Re: firefox user trying out epiphany looking for bookmarks toolbar

[Reinout van Schouwen <reinouts gnome org>]

Hi Matthew,

On Wed, 2 Nov 2005, Matthew Thomas wrote:

> 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!

Good point. If it isn't obvious for the casual user how to use the 
(bookmarks) toolbar, there is room for improvement.

> 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

For what it's worth, the current 1.9 series doesn't distinguish anymore 
between a regular toolbar and one that contains (smart) bookmarks or 
topics.

> 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.

Even if you don't understand what the text field is supposed to do, 
clicking 'Search the Web' will take you to Google. Smart bookmarks are 
still bookmarks :-)

> 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.

Personally I'm not in favour of that. Typing in your query in the 
address bar already lets you select the search engine/online 
dictionary/whatever after you've typed your search text. There are bugs 
open about showing favicons in the dropdown and about supporting the 
mozilla sidebar addSearchEngine function to create smart bookmarks. I 
expect that once these are implemented, we'll have equivalent 
functionality without adding another interface element. Besides, using 
the main address bar has the advantage of being able to see the complete 
query if your search text is longer than one or two words.

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

I'd support the idea of remembering smart bookmark queries, but it would 
have to be very easy to delete them from the autocomplete widget, 
otherwise I think there would be big negative privacy implications. 
(Accidentally seeing a URL visited by someone else is one thing, seeing 
someone else's search queries is quite another!)

> *   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.

Leaving this sort of functionality to the deskbar applet is another 
option. We'll have to see how it turns out with the GNOME 2.14 
inclusion.

> 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*.

In the other thread we're discussing the Add Bookmark dialogue, maybe it 
should be considered there if a checkbox for adding a bookmark to the 
toolbar is desirable. Also, if I'm not mistaken, the new toolbar editor 
contains a 'Quick Bookmark' item that allows you to select a bookmark 
from the menu to place on the toolbar once you drag the QB item to the 
toolbar, would that be sufficient?

> 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.

To be fair, all bookmarks in the bookmarks bar are plainly visible in 
the browser window itself. Typing the first few letters of the title 
will quickly dig the relevant bookmark up. But, it's possible that a new 
special topic 'On Toolbar' or similar would make managing the bookmarks 
on the toolbar easier. Anyone who wants to write this? :)

regards,

--
Reinout van Schouwen	   ***	student of Artifical Intelligence
email: reinout cs vu nl    ***	mobile phone: +31-6-44360778
www.vanschouwen.info       ***	help mee met GNOME vertalen: nl.gnome.org