Private window design

[luetage]

I want to discuss the theming of private windows. In my opinion it's suboptimal right now. Both search and address field use a variation on the theme foreground color as background and hover color for buttons right now, while the addressfield foreground color is a variation of the normal background color. This leads to curious results on more colorful themes, which in my opinion looks bad.

Example: Accent color from active page turned on, foreground color some shade of blue/purple. As you can see the foreground color looks terrible as background and clashes with the accent heavily.

Some other solution should be found. Since we have the private window introduction turned on by default right now, maybe the key icon in the addressfield is enough to discern private windows, especially because opening a private window is a conscious decision. Or maybe some other way to distinguish private windows more clearly could be worked out. For example let us choose another theme altogether for private windows. This could be incorporated as an option in vivaldi://settings/themes/

[LonM]

I'm going to go with the assumption that if people open a private window, they've done it on purpose and won't forget.

Maybe a slight texture applied to the header would suffice. (e.g. Some warning stripes). I'm not a designer but trade, so I don't know what counts as sufficient warning. Maybe it would be worth building a comparison of how all the other browsers handle this.

[Pesala]

@LonM said in Private window design:

I'm going to go with the assumption that if people open a private window, they've done it on purpose and won't forget.

Although they probably do not do it accidentally, they are likely to forget which of several windows is the private one, so some obvious indication is needed.

In my opinion, the different coloured URL field is as good as any other method I can think of at the moment.

[luetage]

@Pesala Yeah, changing the color of the addressfield and searchfield is a good indicator, but it doesn't work out. It's ugly because foreground color variations were never calculated to work as different backgrounds to begin with and vice versa. Even in the best case scenario (colors fit) the difference in shades between hover colors / faded colors / etc. can never be coherent to what they look like in a regular window. That's exactly the reason why we should switch to something else.

[luetage]

@LonM Comparing it with other browsers is a good idea. Here is what Firefox does:

They use an intro page just like Vivaldi. Additionally there is an icon being added to the upper right of the tab bar. This is comparable to the key icon Vivaldi uses in the address bar. The theming itself doesn't seem to change at all. It could be argued the icon is at a more prominent position. So that's something to take into account.

[LonM]

@luetage making the icon appear on the title bar is a good idea because that's where I imagine people will look if they have multiple windows open (as @Pesala mentions) .

Having that follow a colour so it stands out would be nice.

[luetage]

@LonM Moreover Vivaldi gives people the option in settings to hide the address bar. Currently this makes private windows indistinguishable from normal windows. So yeah, theming the addressfield/searchfield is no solution at all. The key icon should probably be moved. Title bar will always be visible (even with UI turned off), so it makes sense placing something there.

[Pesala]

Since it is possible to hide most UI elements in a Private Window, (e.g. in Chromeless Mode), the menu button could be changed to show the key icon rather than using two icons.

Some users may even browse in Fullscreen mode by using the Quick Commands dialogue or enabling the Bookmarks Bar. I don't know how one could cater for them.