Re: Open links in a tabs (Epiphany)

[Kristoffer Lundén <kristoffer lunden gmail com>]

On 10/10/05, Reinout van Schouwen <reinouts gnome org> wrote:
> On Mon, 10 Oct 2005, Kristoffer Lundén wrote:
>
> > whatever modifier it is on the keyboard. But, if you like me *never
> > ever* want to open in new window, then a simple setting is much
> > better.
>
> I really don't remember the details, but if I remember correctly, in the
> early days of epiphany it was decided against such a setting because it
> would prevent some websites from working correctly.
>

Well, I'm a Firefox user, but I do like Epiphany and I run it on a
regular basis - I hope that it will be my browser of choice in the
future, just can't switch before some more things work (waiting for
bookmarks patch and adblock, among other things).

Anyhow, I do run Fx with this setting and I've yet to see any site
break down due to this. Actually, I can't think of a single case where
this could happen (and if so, "Open in new Window" context menu would
solve that very uncommon case).

It may also be that things were different in Epiphany early days,
although it isn't that many years ago.

> Maybe someone who cares enough will have time to dig through the list
> archives and bugzilla...

I've tried, but I can't find anything that actually makes a real case
against it.

Here's one thread I found that seems to deal with at similar issues,
but the answers seem to mostly say "there should be a better window
manager instead" and "MDI has inherent problems":
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/epiphany-list/2003-August/msg00208.html

There's no real explanation of what those problems really are, and
like I said, I have no problems using this mode in Fx.

Also, I don't see a window manager solving these problems, at least
not in a way that is comfortable to me. It would also require me to
switch to some other manager, and I'm actually pretty comfortable with
the Gnome default one. Besides, I'm trying hard to be a *user*
nowadays and should not have to tweak my system in such ways for such
a feature. =)

I think that part of the problem might be that there is a school of
thought that says that only related groups of pages should be in tabs
and then extrapolates that to only mean pages from the same site or
something like that.

However, that maps pretty badly to how users actually work: my related
pages can come from many different actual sites, and still deserve to
be grouped together. Many sites and forums map all external links to
new windows, but that is mainly to keep their own site open, not
because they are unrelated. It's old IE cruft, more or less.

IMO Fx understands this and caters for it - users have driven the
development in this direction, not the other way around, as this
feature as fully implemented is relatively new. Like it or not, this
is one of the things that make Fx an effective tool.

--
Kristoffer Lundén
✉ kristoffer lunden gmail com
✉ kristoffer lunden gamemaker nu
http://www.gamemaker.nu/
☎ 0704 48 98 77