Evolving the Wolvic interface

Over the past year, we have been working hard at improving the user interface of Wolvic to make it more flexible and useful. This blog post looks back at what we have achieved so far (many arriving in 1.6) and outlines our plans for the future.

Window management

We have added more flexibility to Wolvic’s window management, allowing you to move the browser windows closer or farther away, as well as supporting horizontal movement and vertical alignment.

Window management improvements (5.1 MB MP4, no audio)

We have also implemented “head lock”, where the browser window remains centered in the field of view. This feature is particularly useful for watching videos and also comes in handy in the case of devices with a narrow field of view.

Headlock (7.0 MB MP4, no audio)

Our goal is to enable Wolvic to accommodate different types of tasks and workflows, with a user interface which is able to evolve from a simple and focused experience all the way to handling multiple documents simultaneously along with side windows for music, chat, or email.

Multitasking in Wolvic.

The Wolvic user interface was originally conceived as having the windows placed on a cylinder around the user, with a maximum of three open at the same time. We intend to ease these limitations eventually, although this has to be done carefully so the application always remains clear and usable.

Browsing improvements

Above all, Wolvic is a tool for browsing the Web and therefore we have strived to make that experience as great as possible.

Over the past months we have improved the resolution and detail of Web pages, making them much crispier and more detailed than before and giving websites more room to lay out their contents.
Old (768x432) vs. new (1280x720) resolution. Drag slide bar to compare.

Moreover, we have continued to add useful functionality like searching for text in the current page.

Search for text on any page.

We are planning a number of changes to make Web brosing on Wolvic even more useful and convenient.

First of all, we will add zoom functionality, giving users more fine-grained control over how websites look.

Furthermore, we plan to introduce a New Tab page to provide direct access to search, recently visited sites, bookmarks, and so on.

Finally, we expand support for the WebXR APIs so you can experience a wider range of immersive and augmented experiences with improved performance.

Personalization and 3D environment

On each release we add new environments so you can have more choices when it comes to personalizing the Wolvic workspace. Check out the repository at github.com/Igalia/wolvic-3D-environments for more information, as well as ways to contribute.

Some of the environments that we have recently added to Wolvic.

Also related to the 3D environment is the “pass through” functionality, which brings the outside world inside the app.

Seeing Wolvic in reality (5.0MB MP4, no audio)

Input

We have iteratively improved the precision of hand tracking and the rendering of hands in the 3D world, and also introduced convenient gestures.

Hand tracking and gestures on Oculus Quest (6.7MB MP4, no audio)

We have added voice recognition to the on-screen keyboard.

Using speech recognition to run a web search (4.8MB MP4, no audio)

Moreover, we have implemented text autocompletion for Latin and Asian languages.

Autocompleting text (5.9MB MP4, no audio)

Even after all this progress, there is still a lot of work left to do in terms of input. We are working on supporting Bluetooth keyboards so that entering text becomes much easier, and we also intend to refine our voice recognition and use in as many places as possible throughout the app.

Library

The Wolvic Library is available from the tray and includes different kinds of information: bookmarks, downloads, history, extensions, etc.

It might not be obvious to the user that the “Library” is the place to find all of these, so we are reorganizing the UI and moving each component to where it makes the most sense.

The Library button in the tray will be eventually replaced by direct access to your Bookmarks and Downloads. History will become a section in the Bookmarks. Search functionality will be added to Bookmarks, History, and Downloads.

Planned changes to Bookmarks and History.

Web Apps are a powerful concept that we want to evolve, making them feel more like real apps. We are considering adding a list of recent Web Apps to the tray, along with an Edit button to manage them.

Finally, Web Extensions will be accessed via the Settings window.

We already have an experimental implementation of these changes in this PR and we will keep on refining it over the coming months: github.com/Igalia/wolvic/pull/881

Tabs

Currently, tabs in Wolvic are hidden behind a button that displays them in a list. Furthermore, this list includes tabs from every window and is ordered by the most recently used, which means that tabs don’t stay in the same position and that there isn’t a clear spatial link between windows and tabs.

All of this makes it difficult to switch between open tabs; as a result, the browsing experience is not as fluid as it could be.

We intend to position tabs on the side of the window for better visibility, thus associating tabs with specific windows, which allows for easier organization. We also want to add customization options, so tabs can be displayed on different sides of the window and so they can be sorted according to different criteria.

Browser window with tabs on the side.

Conclusion

A broad overview of our plans is detailed at github.com/Igalia/wolvic/wiki/Future-UI-evolution

The field of XR is new and continuously evolving, so we expect that each new functionality will need to be iteratively improved over time. A key part of this is to gather feedback from our users. Here are some of the ways in which you can get in touch with the Wolvic team:

Thank you so much for your support, and please get in touch with your suggestions and feedback.