

Rethinking the iPad Browsing Experience - ab9
http://blog.arc90.com/2010/07/27/rethinking-the-ipad-browsing-experience/

======
muhfuhkuh
Reading the conclusion, they say discoverability of the sidebar is a factor.
Well, I've seen some iphone/ipad apps that by default, show all the toolbars
and buttons for a few seconds before hiding them (like showing and hiding the
dock in OS X); and some even give a little automated "nudge" imitating an
aborted swipe motion to show that there are other screens you can swipe to).

~~~
mikeryan
Could also make this a settings based feature...

~~~
j_b_f
I love how the common user suggestion to "just make it a setting" is
immediately downvoted. Hacker News FTW.

~~~
hnhg
I can't tell if that's sarcasm or not. I hope it it is. I thought downvoting
was reserved for the most egregious of comments. For me, that one by mikeryan
doesn't count.

------
zmmmmm
I like physically reading a page on the iPad - being able to use touch to
control the page is wonderful. But I hate just about everything else about it.
This is probably because I have very non-linear browsing habits and a typical
session involves opening 10 - 15 pages as I branch off into links on the page
or google for more information about terms in the page. For this purpose
mobile safari is simply horrible. It is a good _reading_ device but it is not
a good _browsing_ device.

------
wmeredith
This is a good article and I love Arc90, but I find the act that I can't watch
the demo video of their iPad usability solution on my iPad humorous.

~~~
eelco
<http://vimeo.com/13682463>

------
thought_alarm
Interesting concept, but I don't think toolbar real estate is much of a
concern on the iPad; if it was they could just automatically hide the toolbar
altogether like on the iPhone.

And I like having the name and URL visible at all times, as well as my
bookmarks. I don't think I've ever complained about having to reach _all the
way_ to the top of the screen to tap my Google Reader bookmark.

Address bar attached to keyboard is an nice idea, and something I've thought
about myself. I find myself wishing there was an input mode that simply
attached an textview onto the keyboard, especially in Safari.

I also wish the iPad keyboard had select all/cut/copy/paste keys, arrow keys,
next/previous word, start/end of line, forward delete, delete word, etc. I
love actually typing on the screen, but positioning the cursor and revising
text can be a pain.

~~~
bruceboughton
One area of text input that really could do with improvement in Safari is
input labels. Especially on the small factor iOS devices, the zoom level after
activating a text box is necessarily so high that the input label often goes
offscreen, particularly if the labels are (far) to the left of the input. When
filling in a series of inputs you end up swiping back and forth between input
and label.

Since labels are often tied to input via ID or nesting, it should be possible
in the majority of cases to show the label onscreen while navigating forms,
overlaid near the input element. I would even have thought some simple
heuristics could be used when the HTML does not markup the relationship
explicitly.

------
raquo
Why don't they just code such a chrome and publish it in the AppStore..?

~~~
thought_alarm
That would take actual work. Feel free to do it yourself, though.

~~~
raquo
I would but I'm not that good of a programmer (yet)

------
sacrilicious
The webOS dock-ribbon you can pull up from the gesture area in any card app
would be another interface paradigm Apple or a third party could implement.
I'm sure HP will blow the iPad experience out of the water with their
tablet... #sda

------
losvedir
The browsing experience on the iPad is fantastic. That said, I too have
noticed some small hiccups, though the author's problem with the address bar
at the top hasn't bothered me. The two things I don't like are:

1) I don't really know what a link points to without clicking it. I would love
to just, say, draw a circle with my finger around the link and have it display
the URL. Maybe there's some way to hover over links on the iPad that I don't
know about?

2) No immediate close button. I have to hit the two overlapping rectangles to
bring up the "tabs" and then close from there.

~~~
glhaynes
1) Tap and hold on the link and a menu will come up showing among other things
the target URL of the link.

2) Agreed. That makes browsing feel slower and less fluid for a many-tab user.
I don't really have a proposal on how to do it better than it's done
currently, though... a close button being always available would be too easy
to accidentally tap. Maybe if there wasn't that brief pause when you tap the
"tabs" button...

~~~
jodrellblank
2) Atomic web browser from the App Store gives classic tabs with a close
button, and configurable gestures such as two finger swipe down to close a
tab, and a three finger tap hides the toolbars for a fullscreen view.

~~~
bruceboughton
Gestures surely cry out for convention over configuration.

------
martingordon
I have concerns with moving the address bar all the way down to the top of the
keyboard: depending on the viewing angle, your fingers might cover your line
of sight to the address bar, and you might accidentally touch the address bar
while typing, causing you to change the cursor point or select text and
overwrite the current text. How about we split the difference down the
middle...and move the address bar to the middle?

~~~
bartl
I too wouldn't move the text area towards the keyboard, but the other way
around: position the keyboard just underneath the text area.

~~~
bruceboughton
I suspect moving the keyboard would cause muscle strain and the
unpredictability of its location (system wide) would be frustrating.

------
jluxenberg
If you get rid of the browser chrome at the top, how do I know what URL I am
visiting?

~~~
mikeryan
I think there's an assumption in most mobile browsers that knowledge of the
url isn't too important.

That being said in the example the address bar gets moved to the top of the
keyboard which you can launch from the side menu.

------
j2d2
I couldn't watch the video on my iPad. They should rethink that.

------
wazoox
This is the way you access the URL bar in the Palm Pré browser (swipe at the
top). and navigation is done with floating buttons at the bottom. Much better,
IMO.

------
nrbafna
Sidebar experience similar to Dolphin HD for Android?

