Browsers on Windows 7
A few days ago I completely reinstalled the operating system on my computer in order to upgrade from the Windows 7 Beta to the Windows 7 Release Candidate. In doing so, I had to manually reinstall all of my applications, including the various browsers to which I am accustomed — Mozilla Firefox (3.5 Beta 4), Google Chrome (dev branch), and Safari 4 (now no longer beta) in addition to the built-in Internet Explorer 8, which I seldom use.
I am also accustomed to my taskbar being set in “Combine when taskbar is full” mode, which is a compromise between the dock-resembling Windows 7 taskbar and the older taskbar style with which XP and Vista users would be familiar. This looks something like this:
An alternative taskbar look for Windows 7
Today, I decided to see if I could get accustomed to the Windows 7 taskbar look, which involves taking out those labels and showing merely the icons. Screenshot by Paul Thurrott:
The default Windows 7 taskbar style
This is when I discovered something cool yet shocking about my browsers.
Firefox in the taskbar
Mozilla Firefox is a nice browser; that’s why I use it most of the time. Google Chrome is lightweight, fast, and aesthetically pleasing; that’s why it’s my default browser.
But neither of them seem aware of Windows 7. Their browser icons are plainly represented in the taskbar, even when I’ve got multiple tabs open. In the screenshot to the right, Mozilla Firefox only gets one taskbar thumbnail when I mouse over the icon, even though I have 4 tabs open. The icon, too, doesn’t reveal anything about how many tabs are open.
Chrome has the same issue
With Google Chrome, the exact same thing happens. The thumbnail is one of the application, not the individual tabs open, so it would appear that Windows 7 isn’t aware of the individual tabs nor is Chrome taking advantage of the new taskbar.
Internet Explorer has no issue with this; as soon as more than one tab is opened, the taskbar reflects this change. Note: the same change occurs for Chrome and Firefox if multiple WINDOWS are opened.
Windows 7 recognizes tabs in Microsoft's browser
The shocking thing is, Apple’s new browser takes advantage of the taskbar. Perhaps one expects this from a company that focuses on user experience and aesthetics. But this just makes Safari awesome.
The taskbar actually recognizes the individual tabs in Safari 4
You’ll notice that the thumbnails aren’t of the browser, but of the individual pages loaded in tabs. This means that I can click on a thumbnail to go directly to that tab — an excellent convenience, thanks to the Windows 7 taskbar.
I’m very surprised that Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, two of the most common browsers among people who are on the cutting edge of software technology, aren’t taking advantage of Windows 7’s new taskbar. After all, according to Wakoopa (which tracks software usage), Firefox and Chrome are the 1st and 3rd most used browsers on Windows. Come on, Mozilla developers, make your browser more Aero-aware and taskbar-aware! Even Chrome looks nicer on Aero Glass by default.
Chrome looks really attractive with an Aero Glass interface
Taskbar thumbnails are really useful when the taskbar items don’t have labels and when the icons are combined. It’s no longer necessary to read the labels to determine which item to click on; I can just mouse over, quickly scan over the thumbnails, and click on the one I want. Kudos to the people at Microsoft who came up with this intuitive interface!
If you’re still on Windows XP — noting that it is nearly 8 years old — or on Vista, Windows 7 is a major step up in terms of the user interface. It might take a bit of adjusting, but in the end, I am certain you’ll like it.
A couple of things.
One: Safari is, really, not that great. I’ve tried out several different browsers in the past few months, and I must say that Safari is by far the worst. Most prone to crashing, most ineffective attempt at a “pretty” graphical interface, generally just annoying.
Two: This “rollover to view tabs” sounds more like an inconvenience than a good thing. If you are doing something personal or private on the computer, and you don’t want the other people near you to see what you’re doing, you can’t roll over the taskbar without giving everything away. That’s another reason I don’t really like Chrome – everyone can see what sites you visit right when you open the browser.
Don’t forget that with Chrome and Safari you can remove thumbnails from the startup page. (And Opera’s Quick Dial pioneered the thumbnail start page.)
If you don’t like the taskbar thumbnails, you can always disable them.
You see to forget this is just an RC. Windows 7 is still months if not years off of Launch. Why would Mozilla be developing features for Windows 7 when they can focus on getting 3.5 out sooner.
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After all, according to Wakoopa (which tracks software usage), Firefox and Chrome are the 1st and 3rd most used browsers on Windows.
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What kind of source is that? That site only tracks those who sign up for it. To have a fair and unbiased sample, we must look at all Internet users, which http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0 does a good job of. And we see IE has by far the largest share. (And this is adding in Mac users – higher in Windows)
“Just an RC” means a lot. It means a ton to software developers, hardware OEMs and everybody as a whole, given that RTM will be in July and GA (in stores) is set at October 22nd. (Windows 7 Team Blog.)
It’s the goal of developers, particularly those working on major projects, to ensure compatibility with new (versions of) platforms, and for a project as massive as Firefox, there’s no reason not to make it Windows 7 aware — aside from the little problem that it’s not even perfectly integrated into Vista, and that was about 2 years ago.
Perhaps it’s valid to claim that Firefox should perfect the HTML5 features in 3.5 before turning to the aesthetic things. But I would also note that, as of two days ago, I got an early release candidate of Firefox 3.5, where all those other things seem to have already been perfected.
Meanwhile, Apple has managed to implement, in Safari 4, not only an implementation of many HTML5 features, but also amazing support of CSS3, thanks to the WebKit project. That’s how Safari 4 combines an aesthetically pleasing UI with amazing underlying technology.
As for Wakoopa, I’d agree. It only tracks those who sign up for it; it represents the demographic of users who are more technologically adept than their peers. This is very possibly the same demographic that is running the Win 7 RC or that will be the early adopters of the new OS.
More to come in my next comment.
Sure, Internet Explorer has by far the largest share. This is common knowledge among Web designers and developers — most often as a nuisance, given its massive failures with Web standards.
But I’d refer to the context in which I mentioned Firefox and Chrome as the 1st and 3rd most used browsers.
Remembering that the purpose of this article wasn’t to highlight the respective successes of Firefox and Chrome, it seems reasonable to me to point out that both Firefox and Chrome, with advantages in terms of Web standards and technologies over Internet Explorer, should focus on — or at least pay some attention to — improving their user-friendliness. Chrome’s done a great job of that, though, as Linus Torvalds said, “different, if better, is worse”; that is to say, Chrome’s too different from the norm for the average user. Similarly, if only Firefox could make itself integrate… it would gain popularity with new, non-technical users.
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