Adaptive Path Blog

The Firefox browser (for Mac) has been messing with my (and I assume other users’ as well) muscle memory lately. The first version of Firefox 2 Beta (2.0B1) made a small but disruptive change from the earlier version of Firefox: the close button on the browsing tabs was moved from the right side to the left side of the tab. This undid all the training about tabs that the previous year of the browser had taught me. Which would have been fine had the shift been more natural or made clsoing the tabs easier or some other gain. But it didn’t, and, even though over the last few weeks I’d sort of gotten used to it, now in the new beta (2.0B2), the tab close button is back again on the right. Argh.

Complicating this, the drop-down changer on the search box (to switch between Google/Yahoo/Technorati/etc) didn’t move this time — it’s still on the left. Huh?

Cooper’s Rule applies here: if it doesn’t provide a noticeably-better change, don’t change it from what’s expected. Keep the close buttons (and the search changer) on the right.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 3rd, 2006 at 6:28 pm and is filed under Interaction Design, What Were They Thinking?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.