Random Thoughts

New Tab

Lot has been happening in browser UI. Chrome is the one which has got the elegant design as of now with Firefox & Opera catching up. IE doesn't about it anyways. One feature that is common in all these browsers (including Safari, on windows it's a crap) have is the placement of new tab button.

Not an UI designer myself but I want menu & button to be easily accessible. So, what's the easiest way to open an new tab using mouse? Ctrl + T is obviously the simplest but weren't going to consider it because 80% of the browsing time there's no need for keyboard.

Look at the below screenshot,
new-tab-apple-chrome.png

Current tab is the wiki page, third from left. To open an new tab need to traverse two tabs left to click. If there are more tabs opened and the current tab is on left, it gets worse. Especially in an wide screen monitors its crazy.
What's the solution?
  1. Mouse gestures. Yes, Apple is correct with its magic mouse. Firefox has mouse gestures plugin.
  2. New tab button should be next to the current tab dynamically. Not sure if this can be done.
As it turns out, mouse gesture is the best way to open new browser tabs. Fire gesture for Firefox works really cool. Take a look.