[STUMP] Re: Re: conkeror

[Nikolai Weibull]

* Shawn Betts <address@hidden> [Oct 29, 2004 21:10]:
> > I alo browse with a caret, which works nicely for moving around.
>
> I didn't use it for long but I found it to be a bit difficult. It
> seemed to get stuck and I could navigate the whole page with it. But
> that may have been just me.

Yeah, its a bit jumpy at best.  The problem is with the underlying HTML
more than anything else it seems.

> > So, if you'll indulge me, how is conkeror's setup different?

> Sure! The layout looks like this:

> +-----------+
> |           |
> |   browser |
> |           |
> +-----------+
> [mode-line  ]
> [minibuffer ]

> The minibuffer doubles as input and output. All status messages are
> sent to it. If you hit 'g' then you get an URL prompt in the
> minibuffer.

Great!  Opera could be configured this way.  It's nice, saves another
20px or so of real-estate.  Not much it may seem, but definitely nice.

> There are no tabs. But Conkeror has multiple browsers. Hit C-x b and
> you can select one.

Hm, what I'd really like would be something that would act like EMACS
frames and buffers:

A single window can contain multiple buffers (like tabs, but no tab-bar)
and there can be multiple windows for various "buffer-groups".  That
would really be sweet.  Saves another 20-30px by removing tab bar, which
actually only works as a simple selector for the above behavior.

> It has junky tab completion. But I'll be
> implementing something like iswitchb. You type a substring and all
> matches are shown in a list:

> iswitch ratp {http://ratpoison.sf.net, http://ratpoison.elektrubadur.se/, ...}

> Use C-r and C-s cycle forward and back through the matches. It's
> brilliant. But I should stop bragging about a feature not yet written :).

:-)  Yeah, this is always much, much better than URL autocomplete
dropdown shit.  I hate moving my fingers off of the homerow just to
press "Down" 10 times to get to the url I want.  Such flawed design.
I'd say that the mouse is responsible for more than 95% of the bad
design decisions in modern user interfaces.  But that's the price of
being "accessible to the unknowledged user" I suppose.

> There's i-search, which is like typeahead but it's what they meant to
> do. When you search for a match it will only find matches below the
> top of the window until you wrap. it's almost identical to emacs'
> i-search.

Hm, well, with caret browsing this is what you get I think.

> It has numbered links. So you just have to type the number of the link
> rather than navigate a cursor or a mouse pointer to it.

Yeah, there are still some bugs in the code it seems and it can be
annoying on quite a few sites that have links everywhere.  It's a good
idea though.

> there's input history (rather than yer standard browser
> autocomplete). C-p C-n goes through the history.

So incredibly much better than what is currently offered.

> I added some hacks to send the current URL to the X clipboard and
> import the X clipboard into the mozilla internal clipboard thingy.
> This has always bugged me about mozilla and it seems like a stupid
> enough thing that there's gotta be a way to shut it off. I don't know
> how tho.

Yeah.

> That's most of it, I think.

OK.  Some ideas:

1.  Configurable key-bindings.  This would allow me to use the
    user-interface, while retaining my Vi-like keybindings.  I know that
    this isn't really an issue with your overlay/chrome or anything, but
    once the bugs holding this back are resolved, it would be nice.

2.  I'm guessing it would be more work than the reward is worth, but an
    idea would be to not implement it as a "plugin" to mozilla, but as a
    completely separate browser, using only the most basic XUL/JS from
    the standard Mozilla/Firefox tree and the necessary libraries.
    This would remove any unnecessary cruft one would otherwise inherit.
    I'm not familiar with the setup, but I'm guessing that a lot could
    be removed without any loss.

<enter something nice to end the message with here>,
        nikolai

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