[Epiphany] Re: Page Snapback feature

[Daniel Borgmann <spark-mailinglists web de>]

On Sat, 2003-06-14 at 05:57, David Adam Bordoley wrote:
> hyperf writes: 
> 
> > I was just following the snapback conversation and to me it seems that
> > what is being discussed is a lot like just a local bookmark. It seems
> 
> Bingo. This is right on. Basically snapback is a temporary bookmark that 
> isn't saved. Now why would a user want to create a temporary bookmark 
> instead of a permanent one? The answer is that bookmark handling tends to 
> suck in all web browsers. So the issue now is how do we make bookmarking 
> better and more useful. 

What's wrong with temporary bookmarks? Bookmarks in the original meaning
of the word ARE temporary. I would argue that permanent bookmarks are
rather wrong and are more like an address book or an index.
For example I might want to have a temporary bookmark "Snapback". And I
might always want to put this bookmark into places where I need to "snap
back" to. But currently I can't really take an existing bookmark item
and move it to the place I'm currently reading. I can only "file" the
page I'm currently reading as a new bookmark. I could manually type in
the same name for the bookmark each time and the system might overwrite
the old one, but that would be far from being convenient.
Another use case would be reading a large online book. I don't want to
make a new bookmark whenever I quit reading, but update a current one.
And it should save the scrolling position. The lack of such a bookmark
is actually the only reason why I never read an online book yet. It's
just unusable without this possibility.

One solution to this problem might be the possibility to "update" an
existing bookmark with the current page/location. Are there plans for a
context menu on bookmarks other than in the dialog? This could then
contain this possibility and allow to quickly remove a bookmark (that's
important too). Currently right-clicking a bookmark will just make it
load. Ideally, the context menu of bookmarks in the menu or the on the
toolbar would be the same as in the bookmarks dialog (and then place the
update command in there?). It would need good wording of course to be
obvious. Maybe something like "Replace with current location" would be
better. And it would be tricky to do with the bookmarks dialog as long
as it's not obvious to which window it "belongs" (which would be solved
if the bookmark dialog becomes a browser window mode, which I still
think would be the right thing to do).

This would however have the HUGE advantages of allowing an often
replaced "snapback" bookmark (even an unlimited number of them) _and_
allowing to keep "position bookmarks" for large pieces of text without
introducing much UI bloat (only one item in a context menu and making
the context menu work on toolbar and menu).

Daniel