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Safari 15 Extension for Mac Helps You Tell Which Tab Is Active

TheMacDaddy1 said:
Ummm...that active tab has the "X" at the left of that tab and color or light/dark mode does not change that. Not sure how hard that is?????
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People aren't complaining that it's impossible to tell which tab is active - obviously the active tab will have the "x" (as you said) and also have a title that matches the page content. The complaint is that it doesn't stand out for quick "at a glance" identification. However, everyone's different in how they perceive this, so I'm not one of those who is going to say nasty things about the Safari development team or call Safari "broken".
 
Rizzm said:
I’m reminded how many years it took for Safari to have tab emoticons. It was useless without extensions to add them until that point. I don’t know how these usability design oversights were overlooked.
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Tab emoticons? Do you mean favicons? I can understand the thinking behind not using them, especially as until relatively recently loads of them looked janky as hell.
 
Seanm87 said:
Seriously? Do people find it that hard to realise which one is the active tab?

I mean you have multiple tabs open and only one of them is shaded. Why is that so hard to grasp?
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The biggest problem is when you have two open. The usual UI expectation then is that the lighter coloured tab is the active one, but Safari has inverted that expectation for no reason. It might seem like a minor quibble but it's still bad design.
 
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leslieg said:
I really don't understand why anyone is confused. also, I use the new compact layout, and have never once been confused. I think it's a great design.
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This issue doesn't exist in dark mode which I use pretty much exclusively, that would explain why it doesn't bother me.

Edit: Strangely I got different behavior just now opening up Safari Tech Preview, the shading was inverted. But I didn't need an extension to fix it, simply unchecked Preferences > Tabs > Show color in tab bar. The color tinting was something they introduced in iOS 15 Safari and I unchecked it on my iPhone as well.
 
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leslieg said:
I really don't understand why anyone is confused. also, I use the new compact layout, and have never once been confused. I think it's a great design.
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I agree the problem is solved in the compact view, which I'm actually starting to quite like, but it should be a choice about whether you use either/or, and at the moment I feel forced to use compact just because the traditional view is a mess.
 
l0stl0rd said:
Safari is not broken, I use the new layout not the tabs one like that and never had an issue;)
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Yep. Apple never should have run away from the new Compact tabs design. The entire Safari 15 redesign revolved around it. The backup design they came up with after people cried "so different!" is worse than all other options. It is worse than Compact tabs, and worse than Safari 14.
 
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MacRumors said:
ActiveTab simply makes it easier to spot the active tab in Safari on Mac by drawing a line underneath it. There are eight colors to choose from, and the line below the tab can be customized to be between 1 and 7 pixels wide.

As Zhenyi notes, the extension works best with the "Separate" tab layout selected and "Show color in tab bar" disabled in the Tab section of Safari's Preferences. Zhenyi also cautions that ActiveTab will not work reliably if you have so many tabs in a window that the tab bar becomes scrollable.
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How is this better? The original beta did have the color too close to easily identify the active tab. The current tab coloring is quite easy to identify. Adding a colored bar under teh already identifiable tab is not really helpful - especially if it causes Safari stability issues.
 
SilverWalker said:
OK, so I had a play with the settings in Safari > Preferences > Tabs

If you have tabs flip flopping (as I did) from light to dark depending on what page you are viewing, and causing confusion about the current tab - check that you don't have "show colour in tab bar" turned on. Turning this off solved the issue of the current tab being black on one page and being light grey on another. It's now light for the current tab, dark for the others.

I don't know when this got turned on in my browser - perhaps when the new version started up it asked me? Some vague memory on that.
They really should have implemented this better.
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The show colour in tab bar option is turned on by default when you install the new Safari. For some reason!
 
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I'm using different extensions that are free. They're called "Brave" and "Firefox."

Major Kudos to the developer for this extension, though. I'm getting it because it's worth $2 to send Apple the message.

#FixThisApple
 
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I guess the Safari coloring issue is what happens when MacOS engineers don’t talk to each other.

arstechnica.com

Mac OS X 10.3 Panther

It's that time of year again. For three consecutive years, Apple has released …
arstechnica.com arstechnica.com

1633536340377.png
 
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A paid extension to fix Apple's horrific UI decision...

Is this a cruel joke?
An headline at The Onion?
 
TmszLBMrv said:
Why the hell would anyone prefer using address bar on top of a 6-inch touch screen? Yeah, it's a weird placement at first, but really, one/two days and I cannot imagine address bar on top. It's so much easier and quicker to use.
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And, for me, swiping to adjacent web pages is easier.
 
akro said:
Am I over-reacting?

For extension to work, you must approve its use for all web sites AND let the extension "read and alter sensitive information on webpages, including passwords, phone numbers, and credit cards, and see your browsing history"

View attachment 1858142

Also, it is sluggish in getting the bar below the tab..
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I don’t think you are. For what this app does, it shouldn’t need that info. Perhaps a mistake, perhaps not?

The developer likely started working on this as soon as the uproar over Safari started and was prepared to ship it knowing that, even if a majority don’t care about the change, there will be a large enough group of folks wanting a “fix” and willing to toss a couple bucks their way to give it a try. They MAY intend to keep working on it and updating it over time, they may decide to just take the money and run. All in all, pretty effective way of making a dollar.
 
This problem all over again:

1633544590079.jpeg


After Apple updated the onscreen keyboard to address this issue, there were people who argued against the fix and wanted to keep the keyboard the way it was in the screenshot.
 
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soaddk said:
Don't most people run dark mode? Well, I do and my safari looks fine. The active tab is lighter than the inactive ones, just as you'd expect.
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I don't run dark mode, because I'm not sitting in a dark room. If I were, it might be better than light mode. Not interested in switching to dark mode just because "it looks cool".
 
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My first thought, on seeing the title, was an app that would constantly tell you which tab is active - preferably with yelling: "THE MACRUMORS TAB IS ACTIVE! ... THE MACRUMORS TAB IS ACTIVE!"
 
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