How can we improve image management over Mozilla/4?
Today we can't even easily load all images, or unload all images, so the first step would be to reach
4xp, but that's probably less than a month away, the backend support for most of it is finally in
place.
The basic interface would allow "show image"[4xp]/"hide image" context menuitems, a load all images
button [4xp] which could turn into a hide all images button (or textonly or perhaps it could actually be the
entry-point to user style sheets, and one of the style sheets would be text only, one would be load
images, ...).
What image management support is available in Mozilla/5 1.4?
Well first, let's look at how the user can manage images in Mozilla/5. The current approach to image
management has three or four mostly disconnected pieces:
- You can right click an image and choose 'block images from this server', but you have no idea what
server it is.
- You can load an image manager from tools (Mozilla/5 1.4), which lets you remove blocked sites, but
you can't add a server using the manager :).
- You can choose not to load images or not to load images from foreign servers in preferences. But this
option is global, and you might actually want to make the decision on a per server basis as you're
browsing. Phoenix, Firebird, Mozilla/5 1.5 put the image manager into preferences next to this pair of
preferences, which at least unifies these pieces.
- You can't choose not to load images of a given mime type
- You can't choose not to load images which are handled by plugins [a plugin might allow you to
configure
this, e.g. QuickTime, but Mozilla itself doesn't currently allow you to control this]
- You could write CSS which styled <object type="image/something"> to nothing, but there's no
style sheet editor for Mozilla and it doesn't help if there's no type tag on the object. If such a rule
became common it could actually encourage authors not to include type attributes for object tags, or to
specify content types which don't match the actual content type of the data, which would be bad...
How can we improve image management over Mozilla/5 1.4?
The current approach to loading content is to try to load all resources as soon as possible.
I think we can abandon this approach in favor of an approach which delays resource loading to allow the
user the chance to cancel, delay or reorder resource loads.
How could we do that?
In the current Mozilla architecture, this would be a sidebar or part of the download manager, but as with
everything else, other approaches are possible.
So what would it look like?
The panel would have a list of resources (images, plugin content, scripts, stylesheets, embedded content
[e.g. HTML]) listed in the order in which they'll be loaded, possibly scored/colored based on things like
whether the origin matches. There would be an icon for the resource which would indicate its type and
whether it will load over a secure channel. If the user wants to load something sooner, the user could
drag the item higher on the list, or press the plus [+] key. If the user wants to load something later,
the user could drag the item lower on the list, or press the minus [-] key. To pause the loading of an
item the user might press the space [ ] key or click a pause button. To prevent an item from loading the
user might press the delete [del] key or click a delete button. To block or whitelist resources similar to
the selected item, the user would click a block or whitelist dropdown button which would list the full
server, its ancestors, and its mimetype. For an image/jpeg from classic.example.com the user would be able
to block/whitelist items from classic.example.com, example.com,
.com, everywhere for image/jpeg, image/* or */*.