File:Lcars taskbar shown.png

In the science fiction television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, the information systems of the USS Enterprise run an operating system called LCARS. I've noticed lately that people used to the GUIs of mainstream operating systems early 21st century get confused when looking at LCARS screenshots in Star Trek: The Next Generation because the unfamiliarity of applications related to space exploration adds to the unfamiliarity of the LCARS GUI. So to help people understand the design elements of LCARS, I made a mock-up, based on some resources from lcarsdeveloper.com, of what an early 21st century World Wide Web browser might look like with LCARS controls.

Includes a screenshot of Prawn as of December 2011. (Since then, page moves in August 2012 have obscured the article's history, and the Wikimedia Foundation has used other certificate authorities including DigiCert and GlobalSign.)

In the taskbar (far left) and tab bar (left), colors have distinct meanings: The box next to a taskbar entry shows the status of the application, such as the number of open tabs, the number of unread messages, or the number and progress of transfers. For example, Firefox has 5 pages open, Thunderbird has 21 unread messages, and Transmission has 3 seeds with an overall share ratio of 0.5.
 * Teal: Focused item
 * Orange: Item with notification, such as new mail or web notifications
 * Light gray: Other open item
 * Dark gray: Pinned items not open (not shown)

To hide the taskbar, slide the gray elbow next to the menu bar toward the left, slide the tab bar to the left, or slide the taskbar itself off the screen. (result)

Not shown is collapsing the page navigation controls by sliding the elbow to the top of the screen. This would cause everything above the menu bar to slide out, making more room for text, and the page title to replace the menu bar.

For this Slashdot discussion.