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"The design is counterintuitive," . . .

100% agree. Glad I'm not the only one finding this backwards.

I thought this was just me

Even after using the betas for 3 months, I still get confused with which tab is active

Precisely. I have been annoyed by this since they released 15.

I totally agree on this. I don't like it, and it is confusing. If I could put it back, I would.🍸😿

It is counterintuitive and stupid. . .

This inverse colour confuses me every day. I tried compact briefly and didn't like it. Why, Apple!?

Me too . . .
 
Anyone else also not like that they reversed the ordering of the tabs and favorites bar (tabs are now above the fav bar)? Muscle-memory is causing me to still fumble with this.
i thought i saw that on Catalina last week and rebooted, zapped the pram, thinking that was a mistake.
then i eventually returned to Mojave, were safari is old and good.
 
Just yet one more example of the poor designers Apple employs lately. It’s such a small thing but it speaks to a larger problem. Their user interface has sucked on many design angles for years. Just take a look at Apple Music. Nothing is as intuitive as it used to be…
I would argue that Apple no longer employs designers. They employ stylists.
 
The active tab is the contrasting one, the rest kinda blend in. Seemed pretty straight forward to me. If it's too difficult to tell, try dark mode 🤷‍♂️
 
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The shading of the active/inactive tab is completely backward. It's kind of shocking that anyone thought it was the best way to do it.
 
You guys are bad mouthing a design from the company that gave us the current airplay interface, where speaker buttons literally move around as you're trying to click them. And where if you click the space that was once a button, you get a 15 second penalty as airplay turns off and then you get to start over again. That's to say, does anyone expect anything but demonstrably bad design from apple these days?
 
It's weird because the old days of Mac, it used to be come for the hardware and get the software. Now its the software that keeps you in the ecosystem. But with the hardware sucking compared to the true innovation out there, the software needs to shine. When the software breaks down and then hardware is less than stellar eventually people will look elsewhere. They need to have people that actually use the products QA it and they need to push the bounds on the hardware.
 
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It took me a little while to get used to the new design, but once I developed new muscle memory I hardly notice any more.
 
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No idea what this article is talking about, my active tab has a lighter shading

Screen Shot 2021-10-04 at 11.58.53 AM.png


My complains about S15 however are way too long to list. Ive said it once and ill say it again: Apple will never get the browser right. Just....... Copy.......... Chrome.
 
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The very first thing that I was taught in university about UI design is that there is no way to make a UI that is universally understood because of the variety of experiences and backgrounds that users have. We all come at the world through different paths and though we tend to feel that we all think in similar ways, our thoughts and internal processing vary widely.

So, UI designers try to find a happy medium where most users will understand what they should do rather naturally, but there will always be a significant minority that will need to be educated and will need to adapt to the UI. It’s just the nature of people and UI design. Even a simple green button to indicate how to start a machine or process isn’t meaningful to everyone. Consider people that don’t drive. Green is just another color to them. Consider people that are colorblind. They might not be able to discern which button is green and be unable to start the system.

I too was a little confused at first with the new tab layout, but have adjusted to it so I can live with it.

The last thing that I’ll offer is that if you never fail, you’re not actually trying! The designers don’t always get it right, but at least they are attempting to find better ways of doing things. Think of the original iPhone and how many UI paradigms that it shattered and how many new and intuitive elements it introduced. Something to think about.
 
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Reminds me of the WTA website, have a look at the link below, you would think that her singles ranking was 22, but it's actually her doubles ranking. You can click on the words Singles or Doubles to toggle. Very poor design.

 
I'm definitely missing something.

What sense does it make that no matter your settings, the active tab is rendered with less contrast between the tab title and the background than background tabs? The active tab should be the one that pops.

My active tab is the one that pops. The active tab has significantly more contrast between its tab title and background than the background tabs do. I've played with the Safari "Tabs" settings and can't duplicate what everyone else is seeing.
 
I've tried it over and over since release, and I still don't like it. In fact, I try to avoid browsing the web altogether.
 
Just yet one more example of the poor designers Apple employs lately. It’s such a small thing but it speaks to a larger problem. Their user interface has sucked on many design angles for years. Just take a look at Apple Music. Nothing is as intuitive as it used to be…
Problem happened when Jony Ive became in charge of Software UI beginning with iOS 7. Greg Christie, who was then head of Software UI, ended up leaving along with quite a few other UI designers. A lot of those guys were replaced with graphic designers from the Marketing team. Alan Dye, who is current of Head of UI design, has a background in graphic design, not UI design. This is the problem. Graphic designers rarely make great UI designers.
 
Just yet one more example of the poor designers Apple employs lately. It’s such a small thing but it speaks to a larger problem. Their user interface has sucked on many design angles for years. Just take a look at Apple Music. Nothing is as intuitive as it used to be…
It's not exactly indicative of poor designers so much as a clear decision maker at the top who has final say. A lot of things feels very "design by committee" so it becomes a mishmash of different design ideas.
 
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