Usability flaw in IE8′s address bar

Sogra Nishath / Usability / Web & Software

Thanks IE for inspiring this blog entry and no thanks to my frustration!

I recently upgraded to Internet Explorer 8. For the last 2 weeks, every time I clicked on the drop-down arrow in my address bar to access a link that I had visited nothing was happening. The drop-down was still open but the link that I had just clicked on wasn’t being loaded. When nothing happened I looked at the open drop-down to retry but the link wasn’t there anymore. This happened so quickly that I just shrugged it and moved on…

At first, I thought I was crazy and that strange things were happening on my computer. I’ve been known to have the most computer problems in our office. But when it happened to me again after a few hours I was determined to find out what was going on! Then, A-ha! I figured it out. There was a small delete icon at the right-hand side of the link where my mouse pointer was.

So, I was deleting the links when I was trying to click on them. Here are the issues with the placement of the delete icon in the link:

1. My mouse was on the delete icon partially covering it since it is placed directly under the drop-down arrow that I just clicked.
2. I wasn’t even paying attention to the tooltip text because I was focused on the left-hand side to identify my link which was left justified.
3. Most importantly, I was accessing the drop down to get to a link not delete it.

Why would there be a delete icon right under the the drop-down button? The most common task when you access a drop-down is not to delete a link but to access it. I didn’t think it would bother me so much, but I keep making that mistake. It is a minor annoyance to some but could be frustrating if it is repetitive. However, it is not annoying enough for me to switch to Mozilla yet.

So, a humble request to the IE team… please remove the delete button or move it to the left hand side of the link.

While they’re not perfect or complete, Jakob Nielsen’s Ten Usability Heuristics offer good general design guidelines. The problem with IE8’s address bar falls right under the “error prevention” heuristic:

Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.

1. James Bond

   Whoever designed this within development at Microsoft (including their management team and QA team) should be FIRED. I’ve designed software for years and while I generally like IE8, this “feature” is idiotic in terms of UI.

   12.10.2009

2. Jude

   Totally agree. Took a while for me to realise that too. However, what’s worse is that it happens many times after I am already aware of the problem – the natural selection and clicking of the desired url is exactly where i “X” (delete icon) is. I am surprise no one in microsoft has experienced it? Or are they all using Chrome or Firefox?

   02.07.2010

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