Slashdot Mirror
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)."
bookmarks, if they were searchable i think that would be a big improvement. i collect so many they get hard to manage.
I think a better bookmark managment system needs to be implemented, especially when you move from office to home to mobile. possibly network storage system to publish your bookmarks so your browser can grab them automatically?
I want to be able to search the browser cache, since that's where pages I've recently visited can be found. Sure, I can grep the directory, but this really should be integrated into the browser.
The problem with bookmarks is that they are tied down to one computer! I have to maintain two different lists at work and at home. Not to mention when I'm over at a friend's house and I'm trying to remember the url for one of them. I've found breasy.com to be a good solution. Could this be done in a Firefox plugin somehow? I suppose you need a central db to make it happen. Will the tinfoil hat crowd shy away from this?
Have you ever asked yourself, Is It Normal?.
For example, If I do a search for 802.11g router reviews, go to smallnetbuilder.com, then go to say Netgear and back then go to another generalized info site, the history would show from the google search which links I followed to info, as opposed to commercial sites, as opposed to junk. Hell, it doesn't even need to be graphical. It could even prioritize by something like time spent there, or depth of links followed.
There are a number of features that have not made it into mainstream browsers yet. IE is obviously lacking in security due to its implementation, although the concept of different security levels that can be set on a site by site basis is a good one. Omniweb's ability to edit HTML files "in place" is incredibly useful for fixing broken sites on the fly when you really need to use something that is is served while non-functional. Several browsers have implemented a "right click to never see ads from here again" feature that is indispensable once you have used it. Mainly, however, what we need is a push for open standards so that all of the different browsers (coming soon to your phone, toothbrush, toaster, etc.) will all work on all sites. This last feature will only happen when IE is dethroned. Whether or not this will come to pass, is pretty uncertain at this point.
Those features are nice. And I'm sure that most people on slashdot would benefit from them greatly. But for normal people, it wont help. My parents I switched to linux. And they enjoy the obvious benefits like not crashing and no spyware. And they've been using firefox even longer than they've been using linux. And they still dont' understand tabbed browsing, why its better. They don't organize bookmarks into folders. They really just don't care about efficient use of the computer. It takes me about 5 seconds to accomplish what it takes them an hour to do, and they don't care. They have the features and the power available to them to imporove their computing experience and do things faster and more efficiently. But they don't do it.
So for nerds like you and me this stuff rules. But leave it to firefox extensions. If you put it in the base package it will only confuse normal folk. You have to stick to things that are obviously better and things that my parents will use. Like the google search box.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
That's already a solved problem. Check Furl, Spurl, del.icio.us (which have the further benefit of an emergent collaborative filtering system).
Better bookmark managment systems need to be implemented indeed, but the problem is far deeper. I wouldn't be satisfied with less that what Integrated Back, History and Bookmarks describes: most visited pages bookmarked automatically and shown in the history list, filtering by frequency of visits, thumbnails.
I would implement that system myself as a Firefox extension, but sadly I lack the developing skill with the Mozilla base code.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
This is already possible in Galeon for ages, what I however miss is a way to customize the password settings for single input fields, ie. the Mailman password field for example isn't recognized by Galeon and thus no password is ever remembered, I would like to tell the browser explicitly that this is a field that I want him to remember. And there is also the throuble that the browser always remembers the password *before* the login is validated, so if you type the wrong one, you have quite a lot of throuble getting it out of the password manager again and fixing it. Idealy the browser should only save the password after a successfull login, however with most webpages that should get tricky, since there might no easy way to find out what was successfull and was what not.
I would like the "browser" to be decomposed into its simple components, which are available to any app. So the "HTTP" component is available (like wget) to any app that calls it, like fopen() now. And the "HTML" component is available, like htmlRenderer = new HTMLRenderer(htmlDocument). And the MIME lookup, JavaScript interpreter, and other components are all available via API to any calling program. Then we can not only get "innovative" new browers, with exciting or satisfying new features, but integrate them into our own apps.
I know GNOME and KDE each have "get URL" and MIME management components. I also remember all that BS from Microsoft's Internet takeover about "IE is part of the OS". But the right way to include the Internet in a distributed platform would let me open an XML app definition, which would glue together whichever network/data, logic and presentation/GUI components were installed, into a task-specific application. If browser developers were contributing more to the platform infrastructure, rather than exclusively to their pet monolithic application, that day would be here sooner. And we'd all be able to build the real apps on that flexible, complete, and simply customizable platform.
When you're done reading this book, think about what kind of project will be most productive when you contribute your code. Backfilling the holes in the Web platform left by the blind rush of the Web bubble is satisfying as a developer, and enables a better development and business environment. Change the world with gcc!
--
make install -not war
There are a few things that are keeping me on Opera. One of them is the ability to resume where you left off after a crash. Seeing that Opera crashes on occasion, this is a necessary thing. If you have 6 tabs open when it crashes, when you restart it you can choose to have it "continue from last time" and it will re-open all of those tabs.
Other things keeping Opera as my primary browser:
Mouse gestures - they just aren't as polished in Mozilla/Firefox.
Being able to close all tabs and not close the browser. I hate accidentally closing the last tab in Firefox and having the browser close.
Ability to identify itself as another browser - really only helpful from some asinine IE-only pages.
Configurability - I like the way in which Opera allows you to configure things.
Pop-ups. I like the way Opera does it better than Moz/Firefox.
Some things that Opera needs to work on:
Stability - still too many crashes. And it can freak out and eat all my CPU, and I have to kill it.
I do like the "line tracing" ability for Moz/Firefox mouse gestures. It is reinforcing to see them, so you don't get sloppy in using them.
Gripes for both:
Why did you move "Preferences" from under "Edit" to "Tools"? That is something that always bugged me about IE, now everyone does it. Arghh.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
You know, it's just as easy to write Firefox-specific HTML as it is to write IE-specific HTML.
If Firefox takes any foothold in the market, I expect to see a lot more shitty HTML that won't render properly in, say, KHTML-based browsers like Safari.
For more information, click here.
You publish your bookmarks.
Then you run a program that compares your bookmarks to other people's bookmarks, and the closest 5 matches come up. Then you recieve the websites they have in their bookmarks. For the most part you may be getting nonsense, but maybe you'd find some links you'd be interested in.
God spoke to me.
Instead of having it ask to save the password when you click on the button, it waits until the next page finishes loading and then asks you if you want to save the last password.
Check out www.sitebar.org for the solution to your bookmark woes.
Methinks you didn't read the whole paragraph, just the headline
Security and Stability
Something is wrong if competition in any product line continually focuses on security and stability. These design attributes are basic requirements, not advanced features . You won't see advertisements for toaster ovens that say "Now, it explodes less often!" [...]
(emphasis mine)
He says that we should not be using security as a selling point, because it should be a baseline, an absolute must that should be taken for granted, rather than a "feature".
And I agree.
"When a ball dreams, it dreams it's a frisbee"
"Second, any urls that are dead should be deleted, or moved to a folder of dead links that I can try to revive."
I'm liking the article but this rather stood out as something wrong (for me, ie my opinion, ie that which I think that you do not necessarily have to agree with but can if you so wish).
A browser that moved or deleted my bookmarks automatically (for its own dumb reasons) would get tossed pretty quickly.
Consider a duff link - is it totally useless? No, it represents something that: a) you might want to look for again; b) may well be available on http://www.archive.org/; c) may contain a relatively unique file name so that a search will instantly bring you its new address.
But, no, no you just go ahead and delete my bookmarks why don't you. *But* when I delete sodding Outlook express, hey, feel free to magically and silently bring *those* files back!!!
Even if bookmarks were resorted into a 'duff links' folder rather being dumped entirely you'd loose any filing information that you'd made for that link and let's face it, if you can't find a bookmark quicker than you can re-google for the site itself then there wasn't much point in making it, keeping it, or sorting it in the first place.
A bit more respect for users would be nice - this article reeks of 'users don't know jack': Apparently we need help even *generating* our own bookmarks (ie from our history) and we're not even trusted to set our home page correctly!!
Personally, on a Windows machine I just create short-cuts to web pages and sort and search them - I almost never go near the 'Favorites' menu if I can help it. Heh, and this is me when I'm liking and article...