Bookmarks menu overflow

[pepp5]

Okay I know somewhere I saw this addressed by one of the Phoenix people. I read that the whole bookmarks menu/overflow debacle in Mozilla was going to be settled in Phoenix by doing it the Netscape Navigator/Communicator 4.x way, to continue the bookmarks menu to the right in additional columns when it overflows to the edge of the screen. In fact I thought I read that it is already that way in 0.4, but I'm not seeing that. So can someone please either:

1) Provide the place where I read that it was coming or is already there. I can't find it in newsgroups, mozillazine old forum, mozillazine new forum, phoenix pages, etc.

2) Tell me what the plan is for this in the future

3) Tell me it's already there in 0.4 and I have to do something I don't know about to enable it.

Thanks!

- pepp

[flii]

does yours not scroll at all? i'm using 20021114 nightly with winme, and mine at least scrolls down and up.

scrolling overflow

[pepp5]

No it scrolls fine, but that's not what the objective is. The objective is that when you have more menu items in the bookmarks menu than will fit on one screen, rather than having scroll arrows at the end of the menu, the menu items are continued in the cascading submenu one column to the right. Like the Start Menu / Programs in Windows and like the Bookmarks menu in Nav 4.x.

So, if you had 2,544 bookmarks in one menu (let's not get into the debate about how that is bad bookmark organization), when you click on the bookmarks menu the entire screen fills with multiple columns of menu items so that you can go from column to column to go farther down the list of menu items (bookmarks).

[flii]

ah, i see. that would definately be a good feature. fortunately, only my "unsorted" folder is so freaking huge. lol. i've been through it numerous times and just can't lump them into categories. you said you thought this was planned for one of the releases?

[pepp5]

Okay the bug for the endless bookmark problem in Mozilla matches the problem, it is an endless bug entry. http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=45700

For some reason the powers-that-be can't understand that multiple-column menus are not invalid UI, and that the way it was implemented in Nav 4.x worked great for everybody, didn't cause HIG or UI problems, solved the problem, reached the objective, didn't break any UI rules or HI guidelines, etc etc. But they spent half of this bug closing it as wontfix or whatever reason. So I read *somewhere* that Phoenix did or is going to implement overflowing bookmark menus the same way as Nav 4.x. I just can't remember where and I can't remember if that was already implemented or is a future plan.

- pepp

[Thumper]

The Navigator way is horrible. I used to think I really liked it until I switched to IE and realised that keeping things in hierarchical folders in the first place not only gives much the same effect but also makes it a lot quicker to find the damn things later.

- Chris

[flii]

thumper, the main reason my bookmarks are all so organized is because i was able to go to c:\windows\favorites and *manually* move all the files around when i used ie. i could highlight multiple files at the same time and cut/paste them all over the place, which was really nice. using the bookmark manager is not only very frustrating to me, but it takes a long time. if i get behind i'm screwed until i have free time to devote to it. i know that the way phoenix does it takes up less disk space, but it's just not the same.

anyway, that's basically being long-winded about the fact that it's very easy to get huge folders quickly if you don't organize your favs as you go. for some people, having the columns would be a great feature. not everyone likes folders.

[asa]

ah, i see. that would definately be a good feature. fortunately, only my "unsorted" folder is so freaking huge. lol. i've been through it numerous times and just can't lump them into categories. you said you thought this was planned for one of the releases?

I moved all my bookmarks out of folders. Now I just use the filtering in the sidebar to find the bookmark I want. It's kind of like google. I have my own website database of about 1500 bookmarks. I pop open the sidebar, type 'mozillazi' and it filters the list down to my 11 mozillazine bookmarks (I bookmark several forums, the front page, the blogs, submit article and a couple of really useful posts). I click on the bookmark and I'm at the page. No more worrying about organizing. I just make sure the bookmarks have good names and I'm all set.

--Asa

[pepp5]

Hi Asa. I did an F9 to open the sidebar, selected the bookmarks tab, but I see no filtering option. I'm on 1.1, is this something new in 1.2 or 1.3?

I understand the philosophy of choosing specific items from a giant list via keywords or filtering, but still, the concept is a bit less intuitive than "traditional" hierarchichal item management. I firmly believe that the objective should be to organize anything via some sort of hierchical organization by category first, and keyword filtering as a supplementary method.

We can do searches for files in my filesystem browser of any OS, but we still put files in logically arranged directories by category rather than flat all at the root level. Doing it the one-location method would work in theory, using keywords and searching, but it's just not implemented as maturely as it should be to be the primary method of item organization.

So, the same applies to bookmark management in Mozilla. Either way, it is not unreasonable to have an extremely category-oriented filing system for bookmarks, but still have >200 bookmarks per category (folder), and when you display a menu of that many items, the current UI for this is inferior to the Navigator 4.x method of multiple-column menus.

- pepp

[pepp5]

The Navigator way is horrible. I used to think I really liked it until I switched to IE and realised that keeping things in hierarchical folders in the first place not only gives much the same effect but also makes it a lot quicker to find the damn things later.

In what way is it horrible? Please explain. We are not talking about a preferred method of item organization mind you, but simply the UI concept of multiple column menus when the number of menu items overflows beyond the edge of the screen. I don't see how that is horrible.

- pepp

[flii]

i like similar things grouped together, which is why i have lots of folders. i wouldn't like a system where the only good way to do it is searching through all of your favs. i'm glad it works for you, though.

[asa]

Hi Asa. I did an F9 to open the sidebar, selected the bookmarks tab, but I see no filtering option. I'm on 1.1, is this something new in 1.2 or 1.3?<snip>

Try Phoenix.
--Asa

[Thumper]

In what way is it horrible? Please explain. We are not talking about a preferred method of item organization mind you, but simply the UI concept of multiple column menus when the number of menu items overflows beyond the edge of the screen. I don't see how that is horrible.

Because it's at odds with having a bookmark hierarchy. If you have a list of folders, mousing over a folder flips it open to the right. However, if you wrap bookmarks over to a second column instead of having a vertical scroll, opened sub-menus would overlap your wrapped root menu and obscure root menu choices (a clumsy way of putting it, hope I'm making the idea clear though).

Not only that, but having a hierarchical system encourages the use of folders for categorising, which is fundamentally a good way of organising a large amount of data. having a single root bookmarks menu with possibly hundreds of bookmarks blanketing the screen is clumsy and unattractive, and the user has to sift through many more items to select the correct one.

- Chris

[pepp5]

Because it's at odds with having a bookmark hierarchy. If you have a list of folders, mousing over a folder flips it open to the right. However, if you wrap bookmarks over to a second column instead of having a vertical scroll, opened sub-menus would overlap your wrapped root menu and obscure root menu choices (a clumsy way of putting it, hope I'm making the idea clear though).

But there is nothing wrong with that. That is valid user interface design. When you back off the item that your pointer is over, the sub-menu that is overlapping will go away and you can see the obscured menu again. This has worked very successfully in practice since the late 1980s on the Macintosh platform. When the menus items are properly shadowed and the submenus are properly shifted or staggered in position, there is no visual disorientation.

Not only that, but having a hierarchical system encourages the use of folders for categorising, which is fundamentally a good way of organising a large amount of data. having a single root bookmarks menu with possibly hundreds of bookmarks blanketing the screen is clumsy and unattractive, and the user has to sift through many more items to select the correct one.

Again, my point is not at all about how people organize their bookmarks. I'm only referring to the UI concept of a menu that contains so many items that it goes way beyond the edge of the screen. This would apply to anything, a font menu, a popup menu in the middle of a dialog box listing people invited to a party, anything.

- pepp

[pepp5]

Try Phoenix.

Awww man. I fell for the which-browser-am-I-looking-at gag. Sigh. Sorry, I see what you mean now when looking in Phoenix... the browser I asked my original question about, doh. Thanks.

I guess my point about still wanting a hierarchical system is for simple browsing purposes. There are two ways to use a library or video store, browsing or searching. For searching, the keyword filtering system in Phoenix (or card catalog or store database) works great. But if you want to simply browse or peruse the entries, you have an overwhelming huge chaotic mess on your hands, which is why even in this era of super functional database systems, libraries still categorize books by Dewey Decimal and video stores still categorize videos by type, so you can browse the collection managably.

pepp