Access Points for Everything: Part I…
By Non-Troppo. Sunday, 23. September 2007, 09:55:41
With Opera 7 came a great revolution hidden in an obscure place: dynamic search available through things called "access points" in M2. Once we brethren saw it, we knew it was good. The long-overdue assault on the folder had begun, and as in any war, there was (and still is) much resistance to change. Static folders are comforting, they do what they are told. I put A into B and it stays there. Unfortunately I can't put it into C without copying it, then if I want to edit it I have to do so in two places repetitively and so on. Folders are inefficient and inflexible. They are inferior. Access points can behave like folders, but do much much more. But to benefit from an access point, we need sufficient information to allow the access point the ability to store what we want.
So if we only have a title to a page, that says "Apples are great", we don't know from the title alone if that page belongs to a food category or a computer category. But if we can index the page content then that ambiguity is gone (hint: Kestrel does it now).
So when I saw this patent:
Apple Patent Hints at Future Navigational Interface
I saw there a technology I've been using for years applied to page history; access points. Sorting things in piles dynamically based on categories is what access points do. Indeed, I can do that manually now in Kestrel by using opera:historysearch?q=MY_TOPIC saved as a bookmark, but I want an interface to store my access points more elegantly than that. And I want a "Top 10" for word frequency for my page history. That makes Apple's patent trivial.
So if we only have a title to a page, that says "Apples are great", we don't know from the title alone if that page belongs to a food category or a computer category. But if we can index the page content then that ambiguity is gone (hint: Kestrel does it now).
So when I saw this patent:
Apple Patent Hints at Future Navigational Interface
I saw there a technology I've been using for years applied to page history; access points. Sorting things in piles dynamically based on categories is what access points do. Indeed, I can do that manually now in Kestrel by using opera:historysearch?q=MY_TOPIC saved as a bookmark, but I want an interface to store my access points more elegantly than that. And I want a "Top 10" for word frequency for my page history. That makes Apple's patent trivial.
WIDGETIZE
Steve # 23. September 2007, 13:59
Non-Troppo # 25. September 2007, 07:53
newscpq # 25. September 2007, 09:16
I totally agree with you non-troppo: I'm so tired to stick to the "file menu" philosophy when using my software applications.
I remember in Italy a new concept of web browser was proposed in 2001 or similar: it was something aimed to build a graphical personal tree (forest?) of visited pages graphically linked toghether onto the screen.
It was quite similar to having a bunch of "post-its" linked toghether by your personal navigation flow, rather than by their belonging to a certain website or another.
After a while, the navigation forest of every web browser owner was big enough to be a small (very small indeed) subset of the internet... very interersting.
To stay in topic, I don't see the need of access points in a browser, I mean, not only: I'd let the imagination go even further if possible to try to define something new, from scratch.
In general, for any application development, there should be a team of developers just thinking about its' implementation and upgrade with the evolving standards (HTTP, HTML, CSS, ...) and a team concentrating on its' concept.
Apple is the only company that does something similar from my point of view.
My wishes that (almost) came true thanks to Opera:
- "visual history" (much similar to speed dial, but that updates automatically) http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=86040&t=1190715722&page=1#comment880561
- "popularity based history" http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=86041&t=1190715865&page=1#comment880565
- "bookmarks, top10 and history collapsing into one single thing", "a global history into the address field drop down" http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=119786&t=1190716008&page=1#comment1358108
Non-Troppo # 25. September 2007, 19:38
Your old wishes are very much along the same lines — there is so much overlap between bookmarks / history / browsing patterns that this needs to really be worked over. Firefox 3 is going there with Places, and they are the closest to getting a solid base (SQL database with a flexible remixable UI + open API) to really bring a new paradigm to the table.
O'Bart # 26. September 2007, 19:23
Here is a description from the IBrowse site:
FAB Menus
Using the right mouse button over the Back, Forward, Home or Reload button, will open a FAB Menu in the context of the button you use. The Back and Forward buttons, will show a history of the web pages you have visited in the current browser, for the current session. This allows you to quickly jump to a specific web page from your Browser History, without having to step through each one in turn. The Home button will show two hard coded options, the IBrowse² and Amiga Inc. homepages. Finally, the Reload button will show you two hard coded options, All and Images, which will reload the whole web page, or just the images, respectively.
Steve Haney
newscpq # 27. September 2007, 12:28
I tried that softare once, but it was different from Apple's solution: it was graphical, it was developed in Java, it showed a tree of pages linked toghether that moved towards your mouse pointer as you moved it towards them, then you could click on them.
I don't believe it was patended... but I may try to see if there is a public database somewhere I could consult.
sebt # 29. September 2007, 03:23
Non-Troppo # 7. November 2007, 20:22