The ideal browser... doesn't exist
A very personal view of the Web
Bert Bos
Bert Bos <bert @w3.org>
W3C/INRIA
Sophia-Antipolis, France
10 October 2002
Presented at Opera Software, Oslo
About this talk
- Looking back to last year
- Why I use a browser
- The coolest features
- The biggest frustrations
- Hot topics
- Potential hot topics
Looking back to last year (1a)
What I said about Opera last year:
- has wrong size at start up [correct under Windows]
- allows only one window
- no Java [correct under Windows]
- almost no integration with WM
- ugly, big icons [settable, I know]
- no shortcuts ("enhanced browsing keywords")
- no font-size increase button
- no "open with..." command
Looking back to last year (1b)
Current status:
- broken config file was fixed within the hour
- multiple windows and even tabs, yeah!
- java works
- drag&drop works in KDE
- small icons available
- still no URL shortcuts
- still no font-size increase button
- still no "open with..." command
Looking back to last year (2a)
Other things on my wish list last year:
- "stretch text" (collapsing lists, etc.)
- pop-ups
- text alignment with tabs
- highlighting the link target
- select text on buttons
- see & copy URLs of forms
- see & copy local anchors
- "fish"
search
- source view in same window
- navigation via link elements
Looking back to last year (2b)
Current status:
- "stretch text": CSS proposals being studied
- pop-ups: ditto
- tab stops: ditto
- link target: exists (but not implemented yet)
- select button text: only in Lynx
- see & copy form URLs: only in Lynx
- see & copy local anchors: only in Amaya
- "fish"
search: still no sign
- source view in same window: only in Lynx
- navigation via link elements: Lynx & Mozilla
The biggest frustrations
- No MathML
- Limited SVG support
- Cannot bookmark/save a half-completed form
Hot topics
- XLink/HLink
- XML Namespaces
"Stretch text" can be a part of a Web page that is collapsed and expanded or a separate Web page that is shown inline in another. (You can think of it as making the A element behave as an OBJECT.)
Pop-ups are Web pages that are displayed in a temporary window. It is possible with JavaScript, but not yet with style sheets.
Aligning text with tab stops is often simpler than with tables and it allows text to wrap at the end of the line, while also being aligned. For example, the author of a citation can be shown right-aligned on the last line of the citation.
Highlighting the target is part of the Selectors module of CSS3, but is not yet implemented by Opera.
Buttons, selection lists, etc. contain text, but I cannot select the text for cut & paste. That is a limitation in the graphics toolkit (Qt), not Opera itself, but it would be nice if it could be changed.
Normal hyperlinks show the URL in the status bar and allow me to copy the URL to the clipboard, but the URLs of forms remain hidden.
The address bar shows the URL of the current document and I can use that to copy and paste the URL into a document of my own. But it is very hard to get the URLs that point to anchors in the document. Amaya has a mode where such local anchors are represented by icons, so their URLs can be copied.
Fish search was an extension to Mosaic back in 1994. It extends the "search in this page" to "search in this page and all linked pages." The maximum depth wass 4, which is usually already too much, but it would help with finding text in articles that are split over multiple pages.
Most browsers have a source view, but it opens a new window. That is sometimes what I want, but usually displaying the source in the same window would be both quicker and less wasteful of screen space.
Mozilla now uses the LINK elements in HTML to build a navigation menu. That is about 12 years after Lynx, I guess, but better late than never. When more browsers support it, many of the navigation menus that take up so much space on the page and that are so inconsistent can be removed. Moreover, the body of a page will then really only contains information about the subject of the page and not about the rest of the site.