It’s safe to say I’m not the only Web surfer who has lots of tabs open at any given time. It’s also safe to say I’m not the only one who all of a sudden thought he was hearing voices, only to realize it was actually some Web site that automatically plays audio (or a video with audio). Funny at best, annoying on average, embarrassing / disruptive at worst. Especially if your desktop looks like this:
What if it looked something more like this:
I’m obviously not the best at Photoshop (and thanks to Jing for the easy markup tool), but there are so many ways to think about how to help users out a bit more. Tabs could also show:
- Download status
- Buffer status
- Flash/script problems
- Incomplete forms
- Loading issues/status
- and so much more…
We’ve been online and using “the Web” for about 15 years now (some of us, at least), and despite the amazing advances in the capabilities of a Web browser, I find in many ways things aren’t much “better”. Web sites still can’t seem to load much faster than they did a year, five years, or ten years ago. I understand you can “do more” in a Web page than ever before. But is “more features” better than “load faster” in our fast-paced lifestyle? I’m not quite sure…