Clean Frame- and Navbarless UI

[TomasLongo]

Im a fan of clean, clutterless UIs and thought it would be a nice thing to add to the min browser. The navbar and windowframe are gone as you can see in the screenshot (top image with navbar, bottom image without).

• The navbar is brought up with a shortcut which has to be hold (shift+ctrl in my case) and disappears if the key-combo is released. That way you only see the navbar if needed.
• When visible, tabs can be switched with vim-like-bindings (previous tab: h, next tab: l)

The screenshot shows my actual implementation of the feature.

[idAlencar]

"Google translator" hi @TomasLongo , very good, I like the idea, what do you think about adding this functionality to full screen mode (F11).

staying: 1 - hide the bar in normal mode (shift + ctrl in your case)

2 - hide the bar when entering full screen mode automatically (F11) and show (shift + ctrl in your case)

Can you see how it looks?

[TomasLongo]

Hi @idAlencar.

Thanks for your feedback. I implemented the navbar to be not visible by default which is also true for full screen mode (tested it moment ago). You have to press and hold Ctrl+Shift in Order to bring up the navbar.

So, if I understood your request rigth, it is already implemented. Let me know if you actually meant something else 😉

Cheers, Tomas

[idAlencar]

really like the idea, but I think that hiding it by default is not very cool, think the navigation bar is used a lot by many people, sometimes it is good to hide it, but all the time I think it is bad. it would be nice to offer the option to automatically hide in nomal mode in preferences, something like: Enable auto hide from bar

I like to hide the automatic navigation bar by default in full screen mode

Google translator (I hope you understand) kkkkk

[PalmerAL]

Interesting idea, but I have some concerns with it:

• If you enter this mode by mistake (and accidentally pressing a couple of keys isn't that hard) there's no obvious way to exit out of it.
• There's no way to drag the window.
• The traffic light controls will overlap with the webpage, unless you're hiding those as well (but then you can't close the window either).

I think I'm just having a hard time seeing how this would work in general - it seems like it would be really hard to remember the order of your tabs in your head without some kind of visual aid, so your're going to end up opening the navbar again every time you want to switch, but it seems like that would be fairly slow. If the idea is that you're looking at one piece of content for a long time, and don't need any navigation controls, this would make more sense - in that case, we could look at adapting the existing focus mode (vew > focus mode) to fit that.

I could also see offering an option to have a compact titlebar that's compressed vertically, although the existing titlebar doesn't take up much space either, so I'm not sure if that's the issue. Is there anything in particular that you think makes the titlebar distracting?

[TomasLongo]

Valid points. Il try to tackle them separately.

but I think that hiding it by default is not very cool

You are right. This feature should be made available via a setting. And even after activating there could be some kind of user-message that tells the user that she is in e.g. clean-mode. With instructions on how to get back to normal-mode

@PalmerAL

If you enter this mode by mistake (and accidentally pressing a couple of keys isn't that hard) there's no obvious way to exit out of it.

I think activating this feature, deliberately, via settings should prevent that

There's no way to drag the window.

Fair point. This was not a concern for me, since Im using a windowmanager on my mac but will surely be for users that do not.

The traffic light controls will overlap with the webpage, unless you're hiding those as well (but then you can't close the window either).

These would disappear too. Closing the window would still work with keyboard shortcuts that work on the OS-level

it seems like it would be really hard to remember the order of your tabs in your head without some kind of visual aid, so your're going to end up opening the navbar again every time you want to switch

Yes. The idea was to show tha navbar only if you need it, e.g. when you want to switch tabs. You would press and hold a shortcut which brings up the tabbar. While holding the shortcut you can navigate the tabs cycling through them (as you would now). After navigating you release the shortcut and the bar disappears. Thinking about it, you could accelerate the navigation by assigning a number to each tab. While showing the navbar you could directly navigate to a specific tab by pressing the number on your keyboard.

Is there anything in particular that you think makes the titlebar distracting?

Just a personal preference. I like frameless windows.

---

I think, that your points lead to an important conlusion:

This feature would be suited for powerusers, which in total would be a narrow user group, that are comfortable using the keyboard heavily.

[idAlencar]

I like the implementation of these cases: 1 - Hide the bar by pressing the shortcuts

2 - automatically hide in full screen (F11) (the full screen is to gain more space, the more, the better)

3 - in focus mode automatically

In all cases to exit - touch the mouse to the top of the screen and display an "X" to return to normal mode

[manoger]

I would appreciate the feature

[idAlencar]

I use a program that, in full screen, creates an area when you hover the mouse shows a menu (output, list the shortcuts, clock, night mode), I think something similar in full screen mode and hiding the bar would be very good, it would be a way to work the idea of ​​the focus mode

[TomasLongo]

Based on our discussion, I came up with a short task list for this feature. I named this new mode clean-mode (suggestions for alternative names are welcome 😄 )

• create setting for clean-mode
• enable clean-mode automatically when entering full-screen (only if setting for clean-mode is activated)
• enable clean-mode automatically when entering focus-mode (only if setting for clean-mode is activated)
• enable/disable clean-mode with shortcut. Changes the value of the setting, not to confuse with the press-and-hold shortcut to show/hide the navbar
• [optional] Navigate to tabs by pressing number

[idAlencar]

it looks good, in focus and full screen mode, when the navigation bar is hidden, what do you think of a floating button to be able to return to normal-mode?. decreasing the use of the keyboard

[TomasLongo]

Nice idea. But i certainly would need help to implement that. My HTML/CSS skills are limited to the very basics. This feature would have to be implemented by someone else, then.

[idAlencar]

I understand, do what you know, it's already a big help, let's wait for a path to implement this function, maybe if @PalmerAL has time, suddenly he can help

[PalmerAL]

I guess I'll just re-iterate my previous concerns, which is that I don't really see this being very practical to use for most browsing. Navigating between tabs and controlling the window would become much harder, and it'd be easier to lose track of where you're located among your tabs. And TBH, I don't really see the current navigation bar as being very distracting.

If you're looking at a single piece of content for a long period of time in full screen mode, I do see this making more sense, and in that mode, the lack of window controls isn't an issue. So I think it would make sense to add an option to hide the tab bar when in fullscreen mode. From there, if you wanted to switch tabs, the easiest way would probably be to open the task overlay (shift+ctrl+e), which will hide the current view but keep you in fullscreen mode.

[idAlencar]

I spend a lot of time in full screen, I like the idea of ​​pressing (F11) and having a clean screen. to exit -> move the mouse somewhere and press an X (this function is in Chrome, I miss it)

[TomasLongo]

@PalmerAL I really understand your points, and I already stated they are not much of a problem in my personal day-to-day work and that, therefor, it would probably only be used by a small user group (those users who are comfortable with using the keyboard).

So, I guess the question here ii: Does the community see, that this feature is worth the effort? I want to avoid putting any more work into this, polish it, making a PR and see it being rejected because the project thinks that it does not bring any value to the table.

Since this is the first time Im working on an open-source-project I don't know if there is any process to answer this question. How is this handled?

[PalmerAL]

There isn't really any particular process to figure this out. Ultimately, I'm going to be the one reviewing your PR and deciding what to do, but I do want to make decisions in response to what people want, and what will end up being useful to most people.

I do think that because of the limitations this mode would impose, it's only going to be useful to a very small group of people, and because of that I don't think it's worth doing it at this point in time (although I do think it adds some value). However, I think there's a couple things that could be done:

1. It would be a fairly simple change (like a couple lines) to keep the tab bar and window controls hidden all the time; with that, you could still press ctrl+l to open the tab editor, and use the task overlay to switch tabs. You could probably make a patch for that and apply it on top of the master branch in your personal copy (and this is something that might apply to your changes as well, depending on how large they are).
2. We could think about doing some kind of "compact tab bar" mode. I'm not sure if this completely addresses your concerns about being distracting or not, but it would have a lot fewer limitations, so it might be useful to a wider group of people.
3. I've been thinking about doing another user survey like the one I did a year and a half ago (#532); I could include some questions on there about the interface, and whether people would be interested in something like this. If there really is a widespread demand for this, I'd be willing to reconsider doing it (I think we'd at least have to figure out what to do with the window controls though).

[TomasLongo]

Ok. This sounds like a plan.

Regarding the amount of work needed to hide the tab bar and controls: It's a matter of putting the navbar in an extra div and remove/add it to the div in order to show/hide it. Not much of a problem.

Cheers, Tomas

[PalmerAL]

From Twitter:

Hello! I recently switched to Min Browser, is there a way to run in "App" or "Kiosk" mode as per other browsers. Like, no browser bar or fullscreen etc?