Firefox 3 Feature Planning: tell me about *your* problems.
Mike Beltzner
mozilla.dev.apps.firefox with a followup set to
mozilla.dev.apps.firefox; if you are reading this as an email list,
please make sure you reply to dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org, and
make sure you are subscribed to that list so your reply doesn't
bounce!)
A few weeks (months?) ago on a Gecko 1.9 / Firefox 3 planning call, I
mentioned that one thing that I was never terribly thrilled about was
that when looking at planning out the features for Firefox 2, I didn't
push hard enough for every proposed feature to explain the problem that
it was attempting to solve. Without understanding the problem we
believe to be solving with a feature, it's extremely hard to get a
sense of when the feature is complete, how important the feature is,
what the impact of cutting the feature is, and what advantage we get by
including it in the final product.
In last week's meeting
(http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox3/StatusMeetings/2006-08-16#Firefox_3),
I started brainstorming up a list of problems that I felt users were
facing when using web browsers today. I don't think we should focus on
solutions or implementations just yet, but instead focus on answering
the following question: "What are the problems with the web that users
are currently facing, whether they realize it or not?"
So go ahead and throw a couple of ideas onto this thread!
cheers,
mike
jype...@gmail.com
Mike Beltzner wrote:
> So go ahead and throw a couple of ideas onto this thread!
As someone who tries to help Firefox users on support forums, here is a
first list of usual problems they (and I) encounter.
Note: T4 and T5 would be more useful to support people than to the user
itself, but it would help us solve much quickly some problems.
T1) Better Session Management.
People using webmails have problems to connect several times
simultaneously under several different users to the same webapp.
Workarounds are too complex for most users and IE solves this by
starting several instances.
T2) Real Page Zooming
People using high resolution with small screens find some sites to be
too small to read. This also impact people needing to go often to site
with large image/text (hence benefiting of a high res) and to site with
fixed width (there are still sites design for 640x480 or 800x600 that
will use only a fraction of a screen on 1280x1024 res or higher). A
real zoom, or fit-to-page, feature for both sites and appl UI would be
nice. It is one of the most requested feature in the forums (and both
Opera and IE7 have it, though not for the UI).
T3) Less cryptic warning/error messages.
I had to explain several time what the "resend POST data" warning
means. All non-computer savvy does not understand the message. The
warning is necessary, but too cryptic: users do not know what is POST
data... (I used that message as an example, but it is not the only
one).
T4) Better link between the error message and its cause
(site/extension...)
I think mainly of the "A script took too much time." We get no
indication of what script caused the (legitimate) warning: is that a
script on a page or in an extension? It would ease diagnose quite some
problems.
T5) History of extension/theme installation/disabling.
That would help diagnose what recent extension installation caused the
problem. Something à là Update history would be nice.
Ok, that's all for the moment, surely others ideas will pop later.
Axel Hecht
- the url bar autocomplete boosts hand-entered URLs and does not boost
the corresponding URLs that those redirected to.
Example, if I enter axel-hecht.de/blog, I get redirected to
http://www.axel-hecht.de/blog/, and I would like that to be my first
choice in autocomplete.
Pitfall, we can't just remove the redirected entry from the history, as
it may contain strings that the target does not. But maybe we can shift
the boost from one to the other, or at least boost the target twice or so.
Filed https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=349844
Axel
Jesper Kristensen
1) ** Better handling of new windows and tabs. **
I know it is only available in the about:config for Firefox 2, but the
limitations is the most annoying thing about Firefox for me. Here is what i
personally want Fx to do:
Links from external applications:
- Open in a new tab
Links from browser ui:
- Open in a new tab
Links from web pages, that tries to open windows:
- Open in the same tab if it is a HTML link (<a target="_blank")
- Open in a new tab if it is a JS link (window.open)
Closing a window:
- Websites should not be able to close any windows/tabs
And here is the best match i can configure Fx to do:
Links from external applications:
- Open in a new tab
Links from browser ui:
- Open in a new WINDOW
Links from web pages, that tries to open windows:
- Open in the same tab if it is a HTML link OR a JS link without "features"
- Open in a new WINDOW if it is a JS link with "features"
Closing a window:
- Websites is only able to close windows/tabs opened by the page AND
tabs/windows opened by me if Fx earlier redirected a new window link to this
tab/window
As you may see, there is no way Firefox can do near my desired behavior. The
two main problems is:
* My online banking: it often uses window.open without "features", and they
gets redirected to the same tab, thus preventing the site to transfer my
login information via wondow.opener and then failing to function
* Links like Get extensions in the Addons manager open new windows, and i am
not able to drag it into a tab in an existing window
Another thing missing is the ability to redirect every window.location.href
and window.open to a new tab when Crtl+Clicking or middleclicking on
thomething that fires a JavaScript event.
2) ** Digital Certificates **
Firefox and Thunderbird should be able to encrypt and password protect
individual installed certificates. The only option now is a master password,
but that is not very usable. I have decided not to get a Danish Government
Digital Signature certificate until my browser and email client supports
individual protection of certificates, because i don't think my possibilities
now is secure enough. If you search for problems with no solution in
forum.mozilladanmark.dk, i think this problem tops the list. See bug 322617
3) ** Easier storing of data **
- Ability to search bookmarks, including website content would be usefull
- Ability to remember a page without having to bookmark it. It takes time to
find a good title and a good location, and that is important if i want to be
able to find the bookmark later on.
4) ** Per site options **
I would like to be able to set a pref for one domain only, and i would like
to be able to do this with every pref that has something to do with website
handling, not just a chosen handful of prefs (like cookies, images and popups)
5) ** Full page zoom **
As mentioned earlier in the thread
Eric Shepherd
> T2) Real Page Zooming
> People using high resolution with small screens find some sites to be
> too small to read. This also impact people needing to go often to
> site
> with large image/text (hence benefiting of a high res) and to site
> with
> fixed width (there are still sites design for 640x480 or 800x600 that
> will use only a fraction of a screen on 1280x1024 res or higher). A
> real zoom, or fit-to-page, feature for both sites and appl UI would be
> nice. It is one of the most requested feature in the forums (and both
> Opera and IE7 have it, though not for the UI).
I'd like to be able to set specific sites to automatically be scaled
different amounts. Some sites I visit use ridiculously small (or
large, in some cases) fonts, and I'd like to be able to automatically
have them scaled appropriately so they're legible. I don't know how
the UI for that would work, but it would be quite cool.
Eric Shepherd
Technical Writer
she...@mozilla.com
Eric Shepherd
menu to select the autocomplete I want if it's the first one in the
list. I like that in Safari, the first autocomplete option is right
in the URL bar so I can simply hit return to choose it.
Eric Shepherd
Technical Writer
she...@mozilla.com
robmca...@gmail.com
Mike Beltzner wrote:
...
> So go ahead and throw a couple of ideas onto this thread!
Browser synching. That is my biggest peeve - that I can't easily sync
bookmarks and my profile across multiple computers. The current way of
doing it (manually) is error-prone and often leads to corrupted
profiles and lost bookmarks. Password synching would be extremely
helpful as the current model still forces me to save passwords to
separate files or the OS X keychain.
Rob
Martijn
persuade her to use Firefox.
She asked (or more or less expected) that her IE bookmarks were
transferred to Firefox (this already happens), but she also asked if
any added bookmark in IE would be automatically added to Firefox
bookmarks (when Firefox is already installed).
Regards,
Martijn
On 23 Aug 2006 07:43:01 -0700, robmca...@gmail.com
> _______________________________________________
> dev-apps-firefox mailing list
> dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-apps-firefox
>
Axel Hecht
> Problems numbered by my priority
<...>
> 4) ** Per site options **
> I would like to be able to set a pref for one domain only, and i would
> like to be able to do this with every pref that has something to do with
> website handling, not just a chosen handful of prefs (like cookies,
> images and popups)
Did you try to find out how much of that CAPS can already do? Maybe it's
merely that you need an UI for existing functionality.
(Technically I could see that baking as an extension for starters.)
Axel
Hass
>"What are the problems with the web that users
> are currently facing, whether they realize it or not?"
Obvious, but handling different types of media.
Jesper Kristensen
Sounds interesting, i didn't know about that. But it doesn't seem to work in
the Fx 2.0 beta, could you help me with this? Created a new topic in
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=455474 since it is a little
off-topic here.
Peter Kasting
> I'd like not to have to arrow down into the autocomplete drop-down menu
> to select the autocomplete I want if it's the first one in the list. I
> like that in Safari, the first autocomplete option is right in the URL
> bar so I can simply hit return to choose it.
about:config
browser.urlbar.autoFill = true
I made this a non-invisible pref in Fx2 and onwards, and fixed a bunch
of bugs with it. It's incredibly useful to me (usually in conjunction
with browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTypes = true, to hack the autocomplete
heuristic to suck less), and if we had a better set of autocompletion
heuristics, we could probably expose it more publicly.
PK
Eric Shepherd
message. Thanks!
Eric Shepherd
Technical Writer
she...@mozilla.com
Peter Kasting
> I have tons more. But since you asked for a couple....
These all sound more like feature requests than problems. For example,
you said "Per Site Options...Options like 'Make Background White' or
something". So a problem here might be "some sites look bad/are hard to
read, and I'd like to easily make them more usable". Per Site Options
might be a solution to that, but for example so might "heuristically
detect that the contrast on the page is too low and shift the colors",
or other choices I haven't thought of.
For the features you've suggested, can you give the set of problems
you're actually trying to solve?
PK
Chris Ilias
> A few weeks (months?) ago on a Gecko 1.9 / Firefox 3 planning call, I
> mentioned that one thing that I was never terribly thrilled about was
> that when looking at planning out the features for Firefox 2, I didn't
> push hard enough for every proposed feature to explain the problem that
> it was attempting to solve. Without understanding the problem we
> believe to be solving with a feature, it's extremely hard to get a
> sense of when the feature is complete, how important the feature is,
> what the impact of cutting the feature is, and what advantage we get by
> including it in the final product.
>
> In last week's meeting
> (http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox3/StatusMeetings/2006-08-16#Firefox_3),
> I started brainstorming up a list of problems that I felt users were
> facing when using web browsers today. I don't think we should focus on
> solutions or implementations just yet, but instead focus on answering
> the following question: "What are the problems with the web that users
> are currently facing, whether they realize it or not?"
- One thing we still get a lot of, in mozilla.support.firefox, is lost
bookmarks. Currently, there is a folder in the profile directory, where
Firefox automatically backs up the bookmarks file, but it does not
automatically restore a backup, when bookmarks are lost. (whether or not
it knows if the current bookmarks file has been corrupted, I don't know)
Users don't know how to restore a backup, and shouldn't have to. They
shouldn't have to find out where their profile folder is. Bookmarks
should be automatically restored from the latest backup, when lost, and
there should perhaps be a message saying "There was a problem with your
bookmarks file, so a back up has been restored."
- Even though I use POP for email, there's no doubt that web-based email
(Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Gmail, etc.) are very popular, and used as the
primary email account by many. It makes me wonder about what a pain in
the butt mailto: links must be for those people. Maybe this is more of a
feature for the OS, but it would be nice, if the user could configure
Firefox to open mailto: URLs in their webmail account, rather than a
separate email program.
- Here's a question that I thought was beautifully simple, and (AFAIK)
not possible in Firefox: How do I disable sound on webpages? In other
words, I don't want any websites to give me background music, or audio
in advertisements.
- which brings me to my next item: better plug-in management. I don't
know if I can really pinpoint the actual problem with it. Most of the
problems in mozilla.support.firefox lately, have been related to
plug-ins. A user goes to a site, and gets a "missing plug-in" message.
The user clicks on the button to get the plug-in, but finds he/she
already has the plug-in required. Why didn't it work? The plug-in wasn't
registered to handle the content-type on the problematic page. No
plug-on was. Other users experience a Firefox crash when going to
certain webpages (which requires a certain plug-in). Some users just
want to occasionally disable Flash (not just SWF). Users don't know what
plug-ins are installed, or what plug-ins are found by Firefox (so we
have to direct them to about:plugins). The whole thing seems so messy,
and not user-friendly.
- font options UI. I don't know about the rest of you, but I've never
used the font options UI. I can hardly understand it. The only instances
in which it is useful, is when a user asks if he/she can make the
'View-->Text Size' setting persist between sessions. In those cases, I
advise them to set a minimum font size.
- live bookmarks is a nice technology demo, but they are not very
practical, if there's nothing to tell you which items are new/unread. I
don't want to have to reread through the list of items on every web
feed, to see if I recognize the titles. A more 'Sage-like' feed reader,
in which I can navigate to different items in the feed with having to
open up a menu, would be more practical.
FWIW, I also started a poll in mozilla.support.firefox, "What new few
feature would you like to see in Firefox?"
<http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.support.firefox/browse_thread/thread/e60c00e53190d761>
--
Chris Ilias
mozilla.test.multimedia moderator
Mozilla links <http://ilias.ca>
(Please do not email me tech support questions)
beltzner
On 8/24/06, Justin Wood (Callek) <Cal...@gmail.com> wrote:
> And some (known) solutions to these problems, mostly future, with no ETA.
On 8/24/06, Hakan Waara <hwa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Basically, what I propose is to merge them.
...
> I would like to hear your opinions on this.
Please, as per the start of this thread, let's not focus on solutions
(especially future solutions). Right now we're interested in collating
problems and seeing if we can bubble up broad themes and directions
for focusing and prioritizing future efforts. I know that we're all
A-type problem-solvers here, but let's leave solutions and feature
proposals out of things for now. The description of user problems is
what we're after.
cheers,
mike
--
/ mike beltzner / phenomenologist / mozilla corporation /
pascal chevrel
I have bought a laptop to my mother who is a senior woman and a total
computer illiterate and she has difficulties understanding the
difference between Thunderbird and Firefox.
For example she receives a newsletter she has subscribed to and there is
a "click me" button inside to redirects to the website the newsletter
originates from. When she clicks on it and sees the website she doesn't
realize that she is now using Firefox and no longer Thunderbird.
I have no solution for that, but the distinction between Mail and Web is
rather blurry for people who have never touched a computer in their
life, especially with all the webmail services. I think that somehow,
when clicking on a message in thunderbird sends focus to Firefox there
should be some kind of message, communication, about what is happening.
I have no solution, I just see that people without computer knowledge
have difficulties understanding what the difference is between seeing an
html newsletter and a website and have difficulties knowing what
software they are currently using, the emailer or the browser.
pascal
tjb
> "What are the problems with the web that users
> are currently facing, whether they realize it or not?"
"Why won't some links respond to middle clicks?"
"After opening a link in a new tab, why can't I go *back* (in the new
tab)?"
"Why is it that when I (in one go) open multiple bookmarks in tabs, my tab
set gets replaced by the bookmarks, but when I open a single bookmark in a
tab, the new tab is *appended* to the set?"
(The last one is <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=300198>.)
Peter Weilbacher
> A few weeks (months?) ago on a Gecko 1.9 / Firefox 3 planning call, I
> mentioned that one thing that I was never terribly thrilled about was
> that when looking at planning out the features for Firefox 2 [...]
This is not Firefox specific but I always get lots of complaints about
how badly printing works (and I am very unhappy with that myself). Only
the most simple webpages end up on paper as expected, and even there
print preview often bears little resemblance to the output. Graphics get
arbitrarily squeezed on many occasions, the page numbers are different,
lines get wrapped in weird ways, parts of tables appear spread over
several pages etc.
Printing difficulties are also discussed on Gerv's blog and the attached
comments:
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/gerv/archives/2006/08/ie_7s_effect_on_firefox.html
Cheers,
Peter.
Gertjan Klein
>"What are the problems with the web that users
>are currently facing, whether they realize it or not?"
[Some of mine have been mentioned by others as well.]
- Background sound: used by some sites, can't be turned off in the
browser (short of using complicated and site specific greasemonkey
scripts).
- Popups: the popup blocker is essential, but awkward to use. If Firefox
notifies me that it blocked a popup, it want to be able to see that
popup with a single click. I don't want to add the site in question to
the allowed sites list, as I don't know if the popup contains anything
useful or just ads.
- Download manager: is used for links to e.g. mp3 files, even when these
are configured to open in an external application. Entries are added to
the downloads window even when saving e.g. a picture on a web page to
the local harddisk. This is annoying. I'd rather see the use of download
manager limited to where it is actually useful (e.g. downloading a large
file so you can watch its progress) than have everything but the kitchen
sink dumped in there.
- Installation (Windows): it seems impossible to install a newer version
of Firefox *alongside* an existing one; it reuses the same profile,
disables all existing extensions, and breaks the profile for the older
Firefox version. When installing, the installer program should ask
whether I want to upgrade the (or which) existing version or create a
separate installation. (Not really a usage problem, but this prohibits
me from testing newer Firefox versions.)
Gertjan.
--
Gertjan Klein <gkl...@xs4all.nl>
Jesper Kristensen
>
> - Installation (Windows): it seems impossible to install a newer version
> of Firefox *alongside* an existing one; it reuses the same profile,
> disables all existing extensions, and breaks the profile for the older
> Firefox version. When installing, the installer program should ask
> whether I want to upgrade the (or which) existing version or create a
> separate installation. (Not really a usage problem, but this prohibits
> me from testing newer Firefox versions.)
>
Take a look at the profile manager. I don't think we should put UI in the
installer for that. It would just confuse normal users, and we should expect
beta testers to be able to use the profile manager.
Benjy Grogan
I don't feel I should be using google most of the time to find a web
site. I have it (the thing I'm after) in my bookmark list, and I just
need to go to Manage Bookmarks and search, but that's clunky. I don't
organize my bookmarks list and that can't really be expected of your
average browser users. I think Bookmarks has to be deconstructed and
reinvented.
- There should be no need to organize them into folders, unless you
insist on labeling them.
- Make it quick; as quick as clicking on a button beside the Home button.
- Have a simple to access Bookmark search thingy
- Find relevant and unique information on the web page, and store for
improved search.
- Find ways of using that Bookmark store outside of the browser, so
even when you don't have the browser loaded up.
- Make it all painless, and accessible.
- Have a management tool to check if the links are still in existence
if you will to.
- Make it fun and navigatable if you want.
- Have a high volume Bookmarks thingy to see which ones you go back to the most
- Have a most recent Bookmarks thingy.
- Have a read-when-you-have-the-time Bookmarks thingy
- Bookmarks syncing and storing on places like Google, or others.
As of now I dread the Bookmark system, but I know that I have a whole
store of rich and unused web site info in it, that I stored in the
first place because I thought they had a future use.
Oh, and have a way to delete all of that info in a New York heartbeat
for times when you get raided by threats. :)
Benjy
Eric Shepherd
really interesting experimentation. Consider the interesting UIs
Apple comes up with things (such as Time Machine, for instance).
Thinking outside the box on this sort of interface could be fun and
could produce some helpful results.
Eric Shepherd
Technical Writer
she...@mozilla.com
Benjy Grogan
> Improved bookmark ease of use is an area where you could do some
> really interesting experimentation. Consider the interesting UIs
> Apple comes up with things (such as Time Machine, for instance).
> Thinking outside the box on this sort of interface could be fun and
> could produce some helpful results.
For sure. You could have
- Recommended Bookmarks that the browser has seen you search for
often, or come across, or who knows what. That recommended Bookmarks
could be incorporated into Bookmarks search or not depending on you.
- There should be a sense that you can add Bookmarks and not worry
about overloading the Bookmark system with junk. No need to be picky.
- You should be able to collect Bookmarks into topics 'Graduate
Schools', 'Career Sites Specific to My Field', and then send these
Bookmarks to friends, or clients. So "hey, Linda, you're interested
in running, well then let me send you the Bookmarks I've accumulated
that got me started" and be able to produce that hitherto non-existant
list on the spot and transfer it to her via email, IM, or whatever.
- Perhaps a plugin API so that extensions could take off in this realm
of the Bookmark. It's all about increasing the traffic of pertinent
web sites.
Benjy
>
> Eric Shepherd
> Technical Writer
> she...@mozilla.com
>
>
>
> On Aug 25, 2006, at 12:02 PM, Benjy Grogan wrote:
>
> > I don't feel I should be using google most of the time to find a web
> > site. I have it (the thing I'm after) in my bookmark list, and I just
> > need to go to Manage Bookmarks and search, but that's clunky. I don't
> > organize my bookmarks list and that can't really be expected of your
> > average browser users. I think Bookmarks has to be deconstructed and
> > reinvented.
>
Sherman Dickman
Apologies in advance if this extends beyond the scope of your
question... Most of my challenges center around information and
activity management, particularly for persistent goals or
objectives. I have less problems using the browser for recreational
purposes or for quick searches. But when working on larger goals
such as a kitchen remodel, work project, planning an event, etc., I'm
constantly switching between web browser, email, calendar, and file
system windows. When applications such as these aren't integrated or
do not rely on common services, I really start to feel the burdens of
orchestration.
1a) The first problem I have is with organizational structures. My
bookmark folders, mail folders, RSS groups, and file folders tend to
reflect what's important to me at any given point in time. New
folders are created and old folders are retired somewhat
organically. But these foldering systems are not synchronized across
applications, and manually keeping these structures in sync is a
challenge (especially across machines, but more on that later).
1b) Every time I download a file or save an attachment I have to
figure out where to store it, so I would like an option to save web
downloads or mail attachments to the same hierarchical schema as my
bookmark folders (and have this work for uploads and mail attachments
as well). And when I save a document, I want some metadata saved
with it like the URL that it came from or the person that sent it.
Apple's iLife applications have an interesting way of handling
files. They obfuscate the underlying file system by allowing users
to manage content directly within each application, which also allows
for metadata associations to be applied to the content. This enables
a user to more intuitively search for content via its metadata as
opposed to navigating through the file system directly.
2) I spend too much time switching between apps, and want to achieve
more of my workflow within the app that I'm working in. For example,
I want to be able to:
* add contacts to my address book directly from a web page
* add events to my calendar directly from a web page
* autofill a web form with contacts from my address book (especially
handy for entering shipping addresses for gifts)
* email selected history/bookmarks from the browser
* email web page content directly from the browser (in the same way
that I can invite people to a meeting directly within a calendar app)
* access my bookmarks from within a mail composition window so that I
can easily add them to a message, same with events from calendar
* bookmark a link from an email message, and save some metadata on
who sent it, the mail subject line, etc.
* search for a contact or event via auto-complete in the URL bar
3) It drives me nuts that I can't annotate a web page or a mail
message. A simple sticky note interface would do. Tagging would
also be helpful.
4) Keeping my preferences, bookmarks, mail filters, etc. in sync
across machines is a real pain. Why can't all of this be easily
exported as one xml file, with publish/subscribe capabilities to a
simple url?
5) I hate it when I miss meetings or don't know about them. I want a
view for all events that can be extracted from every page that I
visit and every email that I receive, and it would be nice to be able
to filter these views as well.
Sorry if this extended beyond a Firefox discussion, but I'd give
anything to have "systems" that help facilitate repetitive, tedious,
and manual tasks like cut/paste so that I can spend more time on
higher level pursuits.
Sherman
Gertjan Klein
I disagree. Installer programs have, for ages, differentiated between
"normal" and "advanced" installations. A question about whether or not a
completely separate installation should be performed could be placed
under advanced installation options. It would not "confuse" a normal
user as they would not select an advanced installation. But a UI in the
installer for this isn't even necessary, see below.
Although I do know how to use profile manager, I did not expect my
current profile to be mangled if I installed firefox beta in a different
directory than my previous, stable version. It makes no sense to me that
two different versions of firefox, installed in two different locations,
by default share the same profile, even if the two profiles are actually
incompatible. What I *would* have expected is for the installer to
detect a parallel installation, create a new profile, and ask me if I
want to import (compatible) settings and bookmarks from the existing
installation.
As things are, I *must* remember not to start the newly installed beta
before setting up things with profile manager, or my old profile will be
messed up. Even then, I get asked which profile to use every time,
unless I manually change shortcuts. All this is unnecessarily complex.
It made mozilla needlessly lose at least one beta tester.
Benjamin Smedberg
> As things are, I *must* remember not to start the newly installed beta
> before setting up things with profile manager, or my old profile will be
> messed up. Even then, I get asked which profile to use every time,
> unless I manually change shortcuts. All this is unnecessarily complex.
> It made mozilla needlessly lose at least one beta tester.
Can you explain what is broken about your profile? You're supposed to be
able to use the profile across versions, and if a new version "horks" a
profile so that an older version doesn't work that's a pretty serious bug.
--BDS
dolphinling
Do we have any automated testing of that? I know it generally works for me (with
the exception that trunk and branch have different bookmarks, etc. because of
places), but I don't do it all that often and I might have missed something if I
don't use that feature.
--
dolphinling
<http://dolphinling.net/>
Stanimir Stamenkov
> I'd like not to have to arrow down into the autocomplete drop-down menu
> to select the autocomplete I want if it's the first one in the list.
I don't know whether Firefox has other UI for setting that
preference but you could set "browser.urlbar.autoFill" property to
"true" at the <about:config> page.
--
Stanimir
Stanimir Stamenkov
> /Eric Shepherd/:
>
>> I'd like not to have to arrow down into the autocomplete drop-down
>> menu to select the autocomplete I want if it's the first one in the list.
>
And I should have read the other two replies first but strangely
they didn't appear as direct replies to the Eric's message.
--
Stanimir
Gertjan Klein
>Can you explain what is broken about your profile? You're supposed to be
>able to use the profile across versions, and if a new version "horks" a
>profile so that an older version doesn't work that's a pretty serious bug.
The most obvious problem is that all extensions are disabled, because
they are not compatible with the newer version. That is merely an
inconvenience, though -- after setting up a new profile for the beta
version I can reenable them.
What I did notice is that (stable) Firefox consistently started crashing
after sometimes only a few minutes of browsing, and always when closing
the browser. I had set things up to autosubmit crash reports, so many of
those must have been filed. In the end I cleared both installations,
removed the existing profiles, and reinstalled stable. I'm not really
inclined to go through that again...
Robert Kaiser
Boris Zbarsky schrieb:
> I have to admit that it took me a bit to convince myself of this; it
> doesn't help that most people I know are not typical users. That said,
> it seems to me that we should consider something along the following
> lines as our default UI:
>
> 1) Have a single text entry field in the UI; have this be a
> search-and-url-entry widget.
> 2) Do not show the current URL in this widget. Show either nothing or
> the last
> thing searched for.
> 3) Show the current _hostname_ (or some other "what site this is"
> indicator) to
> prevent phishing.
> 4) Have the current URL bar available via toolbar customization so that
> we can
> use the browser as dogfood. ;)
Hmm, reading everything in here, an idea pooped up in my head (yes, one
of those nasty pop-ups):
What about making what's currently the URL widget a tabbed widget, i.e.
a text entry box with a small tab strip above it that lets you switch
between "Web Search", "Page Search", and "(Page) Location"?
It would look like this:
+------------+ +-------------+ +---------------+
| Web Search | | Page Search | | Page Location |
+-+ +-+-------------+-+---------------+-------------------+
| +-----------------------------------------------------+ +--------+ |
| | | | Search | |
| +-----------------------------------------------------+ +--------+ |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
The tab strip should probably be very narrow and in a relatively tiny
font. The Search button would change to "Go" in the "Page Location" view
- and of course, this bar can contain the search engine dropdown the
current search bar has, I also have left out stuff like RSS icon here,
it's just the basic idea.
Would users understand that? Would more professional users find it
convient enough to use?
Perhaps the "Web Search" mode should do some simple detection and use
the input as a URL for loading the page if it starts with a protocol
identifier or "www."
We also could merge the find bar into this as "Page Search" (or "Find in
Page"), as I still think the bar at the bottom of the screen is quite
unintuitive.
This is just an idea, but I've had this some days ago, revisited it
every time I read this thread and I still think it might be an
interesting way to go.
Robert Kaiser
Peter Kasting
> What about making what's currently the URL widget a tabbed widget, i.e.
> a text entry box with a small tab strip above it that lets you switch
> between "Web Search", "Page Search", and "(Page) Location"?
The problem I have with this is it doesn't seem to address the original
motivation for combining things into a single entry box: the ideas that
"users don't understand URLs" and "the difference between 'search' and
'go' is unclear". This tabbed model still requires people to explicitly
choose how the box treats their input, which completely breaks when they
don't know what their own input means.
Besides this, it requires more clicks than Firefox' existing two-box
model, so it makes life that much harder for everyone.
I think the one nice property here is that when users specify how they
want their input treated, the browser's behavior is more predictable and
less "magic", as you have an unambiguous signal. Unfortunately, if
users forget to change modes, or don't understand the modes. That
signal could be unambiguous and wrong.
Instead, I'd suggest that a non-modal box that gives incredibly good
feedback on what your input means is probably more helpful. Even this
is tricky to get right -- the keyword.URL behavior often kicks in after
a failed DNS lookup, which would be hard to do quickly and signal
properly ahead of time.
> We also could merge the find bar into this as "Page Search" (or "Find in
> Page"), as I still think the bar at the bottom of the screen is quite
> unintuitive.
I think this has some merit, but again needs to be done very carefully,
as we're talking about something like 3-meaning simultaneous overloading
of a single input box (assuming your tabbed model is not used). We
can't just present 100 different options to users in a dropdown box --
that isn't particularly convenient or comprehensible.
PK
ehume
IMO, you have it right. I recall as a new user to IE a decade ago, I
would accidently set up a search from the url bar when I was looking
for IE to navigate me to a website. While one might argue about the
placement of the Find bar, I agree that the three input bars should be
kept separate.
As for Mr. Kaiser's suggestion of a narrow tabbar with relatively tiny
fonts, do remember that the baby boom generation is on-line in large
numbers, and we are old enough that we have a hard time reading small
type. I have argued elsewhere that the fixed size of the Bon Echo
default theme is a mistake because it assumes a small text size, and
looks bad when someone with a hi-res screen (all the flat-panel
screens) jacks up the text size to something readable. We should not go
further down that road.
EH
Peter Kasting
> Peter Kasting wrote:
>> Instead, I'd suggest that a non-modal box that gives incredibly good
>> feedback on what your input means is probably more helpful.
>
> kept separate.
Don't mistake my argument; I'm the one who originally stated that many
users don't understand URLs well and don't grasp the distinction between
"search" and "go". I'm not opposed to unifying some of the controls. I
was responding to a particular proposal about how it should be done.
PK
Asa Dotzler
Key settings need to somehow be elevated -- things like the start page
or other important features like minimum font size are buried.
Finding and using extensions and then ensuring your getting a safe
extension that stays up to date is still really only accessible to us geeks.
We have a few really important keyboard shortcuts that people, even
primarily mouse users, should know and yet I see people going to menus
all of the time. Same goes for other shortcuts like middle-click for
opening links in tabs. I think that the classic shortcut identifier in
menus just doesn't work to educate most people. This is clearly an OS
problem, but that's no reason for us not to be thinking about it :-)
- A
Robert Kaiser
> Robert Kaiser wrote:
>> What about making what's currently the URL widget a tabbed widget, i.e.
>> a text entry box with a small tab strip above it that lets you switch
>> between "Web Search", "Page Search", and "(Page) Location"?
>
> The problem I have with this is it doesn't seem to address the original
> motivation for combining things into a single entry box: the ideas that
> "users don't understand URLs" and "the difference between 'search' and
> 'go' is unclear". This tabbed model still requires people to explicitly
> choose how the box treats their input, which completely breaks when they
> don't know what their own input means.
>
> Besides this, it requires more clicks than Firefox' existing two-box
> model, so it makes life that much harder for everyone.
>
> I think the one nice property here is that when users specify how they
> want their input treated, the browser's behavior is more predictable and
> less "magic", as you have an unambiguous signal. Unfortunately, if
> users forget to change modes, or don't understand the modes. That
> signal could be unambiguous and wrong.
>
> Instead, I'd suggest that a non-modal box that gives incredibly good
> feedback on what your input means is probably more helpful. Even this
> is tricky to get right -- the keyword.URL behavior often kicks in after
> a failed DNS lookup, which would be hard to do quickly and signal
> properly ahead of time.
My primary intention was to find a solution that 1) gives the user
feedback on how his input is treated and 2) still lets him intentionally
choose a specific treatment of his input.
The solution should make it possible to still be able to show and edit
the URL if one likes to do so, for one because semi-professional and
professional users expect to be able to do that at least from time to
time, and second because some admin/friend/whatever might ask the user
to tell him the shown URL or change one character there and try again,
so they can find out where some problem is.
Additionally, liking the way of having one text input field for URL and
web search like the browser I'm working on (SeaMonkey) and disliking the
location of Firefox's "find in page" bar out of the normal workflow at
the bottom of the screen, the whole idea of getting some merged input
bar for all those browsing functions is something I think about a lot,
and yes, I'm still undecided on what's really the best way of adressing
the two main concerns in the first paragraph of this reply.
A tab solution was the first that at least looked like a chance to give
that mode indication and switching capability, perhaps the idea can be
improved with some other indicator/switching UI.
We have enough time until Firefox 3 (and the Gecko-1.9-based SeaMonkey
incarnation, where I'd be glad to see that as well) and we have enough
intelligent people around that we will eventually find a really good
solution for those problems ;-)
Robert Kaiser
Peter Kasting
> My primary intention was to find a solution that 1) gives the user
> feedback on how his input is treated and 2) still lets him intentionally
> choose a specific treatment of his input.
I think better cues inside the URL bar and in the "autocomplete"
dropdown can provide for (1), and I think allowing the user to select
among these options provides for (2).
> The solution should make it possible to still be able to show and edit
> the URL if one likes to do so,
I agree that being able to see/copy/edit page URLs is potentially
useful. I don't think we need to assume they have to be shown in the
generic input box at top. A strip that always shows the full page title
and URL, from which one can copy the URL into the input box, seems like
a possibility to me. Maybe they're not even useful enough to demand
that much space in the chrome. I've started paying attention to how
often I modify URLs in place, and the answer so far is "never".
Something informative that shows me what domain I'm on is (amazingly)
good enough for me, despite my being an "expert" user.
PK
Robert Kaiser
> Robert Kaiser wrote:
>> My primary intention was to find a solution that 1) gives the user
>> feedback on how his input is treated and 2) still lets him
>> intentionally choose a specific treatment of his input.
>
> I think better cues inside the URL bar and in the "autocomplete"
> dropdown can provide for (1), and I think allowing the user to select
> among these options provides for (2).
Can you elaborate on specifics about what what you think of there?
I'm not sure I understand in which way you want to achieve those.
> I've started paying attention to how
> often I modify URLs in place, and the answer so far is "never".
> Something informative that shows me what domain I'm on is (amazingly)
> good enough for me, despite my being an "expert" user.
I'm doing that quite a lot, but then, I'm also doing lots of web page
design, which might influence this a lot...
Robert Kaiser
Eddie
> ... explain the problem ... list of problems ... when using web browsers ...
> ... "What are the problems with the web ..." ...
Symptom:
"Summary: "*.tgz.md5" files not saved after download."
Mozilla Bugzilla Bug 336900
Problem:
Ben Fowler, in Bug 336900, Comment #10:
"... there may not be a fix for Firefox
that works in all circumstances
and is acceptable to the wider community"
Is there a generic problem here that requires the coordination of
Mozilla, Apple, Apache, W3C and others to solve?
Will the Firefox portion of the solution be ready for Firefox 3?
Background:
Mozilla Bugzilla Bug 336900
(confirmed by Ben Fowler in Comment #1)
Comment #10 From Ben Fowler 2006-05-29 14:58 PDT:
"... and I am fairly sure that Firefox is using the fact that the
filename has a gizp-matching extension (.tgz) and an unknown one
(.md5) (= a recognised MIME type "application/x-tar" and an unknown
extension) to fail to switch off channel conversion.
This seems surprising, and is arguably very wrong -
I would wager money that you thought that with HTTP,
unknown files were treated as plain text;
but it is possibly Apple's bug.
"I would suggest that the ApplyConversion switch should be set to off
when there are either unknown extensions or MIME types in the picture.
"It would be a good idea to check what Safari and Konqeror do, and,
if you are able to consult with someone who knows the code, why.
"... The problem is not located in just one part of the code, ...
where the ApplyDecoding is only turned off if there is a
non-DecodableExtension and a matching MIME type.
"Perhaps a more important piece of the jigsaw puzzle is to think about
how a md5 checksum came to have that MIME Type.
This is partly a server side setting, ...
"and you could probably ameliorate the problem ...
Obviously you can't rely on changing the configuration of
every server on the planet, ...
"Hope this helps, but there may not be a fix for Firefox that works in
all circumstances and is acceptable to the wider community"
Thanks,
Eddie Maddox
Inwood IA USA
Peter Kasting
> Peter Kasting schrieb:
>> Robert Kaiser wrote:
>> I think better cues inside the URL bar and in the "autocomplete"
>> dropdown can provide for (1), and I think allowing the user to select
>> among these options provides for (2).
>
> Can you elaborate on specifics about what what you think of there?
> I'm not sure I understand in which way you want to achieve those.
In Firefox 2 when we added search suggestions to the search box, we made
it possible to show both history and suggestion results in the same box.
From what I recall, Flock took this even further and had some kind of
box that had everything in the universe in it.
I'm thinking of something a bit more scaled back from what Flock
provided, but better than "autocomplete". Effectively, the dropdown
could provide you the options you might want, including matching pages
from your history, various ways to search for a phrase, or (since you
don't like the Find bar) perhaps ways to find the phrase in the page.
We can also use cues in the urlbar to indicate what's happening; for
example, let's say the user types "slash", and our heuristics guess that
they want slashdot.org. Perhaps we can show the page title, url and/or
favicon in the address bar to indicate what will happen if they hit
enter. and maybe in the dropdown we highlight that choice, while nearby
are other sites (with titles and favicons) and search
results/suggestions for "slash". Maybe if you go to "find 'slash' in
this page" we pull up the find bar or some other smart thing.
PK
Rudi Gens
> facing when using web browsers today. I don't think we should focus on
> solutions or implementations just yet, but instead focus on answering
> the following question: "What are the problems with the web that users
> are currently facing, whether they realize it or not?"
>
One area that causes people considerable grief is bookmarks.
My favorite complaint I hear from people is "I bookmarked the page a
couple weeks ago and now all I get is an error message: Page not
found". I guess we have all gone down that path. Having the option of
saving a bookmark offline helps a lot.
People have different habits as far as bookmarking goes. I know people
who pretty much bookmark any page that could be vaguely interesting to
read up on them later when they have more time. Whether they actually
do that is an entirely different question. It would be nice to have
something that categorizes the bookmarks. Sounds a lot like tagging but
could be handled in a couple different ways (time stamps,
urgency/importance levels etc.)
Once you have bookmarked the hell for a particular topic it surely
would be nice to be able to search through them in a more extensive
fashion than just the title. Might again require some offline version.
People tend to search and bookmark for a reason. Assigning tags and
notes to a bookmark would help people a lot in figuring out a couple of
weeks later why they were interested in this particular page without
going through the entire contents again.
Looking at the current boom of social bookmarking, people seem to like
the idea of sharing their findings with others. An interface for making
a bookmark available via del.icio.us, ma.gnolia etc. goes long ways in
this respect.
All these issues are addressed somewhere. The ScrapBook extension
solves a couple of the issues (e.g. offline version). Google Notebook
is pretty good for taking/sharing notes. But a proper integration into
the browser with an obvious, user friendly interface would be sweet.
I am not sure whether I would want to through the live bookmarks/feeds
into this particular mix but they could be attached to it if you want
to go that way.
Cheers,
Rudi
Gervase Markham
> T1) Better Session Management.
This is not a statement of a problem; it's a proposed solution.
> T2) Real Page Zooming
> T3) Less cryptic warning/error messages.
> T4) Better link between the error message and its cause
> (site/extension...)
> T5) History of extension/theme installation/disabling.
Ditto for all of these.
Gerv
Gervase Markham
> That is my biggest peeve - that I can't easily sync
> bookmarks and my profile across multiple computers.
How common do you think this desire is in the userbase at large?
Can it be equally well served using an extension?
Gerv
Gervase Markham
> I have bought a laptop to my mother who is a senior woman and a total
> computer illiterate and she has difficulties understanding the
> difference between Thunderbird and Firefox.
>
> For example she receives a newsletter she has subscribed to and there is
> a "click me" button inside to redirects to the website the newsletter
> originates from. When she clicks on it and sees the website she doesn't
> realize that she is now using Firefox and no longer Thunderbird.
Why is this actually a problem? People have designed entire desktops
around the "task-oriented" idea; that it doesn't matter what application
you are using, only what you are doing.
Gerv
Gervase Markham
>> 1) Have a single text entry field in the UI; have this be a
>> search-and-url-entry widget.
This is somewhat offtopic relating to Mike's original request for
problems rather than solutions, but I completely agree we should do this.
Currently, we have a URL bar; if you type something that's not a URL you
get an "I'm Feeling Lucky" search, which tends to confuse more than it
helps. People don't know what's happened or why - they just feel they
got taken to some random website.
Then, we have a search box which does normal searches.
Why can we not just have a single box which goes to a URL if that's what
you put in it, and otherwise searches with the default provider? I'm
sure I've seen data from Google which shows that people often type full
URLs into their search box, showing that the two are confused in
people's minds. We should work with that, not against it.
Gerv
Gervase Markham
> 2) I spend too much time switching between apps, and want to achieve
> more of my workflow within the app that I'm working in. For example, I
> want to be able to:
> * add contacts to my address book directly from a web page
This works today, if the contact is a vCard, doesn't it?
> * add events to my calendar directly from a web page
Again, if we use iCal?
> * autofill a web form with contacts from my address book (especially
> handy for entering shipping addresses for gifts)
This could be made to work if people respected the RFC for form field
naming...
> * email selected history/bookmarks from the browser
> * email web page content directly from the browser (in the same way that
> I can invite people to a meeting directly within a calendar app)
This feature got removed in the transition from Seamonkey to Firefox -
correctly, in my view. Emailing entire web pages is inefficient, it
gives people the false idea that they are looking at the latest copy of
some data, it's Repeating Yourself (which we Don't do),
I don't see the analogy with calendaring - can you explain more?
> * access my bookmarks from within a mail composition window so that I
> can easily add them to a message, same with events from calendar
What you need is a closely integrated suite of Internet applications... ;-)
> * bookmark a link from an email message, and save some metadata on who
> sent it, the mail subject line, etc.
Where would this data be stored and displayed? What's the use case?
> 3) It drives me nuts that I can't annotate a web page or a mail
> message. A simple sticky note interface would do. Tagging would also
> be helpful.
Agreed. This seems to me that it would be one of those features that
you'd think of most of the uses for it when it was available to you.
> 5) I hate it when I miss meetings or don't know about them. I want a
> view for all events that can be extracted from every page that I visit
You want pages to automatically be able to add events to your calendar?
> and every email that I receive,
And spam? :-)
Gerv
Gervase Markham
> "What are the problems with the web that users
> are currently facing, whether they realize it or not?"
* Managing several tasks at once
I do several grouped things at once, and like one window per thing.
Often new URLs from mail messages open as a tab in the wrong window.
Sometimes these pages relate to a different group, and sometimes they
should be starting a new group.
* Not protected from online risks
As far as possible, I don't want to have to make evaluations or
decisions about potentially dangerous web pages. Aside from the ability
to do a visual inspection of the content of the page - which is the
*last* thing to base a decision on - the browser has all the information
I have, and probably a much better idea of how to evaluate it.
* Email experience is not smooth
Assuming I am (like very many people) a webmail user, I want to be able
to say to my browser "My mail service is Hotmail", and have mailto:
links produce a compose window, if necessary with an intermediate login
page.
* Better management of viewed information
It's still too hard to track down where it is I saw that interesting bit
of info a few days ago that I now want to send to my friend.
Gerv
Peter Lairo
>> * autofill a web form with contacts from my address book (especially
>> handy for entering shipping addresses for gifts)
>
> This could be made to work if people respected the RFC for form field
> naming...
*Please* tell me the link to that RFC.
--
Regards,
Peter Lairo
The browser you can trust: www.GetFirefox.com
Reclaim Your Inbox: www.GetThunderbird.com
Benjy Grogan
> > I started brainstorming up a list of problems that I felt users were
> > facing when using web browsers today. I don't think we should focus on
> > solutions or implementations just yet, but instead focus on answering
> > the following question: "What are the problems with the web that users
> > are currently facing, whether they realize it or not?"
> >
> > So go ahead and throw a couple of ideas onto this thread!
>
> One area that causes people considerable grief is bookmarks.
>
> My favorite complaint I hear from people is "I bookmarked the page a
> couple weeks ago and now all I get is an error message: Page not
> found". I guess we have all gone down that path. Having the option of
> saving a bookmark offline helps a lot.
>
> People have different habits as far as bookmarking goes. I know people
> who pretty much bookmark any page that could be vaguely interesting to
> read up on them later when they have more time. Whether they actually
> do that is an entirely different question. It would be nice to have
> something that categorizes the bookmarks. Sounds a lot like tagging but
> could be handled in a couple different ways (time stamps,
> urgency/importance levels etc.)
That's what I do. If the page is interesting enough that I think it
will serve as a good reference down the road I'll bookmark it. I'm
often glad I did, but I maybe only use 10% of these references and
it's normally a pain to find them in the slew of bookmarks. And
organizing those bookmarks? Forget it. This is something that I'm
sure Microsoft will study to death if not already in the process. I
wonder if it wouldn't be a good idea to enable archiving of bookmark
pages on a low to high detail level?
> Once you have bookmarked the hell for a particular topic it surely
> would be nice to be able to search through them in a more extensive
> fashion than just the title. Might again require some offline version.
Make it social. Make it so you could group together topics you have
from "graduate schools" to "cars" to "weird shit" and be able to email
them for fellow Firefoxians. I'd like to be able to do many searches
through all my bookmarks and form a topic around those say 9 specific
searches called "Travel". Then send off "Travel" to two of my
friends. This would quickly become popular if done in a user friendly
way.
>
> People tend to search and bookmark for a reason. Assigning tags and
> notes to a bookmark would help people a lot in figuring out a couple of
> weeks later why they were interested in this particular page without
> going through the entire contents again.
Yep, when you go to 'Bookmark this page...' you could have an arrow
that branches out to a list of labels such as "Travel" "Open Source"
"Film" "Weird shit" and bookmark with those labels rather than the
general 'Bookmark this page...'. But it's got to be one click, two
max.
> Looking at the current boom of social bookmarking, people seem to like
> the idea of sharing their findings with others. An interface for making
> a bookmark available via del.icio.us, ma.gnolia etc. goes long ways in
> this respect.
Best to not really on those sites. I've never tried them and I'm not
really interested in getting involved in a bookmarking site. Could be
as an option, but not something to be relied on.
I like the way you think. I hope bookmarking gets a real thinking for
Firefox 3.
Benji
>
> All these issues are addressed somewhere. The ScrapBook extension
> solves a couple of the issues (e.g. offline version). Google Notebook
> is pretty good for taking/sharing notes. But a proper integration into
> the browser with an obvious, user friendly interface would be sweet.
>
> I am not sure whether I would want to through the live bookmarks/feeds
> into this particular mix but they could be attached to it if you want
> to go that way.
>
> Cheers,
> Rudi
>
> _______________________________________________
> dev-apps-firefox mailing list
> dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-apps-firefox
>
Toufeeq Hussain
On 23 Aug 2006 16:51:24 -0700, Sohil <sairamna...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Improvements to the Download Manager (Please). Downloading between
> sessions. A revamped Download Manager.
>
The Download Manager definitely needs a re-vamp.
A few cribs regarding the Download Manager.
- Downloads timeout randomly. There is no visual indication to the
user when a download timesout. People just wait expecting the download
to complete. Usually the way out is to cancel. Restart rarely works.
- When I pause a download and try to Resume it, the download very
rarely resumes.
- Completed Downloads can be removed by default(?) from the download
queue. This will make the UI simpler as the "Clean-up" button can be
eliminated.
-Toufeeq
--
blog @ http://toufeeq.net
Jonas Sicking
url-bar. Most people just don't get it. This is also proven by the fact
that phishing attacks still run wild. These are the things that need to
get easier i think:
1. See what server you're on, and if it's a trusted one
2. Make it easier to type in an address (rather than going through
google like many people do)
We'd still have to preserve the ease of copying the url though for
things like sending people links and copying it to a document.
/ Jonas
Jonas Sicking
Ian Pottinger
> We have a few really important keyboard shortcuts that people, even
> primarily mouse users, should know and yet I see people going to menus
> all of the time.
Examples please! I can't imagine any keyboard shortcut I would ever
care to memorize. When I want to do something, I want to be able to
find how to do it quickly and intuitively. I have far to much in my
life to remember as it is. Don't add the need to memorize how to use a
your application on top of that.
Ian Pottinger
> * Email experience is not smooth
>
> Assuming I am (like very many people) a webmail user, I want to be able
> to say to my browser "My mail service is Hotmail", and have mailto:
> links produce a compose window, if necessary with an intermediate login
> page.
If such a feature were added, it would be nice to have Firefox register
itself with the OS as the handler for mailto: so that other applications
respond appropriately.
Mark Tyndall
> Gervase Markham said on 4.9.2006 12:19:
>>> * autofill a web form with contacts from my address book (especially
>>> handy for entering shipping addresses for gifts)
>>
>> This could be made to work if people respected the RFC for form field
>> naming...
>
> *Please* tell me the link to that RFC.
I guess he means RFC 2706
Mark..
Gervase Markham
> *Please* tell me the link to that RFC.
Googling for "rfc standard form field names" gives:
http://www.rfc-archive.org/getrfc.php?rfc=2706
"ECML v1: Field Names for E-Commerce"
Gerv
Toufeeq Hussain
> So go ahead and throw a couple of ideas onto this thread!
A problem which I ran into today. I have around 20 extensions
installed(others might have more). My firefox got online after a long
time (~2 months) and when I checked for extension-updates I found that
16/20 of them had new updates. Now the only way to install the updates
was to individually go and click on the "update" button which had
turned up for the update-available extensions. This was on FF 1.0.6 so
pardon my ignorance if this was overhauled in Bon Echo but I feel that
a "Update All" button or menu-item would be helpful. This
button/menu-item can be enabled after the "Find Updates" button is
clicked and updates found. Better yet, if the text on the "Find
Updates" button changes to "Update All" it would result in saving of
real-estate on an already small window.
Thanks,
Daniel Brooks
Well, consider the keys Control-C, Control-X and Control-V for copy,
cut and paste. For an operation like copy and paste, the keyboard
shortcuts are often signifigantly faster than using a mouse to operate
the menus, especially if your hands are already on the keyboard.
Another good example is Alt-Enter. Suppose you're typing out a url
that you want to go to (a fairly common thing to do in a web browser)
and you decide that you really want to open that url in a new
tab. Rather than moving your hand from the keyboard to the mouse in
order to activate the New Tab menu item (or to hit a new tab button),
you can hit Alt-Enter while in the urlbar and Firefox will open the
url in a new tab rather than the current one.
The point is not that Firefox should force you to memorize the
shortcuts by removing the menu items, but rather that you can save a
signifigant amount of time over the course of your life by learning a
few simple keyboard shortcuts. As a result, many people (my self
included) feel that there needs to be a way to introduce users to the
keyboard shortcuts, on the theory that most users never know that
there are any keyboard shortcuts at all. I also feel that it's a shame
that lots of people (particularly users who are new to computers in
general) never notice the autocomplete menus in our form fields or the
url bar simply because they cannot type without looking at the
keyboard, so they never see that the option is available. I'm not sure
what can be done about that though.
An analogy would be finding out that someone you know (a friend or
family member, say) didn't know how to read. As a literate person, you
know very well the advantages of knowing how to read, and you would
probably feel compelled to try and help that person learn to read. Of
course, keyboard-shortcut-illiteracy isn't nearly as bad a thing as
regular illiteracy, but it's the same sort of idea.
db48x
Ian Pottinger
> Ian Pottinger <ipott...@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Asa Dotzler wrote:
>>> We have a few really important keyboard shortcuts that people, even
>>> primarily mouse users, should know and yet I see people going to
>>> menus all of the time.
>> Examples please! I can't imagine any keyboard shortcut I would ever
>> care to memorize. When I want to do something, I want to be able to
>> find how to do it quickly and intuitively. I have far to much in my
>> life to remember as it is. Don't add the need to memorize how to use
>> a your application on top of that.
>
> Well, consider the keys Control-C, Control-X and Control-V for copy,
> cut and paste. For an operation like copy and paste, the keyboard
> shortcuts are often signifigantly faster than using a mouse to operate
> the menus, especially if your hands are already on the keyboard.
I have to admit that I do use those shortcuts, but only, as you pointed
out, because my hands are already on the keyboard. However, in all
honesty they are the only shortcuts I know. The rest haven't interested
me at all.
To state it plain and simple, I think the keyboard is the most hideous
torture device ever devised by man. If I could, I would fling mine out
the window in a second. Alas, the mouse alone is not an adequate
replacement. I wonder how many people there are out there that share
the same feeling. I suspect that many first time computer users are
among them.
Daniel Brooks
Perhaps you just need a better keyboard. The right keyboard is a joy to use, but the wrong layout or keys with the wrong weight can sour that experience very quickly.
db48x
Chris Thomas
How does that differ from the SeaMonkey URL bar with the pref set to
search when you enter an invalid URL?
Chris
Gervase Markham
> How does that differ from the SeaMonkey URL bar with the pref set to
> search when you enter an invalid URL?
It may well not be any different; I don't know, I don't use Seamonkey :-)
Gerv