> Decades of UI/UX knowledge, down the drain. Usability is gone.
Exactly the opposite; this is an evolution that has been taking place over the past decade.
Firefox has had tabs-on-top as the default since Firefox v4.0[1]. Chrome has had tabs-on-top for its entire existence (starting in Sept 2008); Opera had them before Chrome.
The merits can be argued either way, but don't act like this is sudden or arbitrary; it's neither.
Consider that maybe--just maybe--the dev teams at Mozilla, Google, et al. have done some usability studies in the past decade that informed these decisions.
I get that you may prefer tabs below the URL bar, but your claims about the greater state of UX are baseless and absurd.
The idea that someone else can know what another wants better than the other person is absurd. Your arguments might be valid for defaults, but they must be configurable defaults, because taste is subjective, arbitrary, and, despite what some believe, never in error.
I know what UX I want better than anyone else. Nobody can gainsay my personal taste.
Exactly the opposite; this is an evolution that has been taking place over the past decade.
Firefox has had tabs-on-top as the default since Firefox v4.0[1]. Chrome has had tabs-on-top for its entire existence (starting in Sept 2008); Opera had them before Chrome.
The merits can be argued either way, but don't act like this is sudden or arbitrary; it's neither.
Consider that maybe--just maybe--the dev teams at Mozilla, Google, et al. have done some usability studies in the past decade that informed these decisions.
I get that you may prefer tabs below the URL bar, but your claims about the greater state of UX are baseless and absurd.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmgtW2Iw-kE posted June 2010
EDIT: Google made a comic for the release of Chrome 1.0 that includes an explanation of their original rationale for putting tabs on top. https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/big_18.html