Open Source Add-on Rewrites the User Interface of IE11 86
An anonymous reader writes "This is how Internet Explorer would look if you move the tabs to the top like in other browsers. Developed as a design and UX study, the open source add-on replaces the default navigation bar and combines three traditionally separate toolbars into one. The UX project started in 2004 to demonstrate that it is feasible to combine the address, search, and find box into one. Additionally, Quero offers a variety of customization options for IE, including making the UI themeable or starting Microsoft's desktop browser always maximized."
Showcase (Score:1)
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I've never used /. as a home page. For me it's always been following links in the 'headlines' emails, because I'm often without connectivity for days or weeks at a stretch. But I too have been suffering from increasingly vomit-inducing layouts as I've been using a tablet more often. for some dumb-fuck reason they try to force me to use a mobile
Re: Who cares (Score:4, Informative)
I will give that my company recently decided to stop supporting IE 6, 7, and 8. IE 9 isn't nearly as bad, and doesn't require as many workarounds as the previous iterations. IE 10 is a little better, it's still slow as shit for mapping applications that HTML 5 and javascript (not written by me) for the mapping engine (works great in Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari), and I haven't used IE 11 as of yet. Hopefully with IE 11 they'll finally have it right and I won't have to waste time rewriting sites and having to explain over and over to management why it's necessary. It's so stupid, our management insists sites work in all major browsers, but then they get pissy when extra time is needed to actually make sure things are working correctly.
I'd also like to know who sets the metrics for how long development should take, because it's not me.
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What quirks are in IE 10 where it has to be rewritten?
IE 6 I can see. So buggy you need to rewrite it just to make sure bugs dont do what other browsers dont.
But IE 10 does not render different. It maybe missing some things but it is pure fud to say it is so horrible you need a 500 line CSS rewrite for formatting errors which is what you are implying. It is 2013 not 2003.
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I also pointed out the issues I'm having is with a mapping engine written in HTML 5 and JavaScript. The mapping application works awesome in Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari, but it is slow to the point that it's next to unusable, not totally unusable, but very very slow to load in IE 10. I don't know if it's the HTML 5 IE can't handle properly or the JavaScript. In either case it's not FUD, It's an actually
Not sinking. News at 8.1. (Score:1)
You apparently haven't bothered to work with Windows 8.1. I learned that with 8.0 about 2/3 of my customers didn't like the default interface. With 8.1 setup to boot to the desktop, wharing Start screen and desktop wallpaper, and shriking the Start screen tiles made it easy to use, even for an 86 year old customer. Presently, we sell about 2/3 Windows 8.1 and 1/3 Windows 7 PC's.
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Hint: Windows is usable these days.
Yeah, if you're a preschooler used to the Mattel "My First" line of big button crap, or have poor motor skills and/or hand-eye coordination.
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But even if you spray paint it gold, it still stinks.
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It suffers from one basic major flaw. The same flaw the MS Antivirus suit suffers from: It is the one thing most people have, and the one thing no malware author can avoid.
Malware is the biggest reason to avoid the IE like the plague. No, not because it's more susceptible. I don't even want to discuss whether it is more secure or less secure than $obscure_browser. It is simply the bigger target. It would be more sensible for a malware writer to try to infect via a timing hole that allows one out of ten atte
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I don't use IE as my main browser and haven't in 12 years.
But the targeting of browsers is so 10 years ago. They target flash, Java, and PDF. After all why target IE when you can target 100% of users instead? Comes to show to use adblock!
yes it exist for IE users now too and great for offices
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There's plenty of malware code out there that checks for browser versions, fires off different exploits based on it, and still tries to load Java and PDF malware.
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All browsers even including IE are more secure and improving each release. Sandboxing, process isolation per tab, excluding xss or side scripting, and hardened APIs.
unless you still run XP or worse IE 6 & 7! Not saying unhackable but hacking a browser is becoming more difficult.
I do cringe on FF 3.6 users. That is an invitation to be hacked!
Turns out... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is how Internet Explorer would look if you move the tabs to the top like in other browsers.
Turns out that it would look pretty much the same as the other browsers. Thanks timothy, I never could have figured that one out!
Re:Turns out... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's *really* hard to give a shit about this "story". Hey, special news report, you can change IE's look, whoop-de-shit!
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I couldn't agree more: The story amounts to "Browser plugin does something that the author really wanted. Film at 11."
I mean, why would it be news if some guy had written a Firefox plugin to do the opposite?
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Well, the technical achievement of finding a way to polish a turd has to count for something.
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post to undo mod.
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It's not that one anachronism either.
The UX project started in 2004 to demonstrate that it is feasible to combine the address, search, and find box into one.
Maybe in 2004 that would be interesting but seeing as that's default behavior for both IE and Chrome I don't really see the novelty. If anything this toolbar is regressive. "Hey check out these browser UI concepts that have already been tried and either discarded or adopted."
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Makes me wonder where it put them before. Spiraling out from the lower right corner?
Why? (Score:4, Informative)
This is how Internet Explorer would look if you move the tabs to the top like in other browsers.
I have yet to understand the reason for the UI change in the other browsers.
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Have you used a recent IE? All of my control are on one line. It takes exactly the same screen real estate as FF.
If you like having 400 tabs opened then I can see a preference for FF, as you get more room for each tab. I don't browse that way, and I prefer applications for my platform to look like applications for my platform, not some different thing that some UI designer thought was clever.
But whichever your subjective preference there, both browsers have the same screen real estate. And both do the s
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Because they ran out of other ways to make their browser worse with every new version?
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There are a couple of reasons.
As a starter, I remember an interview from way back in the aughties when where they asked an IE designer for his thoughts on the Firefox browser, which was at that point really cutting into IE market share. I remember one comment along the lines of "really good browser: the only thing I would change is to put tabs on top. The address bar and everything else only affects the current tab, so you want tabs on top to give the impression that each tab is like its own, separate brows
Re:Did they implement AdBlock and FlashBlock? (Score:5, Informative)
Sure.
AdBlock Plus supports IE.
As for blocking Flash, click the gear menu and tick Safety -> ActiveX Filtering. As Flash is an ActiveX plugin in IE, this blocks Flash by default. You then can whitelist individual sites by using the blue address bar icon.
Stupid Positioning (Score:4, Insightful)
Put the tabs underneath the bookmarks toolbar (just above the webpage you're viewing) where they make sense, then we can talk about maybe using the browser again.
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I can not agree more with this. Tabs are for the page you are viewing not the menu, address bar, search bar, navigation buttons, bookmarks or anything else that is browser wide.
Also having tabs at the top messes with hovering and accessing remote desktop bars and operating system docks like object dock if you have it at the top (which is the default).
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Navigation (back, forward, refresh, and home) and the address bar all control the state of the current page you are viewing, not the browser as a whole.
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AC missed the point.
Navigation is used across the whole browser
Tabs are to choose pages/sessions. You don't change your navigation platform when you select another tab.
At least in Firefox there is a workaround in about:config
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I use FF and place the tabs in the sidebar. Works nice when I have more tabs open then screen width
Ohhh (Score:3)
I feel like my response is supposed to be "Ohh! That's what it would look like if it were different!"
But the reality is that I didn't have much of an idea of what it looks like now.
Oooo Wee! (Score:2)
everything I never wanted in a browser UI
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Some obscure browser that only runs on an obsolete OS.
Why not on the side? (Score:2)
I'm still confused why everyone insists on dumping the menus and buttons on the TOP of the browser window. Web site design, for various reasons, tends to follow a fairly vertical layout: You scroll up and down to get at more content, with little to no side-to-side scrolling. Our screens, on the other hand, tend toward horizontal layouts, with aspect ratios getting increasingly wide.
It makes no sense for us to put menu bars at the top when we could put them at the right hand side, and the content in a narrow
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I'm still confused why everyone insists on dumping the menus and buttons on the TOP of the browser window. Web site design, for various reasons, tends to follow a fairly vertical layout: You scroll up and down to get at more content, with little to no side-to-side scrolling. Our screens, on the other hand, tend toward horizontal layouts, with aspect ratios getting increasingly wide.
It makes no sense for us to put menu bars at the top when we could put them at the right hand side, and the content in a narrower, taller window. We'd see more relevant content on our web pages, it keeps the tabs closer to the scroll bar, and minimize/maximize/close buttons are close by as well. Vertical pixels are valuable. Horizontal ones are cheap. Make the buttons and tabs use cheap pixels, please.
Unless your coding a browser where you want a consistent UI on a mobile device as well where horizontal pixels are far more precious...
Side-by-Side Application Windows (Score:2)
Personally, I like the obsession with menu bars at the top and bottom. It ensures that applications aren't hungry for additional monitor width, which means I can actually run two of them side-by-side on the same monitor. If they start making use of that additional width then I'll no longer be able to do that.
Menus on the left or right also take up far more pixels than menus on the top or bottom simply because text is written left to right. So applications that use menus on the left or right easily eat aw
For their next project.... (Score:2)
they plan to re-engineer the Flu virus to come in pastel colors and to manufacture vitamin D.
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The security implications (Score:2)
It never fails to amaze me that no one seems to get the negative security implications of an integrated url/search bar, especially given the underwear knots some smart people seem to get over truly esoteric 1 in a billion use case vulnerabilities.
If the URL bar performs search, it is ripe for a mistyped URL to lead you to a fishing site (hell, bad guys don't even need to register every typo iteration in DNS anymore, they can just pollute search results; it's like DNS hijacking made simple.) I have seen my
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Like putting lipstick on a pig.... (Score:2)
Yeah, it looks different, but it still squeals, smells, and acts like a pig.
Tab and url box look visually identical (Score:2)
Maybe it's just the Windows theme, but I found the screenshots disorienting. I could not tell the difference between the tab itself and the location input box.
For Windows 8... (Score:2)
Anyone who doesn't use Firefox as their main brows (Score:1)
Tabs don't go there. (Score:1)
I use Firefox and not IE, so this add-on doesn't even effect me, but the first thing that I do on a new Firefox install is set "browser.tabs.onTop" to false in about:config.