Now that Chrome is going to support extensions, I would like to make some suggestions regarding its interface.
We all know that the major problem with extensions for Firefox is that they get your browser cluttered, like in this picture. http://tinyurl.com/5rlbe9 On the other side, Chrome's major benefit is its clean, uncluttered interface. My suggestion as a compromise between a clean interface and the power of extensions is to hide the clutter from the main chrome, using something similar to MacOS's Dashboard. The details of this idea would be better presented with concept drawings, but I am lazy, so just use your imagination to fill the blanks. There would be only one additional button on browser's chrome, which when pressed would bring up a translucent dashboard over the current tab. It could also be quickly accessed by a keyboard shortcut, a mouse gesture or even showing the top N widgets near the mouse cursor when the user hovers over the tab. The dashboard/widget's context would be the current tab, of course. Now, imagine a MacOS dashboard, but instead of a weather widget, you would see a delicious widget, with an field for you to tag the current page. To better manage the several extensions, they could be separated in tabs. There would be a Main tab, with the most accessed extensions, and tabs for other categories, such as Web Development, Security, Utilities etc. All them with the current tab as the context. (Although, the extension could also be context less) Another example. Instead of showing a Firebug icon on the right bottom, like in firefox, it would appear on the dashboard, maybe already showing some useful information if activated or not. When clicked, it would open a pane on the bottom, just like in Firefox. Or, in the case of a Noscript extension, probably all of its functions could be accessed directly from the dashboard, without the need to open another pane/window. Then there's the need to alert the user that something important happened, like an extension that checks for new emails. Alerts could be implemented by showing an alert icon on the button used to access the dashboard, together with the number of alerts. When pressed, the dashboard would show up with the alerts on the top of the main dashboard tab. Or the button could be a drop down that would show the alerts when hold pressed, whatever is better. Of course, the dashboard would only be used to unclutter the main browser chrome. Other kinds of interface, like Skype clickable phone number, would work just like in other browsers. I think it would be pretty cool, specially the hover over the tab, showing the Top N widgets, so you could have a stumbledupon or bugmenot widget quickly accessible, for instance. What do you think? --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Chromium-dev" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/chromium-dev?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
