Presentation:

 

Tabs: deferred browsing

Tabs main use is deferred browsing.

When users find something that seems interesting in a web page, but they don’t want to jump to it right now, they open it in a new tab.

In that scenario, opening a link in the same window means “I want to view this right now”. Opening a link in a new tab means “I want to view this later”.

Managing the browsing experience

One of the problems tabs have is that they don’t work very well when deferring lots of pages.

Actually, users already have a tool to avoid cluttering a window with dozens or hundreds of tabs. By opening a link in a new window, users could define new browsing contexts. Each context could hold a manageable amount of tabs.

Seems like a neat idea. Why don’t users work that way?

The mental model of deferred browsing

Users are in the middle of something when deferring a page. Offering more administration tools or more information about the pages being deferred (for instance, thumbnails), will do more harm than help. If users were interested in evaluating a page to manage it, they won’t be deferring it in the first place.

Managing the browsing experience is not user’s goal. Browsing is.

 

Objectives of our proposal

1. Do not distract users from content

Our main goal is to avoid distracting users from content. That means the smallest possible cognitive footprint. Using more screen real state than tabs do, is not relevant if users’ cognitive flow is not interrupted.

2. View now / View later as only commands

We are keeping View now and View later as the only commands needed to operate the interface.

3. Little or no managing needed later

Deferred pages should be automatically organized in a meaningful way, in order to need little or no management later.

4. Integration of current features

The proposed solution should not only play nice with current features, but also make them work together even better.

5. Work out deferring media content

A problem tabs have is that they obscure deferred media content. Users are not only annoyed when music or video starts playing in a new tab, but also when they have to do a lot of work when they actually want video or audio playing while accesing other content.

 

Browsing Timeline examples

Deferred browing

Deferred pages grouped with referrer in the list:

 

Mini player showing media content from a deferred page:

 

Deferred page entries are duplicated to the first level when deferring content from them:

 

Integration

Our proposed solution integrates all browsing management operations, today scattered as tabs, windows, bookmarks, history, and search.

Displaying History pushes current browsing session to the bottom of the list:

 

Bookmarks:

 

Incremental search on timeline and active page:

 

Web search results shown as new point in the timeline:

All mockups are available at fickr.

 

Santiago Bustelo, icograma
June 2009