Re: extension for Konqueror-style search shortcuts, and other comments

[Reinout van Schouwen <reinouts gnome org>]

Hi Sander,

On Wed, 2 Nov 2005, Sander van Loon wrote:

> Epiphany is great browser for the GNOME Desktop, I'd like to thank the
> developers for their work. I have some questions and comments regarding
> Epiphany. I'm using version 1.8.2 on Ubuntu Breezy.

Thanks for the kind words!

> KDE I used Konqueror. One of Konqueror's features I extremely 
> appreciate are search keywords/shortcuts. Just type wp: <term> or gg: 
> <term> to in the address bar and press enter, and Konqueror will take 
> you to the respectively the Wikipedia or Google search results.

Good news for you: an extension that does just that is attached to bug 
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=118618. Possibly, it will be 
included in the default epiphany-extensions package. Alternatively, you 
could use the new ubercool deskbar-applet: http://raphael.slinckx.net/deskbar/

The reason that this feature isn't part of Epiphany proper is mostly 
because we want to keep the basic browser as simple as possible. Each 
additional feature requires new elements in the UI and adds complexity. 
For the large majority of users, who will seldomly use smart bookmarks 
or bookmark keywords at all, the current feature set is more than 
enough.

> A mayor annoyance is that Epiphany can't display more 7 tabs. If I have
> more than 7 tabs open I have to scroll.

This is a limitation of the GtkNotebook widget. In any case, infinitely 
shrinking tabs have their own usability disadvantages. The best advice, 
I suppose, is to work with multiple windows instead of all tabs within a 
single window.

> bookmark I can't edit it like in Firefox. I have to use the "Edit
> Bookmarks" option.

Yes, that's what the Bookmark Editor is there for :) Generally speaking, 
GNOME applications don't have context menus on menu items themselves, 
with the notable exception of launchers in the Applications menu.

> freezes for a moment (it never crashed though), this happens when I 
> have a page open in a tab which takes a long time to load, and then 
> switch to another tab.

Probably Mozilla-related.

> before I figured out how it worked, I had to read the help file. Maybe
> put some text in the Toolbar Editor window explaining that the user has
> to drag and drop?

There has been a discussion on how to make the toolbar editor more 
accessible (so it can be operated with the keyboard). But this won't 
solve your problem. Having "lightbulbs" with explanatory text is 
frowned upon because it shouldn't be necessary to do that. If you have 
to explain it, the design is probably not good enough.

So, any suggestions how to make the toolbar editor more understandable 
without extra text? Maybe double-clicking a toolbar item should put the 
mouse cursor into drag-mode?

> Sander van Loon

P.S. Drop by in #gnome-nl on irc or gnome-nl-list sometime! :-) Next 
sunday we have a borrel: http://nl.gnome.org/agenda.php?item=15

regards,

--
Reinout van Schouwen	   ***	student of Artifical Intelligence
email: reinout cs vu nl    ***	mobile phone: +31-6-44360778
www.vanschouwen.info       ***	help mee met GNOME vertalen: nl.gnome.org