Re: [Epiphany] Bookmarks system

[Lee Willis <lwillis plus net>]

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

> TOPICS (VS TOPIC)
> 
> Epiphany provides the ability to associate a bookmark to multiple
> topics.
> Let's take one of my bookmarks as an example.
> 
> http://mpt.phrasewise.com/ (for who does not know, it's the blog of
> Matthew Thomas, a guy interested in usability problems).
> 
> In epiphany I associated it to two topics: "Usability" and "Blogs".
> In another bookmarks system I should have put it in my Usability folder
> or in the Blogs folder (or in both using aliases).

I think keywords do make sense - but the process of adding new
bookmarks, and searching needs to be more efficient and less intrusive
(See a proposal below). I think that is the biggest problem for people
adjusting from the folder-approach - they don't see the real advantage
because of the innefficiency of the processes ...

> BOOKMARKS DIALOG (VS BOOKMARKS MENU)
> 
> In epiphany the main way to browse bookmarks is supposed to be the
> dialog. I think submenus are hard to use, and things get worst while
> the bookmarks collection grows.  A dialog, if kept very simple, can
> provide an easier way to find the bookmark you need: it's easier to
> use and more powerfull (contains for example search capabilities).

It can be - however if it's a dialog that obscures your browsing or is
otherwise invasive (Because it has to be activated each time you want to
use it) then it becomes less efficient than a menu IMHO ...

What I'd like to see is the current bookmarks dialog be an always on
docked sidebar (Think of the Favourites sidebar in IE). That gives us
the following advantages:

- Always available - doesn't need to be opened each time you need it
- Doesn't obscure the browsing view (My problem is I check several news
  sites - to do this I have to open the bookmarks dialog, move it such
  that I can still see the sites to click on, and see the content when
  it loads beneath the dialog window. Then when I've caught up on my
  news sites and want to return to normal browsing I have to move the
  dialog again to get the "close" button back in view to dismiss the
  dialog!

> Also I feel the ability to provide a flat list of most used bookmarks
> in the Go menu more useful than a dup of the session history.  To
> avoid the conflict with people used to the menu, we could allow to
> drag All on the toolbars.

If you have always available bookmarks then you don't need the
frequently used list, and if you manage to implement the carrying over
of history between windows/tabs then you don't really need the session
history in there either (But that's a separate issue!)

> DIALOG (VS TOPLEVEL WINDOW)
> 
> Looking to the bugs Dave is submitting, the real choice appear to be:
> open bookmarks from a central place that you keep open while browsing

I'd go for this ...

> or provide a way to open bookmarks in the current window.

If you have the docked approach above then you don't have any context
confusion since the link will always open in the window that you click
the link in (Or the active tab of that window). I think that's kind of
obvious for the end-user?

To complete the efficiency I also think we need to have the following:

- Automatic population of "TOPICS" when adding a bookmark (Based on the
site's keyword META tags) and/or option to add bookmarks without the
dialog popping up (Either associating no keywords with it, or just
associating the METAtag keywords with it)

- Keyboard shortcut that focuses the "TOPICS" entry in the bookmark doc
(I'd like to be able to hit a shortcut - type my "topic", then use simple
keynav to open the bookmark. A sample keystroke chain may be Ctrl-T, N,
e,w,s,Down,Down, Enter which would Focus the topic search, enter "News",
scroll down to the 2nd bookmark matching "News" and open it in the
current window)

Just my 2p
Lee
-- 
| Lee Willis                                  Unmetered & ADSL solutions 
| Solutions Designer                                 for Home & Business 
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