How to Build a Better Browser

TuringTest writes "Interface designer and IE ex-developer Scott Berkun writes an essay on basic principles of web browser design, moved by the recent presence of Firefox and Opera in the headlines. Gives plenty of design constraints and guidelines, some insightful, some debatable. Personally some features that I'd like to see in my browser include colaborative filtering (a.k.a. del.icio.us integration), a unified tool for history+bookmarks in a single list (filtered by keyword tags), and automatic generation of keywords for the bookmarked pages (something that Open Text Summarizer can do)."

Comments

Re:one of the things i would like to see is with

[Anonymous Coward]

bookmarks, if they were searchable i think that would be a big improvement. i collect so many they get hard to manage.
Firefox has this.

Re:one of the things i would like to see is with

[kanweg]

I use Safari, and my bookmarks are searchable. Nice.

Bert

Microsoft getting onto the bus.

[the talented rmg]

It's disconcerting to see Microsoft paying attention to the sort of features available in Firefox and Opera. We all know what happens when Microsoft starts "addressing" the competition.

Personally, I find Firefox's community oriented approach to extensions and plugins refreshing, but it's hard to compete with a paid team of guys who managed to pass Microsoft's crazy hiring tests. As a Linux user, I fear this will mean my web browsing experience will fall yet farther behind that of my friends and co-workers.

Developers should see this as a call-to-arms. If Microsoft pursues feature extensions in earnest, it may well overrun open source efforts. That would be a disaster given the progress Firefox has made in terms of marketshare and acceptance so far.

Re:one of the things i would like to see is with

[Fweeky]

So does Opera.

Bookmarks Synchronizer

[bstadil]

This Bookmarks Synchronizer alone makes a switch to FF worthwile. You can sync regardless of OS you are using.

Re:one of the things i would like to see is with

[Anonymous Coward]

The search in Firefox isn't without it's problems. It doesn't just hilight the item in question, it hides all the other bookmarks and just shows you the one you wanted. Which isn't too useful when you're trying to find which folder it's in.

They should have definable filters like Thunderbird does for email.

Re:Decent

[somethinghollow]

Not terribly insightful or innovative? Coming from an ex-IE designer? Noooo. I don't believe it.

IE are the guys who think tabbed browsing isn't useful or desired by users. Is that why AOL is making an IE with tabbed browsing? Is that why every other browser has tabbed browsing? I think it's pretty obvious who's incorrect.

Taking hints from IE designers are like taking hints on car design from the designers of the Pinto. Sure, they might have gotten alot right, but there was that one problem...

Re:Searchable history

[Organized Konfusion]

Opera has searchable history and searchable cache

Re:one of the things i would like to see is with

[WIAKywbfatw]

The Opera search does just exactly what you want it to do: it shows you all the bookmarks that match your search string but doesn't hide the folders that they're in. Time to upgrade.