I’ve put together a little document listing a couple of things I would like to see as features in WebPositive. It’s probably premature, but my intention is to encourage some discussion and brainstorming. I’ve also made a couple of mockups which I believe keeps the spirit of NetPositive (based on WonderBrush and HaikuLauncher).
I know that the future of WebPositive is in good hands, and I look forward to following Stippis work. Anyways; for discussion, and hopefully some inspiration:
The browser is now working fairly well. There are a number known issues left with the port itself, but it wouldn’t hurt to put more attention to usability for a while. That’s what I’ll likely do, if nothing else comes up.
I completely agree about ad-blocking. I find those annoying as hell. Arora has a solution which reuses AdBlock for Firefox, without installing it as an actual add-on, I believe. I want to look into doing the same. Yes, it does block stuff from being downloaded at all. Since the WebKit in Haiku uses CURL as network backend, this may need a lot of work, since Qt uses it’s own network backend, which WebKit Qt client apps can hook into. That appears to be needed for blocking content from downloading at all. To allow something similar on Haiku may be a great deal of work.
I don’t think the fav-icon thing will be a big problem.
I have no clue about that GreaseMonkey and Stylish stuff. I am simply not a user of any advanced features in any browser. This could turn out to be a problem, so more people working on the browser who actually know all those web technologies wouldn’t hurt…
I hear a lot of talk about add-ons, but there is a notable downside to addons: security. Unlike most software, the web browser is targeted for exploits. Add-ons are one (easy) way for a machine to be compromised without most users noticing. Yes, this is in the very early stages of WebPositive’s development, but coding with security in mind is a wise idea so that code does not need to be unnecessarily rewritten.
And thats where WebPositive can be different. My intention was to get a discussion going on what general features that could be included, and thus maybe (at least to some degree) eliminate the need to have “add-ons”. WebPositive should provide customizability in the right places. WebPositive can be NetPositive in feel, and to a certain point looks, but it can’t be NetPositive as it was - just a browser. We’ve come a long way since 2000. (This is not meant as criticism in any way, which would be most unfair).
What about a Replicant based plugin architecture so that content displayed using a given plugin can be detached from the browser and embedded into the desktop etc. Maybe this is not a new (good?) idea thinking back to Active Desktop but it might inspire someone to think of something cool…
Although I’ve played with them, I’m not actually 100% sure what replicants are so this idea is either more or less useful than I’m imagining. Each plugin / replicant should ideally be a separate process as with chrome so as not to crash WebPositive in the event of an error.
To extend the idea above, it would be cool if you could choose a “div” on a webpage to become a replicant which lives on your desktop, such as the latest news headlines from your favourite site, etc. (kind of like Apple’s snippets thing for the dashboard - except for the desktop and using replicants)
I think that the mockup looks good, however I would make some changes to it in effort to preserve vertical real estate. I modified your mockup and created a new one here. Let me know what you think.
I don’t know about you, but a refresh button would be nice! Can’t tell you how many times I have had to refresh a page that is half loaded! I agree that plugins are dangerous Such features should be core to the browser. A search bar would be sweet too! .
I don’t agree with mixing the refresh and stop buttons - having two different functions which change state in the background is just confusing. For example say I want to stop something loading, but just as my finger makes contact with the mouse button the page has finished and the button changes function to refresh. Not worth it for the saved 16 pixels of width, IMHO.
That’s a good argument, I think.
Personally, I almost never use the stop button, but prefer to quickly hit the “Escape” key. It’s much faster than grabbing your mouse and aiming at an icon. Edit: For me it’s important to be able to stop loading really quick, because I mostly need it when I clicked on a link and realize a split second later that it’s not really where I wanted to go…
For myself the Browser has most of the wished functionally now…
I like the stop button… no problem with it. A shortcut is missing? Esc is free?
I am satisfied with the Alt + R key Combination for refresh.
Also the Opera shortcut: press right mouse button and hold and press the left button for going back works like in Opera … but the solution Stippi choose is much better.
I have no more wish for now. Only Bughunt and stability for now.
For the next Step I wish import of the bookmarks.html file and bookmarks…
Haiku/Beos has/had TABBING as an integral part of OS. Google guys saw that and designed their browser (Chrome) around this idea (every tab as separate process) and/because it works! Why would Haiku now put the tabs back INSIDE the browser window? WHY!? To waste screen space? To crash ALL tabs when single tab crashes? To design interface like it’s good old 2000?
separate search box is useless. chrome and some other browser already search from URI box and it works perfectly.
separate menu-bar (File,Edit…) is useless because it’s mostly an empty grey bar without any use. These menus are so seldom used during normal browsing that the screen space waste is in no way justified. These menus could/should be collapsed to a single menu or button.
-URI box background could be used as status indicator of the URI loading. I think some browsers already do it. Wastes no screen space and it’s much more intuitive than writing in URI box and looking for status indicator from totally different place on the screen.
And no …BeOS did not include integrated tab the window title just happens to look like a tab… only over on the deskbar the applications were grouped together by open windows per app but that isn’t tabbing
There is an extension to add stacking and tiling of windows to haiku but it still hasn’t been integrated.
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