Favicons in Web Search Plugin cause minor hanging

[Derek]

I've been having (minor) problems ever since the Web Search Plugin
introduced favicons. I'm not totally sure how Quicksilver handles the
favicons, but it seems to me that for some sites (eg warez-bb), not
only can it not download the favicon, but it hangs every few days (i
presume from attempting to redownload it?).

Sometimes, it even interferes with my normal running of Quicksilver:
e.g. getting to (sk)ype means I have to go through "s", which is a
search keyword, and so it sometimes will hang, instead of going
straight to Skype.

For me, I have no need for favicons...I know exactly which shortcuts
lead to which searches. Would it be possible to offer the option of
disabling it?

[Derek]

Forget few days. An hour later, typing "wz" (for warez-bb) produces
noticable lags. The same thing happens with flickr, which also doesn't
show a favicon.

[Derek]

Okay, so the culprits that do not have the favicon, and therefore
hang, are:

flickr: http://flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=***&m=text
warez-bb: http://www.warez-bb.org/search.php?mode=results&search_keywords=***&search_terms=all&search_fields=titleonly

most of the others don't hang (e.g. google: http://www.google.com/search?q=***&as_qdr=all),
and they have icons.

perhaps it's to do with the way the define the favicon, or the
filetype. I'll take a look later to confirm (busy with Ph.D Apps right
now :P)

[Patrick Robertson]

If you could let us know the exact URL the favicons for those sites, that will be useful.

When creating the favicon fetching code, I remember being worried that there is no fallback for when the favicons don't exist. At the moment, the code tries to fetch the favicon directly using: http://g.etfv.co/WEB_SEARCH_URL

and will hang if it can't quite find it, this should be fixed.

I've just tested the flickr one and it doesn't return a favicon, as you're saying. If you could try and figure out what the right URL should be to get this to work, that'd be useful :)

Check out http://g.etfv.co/

[su]

I've also been experiencing problems with QS fetching favicons, mostly due to poor signal and congestion on wifi links.

Although I don't need them I recognize it adds a custom look to Web Search plugin. I like this.

However, it'd be useful to have the option to manually fetch them all once in a while.

I don't know if this feature will find acceptance or ever be part of QS, but at least can fetching be temporary disabled?

[Patrick Robertson]

Yesterday I worked on making the icons load 'in the background' so that it will not cause Quicksilver to hang. This is now pending review by other developers at https://github.com/quicksilver/Quicksilver/pull/805

I do not believe it will take too long to be accepted, so it may be in the next version of Quicksilver or the one after.

[su]

Great!

I must add that I'd also like this feature to be performed manually because of Little Snitch.

I find it annoying to create superfluous permanent rules for tasks that could/should occur once in a while.

I think external communications of an app should behave much like updates.

[Rob McBroom]

On Apr 11, 2012, at 4:49 AM, su wrote:

> I must add that I'd also like this feature to be performed manually because of Little Snitch.
> I find it annoying to create superfluous permanent rules for tasks that could/should occur once in a while.

I guess you don’t use Quicksilver to quickly filter the links on a web page then? Have you ever tried it? Bring up a URL and hit → or /. :-)

--
Rob McBroom
<http://www.skurfer.com/>

[su]

No. I probably read about it in the user's guide, but since I usually have direct links bookmarked, hence catalogued, I just don't need it.

However, thanks for the tip.

Rob, Patrick, how will the background fetching behave (update frequency, no favicons, no internet connection)?

[Patrick Robertson]

> Rob, Patrick, how will the background fetching behave (update frequency, no favicons, no internet connection)?

The icon for each 'web search' object will be attempted to load once per Quicksilver session. If you restart Quicksilver, then it will attempt to load the icon again. The 'background' behaviour means you will not notice any hang in Quicksilver when it tries to fetch the icon. If there is no internet connection, Quicksilver will default to the globe with a magnifying glass, but no favicon.

[su]

If there is no internet connection, Quicksilver will default to the globe with a magnifying glass, but no favicon.

It'd be nice that QS pull the icons from cache if there's a problem with the internet connection.