Is Google’s Chrome Upside Down?
Yesterday Google announced Chrome – Google’s very own web browser. It has numerous very interesting concepts – like the complete process separation of different tabs or the Javascript VM – however, one little seemingly unimportant detail stood out to me: Google Chrome places the tab bar above the address bar and the history buttons. Opera did it this way ever since, while Firefox, Safari and IE7 place the tab-bar beneath the address-bar.
The way Opera and Google Chrome do it certainly makes more sense when you think about to which element the address bar and page controls belong to. When you switch the tab, you also switch the contents of the address bar (the URL) as well as what the history back and forward buttons do. Every tab has its own URL, so it is perfectly logical that every tab should have its own address bar. Likewise, when you press the history forward or back buttons, you are navigating the history for the current tab only. These are not functions that apply globally to the whole browser, so every tab should also have its own page control buttons.
With all that said, Opera’s tab bar placement was the single most important reason why I rather migrated from IE6 (Avant to be precise) to a buggy Firefox Beta instead of to a faster and stable Opera several years ago. Of course my decision was influenced by the fact that I was accustomed to having the address bar on top, but ultimately I really believe placing the tab bar above the address bar is a bad decision from a usability standpoint. I mainly have two reasons for that.