

HTML 5, Web Apps and Native Controls - paulrouget
http://paulrouget.com/e/nativecontrols

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malandrew
This is a potential step back for modern UI design with the user's best
interest at hearts.

To understand why we need to consider Apple's one-button mouse. The one button
mouse basically makes it explicit to the developer/designer that you can't
just assume that a user will know that a right click or control click command
exists. This forces the interface designer to make the control available
visually or in some other more obvious way.

Contextual clicking is nice, but better approaches such as showing controls on
mouseover or on select are far more discoverable. Mouseover or show-on-select
controls are also preferable to menu-bars because of Fitt's Law.

Permitting app developers to use menu bars and contextual controls is the easy
way out and results in a worse design.

Both the top menu bar and contextual menu are relics from when the inmates
were controlling the asylum. Show they be eliminated? No, I think it's great
that this can be done, but only if it is an alternative to other controls
embedded in the design itself. The design should not require the menu-bar or
contextual menu for all features to be usable. All the controls found in the
menu-bar and contextual menu should also be discoverable in the design.

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sudont
So, Mac users can now have _two_ toolbars specified in their chrome, and
everyone can lose control of how the browser is displayed? I'm not sure, I'm
reminded of:

    
    
       if  (event.button == 2) {alert "no clicky!"}
    

While there should be a launcher in the browser that can create SSB or a shell
for the web-app, I highly doubt it should be so tightly integrated with the
chrome that a website could take control of the browser window without user
intervention. This seems to just move the typical in-pane menu up to the top
of the window.

This might be a good idea, however I'd rather Firefox included a launch mode
that allowed it to load in an SSB, not to suddenly change the window into a
different app, which might be fine under Windows, but is pretty awkward under
a Mac as it breaks window switching.

