Re: Patch for topic selector, and dnd for bookmarks menu

[Peter Harvey <pah06 uow edu au>]

On Wed, 2005-11-02 at 21:47 -0500, Matthew Thomas wrote:
> On 1 Nov, 2005, at 8:22 PM, Peter Harvey wrote:
> > ...
> > I've been working on a new topic selector for bookmarks. I've posted a
> > screenshot and patch at:
> >   http://home.exetel.com.au/harvey/epiphany/t1.png
> > ...
> 
> That looks very interesting, Peter, but I can't see how it's supposed 
> to work.
> 
> Here's Firefox's Add Bookmark dialog:
> http://akshargram.com/nirantar/media/images/mar05/firefox03.png
> I have a pretty good idea how that's supposed to work.
> 
> Here's Safari's Add Bookmark dialog:
> http://wiu.edu/users/mscmr1/Project_Images/add_bookmark_full.gif
> I can instantly see how that's supposed to work.
> 
> As long as Epiphany's equivalent dialog is more complicated than either 
> of those, that's a problem.
> http://gnome.org/projects/epiphany/documentation/manifesto.html
> 
> Is it possible to make one most likely topic suggestion, and for that 
> to be the default option in an option menu?

I see your point. The problem is that Epiphany encourages users to
select multiple topics for their bookmarks. Other browsers are much more
folder oriented. While they have simpler interfaces, I would argue that
for larger bookmark collections it takes more time to place a bookmark
correctly (normally need to open up a folder view, expand folders until
you get to the right one, etc).

Also note that the topic suggestions listed on the right in the t1 patch
aren't determined by the actual document that you're bookmarking, but by
the topology of your existing bookmark collection. Perhaps the best way
to view them is 'toplevel' topics or something. 'Suggestions' is
probably a poor name right now, though we were planning to have real
suggestions determined by libots and deli.cio.us presented there as
well.

Actually using the content of the page to determine a good topic(s)
selection is trickier. But how about this for a quick alternative
design:

+--------------------------- _X
|                             |
| Title:  ___________________ |
| URL:    ___________________ |
| Topics: ___________________ |   <--- auto-completing text input
|                             |
| --------------------------- |
|                             |
| (  Show suggested topics  ) |   <--- drop down list
|                             |
|  +----------------------+   |
|  |                      |   |   <--- list of topics
|  |                      |   |
|  |                      |   |
|  |                      |   |
|  +----------------------+   |
|                             |
+-----------------------------+

Drop down list contains:
 - Show suggested topics
 - Show top-level topics
 - Show all topics
 - Show deli.cio.us topics

"Show all topics" makes the list show all topics. Clicking on a topic
appends it to the text-entry widget (topics in the widget are comma
separated) and removes it from the list. This "click-to-add" concept
will be used for the other 3 options as well.

"Show top-level topics" makes the list show the same stuff the
right-hand pane does in my t1 patch. This corresponds exactly to the way
that the hierarchical menus are built, allowing the user to 'dig deeper'
down into their topics.

"Show suggested topics" reads the page you're bookmarking and counts the
number of times each of your existing topic titles occurs in the
document. It then builds a list of topics by:
 1 Let B be the set of all bookmarks
 2 Let t be the topic that occurs most frequently in the document, while
   having at least one bookmark in B
 3 Append t to the list
 4 Filter B to contain only bookmarks in t
 5 Go to 2, until there exists no more topics to add
This would be a primitive way to build a list of actually *suggested*
topics for the bookmark. We could alternatively initialise the Topics
text field by this method, and not have this option in the drop-down
list.

"Show deli.cio.us" topics uses the URL to fetch the most popular topics
from deli.cio.us and provides those. Topics which would need to be
created are marked appropriately. Clicking on one of these would
actually create the topic for you.


The horizontal line I've drawn across the window could be an expander
widget, so all the user sees by default is the Title, the URL, and a
"wow! magic!" list of topics created automatically for them. I'd also
like to put a little 'trashcan' or similar button to the right of the
topic text entry to clear it if the user really hates the selection.

Opinions?

Regards,
Peter.