News - Internet Explorer 9 interface leaked?

[HEXUS]

Microsoft's Russian press-site accidentally posts shots of secretive UI

Read more.

[AGTDenton]

Surprised Microsoft are unable to come up with a GUI of their own

[TheAnimus]

they did that with the office ribbon and the vocal minority people moaned because it was innovative and forced them to learn something new, despite all the usability studies showing it worked faster for the vast majority of tasks.

This just doesn't look like it will work, how many people have 5+ tabs open, they or the address bar, will be squashed unless one moves above/beneith the other, or they hide, slim down the address bar (really does it need to be big? I change tab more than i click on the address bar)

[Nikomus]

Perhaps this is the compact mode, similar to full screen in Firefox when just the tabs and address bar are visible. It certainly looks helpful for netbooks, but hopefully you'll be able able to "pop out" The tab bar when there are too many. Really, the address bar could just a button. You need to click it to start typing or highlighting a URL anyway, why not click on a small button that pops out covering the tabs briefly, and automatically hides again when you press either return or Ctrl+C?

[Funkstar]

IE9 seems to be taking a minimalist approach in a similar vein to Google's Chrome and the latest beta of Mozilla Firefox

So isn't Opera getting any love for having a minimalist looks for I-don't-know-how-long now?

[miniyazz]

I hate these ideas to make the address bar smaller

Nearly the first thing I do to customise a browser is to put the address bar on its own row, or at least just have a small search box next to it (only if it's a 1080p+ screen). I want to be able to see the entire URL as much of the time as possible so I know where I am/can easily change parts of it to quickly navigate within a site (think wikipedia, for example).

The tab bar is probably the first thing I change, if need be - I dislike not being able to see all the tabs, and I dislike other things cramping the tab bar as I do use a lot of tabs - currently on two rows using Tab Mix Plus and 19 tabs per row.

[this_is_gav]

One row is better for this increasing trend for 16:9 resolutions (separate rant), but as said, unless you can move the tab-bar onto a row of its own, that's going to be useless for most enthusiasts... unless there's some funky feature to the GUI which is still to show itself.

Without more info, it's a far cry from the game-changing GUI they're promoting though... it's just what we already had, but with less and with what's left made smaller.

[miniyazz]

Yep I don't get this desire for more and more width with less height
I didn't get a 22" monitor 'cause it wouldn't have enough vertical space increase compared to my trusty 19" 4:3, and that was a 16:10 one. Plus a 24" 16:10 was going cheap at the time

[crossy]

they did that with the office ribbon and the vocal minority people moaned because it was innovative and forced them to learn something new, despite all the usability studies showing it worked faster for the vast majority of tasks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrjwaqZfjIY says it for me. Sheesh if you're talking about the Office 2007 UI abortion (and I'm pretty sure that you are), which is also known hereabouts as "where the f**k have they hidden that (feature) today?, then you couldn't be more wrong.
"Usability studies" - ha - good thing I've got arms on this chair or else I would have fallen off/out of it with laughter. What most experienced users were saying is that MS screwed up big style because they rolled out that "innovation" but didn't give folks a chance to migrate into it - it was this or use and older version (I went back to the older version for a long time because I was a good deal more productive without that cretinous attempt to be different). Now I'm forced to use Office 2007 and pretty much find a new thing to hate about it each day. If OO didn't have a hopeless Calc app then I'd be away to that in a shot.
Disclaimer: yes I know that folks coming to Office 2007 as their first office suite really like '2007, and sneer most disparagingly at Office 2003 etc. Horses for courses I guess, or put it another way, ymmv.

This just doesn't look like it will work, how many people have 5+ tabs open, they or the address bar, will be squashed unless one moves above/beneith the other, or they hide, slim down the address bar (really does it need to be big? I change tab more than i click on the address bar)

This, I do agree with you here - loads of folks I see have a good swath of tabs open - me included - so having the navigation bar, search bar and tabs on the same line is a UI no-no. If they want to copy Chrome then lose the search box and integrate that into the URL line. Hopefully, someone in MS will see sense and allow the users to move the tabs to a separate line before this makes it into production.

Meanwhile, I must admit to liking the idea of being able to tear off a tab to dump it into the taskbar, sounds like a great feature if you're wanting to maybe start a new line of searching. That's "innovation" I can get to like.

[Funkstar]

This, I do agree with you here - loads of folks I see have a good swath of tabs open - me included - so having the navigation bar, search bar and tabs on the same line is a UI no-no. If they want to copy Chrome then lose the search box and integrate that into the URL line. Hopefully, someone in MS will see sense and allow the users to move the tabs to a separate line before this makes it into production.

Meanwhile, I must admit to liking the idea of being able to tear off a tab to dump it into the taskbar, sounds like a great feature if you're wanting to maybe start a new line of searching. That's "innovation" I can get to like.

I'm often surprised at the amount of tabs some people have open. I tend to have 5 or 6 at the most, any more and I start to get lost Or I split them off into seperate instances of Opera. So I have Facebook, Hexus, gmail etc. (all my every day stuff) in one window and anything I'm researching or working on in another. I guess everyone is different. I wouldn't be surprised if you can move the tabs to their own line though, all they have done is make the tab bar like all the other menu bars in previous versions of IE.

[TheAnimus]

I'll frequently have about 4 browser windows each with any number of tabs when I'm reading documentation.

that may well be 12 tabs+ in each browser too.

[Funkstar]

You are obviously doing far more work and probably far more interesting work than me then

[TheAnimus]

Not today!

Last day I'm working with this team at this Idea's Mortuary.

So far its always gone like I warn something is a bad idea for xyz, question the merits of what it brings to the party.

Then they ignore me, fair enough their call, then they get irate with me not been able to think of a solution to fix the bad design I warned against.

The person who has to give sign off for my consultancy time, got pissed off with me not been able to fix a problem, which I'd warned about 3 months beforehand, before any work had been done. Got quite vexed when I suggested that those who knew better than me at the design phase shouldn't complain if they are un-able to know better than me at the its all gone pete tong stage.

So in short. I REALLY HATE software & systems development today.

[Funkstar]

Not today!

So you watch far more pr0n than me then?