[Epiphany] Re: Page Snapback feature

[Daniel Borgmann <spark-mailinglists web de>]

On Fri, 2003-06-13 at 20:17, David Adam Bordoley wrote:
> Daniel Borgmann writes:
> > 
> > It does, but usually this menu is full of entries with completely equal
> > titles so it's useless to me. It is also often difficult to find what
> > I'm looking for when I browse too many pages.
> > However, how about including the page snapback in this menu as a special
> > item (in bold maybe)? Then it can never get lost and one can find it
> > easily. You would only need one menu item then (to set the snapback
> > page). 
> > 
> > Daniel 
> > 
>  
> 
> My personal opinion, is that we should look at tasks and design ui for the 
> task. Copying apples features will not lead to good ui, if we thought it 
> would, we'd copy safari pixel for pixel. 

Sure...

> So the first question is what is the task that snapback accomplishes in 
> safari. Once we have a handle on this issue, we can design ui based on it. 

I thought I described that. :)
I open a large page with lots of entries (like search results or a large
comment thread). Now I want to browse a certain link but I know that I
want to return to where I am because there are lots of other links I
want to browse, too. Usually I would open a new tab now, because this
would allow me to go back by closing the tab. This leads to lots of open
tabs and is also pretty much the only use case where "jump to new tab
automatically" would be more convenient (which doesn't exist anymore).
Using an extra tab for this is a waste because I know that I will not
return to the original page until I have finished reading the new page
(closed the tab) anyway.

Ideally, I would not open a new tab but be able to quickly go back to
this overview page whenever I want. The back history can do this, but
there are issues:
- More often than not the website will not use unique names for each
page so it's impossible to identify the page I want to go back to.
- It's much less convenient to find the page I'm looking for in a long
list than to simply close a tab.

Actually most items which appear in the dropdown history are useless for
me. I'm just wondering, do average people actually use them for anything
but what I described above (if at all)? 

I would have two suggestions which might fit the current model:
1) Do not place history items in the dropdown lists by default but an
item "Mark current page" (or similar). Only if a page is marked, it
would appear in the list(s) if appropriate. This would allow users to
easily mark everything they might want to return to and the fact that
it's put in the dropdown list, would make it easy to discover. Other
than that, it would behave exactly like the current model.

2) Like 1), but still showing every page in the list. If a page is
explicitly marked, it would appear at the top of the list and in bold
letters.

The first would have the advantage that it would be very clean and
uncluttered. The second would have the advantage that it would not break
the current model.
Both would have the main disadvantage that one extra item is placed in
the list(s) and maybe that it adds some slight complexity. 
But it would add a very useful feature IMO.

Daniel