Proposal to revamp bookmarks++

[Peter Harvey <pah06 uow edu au>]

Hi all,

This is a follow-up to an IRC discussion recently. I'm basically just
going to present some ideas for a revamp of bookmarks/topics. If people
could put their opinions for each idea it'd be appreciated.



IDEA 1: Replace "Smart Bookmark" with "Search"
----------------------------------------------

For an object to be a "Bookmark" usually implies that it refers to a
fixed point. Like a bookmark in a real physical book. A "Smart Bookmark"
on the other hand works more like a form entry. This is my first reason
for arguing against the term "Smart Bookmark" - it's just not the right
concept from my perspective.

The next problem is the confusion over what happens when you type 'goo'
in the address bar and get two different 'Google' links. The user
*knows* that they bookmarked Google as a "Smart Bookmark", and not as a
regular bookmark, right? So what happens when they select "Google" on
the white background, rather than on the grey background? The user
should be made aware that there really is a Google bookmark which isn't
smart. It should be explicit in the bookmark editor, as distinct from
the Search.

Finally, inserting a "%s" into a bookmark's URL is not discoverable. We
need a better way to edit Searches, and we can't do that while there's a
blurred line between Bookmarks and Searches.

Addendum 1: Allow extensions to add other things like feeds.
Addendum 2: Change "Bookmarks" menu to "Links" ?
Addendum 3: "History" in bme, renamed to "Link Editor" or "View Links" ?

In the case of Addendum 3 we would likely change the left pane of the
bme to contain a collection of toggle buttons at the top, and a list
below.

+-------------+
| Bookmarks   |  <----- selected by default. can drag URLs here (eg.
+-------------+         from history) to make a bookmark easily
| History     |  
+-------------+
| Searches    |  <----- similar to "Bookmarks" in terms of dnd
+-------------+
| Feeds       |  <----- again similar to "Bookmarks" in terms of dnd
+-------------+
|             |  <----- when "Bookmarks" is selected this shows topics
|             |         when "History" is selected this shows dates
|             |         when "Searches" is selected this shows nothing
|             |         when "Feeds" is selected this shows ???
|             |
|             |
+-------------+

We can alternatively use a drop-down list instead of a collection of
toggle buttons. I prefer the toggle buttons so long as there aren't too
many. Also can hook up "View/History" to just open this same window with
the "History" button set.

I would also like to point out that, code-wise, all of these are still
using EphyNode structures, but just as one database rather than many.
And "Searches" no longer are added as children of the "Bookmarks"
parent. EphyNode might also need a revamp at some point.



IDEA 2: Merge the "Add Bookmark" window with "Bookmark Properties"
------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm not going to argue for/against the Bookmark Properties window. I
like it, I want it to stay. :)

I don't see a huge distinction between "editing a bookmark" (via
properties window) and "adding a bookmark". My view has always been "you
have created the bookmark, and now you're just editing it for the first
time". It seems natural to merge the two. The only difference is that in
"the first time" you might want to undo the creation of the bookmark, so
we replace the "Close" button with "OK/Cancel".

I also see "creating a bookmark" as not always equating to "bookmarking
the current page". The "Add Bookmark" action in the menu to me means
"create a new bookmark, initialised with the information from the
current page". For that reason I want all the properties of the bookmark
to be available to me once I create it. That includes the URL.
To use a real-world analogy, it's like using one of those bits of string
on expensive books to mark your page. You would mark the current page by
*default*, but you are still able to move that bookmark around to a
different page. Perhaps set it at the start of your book chapter, rather
than the exact current page.
I get the same thing when working online. I find some reference
documentation, I find the single page that I want *right now*, then
decide I want to bookmark the whole site. Just "Add Bookmark" and
shorten the URL.



IDEA 3: Improve the bookmark properties dialog
----------------------------------------------

The following is a slight revision from what's been shown before.

+--------------------------- _X
|                             |
| Title:  ___________________ |
| URL:    ___________________ |
| Topics: ___________________ |   <--- auto-completing text input
|                             |
| > Choose topics from list   |
|                             |
+-----------------------------+

+--------------------------- _X
|                             |
| Title:  ___________________ |
| URL:    ___________________ |
| Topics: ___________________ |
|                             |
| v Choose topics from list   |
|                             |
| ( Suggested topics        ) |   <--- drop down list
|                             |
|  +----------------------+   |
|  |                      |   |   <--- list of topics
|  |                      |   |        click a topic to add to the
|  |                      |   |        topics text entry above
|  |                      |   |
|  |                      |   |
|  |                      |   |
|  +----------------------+   |
|                             |
+-----------------------------+

Drop down list contains:
 - Show suggested topics
 - Show top-level topics
 - Show all topics
 - Show deli.cio.us topics

"Show all topics" makes the list show all topics. Clicking on a topic
appends it to the text-entry widget (topics in the widget are comma
separated) and removes it from the list. This "click-to-add" concept
will be used for the other 3 options as well.

"Show top-level topics" makes the list show the same stuff the
right-hand pane does in my t1 patch. This corresponds exactly to the way
that the hierarchical menus are built, allowing the user to 'dig deeper'
down into their topics.

"Show suggested topics" reads the page you're bookmarking and counts the
number of times each of your existing topic titles occurs in the
document. It then builds a list of topics in a similar way to top-level
topics, but enhanced/restricted by the number of times that topic occurs
in the page.

"Show deli.cio.us" topics uses the URL to fetch the most popular topics
from deli.cio.us and provides those. Topics which would need to be
created are marked appropriately. Clicking on one of these would
actually create the topic for you.



Feel free to criticise. As you would anyway. ;) :)

Regards,
Peter.