Re: Suggestion for default toolbar settings

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

On Mar 21, 2006, at 10:17 AM, Reinout van Schouwen wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Mar 2006, Peter Harvey wrote:
> ...
> > Can someone provide the reason why it's two [toolbars] again? I have 
> > a suspicion it was something to do with "small screens", but perhaps 
> > there was another reason.
> ...
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=105983
>
> For the lazy reader, the key argument from that bug reads:
>
> 1 The Toolbar and Address Bar being welded together, leaving no room 
> for any buttons besides the standard four (Back, Forward, Stop, and 
> Reload)
>
> 2 Even for advanced users, the toolbar layout is annoying. The 
> shortened address field doesnt show as much of a URI, and the 
> auto-completion menu doesnt show as much of an auto-completion title, 
> as it does in competing browsers.
> ...

FWIW, when I made that argument, the Mozilla suite (which I was talking 
about) had no way of choosing where or whether to have text on toolbar 
buttons. In the default Classic theme text was always shown, making the 
buttons take up lots of space.

So I think if Epiphany switches to one toolbar by default, it should 
switch to caption-less buttons by default too. The system-wide "Toolbar 
button labels" preference is a nice idea in theory, but it's worse than 
useless in practice, because (a) the most appropriate default is highly 
dependent on the application, (b) it causes Customize Toolbar dialogs 
to have two "Toolbar button labels:" options that have exactly the same 
effect, and (c) that the "Default" can even be configured is not at all 
obvious.

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