Re: [Epiphany] replacing the combo with and autocompleting text entry

[Marco Pesenti Gritti <marco gnome org>]

On Sun, 2003-10-12 at 13:04, David Adam Bordoley wrote:
> Based on my understanding of how the new completion code works in gtk, I 
> believe it is possible to have an autocomplete text entry without a 
> combobox. This is really nice for a few reasons. 
> 
> First, my motivation for dropping the combo. Combo boxes are very odd 
> looking widgets. The down arrow on one side makes them look unbalanced. 
> Apple for instance has historically avoided combo boxes in its interfaces 
> for this reason. (this shouldn't be considered a justification in itself, I 
> will never except the reasoning of Apple does it so it must be right, but it 
> is something to point out). 
> 
> Also I think the combo part of our address bar goes fairly unused. By fitts 
> law we know that hitting a small target is very hard, hence i think very few 
> users actually click the down arrow to get to browser history. Based on this 
> assumption, I think we can fairly painlessly drop the combo in favor of an 
> autocompleting text entry. I believe that this fits the 90% use case very 
> well. Most users don't want random history results, but want results based 
> on the page they are currently looking for, hence autcompleted history is 
> very useful. 
> 
> Given our current menulayout the bookmark favorites in the go menu could be 
> replaced by history items, if we believe that quick access to random history 
> items is needed (I'm not quite sure this is even true). 
> 
> What are other peoples opinions. 

My opinion is that you need to stop to make me drop code two days after
I wrote it :P
Seriously, I dont have a strong feeling, let's see what other things ...
I think Greg thought it was not a good idea to drop it, so it's worth to
talk with him too, I dont think he is subscribed here.

Marco