GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 317248
make a distinction between bookmarks and history entries in the dropdown URL menu (location bar)
Last modified: 2012-03-07 23:48:00 UTC
When you start typing something in the location bar, you get: - the area where you are typing - your bookmarks, mixed with the related history (recently visited pages) However, you need to make a clear distinction. What I suggest is coloring the bookmark items, so that they stand out from the recently visited pages. This is a visual cue and enhances greatly the speed at which you can find content. Other information:
Thanks for your bug report. Coloring items may be bad for colorblind people. As the GTK textlabel colors aren 't themable, coloring items can't be overridden by a high-contrast theme for instance. It is also our intention to make history and bookmarks converge in the future, so I'm not sure making such a distinction is a good idea.
Yes, I was aware of the color blindness problem, but I guess it depends on which colors you use right? And I am also aware it cannot be overrided by themes... How do you plan do "converge" them? I don't know, maybe using italics or bold could be a better way instead of colors? Bold bookmarks would stand out in a pretty obvious way. Thoughts?
I think a smarter algorithm is desired to decide in which order to show the dropdown items. Using different colors or font styles may just be battling the symptom instead of the root cause.
Hi, what is the status on this? I use that "autocomplete" feature everyday and I am still utterly lost when I see this huge list dropping down. Is it really hard/a bad idea to make the bookmarks bold? Afaik, it is just a matter of telling the dropdown widget to "use markup" and then add <b> and </b> around the items, am I wrong? What I mean is that we might be "battling the symptom", but that is better than doing nothing "waiting for the fix". How is the current algorith working? I am a user and I could never ever figure it out, makes no sense to me, and every time I have to scan EVERY entry and "guess" if it is a bookmark or a history entry, and if it actually is what I am looking for. It just takes time and is eye straining.
Not sure how easy it'll be to do this. In case someone wants to try, the relevant code is in lib/widgets/ephy-location-entry.c, src/ephy-location-action.c and src/ephy-completion-model.c .
Hey, just an "idea" that has come to my mind, but sadly enough I'm in no position to code, why not do it in deskbar-applet's style? It has a very clean way of separating categories http://raphael.slinckx.net/deskbar/images/deskbar-applet-10.png
harves, you had some ideas about this as well?
Yep, the idea was to group bookmarks and history items in the same way as the bookmarks menu, but without a hierarchy. Once that is done I don't think we need the dividing names that Deskbar uses. See this thread: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/epiphany-list/2006-February/msg00064.html
*** Bug 324662 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I agree we have a big issue with cluttered completion popup, we should do something similar to deskbar's UI, it's quite good and would keep consistency with the rest of the desktop. I would like to put some thought in the default state for expanders though, I don't recall right now how the sorting is done, but we could use that value to show something like: |V|__________________________| > Best matches (recent history items and a limited number of *really* relevant bookmarks) blah blah blah blah > Bookmarks (not so relevant) > History (not so relevant) Well maybe not perfect, but I would suggest that to begin the discussion. I'm confirming since this is a mess anyway and we should fix it.
*** Bug 617875 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Some interesting suggestions from bug 617875: when typing an address in the location entry, it would be nice if bookmarks were a bit more discoverable in the drop-down list. right now they appear the same as other entries, except for a tiny bookmark icon on the right side of their entry. this is not enough, especially for very wide monitor resolutions (think of 1920x1050) with a very large location entry in the toolbar. [I am using such a configuration right now: 1920 pixels width, with just back|forward|stop|location-entry|reload in the toolbar.] two possible solutions are: - move the bookmark icon on the left, like Yelp (see the screenshot [1]). moving the bookmark icon to the left will align it to the rest of the favicons in the drop-down list, hopefully making them easier to spot. the downside is the obvious conflict between the favicon and the bookmark icon (i.e., do you show the favicon or the bookmark icon for bookmarks?) - use a different background color for bookmark entries. this already works for "active" bookmarks (i.e. those bookmarks that include %s in their URL and allow for searching -- how do you call them?), which have a dark colored background. it would be neat if normal bookmarks were handled similarly (possibly some other color taken from the GTK theme?) [Thinking of it, it would be great if "active" bookmarks had a different icon as well. Maybe not worth a bug report though.]
They now get a star on the right side of the completion, plus there are no duplicates now. Awesomenessss. Please reopen if 3.3.91 is not good enough regarding this issue.