[Usability] Re: Mozilla Firefox 2.0 Chrome Changes

["Luis Villa" <luis villa gmail com>]

On 3/2/06, Kristoffer Lundén <kristoffer lunden gmail com> wrote:
> On 3/2/06, Luis Villa <luis villa gmail com> wrote:
> > On 3/2/06, Kristoffer Lundén <kristoffer lunden gmail com> wrote:
>
> > > Hiding the statusbar seems like a
> > > huge mistake though, how then to verify suspect links?
>
> >
> > So come up with a better way to do it. :)
>
> Eh.. a better way than removing it? Keeping it, of course! Or if you
> meant come up with something better that the statusbar, I don't think
> that is my job. That would be the job of whoever wants it removed - I
> think it's fine.
>
> >The information could be in
> > the mouseover popup; i could only come up when the target link in some
> > way doesn't match the text of the link;
>
> How could that possibly be decided? If a link says "Go to paypal" and
> the link is "paypal.bleh.com" instead of "www.paypal.com" a human can
> easily see that something is wrong, but a computer? And if the link
> text says "Gimme!" instead with the same links?
>
> > there are a million potential
> > ways to do this,
>
> Examples? Apart from the popup above, that I think is practically
> impossible? If there is no regression in safety and simplicity of use,
> you can remove/replace anything you like. I'm not against change, just
> bad change. :)
>
> >all less crappy than the statusbar (which gedit has
> > wisely basically gotten rid of.)
> >
>
> What's so crappy about the statusbar? It's an excellent place to show
> extra information

It is a terrible place to show extra information, because one of the
things that usability testing has shown over and over again is that
very few people ever see information put down there. So if you'd said
'an excellent place to hide information in plain sight', I'd agree...

Luis (unfortunately no time today to respond to the rest, perhaps tomorrow)