[sclug] Removing Browser Toolbars

[Peter Brewer]

he he he he he

I thought this may attract this sort of reaction - I should have 
qualified WHY I wanted to do this.

Basically, I'm writing a web based application for a small group of 
users to administer their accounts with me.  I have created both menu 
and toolbars specific to the functions of the backend of my site.  I 
feel that for the level of user I am catering for, having two sets of 
toolbars and menubars is very confusing.  For instance, I want to 
provide the function for a user to save their data as a formatted PDF 
doc.  If they have two menubars with "File > Save as" then half the time 
they may end up using the browsers "File > Save as" ending up with an 
html file of what they see on the screen.  There is a similar story for 
the back and forward buttons.  Parts of this application will allow them 
to scroll through database entries.  If they have forward and back 
buttons in my app and on their browser this is also likely to cause 
confusion. 

See example screenies below:
http://www.waleshideaway.co.uk/demo/withbrowserbars.png
http://www.waleshideaway.co.uk/demo/withoutbrowserbars.png

By removing the browser decorations I end up with a simple clean 
interface which the user can relate to.  You may think I'm 
underestimating my user base - believe me - I'm not.  I totally agree 
that for 99.99% of webpages, removing toolbars is a very bad plan but I 
think that my pages fall within the 0.01% where it *is* suitable.

Do you guys still think this is a bad idea?

Cheers

Pete