Microsoft is being out-Microsofted in browser design
For a company with a rich history of passing off iteration as innovation, it’s pretty weird to see almost all of IE7’s design decisions being implemented — and improved upon — in almost every other browser.
I feel like a lot of web developers ignore IE as “that product that makes me hate my life,” so I’m not sure they see what’s going on here. IE7 was the first major browser to combine the drop-downs for the Back and Forward buttons into one History drop-down. It was the first major browser to move the refresh and stop buttons to the right side of the URL bar. It was the first major browser to attempt (albeit confusingly) to eliminate the traditional menu bar (good-bye File, Edit, and friends).
When these design decisions first came out in IE7, I didn’t like most of them. I thought they were bold, and hoped they would make more sense in the future. Some of those decisions, I think, do make more sense when using Windows Vista. But I can tell that other browser developers have also been looking at these decisions, and improving upon them.
Google Chrome: Release early, iterate often
While IE7 implemented some of these IU decisions sloppily, Chrome executed much better. Even the concept of condensing the menu system into two menus: one for menu items applying to the current page, and one for the browser itself, was done in IE7 first. But IE cluttered the interface too much. It surrounded those menus with so many other buttons, all of which are buttons I would almost never use, that I instinctively draw the assumption that those menus aren’t supposed to be important, either. But displaying a mere two icons to the right of the URL bar, Chrome imbelishes these menus with the sense of importance they need.
Then the idea spreads
What blows my mind is how Apple redesigned the Windows version of Safari so that it looks almost exactly like Chrome. For a company with such pride in its visually distinctive look to imitate another company famous for treating style as an afterthought is jarring, to say the least. What I find interesting is, both Chrome and Safari retain their traditional menus (File, Edit, etc.) on OS X, because those menus are part of the OS UI, and not that of the browser. However, with screen resolutions increasing at a rate faster than mouse speeds, I think the Windows implementations may be better.
So IE, Safari and Chrome are all ditching traditional menus. That leaves Firefox as the only major browser to keep them — for now. Firefox devs are already kicking around mockups for Firefox 3.7, anticipated next year, that follow suit. With that release still being relatively far away, and with Firefox’s reputation for launching UI redesigns late in the development cycle, I personally would be disappointed if I didn’t see some ideas from the Firefox 4.0 mockups sneak their way in.
For once, Microsoft has actually innovated the space of web browser design, and has been out-iterated by its competition. The question becomes: what will they do with IE9?