Re: [Epiphany] Re: [Usability] User defined metadata (was: epiphanytoolbar/bookmarks)

[adam cec wustl edu]

It seems the real question is how to get the benefits of hierarchy without the
drawbacks of navigating through complex hierarchies.  To my way of thinking,
the real problem is deciding how specific to make topics, and I wonder whether
we couldn't make that a bit easier.  So I'll throw something out as a
suggestion that I think is a LOT simpler than the field stuff, and only
slightly more complicated than what we have now, with clear advantages.

Topics (keywords, categories, whatever they're called) should be allowed to
have properties, accessible through right click and through the menus.  Among
the properties would be a list box like the one in the Bookmark properties,
allowing this topic to be a subtopic of (possibly arbitrarily many other)
topics.  So I could cause Epiphany to be a subtopic of GNOME.  They would both
display separately in the list in the bme, but bookmarks in Epiphany would
automatically be treated as being in GNOME too.  That way Quake belongs to
Gaming, and a bookmark in Quake could be accessed either way, but there's no
tree to navigate.

I think this sort of approach leaves things pretty simple, but still lets us
deal with hierarchies of interests.

Three other observations, not directly related to the topic at hand, but
possibly useful.  It would be nice if among the properties of a topic or
bookmark there were something like "keywords" or "nicknames" or something.
Basically, words that could be searched for as if they were part of the title,
but don't display as part of the title (I'm thinking of /. for slashdot, and
ephy for Epiphany).

Also, Marco keeps saying that typing into the URL bar isn't the prefered way of
accessing bookmarks but I really REALLY wish it could be.  Basically, the only
thing it's missing (in my view) is case insensitve search.  If I could type the
name of a topic or bookmark in lower case and basically do a search without
opening the window that would be BEAUTIFUL.

And finally, I noticed something about bookmarks no one has mentioned.  For me,
at least, they fill two separate roles.  Some of them are sites I intend to
visit frequently.  This I usually put on my toolbar, and go to at least once a
month.  They get categorized properly, and all is good.  I can deal with them
under just about any bookmark system.  The other kind is more of a history
markup, a way of saying "Hey, this could be useful later."  I may or may not
ever visit it again, but if I do I know searching for it would be a big pain,
and I have it right here.  Maybe it's a howto for something very technical (not
called a howto, of course), or a random site that seemed amusing.  Whatever,
it's the sort of thing I'd like to just stick in a big back called "Junk" and
every so often look through.  Any effort categorizing it is probably wasted,
but it feels worth spending 10 seconds in case I want to go back.  These
bookmarks are what varies a lot for be based on how easy it is to deal with
them.  In galeon, I had a folder called "tmp" on my toolbar I'd stick them
into.  In ephy, I've considered doing the same, or leaving them in
Uncategorized.  I don't really have a point to this paragraph, and definitely
no real suggestions, only to point out that the two uses are very different and
separating them or thinking about them separately might be worthwhile, or lead
to different thinking about the subject.
-- 
Adam Lopresto <adam@cec.wustl.edu>
Unix System Administrator
Center for Engineering Computing, Washington University