[rekonq] Homepage style

[Federico Cáceres]

This subject is getting pretty interesting, so let me... chip in :D
(Sorry for the long read)

A disclaimer first: The Chromium guys are clearly doing some great
work with their browser... I don't want rekonq to be a copycat... but
I think we should consider learning or rethinking and getting
inspiration about a thing or two from their browser... specially the
homepage...

The image is here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/MEtYnSnJLCciLJmfxIoK9g?feat=directlink
(sorry for the picasa link, it should be public)

So, one interesting thing they have done is save up a lot of screen
real state by dropping the search and recent tabs and bookmarks box
from the left. A one line bookmarks bar is displayed on the top (below
the url input) which is shown permanently on the homepage, but is
collapsible on all other pages, in fact, it disappears once you enter
any other page that isn't the homepage.

At the bottom, a list of recently close tabs is displayed in a single
line. An interesting thing about this is that it saves the tabs that
were open when a window is closed and groups them under a special icon
(as you can see in the screenshot). I never actually thought of it,
but it is a great way to save on startup time like Lionel said.
Obviously when the mouse hovers the icon the list of tabs grouped in
that icon is displayed (but you cannot click on them, maybe that could
be a nice addition). Clicking on this icon opens a new window with the
tabs, click on individual tab links opens a tab on the current window.

Last but not least, the thumbnail management is quite interesting,
showing only 8 thumbnails (someone said symmetric?) by default the
"most visited" pages are shown, but you can click on the "pin" icon to
lock that thumbnail to the speed dial (you can also dismiss the
thumbnail from the speed dial for ever with the "x" button). Even
better is the fact that you can drag and drop icons across the speed
dial, organizing them to fit your OC (obsessive compulsive) needs!

There are other things (like other speed dial thumbnail
configurations) but I feel embarrassed already so I will stop here,
this feels too much like propaganda... What I want to say is that
maybe we can think about some of these ideas and implement them into
rekonq... Just my 2¢.

Dropping the menu bar is one way to save huge amounts of screen real
state, like it is now. Optimizing the homepage so that it can be sleek
but helpful without too much or too little on screen will only make
rekonq (on my opinion) a super useful and fast loading browser.

And there is one more issue exposed here though... do we only stick to
html+css and thus skip compatibility with KDE themes and color
schemes, making the homepage a "rekonq themed" one? Or develop a
separate skin system like Chromium to allow costumizability of the
browser's homepage? Or find a way to make all this compatible with
KDE's appearance settings?

So, what do you guys think?

Cheers,
Federico.

On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 4:18 AM, Andrea Diamantini <adjam7 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Thursday 24 September 2009 10:07:58 Lionel Chauvin wrote:
> > > About homepage layout. The only thing I REALLY like about
> > > it is the ~70% of
> > > space for previews + some blocks of additional
> > > informations: simple and clear.
> >
> > I don't like it. It is asymetric. But it is clearly subjective.
>
> Ok, this is the point when I need mockups..
>
>
> > > My idea about that is that we'll arrive to configure:
> > > A) what sites you'd like to preview (last 9 visited sites,
> > > your 9 preferred
> > > sites, ...??)
> >
> > If you display the most viewed bookmark the user doesn't need configure
> >  something.
>
> Yes, the user can configure what previews he/she/it likes to see:
> - last 9 sites (rekonq knows)
> - your preferred 9 sites (you have to say rekonq what they are..)
> - most viewed bookmarks (rekonq should know..)
> - ..
>
> > > B) What blocks (2-3 max) you'd like to have (Google search,
> > > recent history,
> > > bookmarks, recently closed tabs, ....??)
> >
> > I would like an area for bookmarks at the top part of the homepage and a
> >  "line" area at the bottom for previews of "recently closed tabs".
>
> Again, please let us see something to better ustand this..
>
> > If we save "recently closed tabs" of the previous rekonq execution, we will
> >  not need restore them as tabs at startup. Rekonq will continue to start
> >  fast ; the user will have a clean tabbar and he will be able to reload
> >  wanted tabs.
>
> Yes, perhaps need some rethinking..
>
> --
> Andrea Diamantini, adjam
> GPG Fingerprint: 57DE 8E32 7D1A 0E16 AA52 59D8 84F9 3ECD DBF9 730F
>
> rekonq project
> WEB: http://rekonq.sourceforge.net
> IRC: rekonq at freenode
>
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