Re: [Epiphany] Bookmarks

[Erik <erik knowoneness com>]

Marco Pesenti Gritti <mpeseng@tin.it> wrote:

> 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.

I am somewhat surprized to find anyone that feels "Bookmarks" in the menubar is
clutter. But this is again dictated by the past. It's always been there. I don't
consider the knob on my door, or the laces in my shoes to be clutter. Certainly
they are, they've both been reinvented, but to what success?

What I see so far, it's no longer just adding a bookmark to a folder (Add
bookmark to folder...) but now requires more organization by having a dialog
up for creating keywords. This does not simplify.
 
> 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 ?

Considering my hand is normally on the mouse for navigation purposes, pointing
bookmarks, and going from there is much quicker than pointing to location bar,
clearing it, moving hand to keyboard, typing keyword or part of url, moving
hand back to mouse (or to arrow keys?) to select from dropdown.

> (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.)

Might try to make the dialog less invasive. Currently it covers the browser.
Mabey if the Jump To button would also close the dialog..

> 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).

I seem to be the only one without access to a mac and "safari" .. seems the
miracle product the way people talk of it lately.
 
> 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 :( 

I respect that it is still early, but I feel I want it to succeed for some
odd reason. Same way I felt about galeon some time ago. Can't count the number
of people converted to linux thanks to seeing what galeon did for me on my
desktop (block popups, images from servers, smart bookmarks, etc, etc..)

> 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.

I am not so quick to dismiss the traditional system. If it didn't work I
believe it would have changed by now. *I'd like to play more with this new
method before I comment further*, but after a gdm upgrade just now in dropline,
my MOZ and LD vars are nolonger being set and epiphany segfaults again. Took
me a while to figure out a proper place to export them, and now I've forgotten
where that is.

> 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 ;)

I think (once it is mature) you will have to force it on people to some extent.
You can't please everyone... remember prefrenceses dialog war on galeon list?

I will get epiphany working again, and learn it, watching the list for a few days.
Will be interesting to see how this pans out. I am confident everything will work
out in the end. :)

--
Erik