you don’t take the focus of the new tab away from the address bar.

Often the very first thing I do when I open Firefox is Command+T to open a new tab then enter in whatever address I want to go to. If firefox would put the focus on the address *cough* awesome bar then I wouldn’t have to open a new tab. It always struck me as odd that the default cursor location WASN’T the address bar. Isn’t the entire reason i’m opening a web browser is to go to a website? 90% of the time i open a browser and go to email or news or a specific site before searching. Of course I realize you guys make Millions by having the search bar be the default.

So please do not change the focus on the address bar when opening a new tab.

Oh also… your vimeo says to come here to have a dialog about this… i see lots of comments but no replies from you. ;) Monologs went out with 1.0 remember?

Partly repeating what “Lex” said:

For me, the address bar already is what you propose to display in the as-yet-unused window. I use the Firefox bookmark keywords a lot, so the verb-object relationships they enable are very important (to me). For me, googling for “foo” means “gg foo”, searching Amazon is “az foo” and so on. I think Google’s Chrome [1] caught on to this. For them, one can search for the site first (=verb) then press tab and then enter the search term (=object).

Furthermore, the current Firefox address bar produces a pop-down menu that occupies the window space, so it does not go to waste anyway.

[1] http://blogoscoped.com/google-chrome/20

Agreed – great idea to use the blank space but typing the search should go in the search box or the awesome bar. Having yet another input box is unnecessary and would feel cluttered, I think. The new page should have pre-loaded content like (maybe) currently open tabs, search results for the current selection, bookmark items or history items.

I’m am hugely surprised by how many people open new, blank tabs. Why are you doing this? It’s an unnecessary step. A waste of time.

Need to search in a new tab? Type in the search bar and hold ALT when you hit Enter. Ditto for addresses in the location/Awesome bar. BBrian already mentioned this way back in the comments.

Highlight text on a page, right-click, “Search Google for…”. Search results in new tab. This uses the active search engine, but can be easily extended to return definitions, translations, anything.
Why are people selecting, copying, opening a new tab, focusing the search bar, pasting, then executing?

This functionality has been in Firefox since the 0.-days, if i’m not mistaken. At least since version 1.

I like your brainstorming ideas, Aza—they’ve got me thinking.

All good ideas.

What I would like is a simple tree/map of my browser bookmarks below a standard search box. This needs to be an option for new tabs in the browser configuration.

Another idea for your books:
Have a multiple tab bookmark function. Where bookmarks in a folders are opened together as tabs.

For example. There are websites that I visit everyday and I can categorise these by news, tech stuff, gadgets, sports, etc.. now if I select a folder, all bookmarks inside the folder opens in new tabs, this way, I can browse my fav websites without having to open each one or click on the bookmark thing for every link.

You can pay me later ;)

Not sure if this has been mentioned already. I had an idea and didn’t have time to read all the comments.

I can use on my Mac:
Cmd+T to make new tab
Cmd+L to get to the address bar then Tab once to the search engine
Enter in my keywords and I’m at my Google Web Search.

My idea.
When a search is made from the Search Provider in the browser, have it open a new Tab and not write over my current tab.

Thank you for your website :-)
I made on photoshop backgrounds for myspace or youtube and even more
my backgrounds:http://tinyurl.com/5assk2
Hope you had a good day and thank you again!

I have to agree that a blank new tab works best for me. If I want to do a search based on selected context I simply load up the particular search tool on my Search bar, right click and select Search SearchTool for “foo”. The search is performed in a new tab without having to do anything else.

Usually if I open a new tab it’s to go to another site I have bookmarked or have been to recently. The Smart Location Bar is selected automatically so there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel to put the feature in another place.

As far as opening our home page in a fresh tab goes, that wouldn’t work for people like me who have multiple home pages specified. Granted, I’m on of the minority who actually uses bookmarks so I may be one of the few who also uses a single home page.

Bottom line? Please leave the fresh tab blank the way it is now. Doing anything else will only send me searching for yet another Remove-on to regain a long established behavior and make me long all that much more for an alternate browser that behaves like a combination of Firefox 2 and Firefox 3. Yes, I’m one of the idiots who wishes he could be using Firefox 2.5 rather than Firefox 3, and I continue to use Firefox only because I’m spoiled by all of the extensions I use.

The good resource is informative and actual

One thing I’ve been thinking about for some time is the whole copy and paste issue. SO often websites these days either have trash in the address or are blocking an address for some reason, or an address is listed without being hyper-text for whatever reason. When I select part of a text field that LOOKS like an address… it should be pretty simple for the browser to figure that out… even if the “h” is cut off of the http or it’s completely missing… the browser is plenty smart to figure out that a bunch of words with periods and no spaces is probably an internet or email address. So… when I select an internet or email address and hit right-click… I get the option to copy the information or preform a search on the information… and that’s great and all… but what if the browser was smart enough to figure out that it’s an internet or email address and give me the options to Open “www.whateversite.com” In New Tab or Email “user@email.com”? And what giving that action a keystroke as well? You know, select text field internet address, hit “Shift-Ctrl-Tab” and the browser attempts to open it in a New Tab automatically? (correcting for missing prefixes in the address just like the Location Bar already does). I think I would find that feature about 10000x more useful than any of the new “Awesome Bar” features.

a browsing session is a tree of actions.
a browsers’ lifetime consists in creation of, growth of,chopping of and cutting of the tree.
a tab is a leaf in the tree; even more, going back/forward moves you from one leaf to another

the design should handle the entire lifecycle of a tab: creation,existance and disposal and also the relation of a tab with other tabs and the mother window. your post is just about the creation. if you want to read more, i’ll try to develop the idea here, just let me know, i’m terribly asleep now: http://costinel.googlepages.com/firefox

As long as it keeps opening a new tab the same speed as a blank tab AND doesn’t slow it down like the Internet Explorer “connect” to open a new tab, I think the ideas are fine. I’m not sure how I would use them, but they sound interesting.

Also, how are you going to secure the personal data needed to do all these wonderful thinks? This would be a gold mine for a hacker otherwise.

Thanks for the post, i enjoyed reading it. blogging is not as easy as many think it is, it’s hardwork. any how thanks.

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I like my new tab fast and lean, and I fail to see the point of replicating parts of the interface in other places, but others might
see

it differently.