Hi, Finally I got some time to answer this subject that needs some thought.

[Justus wrote:] I was thinking about improving the dillo experience by adding some functionality / shortcuts people have come to expect. But what people expect is influenced by their background, their choice of desktop environment and platform.

Yes, the main point is different people like things in different ways. If we can provide a simple way to do things and offer the possibility to customize _some_ things, better. I believe one of the important things that we could support is custom keyboard shortcuts in dillorc. There are different shortcut sets, hardcoded into the user's brain, and they depend on what apps. the person is accustomed to use. For instance, if I've been using an editor where the "find text" function is F3, I'd like to have F3 do the same in dillo.

[Justus wrote:] We could pick one / some user interface guideline(s) ([1] lists some) and try to adhere to it / them. Or we could pick one popular browser and copy its 'feel'.

Dillo has come to have it's own "simple" feel, and users have been communicative in making clear they like it. Now that we changed the UI, we have to define some things though. The basic model behind dillo is simplicity achieved with: * right-click context menus. * providing some keyboard shortcuts. As stated before, we can improve it by allowing custom keybindings. On Sat, May 24, 2008 at 04:44:32AM +0200, Justus Winter wrote:

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Hey :)

I hacked up opera (at least I _think_ they do it this way) style search engine handling. I am not too happy with what I did to the config file parser, but it works for now :).

I like the idea of having multiple search engines. As a matter of fact since some years (But manpower/priorities etc...). Well, the CLI is mainly for advanced users, and I'd like to provide a UI that's orthogonal with what we have before tackling a CLI. For instance, the same search engines can be listed from a right-click menu on the search button. e.g. .------------------. . Google . . Wikipedia . . Free Dictionary . . Linux Packages . . SomeWhere Else . '------------------' Now, if a dialog pops-up: .-------------------------------------. . Search Wikipedia: . . [ ] . . [Cancel] [OK] . '-------------------------------------' it'd be quite simple and mnemonic. OTOH, if instead of dialog, the Location bar is focused, it'd not be clear for a new user whether it is for an URL or a new text string. The pop-up provides enough clues. If the pop-up dialog is to be avoided, it'd be nice to have it displaying the same information in the panel, perhaps hiding the navigation buttons. .----------------------------------------------------------------------. . Search Wikipedia: . . [ ] [P] . '----------------------------------------------------------------------' (now we have enough visual clues) Why up and not down like findtext, because that way is easier to tell web searching from page searching (I used to make that mistake a lot! :-) BTW, I don't yet know why avoiding pop-up dialogs is considered good. Don't get me wrong, I prefer the find text bar as it is now, but for other things, I don't yet see the problem. For instance on popup dialogs, messages and inputs. <topic change> Ctrl-X shortcuts in menus: This is another topic that needs feedback. The simplicity of current right-click menus is nice, but they don't provide mnemonic feedback on what shortcuts the listed items have. Probably having the shortcuts listed outclasses the readability, and they should be back, together with a shortcut customization scheme.

I am not sure what I would like to see, but for the moment I'd go with dictionaries and the ability to include other files. This way we could ship some config files (think browser personalities) and the user could include the one he likes best and fine tune the settings in his personal dillorc.

AFAICS multiple dillorc files are simpler.

I was also unsure about the proper way to inform the user of errors and I believe the reason for this is simply that there is no mechanism to do this properly.

Currently there are two ways: * pop-up dialog message. * status bar message. Openning a new dillo window with a custom HTML message is an option too. The advantages/disadvantages should be considered. For instance, with "view source", there's the clear advantage of having "find text" functionality for free. -- Cheers Jorge.-