External URLs, what can be done

I'd suggest that the reader consider the different cases presented earlier for a while. Think about where control over handling urls could be placed to satisfy the enumerated cases.

Now, suppose that of the three people who use this windows 98 computer, at least two of them have different types, for the sake of argument, suppose one is single window, and one is new window.

The way apps are currently designed, each caller has a setting. And mozilla, hereafter described as the victim, honors whatever it is told to do.

So suppose that you (new window) spend time configuring some portion of the 20 or so apps listed (perhaps 12/20) and then use the apps and mozilla for a while. When you're done, you quit mozilla and leave to do something else.

Suppose that the next person to use the computer is your significant other (single window). This person opens mozilla and selects the appropriate profile and uses some applications. The applications have been individually configured to open new windows. Your significant other gets frustrated as sometimes an application does what your significant other wants (uses the same window), but often it doesn't. Your significant other might try to change some of the settings for some of the applications, might get frustrated at emu>not being able to find the settings in various apps, and in the end perhaps 7/20 are now configured as you wanted (new window), 6/20 are configured as your significant other likes (single window), and the rest have their 'default' settings. Your significant other quits mozilla (or perhaps just logs out of the mozilla profile, leaving mozilla resident - this can sort of be done today by quicklaunch, it doesn't work well, but that's a technicality).

If you are the next person to use the computer, then you might select your profile in mozilla and start using mozilla and various applications. You're surprised as some pages are loaded over pages you were using and you get annoyed because mozilla lost your place on a page, or cleared your form info, or completely lost a page when you went back.

Your roommate can be any other type of user, including someone who uses some other browser. To make things interesting, your roommate likes mozilla but uses this new fangled tab thing.

Your roommate comes on irc and asks for a way to tell mozilla to open a page in a new tab. Perhaps your roommate knows about x11 and has found out that x-remote even supports this.

Think about what would happen if your roommate also shared in confusing the settings of the various external applications which can ask mozilla to open a page.

Will adding this extra option make things easier for anyone?

Can you think of a better way?

If you had the power to change how mozilla worked (and it turns out mozilla is open source, so you actually can write patches which change how it works), could you change mozilla so that its behavior was controlled based on a profile setting?

Would enabling a mozilla profile and hence the user of the mozilla profile to determine what to do with a new url be useful?

Perhaps.

What sort of choices would be available?

  1. Open new window
  2. Open new tab (if tabbed browsing is available)
  3. Add to the "Suggested Items" bookmarks folder

That's not a lot of choices.

Well, no it isn't.

That seems like an odd set of choices.

What's with @C?

Well, for one, x-remote has an addbookmark feature, so there's actually a precedent for it. But the reason for @C is more about giving the user the ability to defer playing with a url until later. Perhaps the user only wants to have 3 windows open and they're all busy, perhaps the user is afraid of running out of memory, or crashing. Perhaps the link actually came from a random application which was trying to phone home or show you an ad or registration screen. Once you have a bookmark to a url, you can drag it to any window or tab of your choosing, or save it to disk or open it in an editor.

So what would actually happen in the case of @C?

well there would be a space somewhere in chrome, either in the sidebar, or on the personal toolbar for these external urls. The most recently added bookmark would appear on the toolbar and there'd be a drop down which would let you access the rest of the bookmarks for this special folder. If you actually want to load the page in the current window, you simply click the link on the toolbar.

Should the link remain in the folder?

I'd say no, it's a temporary thing, but the Mac IE has a page holder keeps it there. So instead I'd propose that the link be moved to the end of the suggested folder. This would allow you to receive 5 suggested links and browse them sequentially by merely clicking a single position on the toolbar.

Would the magic folder have to live on the toolbar?

No, but if I were controlling the defaults, it would.

Could anything else I've mentioned elsewhere use the magic folder?

yes.

What about options @A and @B?

Well, people who like tabbed browsing would probably choose @B. People who want new process browsing will have to wait anyway and might actually like option @C, otherwise they're stuck with @A/@B which isn't much worse or different from today.

Oddly enough, or perhaps not oddly at all, the controller type could end up using option @C. Single window type people would use option @C.

Ok. So which things have I left out?

Well for one, that case of the application wanting to control a window for its content. It's not a big issue, but it would turn out that fixing DDE and allowing all three options (@A, @B, @C) to return a window id which the external app could then use to control navigation. If the user selected option @C, and if the user didn't get around to loading the first suggested page before the client suggested a second page, then the first suggested page could be changed to a folder containing itself and the new suggestion. The DDE reference ID would then be associated with the folder.

How would this affect the multiuser case?

The preference for what to do with suggested urls would be per profile, so things would just work.

What about the arbitrary type user?

Well, a Firebird owner would probably suggest @D "Surprise me" if such a user complained. Personally, I'd suggest that such a user select @C and choose what to do from within mozilla.

Does @C add an extra step?

Yes, but it also simplifies choices and hopefully the user experience.