Re: Patch for bookmark properties (t6)

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

On 28 Jan, 2006, at 7:56 PM, Peter Harvey wrote:

> On Sat, 2006-01-28 at 18:58 +1300, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> ...
> > I think topics could be renamed to keywords, and entered in a single
> > text field with an autocomplete menu.
> >   ______________________________________________________
> > |(x) ::::::::::: “Slashdot” Properties :::::::::::: (-)|
> > |            ________________________________________  |
> > |     Name: [Slashdot________________________________] |
> > |            ________________________________________  |
> > |  Address: [http://slashdo|_________________________] |
> > |            _________________________________  __  _  |
> > | Keywords: [_________________________________][+v][-] |
> > |______________________________________________________|
>
> At one time I had such a text entry. You can see some screenshots here:
>    http://home.exetel.com.au/harvey/epiphany/t1b.png

That's a good start, though I think the semicolons, the "Create new 
topic" item, the separate "topics palette" (with its grating repetition 
of "Add"), and the row of buttons are all unnecessary.

> Ignoring the duplication between the text entry and the list, the
> criticism it received was:
>      1. a "rigid" input format would create problems.

On IRC you explained this means people would complain about not being 
able to use commas and semicolons in their topics. I seriously think 
this problem would be solved entirely by renaming topics to keywords. 
People on Del.icio.us, Flickr, and so on are already used to using tags 
that don't contain punctuation.

>      2. it didn't offer an easy way to use the mouse to select topics.

This is addressed by the "+" menubutton.

>      3. we have autocomplete with the treeview so a text-input wasn't
>         improving things for keyboard users.

It makes the ability to type more obvious, and more importantly, it 
lets you add a new keyword by typing it. You don't have to click 
separate buttons or select special menu items; just type.

> ...
> It is also doesn't help the user manage their list of topics. One key
> thing I wanted to do with the topic selector was take away the burden 
> of maintaining "consistency" in your bookmarks. For reference, see 
> this animation of how I would bookmark the Epiphany blog, and how it 
> prompts
> me with the topics that I probably want to select:
>   http://home.exetel.com.au/harvey/epiphany/capture.gif
>
> Note that in that animation I have 35+ topics over a wide variety of
> things. Hunting up-down for Applications and Open-Source, or even
> *remembering* that I have an Applications topic, is not something I 
> want to have to do myself.

That's technically impressive, but quite confusing -- I haven't seen 
listboxes jump about like that before. That behavior would be fine for 
the "+" menu, though. Keywords could be ordered in that menu based on 
their probability from the keywords you'd used already, and there would 
be no jumping about because the menu would never need to rearrange 
itself while it was open.

> ...
> > |            _________________________________  __  _  |
> > | Keywords: [(geek)(news)(tech)_______________][+v][-] |
> > |___________| architecture                    1 |A|____|
> >             | beer                            4 |:|
> >             | cricket                         4 |:|
> >             | geek                           13 |:|
> >             | golf                            7 |:|
> >             |_golfing_________________________1_|V|
>
> I assume that the numbers represent the number of bookmarks in each
> topic. Should that perhaps be the number of bookmarks which are in all
> of the selected topics *and* those topics? Knowing that "cricket" has 
> 4 bookmarks is not useful for a user once he's selected 
> "geek,news,tech" - the bookmark clearly has nothing to do with 
> "cricket".

I don't know the answer to that. Possibly your idea would lead to many 
0s, but perhaps the number could be omitted if it was 0.

> ...
> > I think that would be the kind of simplicity that people like 
> > Epiphany for.
>
> In all the work I've done, I've been aiming for something subtly
> different - making the life of users 'easier' by avoiding time spent
> managing data structures. I liked Epiphany's bookmarks system because
> you didn't have to think about how to develop a hierarchy, you just
> selected topics. "Constructing a hierarchical menu automatically" 
> meant that users now had a hierarchy with *zero* effort. What I'm 
> trying to achieve here is "ensuring the user always selects all the 
> topics he intends to", as this is important for topic-based systems.
> ...

I appreciate that. I'm just trying to find a way of making that work 
understandable to a decent number of people, so they're not avoiding 
Epiphany in the first place. :-)

Cheers
--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/