Re: firefox user trying out epiphany looking for bookmarks toolbar

[Matthew Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

On 31 Oct, 2005, at 4:04 PM, Reinout van Schouwen wrote:
> ...
> On Mon, 31 Oct 2005, Raul Acevedo wrote:
> > The epiphany "bookmarks bar" shows no bookmarks, only a "Search the 
> > web" entry box.  What can I do with it?  Is there similar 
> > functionality to the firefox bookmarks toolbar where I can define my 
> > own bookmark buttons and menus?
>
> Well, of course. As explained in the manual (par.5.14),

I think it's reasonable to expect someone to read the manual before 
posting to the mailing list. However, I don't think it's reasonable to 
expect someone to ever need to read the manual for something as simple 
as bookmarks!

So I think there are three things that can be fixed in Epiphany here.

First, there is only one thing in Epiphany's Bookmarks Bar by default, 
and *it's not a bookmark*. At least, it's not a bookmark in the sense 
that anyone who has used the Internet during the past ten years has 
come to understand and recognize bookmarks. And as much as you might 
marvel at the technical wizardry that lets a text field appear in the 
Bookmarks Bar, it still doesn't make sense.

So I think it might be time to bite the bullet and have a single search 
field on the toolbar, like Firefox and Safari do. Besides being more 
obvious, this would have other benefits.

*   It lets you change the search engine even after you've typed your
    search text. (For example yesterday I wanted to see what Suse's
    partitioning tool looked like, so in Safari with AcidSearch I
    pressed Option+Command+F for Google Search and typed "suse
    partition". Halfway through typing that I realized that what I
    *really* wanted was screenshots, so when I finished I typed
    Option+Command+I to switch to Google Images, and pressed Enter. I
    didn't need to retype the text, because I was still in the same
    search field.)

*   It gives you a single place to go to see your recent searches.

*   It's self-contained, rather than spread over several fields, and
    could therefore be moved to the panel in the future (or integrated
    with deskbar or similar) with minimum fuss.

*   It lets you see the keyboard shortcuts for search engines the same
    way as you see keyboard shortcuts in any other menu.

> all you need to do is drag and drop a topic or a bookmark from the 
> bookmarks editor to the toolbar. Dragging links or page icons works as 
> well. The context menu of toolbar bookmarks offers more options.

Second, Epiphany makes adding something to the Bookmarks Bar 
unreasonably difficult. If I come to a page on the Web that I want to 
add to my Bookmarks Bar, I go to "Bookmarks" > "Add Bookmark...", and 
get a dialog that *doesn't let me add the bookmark to the Bookmarks 
Bar*. It's as if the bar doesn't exist. Safari's Add Bookmark sheet is 
extremely simple here: "Bookmarks Bar" is one of the options for where 
you can file your bookmark when creating it. Firefox is more 
complicated -- you have to understand that the Bookmarks Toolbar is not 
a repository of bookmarks, but a representation of the contents of a 
"Bookmarks Toolbar Folder" -- but it's still much easier than Epiphany.

And third, the same problem occurs when editing bookmarks -- there 
should be a "Bookmarks Bar" place in the editor where I can see all the 
Bookmarks Bar bookmarks in one place, but there isn't.

Cheers
--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/