Russian internet giant Yandex has launched an alpha version of its new Chromium-based browser for Windows and Mac OS X that incorporates a few interesting ideas of how a modern browser might look. The main difference from the interface of Chrome or Firefox is the ultimate minimalism and the fact that the tabs are moved to the bottom of the page.
It actually looks quite appealing. More information and download links can be found in Yandex’ blog post.
The url address is hidden by default. Hello, phishers!
There seems to be a padlock icon there for secure stuff and I am pretty sure that the majority of web users look to the padlock for secure logins far more than at the actual URL itself, especially as a lot of phishers these days seem to be using long URLS to deliberately confuse users. As a power user this may seem like an odd choice but mobile browsers have done it for ages now and there hasn’t been any big upswings of phishing. Regardless though this is an alpha software so there will probably be an option added before the final release
Edited 2014-11-28 11:10 UTC
Most sadly just look for a green padlock, not if the site signed is the site they thing they are accessing.
And long urls are one thing. Another is the use of unicode to mask where they are going. In say Firefox this will become painfully obvious on the url bar, as it turns the unicode into its ascii DNS equivalent.
All in all what i see is a minimalism design wank and nothing more. but then design seems to overrule engineering in computing these days…
In the days when screen real estate was restricted, I could have understood minimalist designs so you could actually see something! These days screens and resolutions are getting bigger by the week it seems, yet we still cling on to the minimalist design, why?
Visual distractions are visual distractions, regardless of the size or resolution of the screen. That’s why simplified UIs are sought after.
Sorry, but if the toolbar is more visually appealing than the website then it’s the web designers fault, not the browser!
Wrong! The human brain is not that lame… I don’t get distracted by the address bar or tabs at the top of the screen nor the Windows taskbar at the bottom of the screen. I am able to focus on the browser window just fine.
A minimal browser UI is fine on mobile with a 5″ screen but I have a large display and a full keyboard at home and work. This is why Windows 8 failed, by trying to force a mobile UI on desktop computers…
The tabs on the bottom (with the Yandex browser) would be visually distracting mixing with the Windows taskbar.
Edited 2014-11-28 16:03 UTC
Yeah, despite all of the people gushing over how wonderful Chrome’s interface is, it’s brought some of the dumbest UI changes in the history of web browsers. Ditching the status bar & using a pop-up to preview the URL of links… with the braindead behavior of truncating URLs, even if the screen/window size is more than wide enough. Or hiding the “http://“ from the URl display (again, even if there’s more than enough space to display it), and then adding it back if you copy-paste the URL – sure is convenient to have to erase the “http://“ part every time I want to ping or run a traceroute on a domain copy-pasted from the browser’s address bar.
That, and the more mundane stuff like combining/hiding multiple menus under one big un-labled menu, sends a clear message that Chrome is intended solely for those whose use of the web is limited to consumption.
Actually, tabs at the bottom just makes me feel nostalgic for the good old days of the Opera browser.
Back when it first implemented tabs they were placed at the bottom of the window by default. I’m not sure it really offered any advantages, but out of habit I ended up keeping them there long after that default was changed. In fact, I only moved them after I bought a widescreen monitor, where a vertical tab bar down the side of the window seemed a better use of space.
Back then there were only one or two other browsers with tabs, and their position at the top of the window hadn’t become so standardised that anything else seemed odd. Come to think of it, even the name tabs wasn’t universal back then, with Opera calling them “Pages” on the “Pagebar” for a good few versions.
Ironically, the location of the tab bar is one of the many options that can’t be changed in cut down ChOpera. At least that was the case the last time I depressed myself by trying to use it…
Big honking deal, they’re still in the damned way the direction we generally have LESS of — Call me when I can move them to the left or the right; when browsing you rarely need the full width of todays widescreen displays, but more height is ALWAYS welcome, particularly if you aren’t willing to pivot the monitor.
Just one of the reasons I still use Opera 12.17… along with all the other features STILL not implemented in the pathetic crippleware called ChrOpera.
I can install about five dozen extensions into Firefox to ALMOST come CLOSE to Opera 12’s capabilities… say hello to unstable unusable train wreck.
WHY THE **** is it that browser makers seem to all be crippling their UI’s and doing everything they can to drag interface design back to the worst of IE 4 Mac?
They’re ALL uselessly and pathetically crippled compared to the now defunct Presto based Opera browsers!
Bold experiment my ass — welcome to a semi-incomplete implementation of decade and a half old concepts.
Edited 2014-11-30 00:36 UTC