I really like OS X Lion’s new card-style swipe-to-navigate in Safari.
I like the way that as soon as you start the two-finger swipe gesture the page starts sliding away revealing the previous page underneath. You can do a partial gesture and play around with it, and it sticks to your fingers until you let go.
Apart from the delightfulness of this interaction, it is a huge improvement in usability. I’m still using Snow Leopard at work, so I’m experiencing daily the difference between the new and old style. In Snow Leopard, you make the gesture and the result is as if it triggers a keyboard shortcut. There is no visual feedback other than the loading progress bar that Safari is loading the previous/next page.
Here’s a video game analogy:
Snow Leopard’s Safari gestures are like a Wii remote ‘waggle’ control scheme where a specific motion of the controller triggers what would have been a button-press on a traditional controller. Lion’s Safari gestures are like Wii Motion Plus controls that translate the position of the Wii remote 1:1 with an object in the game.
One is clunky and disconnected, the other is intuitive and immersive.
