Chrome Browser: Unique UI Experience

At present, I have become a heavily dependent user of chrome, and even a USB flash drive with a portable version of Chrome. For me, it has a killer advantage that no other browser can replace: fast, stable, and perfectly supportive of all Google's online services;

and other browsers, they only in some special requirements will be used, such as the Firefox autoproxy Wall, ie, under the Internet bank payment, Opera turbo acceleration and so on.

People who have used chrome have a habit of saying that chrome is hard to use. Of course, this is a joke, the Chrome 3.0 version of the function has been relatively simple, but does not prevent its users praise it. At its root, it is still out of its unique UI experience.

Only one sentence to evaluate:Chrome is the browser, the other is just software.

"If you really want to know why he is (mediocre), I'll tell you a shot in the projection room," Godard once said angrily to prove that Spielberg was a mediocre director. ”

Now I'm going to do a similar thing, but the goal is to prove that Chrome is a great browser.

Goal-oriented design

When Chrome was launched, everyone was surprised: the interface was so simple that the menu bar was cut off. Where do so many menu bar commands go? have been regroup .

Example question: Guess which menu item is the "Erase history" feature?

While you're still thinking about the "History" or "Tools" of the command in Firefox, I think you should have already decided that this feature is in Chrome's "Control Google Browser" menu.

Look, that's a big difference! What is called the user's first instinct, which is.

As a M-powder, my personal fantasy is that Chrome is a tribute to ribbon and learning:

1. Based on the user's goal, the browser commands are reclassified.

This makes Chrome only two menu items: control the current page , control Google browser . This effectively lowers the user's memory requirements for the command. (One of the usability principles: dependency recognition rather than memory.) ）

M-Powder Grumble: This is similar to the classification of ribbon.

2. Chop off half of the order, and cut off half of the rest.

Chrome's streamlining of command is a drastic move to eliminate some of the user's goals and avoid being plunged into a functional, 100%-browser. (Of course, this also has Google's product strategic reasons)

Look at the picture you can see how chrome cut the command, although the command is streamlined, but the actual use of the Chrome right-click menu does not make me feel a lack of functionality. Chrome is not meant to be streamlined and streamlined, and their streamlining is justified by the user's goal.

Contrast menu item commands, and dialog box commands. Chrome renders the "history" download Record "extended record" feature in a separate tab page. Some common dialog boxes render commands that are modified to float-layer rendering. such as "Set as default browser", "Save Password", "Add to Favorites".

The benefit of these practices is to keep the chrome commands in a " shallow and narrow " structure (see Design Psychology), to follow the user's cognitive rules from the outside to ensure that the user has a better sense of control (Sense):

• Most right-click menu items are within 10.
• There are no three or deeper menu items or window overlays.
• Use less modal controls to break the user focus and keep it in the tab page.

M-Powder again I grumble: one of the purposes of Ribbon's design is to improve the user's sense of control. BTW, if you count the number of toolbar commands per browser, chrome once again proves that it's the most " pure ".

The best response and the sense of manipulation

Compared to other browsers, Chrome makes the following changes:

• Cut off the menu bar and the window title bar.
• Integrate the address bar with the search bar.
• The dynamic status bar.

The interface is simple and commands are less. The first advantage to Chrome is that Chrome has the best display area for the same screen size. But in response, Chrome is instead leading the rest of the browser. Chrome's excellent feedback allows users to understand the state of the system with less attention and focus on their own tasks and information.

Let's start with the tag bar. This is the most glamorous part of chrome.

1. Turn left, turn right

Do you notice that the progress icon on the left of the tab bar is feedback when you load the page?

Chrome uses three of relative information (direction, color, speed) to convey the browser's status to the user: connecting to the server, connecting to the server, loading the Web site.

Most of the time they just flash past, but when there is a problem, he helps you understand the situation: if you visit a non-existent site, such as twitter.com, then you can only see the counter-clockwise progress icon.

2. Go left, go right.

Chrome's Tab bar operates with a buffer-type transition animation that provides a metaphor for feedback that meets the user's operational expectations.

So when a new tab is open, it looks like a new label sliding from the left to the right (incidentally, the Mac is sliding out from the bottom, a little bit interesting). ）。 When you close a label, it looks like the label is indented to the left. Chrome always uses an expected animation that matches real life to render the user's actions, which are the most efficient, vivid and minimized feedback.

3. Minimum operational requirements

No matter what kind of users, most want to get something for nothing, do not like the software to ask him too much. Users not only hate input, hate to press the keyboard, users even hate to go too much to move his mouse. Especially in the face of repeated operations, think about when you need to traverse multiple pages of pages, the Web page that bad, the beating of the pager is how to make you angry, you can probably understand why.

Chrome's minimum operating requirement is to close the tab bar, and when you have multiple tabs, you can turn off multiple without moving the mouse, which is a very strong sense of design control. The Tanioku has been analyzed in detail . There is not much to say here.

4. One of the top two

One of the top points I'm talking about is the chrome address bar. There's a cloud on the Web: a really good user interface has only one button, like the iphone, like a flush toilet. That's a little bit of a truth to say.

The role of the address bar is to take us where we want to go. So, do you need to differentiate the address bar from the search bar?

Is the taxi driver going to say to you, "Hey, I can't identify the place you're talking about, you ask the guy next to me, he can search?"

One of the chrome's address bars reduces the user's thinking. But the automatic feedback of the address bar gives users a more straightforward understanding of where the browser will go next. As you can see, chrome is effectively categorized here so that users don't get lost and confused.

In addition, its accessibility is also not bad, you do not need to help to understand the Ctrl+enter shortcut operation.

The Chrome Address bar design method, in my personal opinion, a bit like the low-level cognitive design I've discussed before: pushing the starting point of a task to a very thin (only one address bar), increasing the depth of the task (the input of the optional path to the floating layer) will help the user do more work. The incremental operating structure, when satisfying the default requirements of low-level users, can bring higher satisfaction to advanced users.

However, the flaw of an address bar is: If the user's first purpose is to search, how to solve?

In the Windows Experience specification, there is one: Ctrl+e in any interface, positioning the focus in the search box. See how the Chrome is solved? You can try it on your own. Remember to say "Chrome bull X" after trying.

There is also a video , 15 seconds Chrome can complete four times search. It's called a top two.

4. Most "useful"

This is said in the Windows user Experience specification when talking about the status bar:

The status bar typically uses text and icons to describe the state, but it can also contain progress indicators and command menus and options that contain state-related commands. It is not critical to ensure that the information in the status bar is useful and meaningful to the user. -- Source

So let's take a closer look at how the progress bar in the status bar works for users. Useless, because most Web sites do not work properly until they are fully loaded. and a Web page loading if the progress bar to the feedback, then the page is inherently problematic. Users will also not be patient with sites that load more than 10 seconds and require a browser to provide progress feedback.

OK, the progress bar is useless, should be removed, so similar to the right side of IE information on the status of useful? For a chrome that doesn't have too many dependencies, he's really useless. (But I personally think that after the expansion of the chrome extension, you should expand the extension bar, and the status bar integration.) ）

What is useful and meaningful information? Look at the picture:

On an older upload interaction model, the system itself does not provide any effective feedback, and Chrome kills everything else through the status bar seconds: He provides feedback on progress. At the same time, his tab bar is counterclockwise, indicating that data is being exchanged with the server.

Let's go back to the beginning of the title, called the Best response: Chrome is not the most powerful browser, but the response is the best. This is not difficult to understand the same function is simple, but also the default browser of the Mac system Safari, the share of the blink is overtaken .

What are the benefits of responsiveness to the user: an unmatched sense of manipulation; that feeling, like a fool's control of a luxurious sports car in the need for speed, is cool.

Hidden OS Ambitions

Finally, on the other end, for Chrome OS, we can see a bit of the prototype in Chrome, such as the Chrome menu has not opened the local File command, but its most important idea is "create application shortcuts ..."

In the image above, this interface already has a strong appearance of the software, and it is a local thing, just a 1 k size shortcut.

So it seems that we also need to install a lot of things on the local hard drive, and then go to boot? No, everything can be simple, maybe one day you click on a shortcut to the desktop, you can use Photoshop directly, real installation-free, and unlimited platform.

Of course, for now, there is a big push on Chrome OS, such as how to define the implementation of modal dialogs and modeless dialogs, and how network applications can avoid a single page rendering of transitions. But in the long run, this trend is irreversible.

In fact, I started to hear Chrome OS I was rejected, because you can't say this is OS, I think this is OS, first I want to try, because I do not want to try to praise it with some persuasive words, very good very fast. So other m powder will despise me, there is no such convenient OS, on the proof that the above is false. Later I also confirmed that Chrome does have an OS prototype, and I used it to "create an application ..." about one months or so, it feels like using local software, and then when I introduce it to my colleagues, I don't brag, because I let them know that I use it so much, and it's so cool when you use it.

Last Words

Chrome is one of my favorite browsers, and it's also excellent. The good thing about Chrome is that it sets up a new future for browsers, the task of the browser is not just the Web page, the browser should not be the traditional software, it should be a completely out of the user's local computer, it should be given more user goals and expectations, Leveraging the cloud's massive information and instant technology makes the user's goals faster and easier to implement.

Although the title of this article is to squeeze the chrome UI, it's just trying to squeeze dry. I believe that every time you use a chrome, you will be more than a surprise, a more satisfied. The last few videos on Chrome:

• a very creative new Chrome AD.
• 19 interesting Google Chrome videos (Need to flip the wall)
• what can Chrome do in 15 seconds?

Finally, if you can insist to see this, in advance wish you a happy tiger, brother let me and you said: "Love Tiger mail." ”