Re: [Epiphany] Bookmarks

["Jon A. Solworth" <solworth parsys cs uic edu>]

On Fri, 2003-10-24 at 00:54, Marco Pesenti Gritti wrote:
> > 	I agree that hierarchy is not the desired property per se, but
> > 	one way (not necessarily the best) of implementing it.  The
> > 	properties that one gets from hierarchy is:
> > 		1. Clustering: related material is together
> 
> In my mind a thing is often related to multiple other things, not to one
> alone. So this doesnt work that well for me.
> 

But isn't this just clustering in multiple dimensions?

> > 		2. Scan a short list and click: find things
> > 			quickly
> 
> Well it's more like, scan, click, scan, click, scan, click, hrm I
> thought I put it here !. Not exactly quick.
> 

Basically, the issue is that a tree gives a search cost
which is logarithmic in the number of elements.  Yes, I
know that it doesn't work as well when it comes to ad
hoc collections.  The issues here seem how much stuff
you have to scan, how easy it is to scan, and how easy
it is to click.  (Sometimes I seem to be clicking again
and again answering small variants on the same question).

> > 		3. I would think that a fully automatic system would be
> > 		 sufficiently inaccurate that an overide would be
> > 		 needed.
> 
> Epiphany bookmarks arent really fully automatic ...
> 
> > No, I wasn't advocating a choice of 12 different bookmark editors. 
> > But an effective bookmark editor is critical for heavy users.  
> 
> The problem is the definition of what is effective and what is not ...
> 
> > If
> > you've got some very experimental ideas to try to move forward,
> > great.  But also with experimental ideas, some work and some don't.
> 
> Exactly as of existing solutions some work and some dont ;)
> 

No, I'm not arguing the status quo here. But doing something
experimental is going to be different than tried and true.
Invite over a bunch of friends and cook from recipes or try
to wildly improvise.  The latter is probably going to have worse
average quality but it may make up for it in other dimensions:
more fun, discover something new, etc.  If your going to do
experimental stuff more things can and almost certainly will
go wrong.  Of course, its worth it if the search for something
better is what drives you.  Moreover, lets face it we don't
need another browser, so a new browser should be different.

> More seriously if someone want to go for a more traditional solution,
> it's encouraged to do so, we will judge from the results.
> Personally I'd be interested to work on it only if there was a
> recommendation of the GNOME usability team. That's not the case atm.
> 

Experimental techniques require more pruning.  If the bookmark-browser
interface changes slowly than the bookmarks can change rapidly.  This
allows people to create branches to try things out.

> I'm working on epiphany for two reason: I like to try to improve the
> usability of web browsers and I want to provide the best possible
> browser for GNOME. I guess that explain my interest.
> 
> > The issue of making it external was for two reasons: one to enable
> > faster and wider experimentation and two because I think externalizing
> > it would make for a cleaner design.  Look at it this way, bookmarks
> > are a directory service while browsers are a viewing system.
> 
> I try to look at these issues more from an user model perspective than
> from an abstract architecture beautiness. Though even from that
> perspective the separation of the two things can be interesting
> (epiphany bookmarks can be already opened without a browser window for
> example).
> 

Architectecture is about usability; its about good engineering
construction (robustness, etc.).  If you want to really push
bookmarks, maybe the become more than browser URLs.  Maybe you
want visualization tools, archiving tools, dynamic load tools,
and expermenting with different bookmark organizations.
> Marco

Jon
-- 
_______________________________________________________________________________
Jon A. Solworth                 	
Computer Science Dept. (M/C 152)	url: http://parsys.cs.uic.edu/~solworth
University of Illinois at Chicago       telephone: (312) 996-0955
851 S. Morgan Rm 1120 SEO    		FAX:       (312) 413-0024
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