Re: [Epiphany] Multiple keywords are crack?

[Marco Pesenti Gritti <marco it gnome org>]

On Tue, 2003-04-15 at 17:22, Andrew Burrow wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> congratulations on Epiphany.  Just installed it from Debian Sid this
> week.
> 
> 
> I am very fired up about the bookmarks.  When I saw the beautiful
> bookmarks dialog, I thought for a moment that someone had finally got
> it, and that we could dispense with the fantasy of tree structured
> hierarchy.  Jamie Zawinski fired a notable salvo in 1998 with
> 
>         http://www.mozilla.org/blue-sky/misc/199805/intertwingle.html
> 
> So I naively posted a wishlist bug concerning multiple keywords.
> 
>         http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=110841
> 
> The meat of the proposition is that the 'Keywords' and 'Search' elements
> of the bookmarks dialog should work orthogonally.  Extending the
> keywords selector to enable multiple selections enables the user to find
> bookmarks by the intersection of keywords.  This is an affordance ---
> something that most any sophisticated user would eventually just try.  I
> did after about 20 minutes.  The remainder would live in blissful
> ignorance of the feature, since single selections behave EXACTLY the
> sames as the present form.
> 
> 
> However, this is something that everyone who is even remotely likely to
> use Gnome already does.  As long ago as 2001, 75% of all web search
> queries used three or more terms.  Source
> 
>         http://www.traffick.com/story/searchengines/020204_positiontech.asp
> 
> So, I would say that Google has accustomed users to the idea of
> narrowing by conjunction.  Consider http://www.googlewhack.com/
> 
> 
> On the other hand, the tab completion of keywords in the search field
> does not improve usability.  Why would any user expect to type keywords
> in a search form sitting adjacent to a keywords list?  For one thing, it
> makes the keyword list 100% redundant --- like a door with two handles. 
> Presenting an entire 'Keywords' list, rather than a drop down, suggests
> selecting conjunctions; and a 'Search' field suggests full text
> indexing.
> 
> As an alternative, why not index the text of the bookmarks and complete
> on any word?  Even then conjunction is possible --- there is no
> difficulty in completing whitespace separated terms, it has been in the
> command line for how many years?
> 
> 
> In Galeon, I used an anti-symmetric hierarchy of bookmarks.  All
> bookmarks in leaf folders, the first leaf folders at depth 1, remaining
> leaf folders at depth 2.
> 
>         |
>         +-- shallow leaf folder 1
>         |
>         +-- shallow leaf folder 2
>         |
>         +-- branch folder 1
>         |    |
>         |    +-- deep leaf folder 1
>         |    |
>         |    +-- deep leaf folder 2
> 
> It worked well, but was hard work to design.  In Epiphany, I ended up
> with 40 keywords and no structure to assist in their navigation.  I
> estimate that I could use 10 keywords if intersection was supported, so
> that my whole system would fit in that neat little bookmarks dialog
> without even scrolling! Designing it would be as easy as writing the
> page I made for my research time tracking.
> 
>         http://zwiki.sial.rmit.edu.au/albCorpus/TimeTrackerCategories
> 
> 
> Sadly, I am going to be away over Easter.  Still if anyone bites, I'd be
> happy to discuss it.


I prolly took that decision too fast. The mail make some good points.
I'm going to reconsider this ... but I want to be sure it doesnt create
problems for the simpler usage method. (bug reopened)

Marco