Re: [Epiphany] Bookmarks

["Marcelo E. Magallon" <mmagallo debian org>]

 > I think hierarchies gives the illusion to scale better while they
 > slow you down tremendously both organizing and retrieving
 > information.  A spatial organization works well for a low number of
 > items, than you are forced to work by association if you want to be
 > efficient (Donald Norman, since you want the references, atm I dont
 > have the the exact bibliographic reference but I can look for it if
 > you want).

 Don't bother, I know what you are referring to.  If you find the time,
 go read this (I'm sorry I can't provide you with online versions for
 all the papers).  Many of the authors partially support your opinion,
 but I'd like you to follow the reasoning, not only the conclusions.

    Vincente, K.J. and R.C. Williges, Accommodating Individual
    Differences in Searching a Hierarchical File System. International
    Journal of man Machine Studies, 1988. 29: p. 647-668.

    "Individual Differences and Navigation in Hypermedia", Kristina
    Höök, Marie Sjölinder and Nils Dahlbäck, In proceedings from ECCE-8,
    1996. http://www.ida.liu.se/~nilda/papers/ECCE_8.ps

    "Spatial Cognition in the Mind and in the World - the case of
    hypermedia navigation", Nils Dahlbäck, Kristina Höök, and Marie
    Sjölinder, accepted at The Eighteenth Annual Meeting of the
    Cognitive Science Society, University of California, San Diego,
    July, 1996. (http://www.ida.liu.se/~nilda/papers/cogsci96.pdf)

    Akin, O., Baykan, C., and Rao, D.R., "Structure of a Directory
    Space: A Case Study with a Unix Operating System," Int. J.
    Man-Machine Studies 26, (1987) pp. 361-382.

    Lee, E. and MacGregor, J. Minimizing user search time in menu
    retrieval systems. Human Factors, 27, 1985, pp. 157-162

    Ahlberg, C., Williamson, C., and Shneiderman, B. "Dynamic Queries:
    Applying Direct Manipulation to Information Exploration,"
    Proceedings of ACM CHI'92 Human Factors in Computing Systems ,
    Monterey, CA (May 1992), pp. 619-626.

 You are misinterpreting the results (or applying them to the wrong
 domain, it depends on how you look at it).  "Hierarchies are bad"
 (hint, I'm quoting this list) is an extremely narrow opinion.  If you
 need to pick one of those papers, pick the first or the second one.
 This might help you see why your "target user base" doesn't really
 exist (or worded in another way, that you are allienating a fraction of
 GNOME's user base -- in wich case noone should be pushing for Epiphany
 to become the default GNOME browser).

 > And anyway our primary target is to allow our targeted user base to
 > organize at least a low number of bookmarks.

 s/at least//

 > I have still to see a real world user with subfolders in bookmarks.

 Thanks, you just called me unreal.  :-)

 > > With Epiphany I have *stopped* using bookmarks because of that
 > > reason. 
 > 
 > Very weak argument, there are users that started to use them ...

 And you talk about weak?  I'm reporting personal experience, not making
 an argument.

 > > I don't want to have to open a dialog (even if it's not modal)
 > >  and type something in a search box just to be able to find what I'm
 > >  looking for.  I really want a _menu_ in the program. 
 > 
 > Hrm, are you at least using a reasonably recent release ?

 1.0.3 according the the about box.

 I'm sorry, I should have said "a menu of reasonable size", one that
 fits on the screen :-)

 > > I don't want folders, I don't want dialogs, I don't want fancy
 > > search methods.  I want a menu.  
 > 
 > You are making very strong arguments to require something that
 > already exist. Go go !

 LOL.  I'm sure you know exactly what I meant, but the humor is
 appreciated.

 > > I have *bad* memory, I don't want to even *try* to recall the name
 > > of the topic I came up with when I bookmarked something.  
 > 
 > You think to have a bad memory, hierarchies require a strong use of
 > recall even if it's less noticable.

 Exactly, it's less noticable, and it works by association, which is
 easier for me.  In my current menu I have _at the top_ two entries:
 "Deutsch" and "Cooking".  I don't have an interest in German from an
 academic point of view, it's more of a hobby.  I'm not a professional
 cook either.  Guess what these two things have in common.  They are
 recreational interests.  As are movies and TV.  Which incidentally are
 also in the topmost menu.  That's four entries.  With that other app I
 had all these under "rec".  I just associate "recreation" with
 "German".  When your topmost hierarchy is small, that's an easy task.

 I have two choices for accesing these: either I look thru the large
 menu or I type these topics in the search box (a great idea).  The
 problem is the search is case sensitive.  Now I have to remember the
 capitalization of the topic. Talk about recalling effort :-)

 > > I'm not a librarian, I can't come up with good keyw^Wtopics out of
 > > the blue.
 > 
 > Bookmarks hierarchies are a form of categorization, and one
 > particularly difficult because it's rigid.

 Is that your problem?  Everytime I read your arguments I think
 "clustering", but good clustering is hard (both to program and from a
 cognitive POV).  If I had assigned "hobbies" to all the bookmarks in
 "Deutsch" and "Cooking" and "Movies" and "TV", you could cluster them
 under "hobbies".  Months ago someone suggested just building menus with
 all the topics (i.e., "hobbies" -> "Deutsch" *and* "Deutsch" ->
 "hobbies"), but that doesn't solve the problem, it just makes
 navigation harder.

 Oh, I'm forced to say this here: reclassifying bookmarks in epiphany is
 not particularly easy either.  How do you add existing bookmarks from
 tha topic?  You drag and drop.  This is nice once you know it works
 like that (instead of "moving").  Now for laughs, how do you remove
 entries from a topic?  I selected a topic, then seleted a bookmark in
 there and pressed delete.  Now I have to find the bloody URL again.
 You have to go to the bookmark and deselect the topic.  Now, how do you
 do this for more than a handful of bookmarks?  I don't edit bookmarks
 that often, I can't provide you with a good use case, but the behavior
 I describe is not what I intuitively expected.  I expected the bookmark
 to dissapear from the topic, and only from that topic.  But you already
 know that I'm a freak, err... sorry... "unreal" :-)

 Marcelo