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Making A Better Browser History
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Mar 31, 2004 07:41 AM
from the and-a-browser-is-a-mousetrap dept.
from the and-a-browser-is-a-mousetrap dept.
jbtule writes "Students at the University of Illinois have released TrailBlazer, a new user interface to represent your web browsing history. It lays out the pages you visit in a simple 2D map with thumbnails and summaries. The project took 2nd place at the university's annual Engineering Open House and a three minute video is available that demonstrates TrailBlazer for those who don't have Mac OS X Panther. TrailBlazer is implemented with Apple's WebKit on a bare bones browser, but this interface would probably be more useful if it were added to a real browser. This is a much better history than chronological lists of web page titles or crazy cubes floating around a 3D space. Hopefully Safari or /insert favorite web browser/ will do something similar in the future."
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The cyberspatial compass (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a great idea - a visualisation of the underlying data in a form far easier to recognise than the data itself. Humans tend to react better to visual stimuli (think a map vs a series of co-ordinates, and try to work out which location is farther away from you). Kudos to the authors for the inspiration.
This new idea tells us where we are in a better, easier-to-use way, and we like that. It can tell us where we can go/have been, and tracks the paths between these nodes on our cyberspatial plane [grin, sounds a bit OTT, but..]. Perhaps a cyberspatial compass combined with a cyberspatial GPS system. CPS perhaps
It's also interesting to see that the 'cool idea' is something to aid the browsing experience, not to replace it. It seems we're happy with the idea of 'click here, go there', but want more intuitive or rememberable (is that a word?) cues for the journey itself...
Simon
Re:The cyberspatial compass (Score:5, Interesting)
In my experience, every single attempt to recreate a heirarchical system (be it a file system, database or in this instance a browser history) fails utterly because it doesn't adhere to the K.I.S.S. principle.
Virtual Reality (oh that is sooo 1990s!) systems often make things much more complicated to use no matter what the graphics are like... it's very easy to get lost in VR space, you have no concept of "up" or "down" (no horizon, no gravity) and trying to control your view quickly and effectively using a keyboard and mouse is very tricky, unless you're a seasoned Descent player.
However, arranging the history in a 2d manner (such as the tree view mentioned here [uiuc.edu]) seems a far better way of going about it - everything you need is within your field of view, arrange in a consistent way (eg all rectangles are same size... unlike a 3d view where they appear to be smaller as they are further away) and you can tell at a glance what the relationship is.
2d vs 3d - It's kinda like the view a general gets on a battlefield (2d) versus the rather limited perspective a soldier has of the action (3d)
Parent
Re:The cyberspatial compass (Score:3, Funny)
One copy of descent 3 for sale... hardly used!
Re:The cyberspatial compass (Score:3, Funny)
I still get nausea and vertigo when I think about [Descent].
Oh yeah, but it wasn't as bad as Alien vs. Predator, playing as the alien. My wife couldn't even be in the same room as the monitor.
Re:The cyberspatial compass (Score:5, Interesting)
a more useful implementation could rely on intelligently excerpting web pages, and tracking things like "did I submit a form here" or "did I start a download from this page"... the things we're really trying to remember when visiting our browsing history.
visual representations are often a crutch for when we simply cannot come up with anything else.
Parent
Re:The cyberspatial compass (Score:3, Interesting)
I imagine that it'd be pretty easy to recognise the site you were on last week by its branding in a thumbnail - assume it wasn't black text on a white background :p
Re:The cyberspatial compass (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd agree, if this weren't built using OS X Panther. This browser history map uses thumbnails (and if those thumbnails aren't resizable, they should be in the next version) and simple arrows, probably using the same basic technology as iPhoto 4 [apple.com] does. OS X handles resizable icons and thumbnails as part of the underlying OS; they probably didn't have to create nearly as much code as you might expect.
a more useful implementation could rely on intelligently excerpting web pages, and tracking things like "did I submit a form here" or "did I start a download from this page"... the things we're really trying to remember when visiting our browsing history.
If you submitted a form on page A, then page A+1 will usually indicate that you've done so in some way (at least if the UI designers did their job). I don't think it'll be that hard to deduce if you've downloaded a file from a particular page, either, since it's usually the visual thumbnail of the page you remember rather than the data you got after visiting it.
visual representations are often a crutch for when we simply cannot come up with anything else.
I hope you were using a text-only web browser and a command-line OS when you wrote that. If GUIs are a crutch, then nearly every computer user for the last twenty years is a permanent cripple.
Parent
Re:The cyberspatial compass (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The cyberspatial compass (Score:3, Interesting)
Merge bookmarks and history (Score:5, Insightful)
A hierarchical (and usually enormous) tree of bookmarks is a broken, broken, broken concept. I spend more time searching a bookmark I know I have, that looking for it in Google. That means something: Google is a better tool than bookmarks.
What I'd like to have is a powerful, a-la-Google context search of my history: I don't want to save "bookmarks", I want to drag predefined "keywords" onto TrailBlazer's history thumbnails; so that when I later select a keyword, all pages that I've marked are retrieved in their full browsing context.
Parent
Re:The cyberspatial compass (Score:3, Informative)
IBM came out with a mosue with one of those controls that looks like a pencil eraser where a scroll wheel would be. Then another company came out with a mouse with two wheels: one vertical, one horizontal. Now Microsoft has their tilt-wheel tech, where you can press on the wheel to scroll side to side.
I think I like the Microsoft implementation best. The IBM concept made it difficult not to get some sideways scrolling when you scroll vert
The Real Question (Score:5, Interesting)
a) Checking up on shared computers' other users porn-browsing habits
b) Tracking the links they've visited in the past.
Personally, I have a 25 meg history file going back I'm-not-sure-how-far which I keep around just so that links I've visited are a different colour.
Thumbnails? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Thumbnails? (Score:3, Funny)
Thumbnails -> Colours -> I Win! (Score:3, Insightful)
Opera's History (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Opera's History (Score:3, Insightful)
Relate-a-zon (Score:3, Interesting)
Similar thing in 3D (Score:3, Informative)
OpenSource, scriptable, customizable ad infinitum integradete IRC for spatial use and finally a good reason besides games to have a fast graphics board
Videos [spatialknowledge.com] and images [spatialknowledge.com] available
I'd be happy with something even simpler... (Score:5, Interesting)
That way when I am trying to remember where I saw the instructions for the excell driving game shown on Slashdot earlier I would only have to search the text I have seen, not try and use google (too many hits) or search by thumbnails and page titles... useless since it was posted in a pretty much unrelated subject.
Re:I'd be happy with something even simpler... (Score:3, Interesting)
Plus, you could then get the proxy server to intercept certain pseudo-urls and treat them as search queries, so the whole system would be browser based and transparent to the user. ie - request something like http://history.search/ to show a search form, or something like http://quick.search/your+query+here to jump straight to results pages.
prolly not (Score:4, Insightful)
My history is just that -- history.
If I want to go to a page I was already at, I'll most likely know when I went to it and can easily find it. This contrasts with Expose which helps you visually organize files currently being used.
I can see this having it's benefits (when I really need to find a poorly titled page), but I highly doubt it will redefine any standards.
see also (Score:4, Informative)
Innovation (Score:5, Insightful)
It's bad to the point of borderline broken. Hopefully there are no IP issues (in the property sense), and this may lead to improvements making usinging browser history less like pulling teeth.
-Pete
Good as an interface (Score:3, Interesting)
What won first place? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What won first place? (Score:3, Informative)
Who actually uses their browser history? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Who actually uses their browser history? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you just hit on the problem. I don't use my history either. Most of the time its easier to find a page you've been to by typing in what you remember into google. If our browsers were a better tool, maybe we wouldn't have to rely on google to find things that are already on our hard drive.
Most usability problems aren't obvious until they're fixed. Hopefully, trailbla
Very nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, I could probably come up with a whole range of criticisms, but why? This is a great idea. Practical, obvious, useful. The most negative thing I can say about this is probably that I feel sorry for the inventors. They'll probably be forgotten after Microsoft and the Mozilla foundation have released their own unspeakably crude and complexified implementations.
Re:Very nice (Score:3, Interesting)
It's nice eye candy, I agree. But far too intrusive. I'm sure I'm not atypical in my web use habits. I have a dozen web sites I visit regularly- and they're book marked. Everything else I Google for. After all if I managed to find it before it must have been using Google...
The other problem is that it's very intrusive - and requires a lot of scrolling. Neither of those are good UI design characteristics for an auxillary browser tool to have.
Re:Very nice (Score:4, Interesting)
The other strange one I remember from those days (less useful, I know) was the DOOM browser - a DOOM engine that would auto-generate an endless map from the hyperlink structure of the web. Special tags would fine tune it. (shades of VRML). Wouldn't you like to fight demons to get to the information you need? That's what it feels sometimes anyway...
Parent
and then patent it (Score:3, Insightful)
Filter Google results using browser history (Score:5, Interesting)
This way you would have your own like WWW to search in and would only return sites you have visted in the past.
How about using bookmarks? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been thinking about this for weeks ...
I realize that I still reflexively bookmark good sites, even though I almost never use the bookmarks (beyond the few I put on the Links/Personal toolbar). I just go to Google for everything.
Yet I'd like to harness the value of that information. I wish I could do a google search, limited to the bookmarked hosts. Weighted by how many bookmarks I have for that host. So if I have 30 bookmarks at 4guysfromrolla or whatever those results come to the top.
Should
Re:Filter Google results using browser history (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I think that Trailblazer can also do a keyword search, which would do a lot of good. After all, the pagerank would be less important given that all of the web sites you've visited have at least some importance to you.
Unless, of course, you're using IE, in which case you've probably been sent to all sorts of web pages that you
But no history mechanism for students? (Score:3, Insightful)
MosaicG was released in 1995.
It's interesting though that Tauscher's paper (the first link) conlcuded back then that the 'stack based' histories we used were not optimal, mainly because sibling history branches disappear. She found that the best method tested was to have a 'context sensitive web subset', ie a graph showing the relationships between visited nodes in relation to the current node, rather than a strict history.
A modest suggestion (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably a good idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Typically, I'll do a search, then open one result at a time in a new tab; if the article is useful I'll keep its tab open, if it's no good I'll close it. However, it all gets very unwieldy once you have more than about half a dozen tabs on the go at once. Plus, tabs are {TTBOMK} not rearrangeable -- so the structure breaks a bit, because I can't put the tabs I opened from each first-level click next to one another. Tabs are good, maybe even great, but they aren't perfect.
Other times, I will bookmark a site which, on further exploration, turns out not to be any good. Which is a waste of a bookmark.
The computer already knows what sites I have visited, how long I spent looking at each one, whether or not I did any word searches {and what they turned up}, and what I clicked to next -- whether it was a link from that page, or if I returned to a previous tab, or started a new search. Now, if I want to find a page that I know I visited recently, how should the above-mentioned information be presented to me so that I can find the page I'm looking for, quickly?
It's good to see that question being addressed. This could be something the web has been waiting for.
Re:Probably a good idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Being a Mac user, I have one.
Mine's set to F9 (Expose's minimize).
Someone else asked about the name of the Apple history viewer. Didn't it use QuickTime 3d and may have been called Project X?
What safari isn't meant to be (Score:3, Insightful)
This sounds like a great feature, but like tabs (which is very helpful) - few people will use it to it's potential.
I think Apple needs to concentrate on being faster and more stable - I really even wish they would remove some features from Safari - when explaining ANY browser nowadays to my LEAP program classes (who are mostly elderly) - it is difficult, at best, to explain ALL the features - something you HAVE to do so they won't be confused and know where to go to set preferences, etc...
I also would like Apple to remember thet their core is only as good as the bushel - meaning - I would like Apple to realize that Opera, iCab, and Ominiweb give Apple the appearance of broader support - therefore, these should be features for those browsers to integrate - features people should want to pay for if they use them.
Memory.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway, how are they going to deal with people that visit thousands of webpages a day/week. Is their history going to catalog all of those images and take screenshots of each one? It seems like there would be some huge memory/efficiency requirements and would make the browser more unstable as you visit more website.
Apple's own safari has a similar problem with web icons even, let alone whole thumbnail images!
Although, it would make searching through all my previous porn a lot more fun
We need a tree for browser history. (Score:4, Interesting)
I never understood why this hasn't been done before. But a lot of times you go backone or more pages, go to another page, then all your previous stuff is lost.
We need a way to say, from this page you want to these places.. Currently we are limited to:
S--->--->--->--->--->
But we need:
S--->--->--->--->---> +--->
+--->--->---> +--->
+--->--->---->--->--->
Where the '+' are junctions where two mor more links were followed
</ECODE>
Re:We need a tree for browser history. (Score:3, Informative)
Only 2D? (Score:4, Interesting)
Just add mouseover magnification (Score:3, Interesting)
This is Excellent! (Score:3, Interesting)
Now where's the copycat mozilla plugin...?
Would be useful for undo/redo, too. (Score:4, Interesting)
Suppose you've written something. Then, you undid the last sentence or two. You wrote something else. By doing so, you've essentially deleted the "redo" information of the sentences you originally undid. Therefore, if you don't remember what you had written the first time, there is no way to "undo" this "branch" and go back to the other "branch" unless you had originally planned to do so and saved the file, or copied the original text into a buffer, or something along those lines.
I imagined that the undo/redo information would have to be structured somewhat as a tree, or hierarchy, of edits, much like CVS is structured with multiple branches and the ability to fork, merge, etc. To solve all the problems that I foresaw, the model became pretty darn complicated (about as complicated as re-implementing all of CVS inside of the undo/redo feature, plus supplying an interactive user interface for this mess), so I never implemented it.
I suppose that at some later point, when I began browsing the web, I thought that something similar should exist for browsers. Every time you go "back" and go on a different path, you basically create a branch. But eventually, I came to the conclusion that having just the simple "back" and "forward" feature has some advantages over a branch-enabled navigation feature. For one, it is much easier for non-tech-savvy users to understand (if they even know the feature exists--many people are really only aware of the "back" button). And furthermore, it allows you to cover up your tracks, to some extent. Say, you're at a public library, and you just used their web browser to find something. And suppose you can't delete the internet cache because of security settings on that machine. So you go "back" a few times, type in a new web address, and you've essentially erased your tracks, as far as any patron without administrator access will ever know. (I assume that if you can't erase the cache, another non-admin patron can't read it.)
I would still love to have this feature in my web browsers (and text editors), as I like to have lots of windows open all over the screen, and I juggle from one to another, and routinely go back and forth many times. With the ability to go back and open another "branch" in another window with a few keys, I think I could be a lot happier with my web browser.
In other words, if a slick interactive way to do this kind of stuff can be implemented, then I see at least two applications (browsers and undo) that would greatly benefit from such a thing.
Re:Perhaps it will find it's way to Mozilla? (Score:5, Informative)
The underlying HTML technology beneath Safari is KHTML [konqueror.org], not Gecko.
Parent
Re:does anyone remember Apple's previous technolog (Score:3, Informative)
Here's [downlode.org] one link I found in Google "apple hotsauce browser."