393506 - Mockup: History Sidebar for Firefox 3

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, enhancement)

Description

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

This is a tracking bug for mockups of the history sidebar.  Due to to the attachment size limit images will be hosted on people.mozilla.com.  Check the most recent comment or URL for the latest iteration.

Comment 1

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

Attachment: History Sidebar, Iteration 2 (Vista)

Text from the mockup:

The drop down next to History allows the user to switch to the bookmarks sidebar
---
The search controls are displayed by default.

The buttons "Save Search" and "Advanced" only appear after the user has entered text.
---
When searching, the View menu is deactivated

Comment 2

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

Link to iteration 2: http://people.mozilla.com/~faaborg/files/granParadisoUI/places_HistorySidebar_i2.png

Comment 3

[Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich)]

daniel had some comments about the history sidebar on his blog. copying them here:

http://glazman.org/weblog/dotclear/index.php?2007/09/02/3777-firefox-history

Common problem we all experienced at least once : I have visited a web site yesterday morning where I read something interesting ; I can't remember the name of the web site or the title of the page. The only thing I remember is the time, I discovered that page right before going to lunch, so around noon.

This problem just happened to me. At this time, it's plain impossible to find such a page in Firefox history if your browsing history is long. The sort options are not enough. At this time, you can sort

   1. by date and site
   2. by site (bad name, that's really by page title)
   3. by date and page title
   4. page title by most visited decreasing order
   5. by date of last visit, most recent first

Sort 5 does not show date and time in front of entries : useless. Sort 3 does not allow to toggle 2nd level sort between page title and time of visit. If you use the Search field in Sorts 1 or 3, you lose the main sort level !. The search field has no "clear search field" button and no key binding on the escape key to do that.. No favicons. The Sort button is ugly and does not match the rest of Firefox UI. The "Search:" label takes too much width in the sidebar. Is it me or History changed for the last time (from a UI's perspective) many years ago ?

Comment 4

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

Not a whole lot of constructive criticism in there.  We should probably add "yesterday" as one of the times in the default view, odds are you can remember what you did yesterday.

idea for future work: allow the user to enter times into the search field:

"yesterday"
"8/4"
"june"

Comment 5

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

Note for i3: remove the "-" between "History" and "Time/Site" change to "by time" and "by Site" 

Comment 6

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

Note for i3: see if placing "advanced search" and "save search" in a drop down menu on the field looks better.

Comment 7

[Ivan Ičin]

First of all, I hope that I am not giving comments at a time when some decisions are already made, so that bug is not fully "commentable".

My whole impression is based on smart folders (also mentioned in bug 387996). I would like to point to the following facts:
* folders like yesterday, last week, saved search etc are *smart folders*
* smart folders have always something to do with history, while they have rarely to do something with bookmarks, and specially bookmarks menu. Even if you are talking about most frequently used starred pages, it is based on history (frequency)
* the only thing I like about smart folders being part of bookmarks, is that they are more readily discoverable if they appear in the bookmarks toolbar. Though, that is far from argument, as they would be even more discoverable if they would appear on the home page, and not to say that they would be easier to use (middle click allows easy opening of several pages)

So, I think that smart folders should be part of History (probably both sidebar and menu). And I would split history sidebar in two parts - in one part you have smart folders as filters and in other you have pages as results (with group by site as option).

Comment 8

[Alfred Kayser]

Looking at my history, which I have on the 'Sort On Date & Site' view, I see a lot of duplicate entries for one site with the same title. 

For example, after some browsing on a shopping site (eshop.mexx.com), I have about 12 entries all with the title 'mexx.com - eshop'. Same on plaxo.com: all entries have 'Plaxo Pulse' as title.

It would be nice if the history system could collapse all these seemingly duplicate entries to one, only keeping the most 'relevant' entry.

The trick is here to determine and only keep in the places database the most 'relevant' entry.

Comment 9

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

This was a tracking bug for Firefox 3 development, resolving.

Comment 10

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

This is better wontfix.

Comment 11

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Bug 451915 - move Firefox/Places bugs to Firefox/Bookmarks and History. Remove all bugspam from this move by filtering for the string "places-to-b-and-h".

In Thunderbird 3.0b, you do that as follows:
Tools | Message Filters
Make sure the correct account is selected. Click "New"
Conditions: Body   contains   places-to-b-and-h
Change the action to "Delete Message".
Select "Manually Run" from the dropdown at the top.
Click OK.

Select the filter in the list, make sure "Inbox" is selected at the bottom, and click "Run Now". This should delete all the bugspam. You can then delete the filter.

Gerv