GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 683582
Overview is empty and boring in fresh installs
Last modified: 2016-02-28 04:22:28 UTC
I'm trying a new live cd. When I first launched epiphany, I was not online. It came up with an empty page, with a tiny white rectangle in the middle. turns out that was the new 'dashboard' thing, just without any thumbnails. After going online, things got a little better: the dash grew a little and has a single thumbnail now. Unfortunately, it is not showing any actual thumbnail, just a placeholder. I've been seeing that on my regular install as well. No matter how much browsing I do, those thumbnails stay gray globes...
Can I get access to an ISO of these images? It would be interesting to try..
http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/misc/testing/GNOME-3.5.91-LiveUSB.iso should work.
Thank you. I'm trying that image.. (In reply to comment #0) > I'm trying a new live cd. When I first launched epiphany, I was not online. It > came up with an empty page, with a tiny white rectangle in the middle. turns > out that was the new 'dashboard' thing, just without any thumbnails. The reason for the graphical oddness was a bug in gtk+ and gnome-themes-standard. This was fixed in 3.5.91 but I see that the image is still using gnome-themes-standard 3.5.90.1. > > After going online, things got a little better: the dash grew a little and has > a single thumbnail now. Unfortunately, it is not showing any actual thumbnail, > just a placeholder. I suppose that what you see there is about:overview (which is the only thing to appear if you're offline). I'm pondering the best way to blacklist about:overview and about:blank from showing up in the overview, so expect this to be fixed before 3.6. > I've been seeing that on my regular install as well. No matter how much > browsing I do, those thumbnails stay gray globes... One thing I've noticed is that some pages never finish loading (planet gnome right now is being the pretty one). I guess we can fix this by adding a timeout to the snapshotting for these cases.
So I'm taking the freedom to retitle this and focus on the fact that the overview is empty on new users, since the other issues are known and we're working on them. We talked about this briefly yesterday with Cosimo and Jakub on irc, and a few ideas came up -- filling the overview with a bunch of default pages or using bookmarks by default. If we do want to do something about this before 3.6 it would be good to agree on something among these lines, not to overly complicate matters this close to the release.
I don't think bookmarks should generally be displayed in the overview, but if it makes implementation of a non-empty initial state easier, they could be used for that situation. As far as the list of default pages itself, I don't have any particular ideas, but gnome.org, Google and Wikipedia come to my mind as good candidates.
I think showing a set of "special" bookmarks somehow as a special case is pretty complex and not a great idea, at least not this late in the cycle. If we want to go that way I'd rather automatically add the default search engine to the history by default in Epiphany, or something like that. In any case, I think it could be interesting (orthogonally to the previous bit) to have a special background (just an image + some text) that briefly explains what the overview is about and how to start loading pages. It can say something like "The overview will show your most visited pages. To start browsing either click on the snapshots or enter an URL in the entry", maybe with arrows pointing to both options.
By the way, it is also possible to make the overview show "empty" blank items when there are not enough history items to fill it. That way, at least, it's not empty. That blank item could be about:blank or whatever. Once you browse a few pages they will be gone anyway.
(In reply to comment #6) > In any case, I think it could be interesting (orthogonally to the previous bit) > to have a special background (just an image + some text) that briefly explains > what the overview is about and how to start loading pages. It can say something > like "The overview will show your most visited pages. To start browsing either > click on the snapshots or enter an URL in the entry", maybe with arrows > pointing to both options. Since we already use this approach in other applications, I think it would be nice, maybe together with one or two sites that are appended to the history by default.
*** Bug 703351 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I am getting thumbnails for visited pages in 3.8.2, although they're oddly not centred when there are few of them. Is it possible for them to be centred or do they just fill a grid? (I can get a screenshot if you need to see what I mean.)
*** Bug 695400 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
(In reply to comment #8) > Since we already use this approach in other applications, I think it would be > nice, maybe together with one or two sites that are appended to the history by > default. Maybe have at least www.gnome.org and there by default? I reckon that would be a better compromise than not having anything at all for this release and it can always be improved later.
Is this still an issue with the new overview mode in 3.12?
It still starts with a blank screen in 3.14.2
*** Bug 746801 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
The simplest solution would be to display a 20% opacity placeholder image, like in Polari or any of the content apps. Something more complicated would be fine too.
Loren, want to post a patch for the implementation you showed me a couple weeks ago? I saw it looked pretty good; we can always make it look more like a native GNOME placeholder image after it lands.
Created attachment 319711 [details] [review] overview: Display a placeholder on empty overview
Created attachment 319712 [details] Screenshot of placeholder for for empty overview
Review of attachment 319711 [details] [review]: Great. I see just a few tiny issues with the code. I'm CCing Jakub and Lapo in case they're interested in playing with the CSS to make it look a bit more like how we would do this in GTK+, but that's not urgent; what you have now is good enough to land as-is. An easy way to reproduce this state without deleting all your browser history is to run 'epiphany -p'. ::: embed/ephy-about-handler.c @@ +476,3 @@ EphySnapshotService *snapshot_service = ephy_snapshot_service_get_default (); + if (g_list_length(urls) > 0) { Space before opening parentheses: if (g_list_length (urls) > 0) { @@ +510,3 @@ + } else { + GtkIconInfo *icon_info; + icon_info = gtk_icon_theme_lookup_icon (gtk_icon_theme_get_default (), This is leaked; you need to call gtk_icon_info_free(). @@ +511,3 @@ + GtkIconInfo *icon_info; + icon_info = gtk_icon_theme_lookup_icon (gtk_icon_theme_get_default (), + "web-browser", Please add a FIXME linking to bug #746716 above this: we should be looking up our own icon instead, rather than using the generic web-browser icon. (The problem is, we don't have our own icon yet!) It might be better to use gtk_window_get_icon_name() here, as then we would not need to hardcode "web-browser," but it would be a layering violation to pass the EphyWindow to EphyAboutHandler, and I think working around that would require too much code. @@ +521,3 @@ + "</li>", + icon_info ? gtk_icon_info_get_filename (icon_info) : "", + _("Start browsing and your most-visited sites will appear here")); Please add a translator comment on the line above: icon_info ? gtk_icon_info_get_filename (icon_info) : "", /* Displayed when opening the browser for the first time. */ _("Start browsing and your most-visited sites will appear here"));
Created attachment 319718 [details] Screenshots of initial states in other apps (for comparison)
(Jakub, Lapo, CCing you in case you're interested in adjusting the CSS, or the placement of the image and text.)
Let's try to get this in before UI freeze next week.
Created attachment 320587 [details] [review] overview: Display a placeholder on empty overview
:) Pushed a follow-up just to fix some whitespace.
(In reply to Michael Catanzaro from comment #16) > The simplest solution would be to display a 20% opacity placeholder image, > like in Polari or any of the content apps. I'm not sure how much I like this approach, to be honest. It's rather grey and and a bit downbeat for the first time you use an app. In general we try and use something livelier and more welcoming for the first experience [1]. I much prefer the pre-population approach for a browser: it is more interesting, and avoids work for the user having to read text that isn't all that interesting or rewarding. It is also an opportunity for us to say something about what we believe in, which is good from an identity point of view. [1] https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/OS/InitialStates
We can do that, but for technical reasons it's more work; it won't happen for 3.20, and it's not a priority as this is something the user only sees when using the browser for the first time. I'm happy to request a UI freeze break for changes to this if anyone submits improvements.