[Epiphany] Bookmarks

[Marco Pesenti Gritti <mpeseng tin it>]

On Sat, 2003-03-08 at 10:41, Erik wrote:
> Marco Pesenti Gritti <mpeseng@tin.it> wrote:
> > 
> > > Yes so far it seems nice and quick. But I do most daily browsing by
> > > bookmarks. I've imported them from galeon, but so far the only way I see
> > > to access them is through very unintuitive and invasive bookmarks dialog.
> > > Unless I'm missing something......
> > 
> > What was your preferred way to access bookmarks ?
> 
> The bookmarks menu, like I've done for years.
> 
> I have a somewhat poor memory and several hundred bookmarks. Setting keywords
> for them all.. well remembering them all isn't going to happen. :( I keep them
> nice and sorted, and visit several sites on a daily basis. What has happened
> to me in the past, (when I've broken galeon one way or another, and resort to
> mozilla) is I just don't remember the sites I need/like to visit.
> 
> For me, it's just easier to pull down through a menu and get visual reminders
> of interesting sites. It's easier to see what's there than to try and remember
> a keyword.. Perhaps 8+ years of a bookmarks menu system has been burned into
> my brain.

Forget for a minute the keyword thing. You can use just one of them and have 
it behave like a normal folder. You may feel irritating to have to type a keyword
instead of select a folder in the new bookmark dialog. We know about that problem,
but it's not very easy to solve avoiding interface clutter. We are thinking to it though.

Now, what's the difference between the menu and the bookmarks menu, in a read
only mode. It looks like just a different representation for the same thing.
I understand it can be hard to get used to something different when you used a menu for years,
but is really a menu easier to access ?
Looks like there is concensus about submenus being hard to navigate (and I guess everyone
experienced that too). I'll add that once you opened the dialog you have more powerful ways
to access your bookmarks also when they are not very organized (and that's how most people have
bookmarks I think).
(The system described in that article is not supposed to be the primary way
to access bookmarks, the primary way is the dialog I think.)

> Unfortunatly, no bookmarks menu means I probably won't use epiphany. I don't
> hate the idea, I just don't feel it works or will be faster/easier.

Unfortunately a galeon like system would mean I'd keep to not using them
:/
The bookmark system was specifically designed to convince me to use
bookmarks, a feature that I never used before. It works very well for me
and for some other people. But a lot of people are also pointing out the
same problems you are finding.

Note that I'm not trying to advocate epiphany bookmarks system. If I
wanted to make most users happy the easier solution would have been to
have something similar to the Safari system (like current ui but
s/keyword/folder and add a bookmarks menu).

Epiphany is still just my fun project ... I want to find a solution that
that works well for everyone (== epiphany target users) but I'd hate to
lose some things that make me use the browser I'm hacking. I know, this
sounds a bit egoistic :( 
It's not just about me though. I feel changes like real improvements for
everyone (not hierarchic way of organize, very clean dialog that should
make easier the browse, new bookmark dialog, in line editing, the things
pointed out in that article ...).
But they have some downsides that are critical for certain use of
bookmarks. I'm trying to keep my mind open to people complaints more
than I can, and to think to solutions to the problems that are reported.

I think traditional bookmarks system has major problems, and a lot of
people just are unable to use them (or end up with badly organized
collections, that are impossible to use). If you try to look at the use
that normal people does of them I'm sure you will notice most of them
(all ? never seen an exception myself) have just a few bookmarks, not
organized at all for complex urls they really need to remember. I dont
think this is because they dont need bookmarks but just because
traditional bookmarks system are not usable.
I certainly may have choose bad solutions, but think we have a problem
and we should try at least to solve it.

My plan is to work improving the system for everyone, possibly without
losing the things I like. That's why I'm asking about your problems.
Unfortunately things are going slowly ... Who knows, maybe this mail
will get us some good proposals on how to improve it ;)

Ouch this was rather long, hope not too boring ;)

Marco
-- 
Marco Pesenti Gritti <mpeseng@tin.it>