
Firefox New Tab Page: Cognitive Shield - toni
http://labs.mozilla.com/2009/03/firefox-new-tab-page-cognitive-shield/
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unalone
I think the best compliment I can pay Aza Raskin is that whenever I look at
one of his designs, I know immediately that it's his. He's got a focus for
circular designs combined with an emphasis on minimal displays that convey a
lot that's a signature look in my mind.

This stuff he's doing for Mozilla thrills me. It's great to see him working
with a huge company.

~~~
markessien
I'm a bit skeptical. The circle is loved by designers, but it does not seem to
survive in software that is actually being used by people. There are few
pieces of software that uses circular control elements - the few that I can
think of (the logitech mouse, LabView) don't handle well.

~~~
unalone
In this case, the design doesn't _function_ as a circle. It changes to a
linear list once you move your mouse. The circle is just there as a
placeholder.

Have you used Raskin's music site Songza? It's a great example of circular
navigation that works really well.

~~~
markessien
It does not work for me personally. I don't like the way that the options
appear in places that I did not predict they would appear in. When I interact
with anything, I want it to behave exactly the way I expect it to behave, and
to do so consistently.

The songza site does not behave as I expect it to, and even after I learn how
it works, it does not behave consistently in its own mould. I click an item
and up pops some 4 arrow thing. When I move over some arrows, yet more things
pop up and on some other arrows, more things don't pop up, and there is no
hint as to which will cause things to pop up or not. So even though one might
learn how such a navigation works on that particular site, as soon as you go
to another site, you will have to relearn again which of those arrows will
cause popups and which will not. Contrast that to a right click menu which
always indicates which options will pop out.

I don't think circles are good navigation tools, for the reason that there are
very few popular tools which use circles as their main navigation mode.

~~~
tutwabee
It seems like you are not arguing against circular navigation in general, but
specifically the navigation on songza.

Your problem with the unpredictability of the menus in the songza-style
navigation could very easily be fixed by simply adding an arrow to each item
that contains a submenu, just like the typical context menu.

An arrow could be added on the tip of each leaf of the songza navigation
circle that uses has a submenu. The arrow would visually indicate that a menu
will pop out if the mouse hovers over leaves with these arrows. This would
function exactly as the arrows on the typical context menu.

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scorxn
I don't get the point. The only time a blank tab opens is when you're typing
in a URL or search phrase, at which point your eyes are on the chrome anyway.
If the Cognitive Shield has any perceptible load time, it's not worth it.
Granted, at least it doesn't look like an error message like IE7's default
blank tab.

~~~
unalone
The mission is to make it possible to click some easy links _without_ the
visual clutter that other browsers' start pages give.

Have you not seen Speed Dial/Chrome/Top Sites? Because this is the _exact
same_ functionality as those other ones, and none of them have perceptive load
times. Firefox is playing catch-up here: it's not giving anything particularly
new.

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andreyf
Chrome's tab-selection of top pages is a lot more useful to keyboard-centric
users... anytime I have to move my hand to the mouse is time from my life I'll
never get back!

A certain improvement would be to, instead of hitting tab-tab-tab-tab-tab-
return, I could just hit alt-5...

~~~
unalone
Knowing Aza this will very likely support keyboard navigation. Aza's a
stickler about having things ultra-accessible.

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feverishaaron
The big flaw with this design (the initial circle), of course, is what if a
site doesn't have a favicon?

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jerf
Odds are it's not one of your favorite sites if the site owner isn't even
committed enough to have made a favicon.

Before you smack the reply button to pop up with "But here's an example of my
favorite site without a favicon!": I said _odds are_.

I doubt the number of favorite sites without a favicon is low enough at this
point that Mozilla shouldn't spend a lot of time worrying about it.

~~~
philh
The example picture has two sites with the same favicon, so the general-case
problem probably isn't all that uncommon. Especially if you're the sort of
user who does things like checking multiple twitter pages without an RSS feed.

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Rabidmonkey1
This looks like an awesome idea. I haven't been able to try it out yet because
I'm running FF 3.07 (simply because Ubuntu repos haven't brought it up to 3.1
yet, and I don't really want to bother that much atm), but it reminds me of
the controls built into some FPS's and even old Lucasarts Adventure games like
Full Throttle or Grim Fandango. Except the default actions in this case are
all favorite websites. Nice to see Mozilla labs pushing the envelope yet
again.

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quoderat
Something else I'll promptly be turning off/removing ASAP when I am forced to
upgrade to a newer version of Firefox. Firefox was at its best in 1.5 --
hardly anything after that has been anything but developer flights of fancy.

