Liam, Don't mind if I forward this to the epiphany list :)
There are a few bugs open on improving history, but I don't think sort by close date is filed already... Op Tue, 28 Jun 2005 15:09:41 -0400, schreef Liam R. E. Quin: > On Mon, 2005-06-27 at 23:42 +0200, Reinout van Schouwen wrote: >> Op Mon, 27 Jun 2005 19:13:57 +0200, schreef Thilo Pfennig: >> >> > I think important is something like if somebody closes a window and there >> > are many tabs open, that the application asks if the user really wants to >> > close all tabs. > > An alternative is to provide Undo. Consider a text editor that asks if > you really want to delete a line of text, vs. one with undo :-) > On the other hand, while I was typing this message, a dialogue box came > up asking if I really wanted to discard the message. I've no idea > why, although I might have pressed control-w to delete a word... *tries* > yes, "delete word" tries to close the window, stupid binding. If the > window simply vanished, how would I know if the mail had been sent, or > if I'd saved the message for later, or if I'd deleted it? So the > dialogue is needed. Better might be to animate the window going into > the /dev/null abyss and a sound of a scream, plus a text log saying > what had happened, e.g. in a scollable status section in the mailer's > main window. Then if I wasn't looking at the screen, I'd be able > to figure out what had happened and press Edit->Undo or whatever. > > If I'm not looking at the screen, I'm likely to press space or even > enter not noticing a dialogue box happened. > >> Not necessarily. The important thing is that data loss is prevented. >> When the user presses the close button / menu item on a window, why >> second guess that maybe she actually meant to close one tab? Only when >> there's unsaved data, a dialog may appear-- but it would have appeared >> too when not having tabs. Plus, in a web browser at least, there's >> always the history that allows you to go back to accidentally closed >> webpages. > > So, back to tabs... if I close the wrong browser window by mistake, > up comes "are you sure you want to close this window?" and I say yes > because I have not realised I clicked on the wrong "X". Then I go > "oooh shiiit" because those windows had been up for days, I was > saving them in tabs until I booked my hotel for a trip. So maybe they > are in my history like you say and maybe not, depends if I cleared > history, depends how long my history lasts, no? If they are in my > history, how am I going to find them? > > So for your statement "they are in your history" to be anything > other than useless :-) the history needs to have a "window closed time" > field I can sort by. I note that for a Web browser, Undo Close Window > still doesn't really work because there's no single main window. > > I restarted my Web browser (galeon) this morning and it started > loading a dozen or so tabs.. it wanted a username/password, and hung > until I typed it. No idea which tab, which URI, not even 100% certain > it was Galeon asking, but it seemed likely. So there are other issues > with tabs, and with associating dialogues/questions/errors with them. > > I tried to imagine a Web browser that didn't have these problems, but > it came out fairly radically different, and maybe not better. E.g. > a "main" window where you can type a URI/IRI and it'll open in a > new window, or you can drag it onto an existing window. A URL bar > on a window then becomes read-only and means "this is what I am > showing". The main window can then have a place to undo a close > window, to get at history, to configure preferences... I suppose more > like Gimp, although I'm not sure I want to hold Gimp up as a UI to > emulate, as it's addressing some very complex editing tasks. > > Let's not dismiss problems with tabs as "oh, it's all solved by history" > though, when in fact it isn't :-) > > It's difficult to provide pervasive Undo on a desktop, because we are > stuck with a file system that doesn't have Undo and, ultimately, we > interface with a real world that doesn't have undo. Putting your > shoes back on isn't the same as to undo the act of removing them, > because you don't forget that wonderful feeling of relief and > comfort :-) > > So the abstraction is a little leaky at the edges, and some of the > questions that are coming up seem to me to be results of adding tabs > as a convenient hack to programs -- I'm not primarily thinking of Web > browsers here -- e.g. the interaction between "spatial" and "tabbed" > is clearly weird -- should a tabbed nautilus window jump around the > screen when I change tabs, to reflect correct positions? :-) -- and > the tab also confuses the distinction between document and window. > > Tabs have some (but not all) of the problems that MS Windows "MDI" > had, but with a lot more flexibility & more benefits. The question > of where to put the [x] is an indication of this... > > Best, > > Liam -- Reinout van Schouwen Companies against EU software patents: www.economic-majority.com _______________________________________________ epiphany-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/epiphany-list
