Re: [Nautilus-list] Oh no, more feature requests!!

[Ramiro Estrugo <ramiro fateware com>]

"Shahms E. King" wrote:
> 
> >
> > Having it as an option would be good but what's really lacking with
> > Nautilus' web functionality is functionality. If it could do all that
> > Galeon could it'd be a much more usable web browser.
> >
> >
> > --Ben
> 
> I don't know much about Bonobo, but if Galeon were properly bonobo-ized,
> would it be possible to just use it as the web-browser and inherit all
> of it's functionality? how feasible would such a bonobization be?
> 
> --Shahms
> 

We've discussed this before in this list, so maybe im repeating
myself...

Regardless of what goes in the content area to handle html documents,
whether its the Mozilla component, the gtkhtml component, a bonobozied
Galeon, or a plain html Bonobo component, you still need to do the work
of building the user interface features that users expect in web
browsers.

Right now all the possibilities (except for the hypothetical Galeon
bonobo component) are very plain.  They include no code to deal with
passwords, ssl, cookies, and the tons of other things people expect in
web browsers.

Now, just because a whatever html widget is packaged as a Bonobo
component, it doesn't mean all the problems are solved!  I think that
most of the work is in getting the user interface right (i.e., all the
menu and toolbar merging needed and what happens when the user boinks on
those things) and then writing the code to do the work.

Would a Galeon bonobo component have the right api for you to do all
this interesting things that web browsers do ?  Well, yeah, if someone
writes it and in such a clean way that is usable outside Galeon.

BUT, my gut feeling (after having worked on 2 and 1/6 web browsers) is
that the needs of Galeon are too specific to be able to package all its
functionality in such a way that something embedded inside Nautilus
would work well enough to satisfy users' expectations.

So yes, im a party pooper in that I think grandiose plans for the
Mozilla component (or even the gtkhtml component) are not necessarily
the right direction for improving the web experience inside Nautilus.

But I have little say because im not planning to work on these features,
so its up to someone else to plan and code them.

If I were to work on improving web browsing in Nautilus I would do
simpler less ambitious tasks, that focus on integrating well with
existing "real" web browsers like Mozilla or Galeon.

1) Concentrate on previewing web content.  Add support for thumb nailing
local html pages.  I think Iain ximain com already got this working.

2) Don't focus on duplicating the daunting amount of work that goes into
web browsers inside the Nautilus html content viewer.  Instead focus on
making Nautilus work better with real industrial strength browsers like
Mozilla.  Mozilla has extensive support for using it via remote control,
exploit that in Nautilus.

3) Perhaps add a feature to synchronize, or somehow share, bookmarks
(and other related data) between Nautilus and Mozilla.

4) Make Nautilus have predictable results when dealing with urls usually
handled by the web browser.  For example, the url mailto:foo bar com
invokes the evolution composer in the same way in both Nautilus and
Mozilla.  Also the reverse would be nice: make Mozilla feed file:, ftp:
and othter relevant urls to Nautilus.

Getting these kind of things working is not terribly hard and would
result in a more consistent desktop for users.

-re