Improve Focus and Recall with Home Dash 4

[Edward Lee]

Check out the latest update to the Home Dash Prospector experiment:
https://mozillalabs.com/prospector/2011/02/07/improve-focus-and-recall-with-home-dash-4

Please leave feedback on that post in this thread.

Ed

[TheDrum]

Hi Ed,

I love home dash. It's a somewhat unorthodox anuvering and at first I
had to get used to it. I have one question though: if I need the URL
how do I get to that? Like I want to copy & paste it to skype or a
mail? Do I really have to deactivate the plug-in or is there a better
way that I'm currently missing?

Cheers

[Edward Lee]

On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 1:56 AM, TheDrum <ratlog...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> if I need the URL, how do I get to that?
You can hit ctrl-L twice from the page. See this post for more shortcuts:
http://mozillalabs.com/prospector/2011/01/27/tips-and-troubleshooting-for-home-dash-1/

I wonder if there should be a button for this or something that better
shows that you can get the page's url. I've been thinking about
various default suggestions, e.g., selected text or clipboard
contents, and that could include the url maybe.

Ed

[TheDrum]

Oh thanks I totally missed that great blog entry. Wow, I really start
to like this plug-in. Major problem imo, for the average user this
might be too complicated. I'm not complaining, but you really need to
read that blog-entry to fully understand the capabilities of Home
Dash.

Why don't you make that the official documentation and included it in
the about section so it's easy to reach for every user? Currently too
much search has to be done to come to this blog-entry. Documentation
is always good and would improve the user-experience a lot.


Ed, thanks for being super-responsive! This is the way to go and has
been a major annoyance with Songbird (which I kicked from all systems
I manage).

[movrev]

I second TheDrum, but why don't you add a "Keyboard Shortcuts" or
"Navigation" button to the home dash, much like you now have the
"manage add ons" and "learn more about home dash" links? I would be
interested in an overlay instead of a page telling me all shortcuts,
but I would be happy with an about:home-dash page that informs and
configures the interface. For example, I would like to move the
location of the tiny icon in the corner, or make the interface react
to "hot corners" instead. The keyboard shortcuts help, though.

Regarding the dash itself, I find the history view confusing and
useless unless it would load the pages. That would probably slow down
everything, though, if those have to keep changing based on the
current view. Would there be a way to turn this on and off (but then,
this wouldn't be a prospector, probably)? I can only find it useful
while searching, but I probably still have those pages in the list
anyway.

Although the UI needs polishing, the searching functionality looks
good (although it returns different results from the awesome bar for
some reason) and the browsing of open tabs is interesting. It's
getting to a useable state. I'm not quite convinced why you have to
put numbers and include the app tabs in there, since you're already
showing them as icons...maybe cycle through the icons at some point?
Also, how about closing a tab with the middle-click of the mouse,
instead of the right click. This replicates normal behavior, making it
more intuitive. As it is right now, I'm expecting the right click to
open up a menu, not close a page.

Last, but not least, having been playing with ff4 for months now, tab
groups have taken over and I now organize my day to day with it.
However, when I'm in a tab group, that's all I see inside home dash
and can't navigate to the others without switching home dash off and
on again...I would suggest integrating an overlay with the tab groups
interface that would allow to glance over the open tabs and groupings.
After all, both interfaces seem like they would play well with each
other.

This is looking good. Keep up the great work,

[TheDrum]

As for the middle click: Imo not a good idea. I'm using Apples Magic
Mouse and I only have programmed two clickes left and right and I
don't want a middle click. Not every mouse has a middle click. (just
my 2 cent)

[movrev]

All I'm asking is the ability to have consistency between both
interfaces. I'm fairly sure you aren't using the middle-mouse button
to close a tab in Firefox, since you don't have it at all. That's the
only reason I bought a wheeled mouse for my macbook, so that I could
keep the functionality consistent across OSs. Then again, if it could
be a configurable shortcut it would be great. Or if both buttons did
the same at least. Besides, you probably can reconfigure the magic
mouse, which doesn't have a middle click but is multi-touch, right?

[Salty`s Solomon]

I just have one problem with the update, I really liked to see all my
opened tab`s wen I used <crtl+l>. Now it is really hard to get an
overlook of all my opened tabs.....

sorry for my bad english