Re: [Epiphany] More Topic/Keyword/Folder madness! Oh, no!

[Johan Forsberg <johan forsberg 6117 student uu se>]

On Thu, 13 Mar 2003 07:57:44 -0600
Erik <erik@knowoneness.com> wrote:

> > What I dont want to do is to go back to a tree because it sucks less
> > (I'm assuming it does, but I dont think so) and user are used to it
> > (who is used anyway ?? How many people are using subfolders ?)
> 
> Hate to say this but, menus and submenus are everywhere. Even to start
> ephy requires the user to go to their applications menu, internet
> submenu.. This idea that they are hard to use, or people don't use
> them, is absurd. Sorry.

This seems to be a strange argument; if people *have* to do this in order to start epiphany, then that is an explanation to why they do it that way, it doesn't necessarily mean it's the "best" way? "Is" does not imply "should" :)

Anyway, they don't even have to do it that way... I usually start it from a command line, but for some reason people find that less intuitive than unfolding a messy desktop menu. I guess I prefer communicating with the computer through language over "pushing buttons" sometimes. I think many people would agree, if the command line interface wasn't so frighteningly powerful and complex. However, in the case of epiphany, there is no danger of accidentally erasing all your files by making a mistake in the address bar.


> Check out the View->Encoding->submenus in Epiphany! What to do, what
> to do..

I think epiphany's bookmarking system is an interesting UI experiment, let's concentrate on trying to find a optimal implementation of the "keywords" idea, and see how well it can work. There are dozens of browsers that do things in essentially the same, "old" way - I just don't see any need for yet another one. Just because the menu bar is hierarchical (a really deeply rooted design concept) doesn't mean that everything else has to work the same way just to be consistent. You have to start reforming somewhere!
--

Johan Forsberg