Hi there, my name is Robby Macdonell, I'm a user interface / experience designer, sometimes front-end-developer, and sometimes, well, I just don't know. I live in Seattle, WA but grew up in The South (and spent time in Alaska and Massachussetts in between).

Firefox new tab extension. An idea.

Thu, Apr 09, 2009
Like the recent post on file uploads, this is an exploration of a Mozilla Labs project, the New Tab experience. I couldn't really explain my thought in a concise enough way to leave as a comment, so I'm posting it here instead.

There's something that seems conceptually weird about the current about-tab extension. My focus gets dragged around all over the place when I pop open a new tab.

Without the extension, my brain and muscle-memory do one of two things.

  • I want to go to a url (cmd-t > start typing > maybe interact with awesome bar)
  • I want to search for something in a new window (cmd-t > TABKEY > start typing in the google search box > maybe interact with suggestions/previous searches)

When I take eaither action, I'm REALLY focused on the navigation bar of the browser. (more specifically, in the middle or right side of the nav bar.) The new tab extension pulls my attention away from that back down along the left edge of the content window. My hands are generally on the keyboard, and to interact with the tab page options I need to switch to the mouse (I realize that's not the case universally, lots of people will use the new tab button to pop open a new tab.)

I wonder if the idea has been explored of having an initial open state for the awesome bar? I can see some legitimate reasons to NOT do this, but it would allow my focus to remain in the right place, have easy arrow navigation to common items. It could be easily dismissed by typing anything in the addressbar, which would replace the list with awesomebar results. Here's a mockup:
new-tab-with-reopen.jpg