Comments on: Firefox New Tab Page: Cognitive Shield

By: Joe

Joe — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 05:57:54 +0000

I'm pretty new at this, so I was trying to find a feature that would replace Top Sites from firefox. This did look pretty promising, but all I can see is the list. No shield or floating circles. As far as the functionality of what I do see, Im getting all of these randomly assigned sites that I've never been to. Also, the gear at the bottom right only leads to a white page, no preferences or anything at all actually. Not impressed, but it could just be that my copy isn't working.

By: leandro

leandro — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 04:55:54 +0000

I agree with raja (#14), the spontaneously bookmarks bar in new tab is awesome, simplistic and get the job done flawlessly. Anyone who wants the permanent BTF, can right-click and tick “always show”.
This approach is very good for us using small resolutions monitors (notebooks and netbooks).

By: Susan K. Craig

Susan K. Craig — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 20:48:12 +0000

How can I get rid of the new Mozilla blog icon that shows up when I start Firefox. If I can’t get rid of it I will go back to Internet Explorer or Safari.

By: raja

raja — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 01:08:50 +0000

Chrome’s homepage has a bookmarks bar which I find really neat. It shows up when a new tab is opened and gets out of the way once a page is opened. It would be really great if this feature can be added to the new tab page of firefox

By: bussiere

bussiere — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 11:28:31 +0000

will it be possible to personnalize customise this page ?

regards
Bussiere

By: quodlibetor

quodlibetor — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 05:39:21 +0000

You mention (somewhere) that the cognitive shield doesn’t work because people keep trying to click on it, but by the time their mouse gets there the icons have faded:

have you considered moving the favicons of the CS to their final locations, so that the background is gray and teh icons are washed out, but when you move the mouse the icons colorize (instead of disappearing) and the text fills in? It seems like this could have all the benefits of the CS without the drawbacks of horribly frustrating users.

By: shelly

shelly — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:13:44 +0000

I personally find the simple yet elegant neew tab extension from NewTabKing to be the most effective in the new tab navigation flow

By: Josh W

Josh W — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 17:15:10 +0000

I think this might be a good idea. One prob though: Power users know that they don’t need to move the mouse, infrequent users don’t: A safe assumption when the UI is unknown is to click the input box you want, or in extreme cases, to follow your pointer around with a very narrow cone searching out the screen.

Now for the extreme case, they will be more confused than in the old situation, as the change they did not originate will attract their attention more than inert stuff appearing.

For the intermediate/inexperienced the problem of origination remains. They don’t know that you are making that assumption of their behaviour, so they will be at a loss to explain why you did that.

Solution? Hover select grayed out boxes that say what they “would” contain (+ icon), and then fill in the contents.

This way both English and visuals are used to distinguish frames, that have consistent information in them (IE they can be zoned out) and have constant spacial orientations, so no worry of hitting them by accident.

Problem? It constrains the geometry of your link list. Fixed sized frames are so 1997, but in terms of reducing confusion they may be the way to go. You could also have them extend downwards when focused on, leaving the bizarre UI of half a page of blank and then say two long parallel lists scrolling off the bottom.

I love ring menus, but I don’t think this is the place. To recap, the principle is monotony until interest is given, in framing and content. It’s like a closed mail-box; always the same until you want to open it.

By: Dusan

Dusan — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 20:13:27 +0000

I think that when I click remove on some site, that site should be removed permanently, moved to some black list, because I except that behaviour, no matter that I’ll visit it later, when I click remove, it means that I don’t want it to appear on new tab

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 19:46:28 +0000

I would remove the circular shield and just show a list of slightly desaturated (and perhaps scaled up) fav icons in the places where they will appear in the list once it fades in. Mouse targets stay the same, but less info/clutter on the screen.