Design 2 Grow

From the moment I switched from Windows to Mac I remembered how it changed my world. Not only was Mac OSX Leopard faster and better looking. It was so intuitive! In 2 days I worked on a Mac as I never worked on anther operating system before.
I was getting often irritated when I had to work on a Windows machine. It was like going back to the 90s. Not responsive and an unusual looking GUI. I know better know!

But to get back to the point why I’m writing this post. Even on the Mac there are things that could have been better. For quiet some time I’m wondering why everything is looking so nicely and minimal, but Safari is looking a bit cluttered at some parts. And is waisting a lot of space. Don’t get me started about IE or Firefox. Google Chrome is doing a good job as well.

For all the people who like it to ‘touch’ a product before reading about it. You can check the interactive demo down at the article!

Topbar

The topbar in Safari 4 consists out of a titlebar, url & Google bar, favorites and tabs (if tabs are in use). That are 4 layers with a height of 93 pixels. So on my mbp with a resolution of 1440 x 900 it would make a lot of difference when I didn’t had the topbar. When I maximize the Safari 4 window so it touches the topbar and the dock of the desktop, i will get a height of 820px. So if there was no topbar I would have 11,34% more space to view a website!

Solution:
The topbar only slides in when the user hovers with the mousepointer at the top of the window. When the mousepointer is not hovering on the topbar it will slide up, and so will the page. You can get the topbar back by entering the topbar zone from all sides. You can try it in the interactive demo.

Tabs

In the Safari 4 Beta the tabs were located in the title bar. Just like Google Chrome. I liked it because it safed space, but it was getting too cluttered. There were too much buttons now in the titlebar.
In the final version of Safari 4 the tabs got back at the normal place and made the topbar bigger again. But the tabs are still not very convenient. When you have multiple tabs the titles of the tabs are getting shortened and you still don’t know what tab you are going to open. Is there a more visually and faster way to open tabs?

Solution:
Now the topbar is not visible all the time, it would make sense if you can view all the tabs by an different action. Since I’m a Mac user I use Expose a lot to change from window or application. It’s lightning fast and visually pleasing. So I implented expose for Safari. The little thumbs of the websites makes the user switch faster from tab to tab. The Expose can be activated by hovering with the mousepointer in the left and right bottom corner of the Safari window. You can try it in the interactive demo.

Just a little add: When Expose is active and you press on the tabs, you will get back to the homepage. You won’t open the other pages. This interactive demo is just to give a better idea how it works.

Advantages for Safari 4 with these changes:

- More space for displaying the website.

- Browsing relaxed. Just focus on the website and not everything around the website.

- Faster changing of tabs

- The animations give the user more feedback of what happens

- Visually more pleasing

What kind of ideas do you have to make Safari 4 better?