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Places in Firefox 3

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Seth Spitzer

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Oct 6, 2006, 1:38:36 AM10/6/06
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All,

Now that Firefox 2 is nearly out the door, Dietrich Ayala, Dan Mills and
I have switched our focus to Places.

Our initial goals for Places in Firefox 3 are to:

* ensure that we have the right APIs, data model, and architecture to
allow for synchronization, remote bookmarks and future work in both core
Firefox and add-ons (such as Google's Browser Sync, Foxmarks as well as
add-ons that integrate with social bookmarking services, such as
del.icio.us)

* implement the FF2 UI on top the Places backend, starting with the
History UI [1]

* write some functional and performance tests that can be integrated
into "make check" and into Tinderbox

We're listing the tasks (as we think of them) on
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Places:Task_List.

We've been hanging out in #places in IRC and we plan to use
mozilla.dev.apps.firefox and http://wiki.mozilla.org/Places to discuss
and document what we're doing.

Additionally, we plan on meeting every Thursday at 4pm (PST) to discuss
the status of our work. The logs of our meeting can be found at
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Places/StatusMeetings.

We'll also be setting up a face-to-face meeting (in Mtn View, with a
dial in number) to discuss Places. When we have a schedule for that,
I'll post it to this newgroup.

-Seth

[1] brettw recommended that we start with history, leaving the existing
(Firefox 2) bookmarks service and UI alone until we made some decisions
regarding our APIs and data model.

Peter Lairo

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Oct 6, 2006, 7:02:37 AM10/6/06
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Seth Spitzer wrote on 2006-10-06 7:38:
> * implement the FF2 UI on top the Places backend, starting with the
> History UI [1]

I hope this means that you will leave the bookmarks (Places) *sidebar*
in place. The weeks/months while the trunk builds had Places without a
bookmarks sidebar were painful.

> [1] brettw recommended that we start with history, leaving the existing
> (Firefox 2) bookmarks service and UI alone until we made some decisions
> regarding our APIs and data model.

Yes, please leave the bookmarks sidebar alone. If anything, mimic the UI
in IE7. I have yet to see or read a suggestion here that is not hugely
inferior to IE7's UI in this area.

Here's a nice little bug I filed, oh... three years ago:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=209642
Maybe Microsoft "stole" my idea. ;-)
--
Regards,

Peter Lairo

Lame attempt to get rich: http://www.lairo.com/donations.html

B. Polidoro

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Oct 6, 2006, 10:27:48 AM10/6/06
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Peter Lairo wrote:
> Seth Spitzer wrote on 2006-10-06 7:38:
> > * implement the FF2 UI on top the Places backend, starting with the
> > History UI [1]
>
> I hope this means that you will leave the bookmarks (Places) *sidebar*
> in place. The weeks/months while the trunk builds had Places without a
> bookmarks sidebar were painful.
>
You could have used the Classic Sidebars Extension:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=391625

Brian Polidoro

Peter Lairo

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Oct 6, 2006, 12:41:40 PM10/6/06
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Thanks, I'll look into that if Places ever breaks the sidebar again.
However, I'm tired of having to resort to extensions. I have too many
already, and many don't work in the trunk builds (which is what I'm using).

The bookmarks sidebar is not only useful to me, but also to many other
"normal" users who would never install an extension.

Robert Sayre

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Oct 6, 2006, 3:54:09 PM10/6/06
to Seth Spitzer
Seth Spitzer wrote:
> All,
>
> Now that Firefox 2 is nearly out the door, Dietrich Ayala, Dan Mills and
> I have switched our focus to Places.

FYI: I've got a JS port of nsILivemarkService, nsBookmarksFeedHandler,
and nsLivemarkListener in

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=353434

Still needs some tests and a little work on refresh intervals and
shutdown behavior. I think it'll be a lot easier to make API changes to
it. It also uses the toolkit feed code, so it's got better conformance
and fewer dependencies.

I can probably take care of feed backend stuff as needed.

-Rob

Ria Klaassen

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Oct 9, 2006, 6:09:18 PM10/9/06
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During those months of using Places builds I had forgotten how
comfortable it was to use the good old mork based history/bookmarks. I
had grown accustomed to slow and hanging shutdowns, an extension as a
sidebar, not be able to search, a hang till death when you browsed with
your Places window open, not be able to drag bookmarks to the right
spot, etc. etc., so life is really easy and comfortable now in trunk
:).

Not only there's a history sidebar WITH search (without hang), I even
have a history bottom bar! Would be nice to have this bottom bar (in
addition to the sidebar) implemented in the coming Places.

Screenshot bottom bar (Custom Buttons extension):
http://img174.imageshack.us/img174/2222/bottombarhs7.png

Seth Spitzer

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Oct 12, 2006, 10:56:09 PM10/12/06
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Ria,

> I had grown accustomed to slow and hanging shutdowns, an extension as a
> sidebar, not be able to search, a hang till death when you browsed with
> your Places window open, not be able to drag bookmarks to the right
> spot, etc. etc., so life is really easy and comfortable now in trunk

Are there bugs logged on these issues? If so, could you add me to the
cc list? (If not, can you help out by logging them?)

> Not only there's a history sidebar WITH search (without hang), I even
> have a history bottom bar! Would be nice to have this bottom bar (in
> addition to the sidebar) implemented in the coming Places.
>
> Screenshot bottom bar (Custom Buttons extension):
> http://img174.imageshack.us/img174/2222/bottombarhs7.png

That's looks like a pretty cool extension.

Our initial goal is to replicate the Firefox 2 UI on top of the Places
backend, but nothing stops brainstorming a design up on the wiki.

-Seth

Seth Spitzer

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Oct 12, 2006, 11:35:32 PM10/12/06
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Peter,

>> * implement the FF2 UI on top the Places backend, starting with the
>> History UI [1]
>
> I hope this means that you will leave the bookmarks (Places) *sidebar*
> in place. The weeks/months while the trunk builds had Places without a
> bookmarks sidebar were painful.

Yes, one of our initial goals it keep the existing Firefox 2 UI,
including the sidebars (history and bookmarks).

> Yes, please leave the bookmarks sidebar alone. If anything, mimic the UI
> in IE7. I have yet to see or read a suggestion here that is not hugely
> inferior to IE7's UI in this area.

As far as the IE7 sidebar goes, what is it that you like?

Feel free to log these as RFEs in bugzilla, unless your comments are
already covered by #209642. (I've just added a few folks involved with
Places for Firefox 3 to the cc list on that bug.)

-Seth

Ria Klaassen

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Oct 13, 2006, 3:19:23 PM10/13/06
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> > a hang till death when you browsed with
> > your Places window open

I can't find this one anymore, or maybe it was never filed, but I
remember when I did a search (which took a lot of time) and opened one
of the results I had to close the Places window very quickly because
otherwise it would hang and I would have to restart.

Mossop

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Oct 20, 2006, 4:57:48 PM10/20/06
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Seth Spitzer wrote:
> Are there bugs logged on these issues? If so, could you add me to the
> cc list? (If not, can you help out by logging them?)

I believe that's bug 333965 which you are already cc'ed on. It just gets
worse the more history you have.

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