Ideas for Konqueror?

[Peter Kelly]

Actually if you're looking for usability ideas like this to implement, 
probably the most innovative thing I've seen like this is Pad++. This is 
a web browser which displays the set of visited pages in a graph 
structure that the user can navigate around.

Each node in the graph represents an individual page, and as you navigate 
to other pages, additional nodes are added to the graph with lines 
connecting the source & destination of links. You can then see a 
zoomed-out view of your browsing history. This is IMHO a far better 
alternative to the traditional back/forward model since you can see 
multiple "branches" of your navigation path, along with thumbnails of 
each of the pages you have visited.

I had a go at putting together a very rough prototype of this in konq at
one stage but didn't get the time to take it any further. The biggest 
question is really how to integrate this into the user interface cleanly, 
and sorting out how to deal with issues like multiple windows etc.

Have a look at http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/pad++/ for more details, 
particularly the paper "A Zooming Web Browser" at 
http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/pad++/papers/spie-96-webbrowser/spie-96-webbrowser.pdf

There's a ton of other ideas like this out there in the research community 
that makes today's web browsers look very primitive and unsophisticated. 
Some of these have a lot of potential if they can be implemented properly 
in maintream browsers.

On Sat, 26 Jul 2003, Michael S. Mikowski wrote:

> On Saturday 26 July 2003 07:23, Hasso Tepper wrote:
> > http://www.irider.com/demo/index.htm
> 
> A review of iRider from the perspecitive of a Konqueror 3.1 User
> 
> INTRODUCTION
> iRider appears to be a 3rd party browser that uses IE components, and is
> available for Windows platforms only.  It claims to have siginificant 
> advantages over "standard" IE, especially when loading, viewing, bookmarking, 
> visualizing multiple pages.
> 
> The demo ( at http://www.irider.com/demo/index.htm ) is interesting but quite 
> long.  This is a summary of the demonstration, and a comparison with the 
> features of Konqueror 3.1 [Konq] and Mozilla 1.4 [Moz].
> 
> FEATURES
> iRider provides tab functions as available on many advanced browsers
> today, including Konq and Moz.  It perhaps fills a niche for tabbed-
> starved IE users.  I refer to the handles for activating downloaded pages as a 
> "tabs," although iRider never refers to them as such.
> 
> iRider's "tabs" are located on the LH side of the page instead of at the top 
> like Konq, Moz, and ( IIRC ) Opera.  There are several advantages to this 
> layout:
> 
>   A1. Many more tabs can be visible at once
>   A2. A (resizeable) thumbnail of the page can be shown with the page name
>     This is nice for shopping links.
>   A3. Parent-child relationships can be illustrated through order and
>     indentation (e.g. a child page is indented below a parent)
>   A4. There's room for an [x] button used to close the desired tab
> 
> Clicking on these tabs works pretty much like other browsers.
> Some features worth discussing:
> 
>    A5. iRider has a feature they call "Surf Ahead."  This is pretty much the
>      same as "Open in Background Tab" currently in Konq.  One difference
>      is a "short" click of the RMB works in iRider; Konq requires
>      a RMB - Select action to do the same.
> 
>   A6. Clicking a link already open in a different tab returns you to that tab 
>      instead of changing the page in your current tab.
> 
>   A7. A progress bar shows how far along a tab is in loading.
>     Once the load is finished, the bar is highlighted.  Once the
>     tab has been accessed, the bar is muted.
> 
>   A8. You can open multiple tabs by selecting multiple links from the web
>     page and then RMB
> 
>   A9. You can "Add to Favorites" all the open tabs through RMB
>     [ Moz 1.4 also has a similar features in "Bookmark this group of tabs" ]
> 
>   A10. You can open multiple of tabs at once from your bookmarks
>     [ Moz 1.4 allows you to open a group of tabs as well ]
> 
>   A11. A custom search page submits requests to multiple search engines and
>       then opens multiple tabs with the results.  [ I think would be better if
>       you could create your own custom pages that worked like this -- ed. ]
> 
>   A12, Pop-up windows are shown in a separate tab.
>     [ Honestly, I don't see the value in this ]
> 
>   A13. iRider claims a fast implementation, with "advanced memory management"
>     which uses "available memory to speed access to pages, but automatically
>     releases memory when other programs need it."
> 
>   A14. iRider claims that one can open "dozens or even hundreds" of "tabs"
>     at once.
> 
>   A15. You can "pin" open tabs, so that may close all open tabs except
>     those which are marked.  This is similar to "Close Tab" and "Close all
>     other Tabs," in Konq 3.1, (and similar in Moz 1.4) but more
>     sophisticated.
> 
>     [ Mozilla 1.4 also has a "Reload all Tabs" option, which seems handy
>       for monitoring all sorts of things, like auctions or video feeds ]
> 
>   A16. "Pinned" pages are remembered between sessions.
> 
>   A17. Includes enhanced bookmark management
> 
>   A18. You have the ability to email a "group" of tabs at once
>     (e.g. provides a list of links to your email app)
> 
>   A19. You can open a list of links in multiple tabs, e.g. if you were
>     receive a list like:
> ===
> Hi Bob:
> 
> Here are the sites:
> 
> http://site1.com
> http://site2.com
> http://site3.com
> ===
> 
>    you could copy the presented links and then open them from your clipboard
>    into multiple tabs.
> 
> FINDINGS
> I consider the following feature sets are worth investigating:
> 
>   1 Tab Presentation and Management: A1 - A4, A15
>   2 Progress Bar: A7
>   3 Multiple link parsing: A8, A18, A19
>   4 Book Marks: A9, A10
> 
> Other features may be of more definite value to others, such as the ability to 
> remember marked pages between sessions.
> 
> CONCLUSIONS
> Much of what iRider has done is provide features of Konq / Moz / Opera to the 
> Windows user.  For example, some of iRider's bookmark features look very 
> similary to those existing in Moz / Konq / Opera.  These "prior art" features 
> could be implemented in Konq directly.  I feel that feature sets 3 and 4 
> (above) probably fall into this category.
> 
> One would wish to be more cautious with other features and ensure they do not 
> threaten any IP property iRider may possess.  I feel that feature sets 1 and 
> 2 may fall into this category.
> 
> Reporting,
> 
> Mike
>   
> 

-- 
Peter Kelly
pmk at kde.org