[Epiphany] Default layout discussion

[Daniel Borgmann <spark-mailinglists web de>]

Hello!

I wasn't sure if I should really bring this up, but then I read this
from Dave:
> (I very much like the fact that epiphany 
> has reached the point where users pretty much never need to use web 
> addresses). 

I agree with that.
The thing that irritates me is the default layout of the location entry.
Or rather the size of it. The two reasons which were brought up in favor
of it were "user can see more of the URL" and "we can place more toolbar
icons". Both pretty good reasons I think. However after using this for a
while, I noticed that in most cases only about 10% or less of the entire
bar does actually contain useful information. The bigger problem though
is, that it completely breaks with Fitt's law. When using the pulldown
menu (all the way on the right), you get a list with mostly very short
entries all the way on the left. Constantly moving all to the right and
then all to the left doesn't really strike me as ergonomic and I found
it so irritating, that I tried to look for a better layout.
I tried a lot of different ones including a Safary-like layout and
combining my bookmarks and location bar but none of them were
satisfying, until I ended up just placing the "All" and "Most Visited"
topics left from the locationbar while still keeping a bookmarks bar for
other bookmarks. 
My recommendation would be to change the default layout to this for
several reasons:
- It makes the locationbar a bit less insanely long, making Fitt more
happy, but still long enough to read most if not all URLs.
- It would allow to rename "All" to something more descriptive like
"Bookmarks" or "All Bookmarks".
- It makes those two important topics stand out from the rest.
- It allows users to place more "regular" bookmarks on the bookmarks
bar.
- It allows users short on screen estate to disable the bookmarks bar
but still have all their bookmarks quickly available.

I don't see any downsides to it but maybe I missed something.
Screenshot:
http://server204.serverflex.de/Screenshots/Screenshot-Epiphany-bin.png

Do you like that or do you think it's crack?

Daniel