An Ideal System Browser

Lex Spoon lex at cc.gatech.edu
Fri Nov 30 17:31:14 UTC 2001


Jerry Balzano <gjbalzano at ucsd.edu> wrote:
> Not that I'd presume to know what that is at my stage of (Squeak)
> development, but it occurred to me as I was browsing around through various
> classes and instances and methods that the Squeak System Browser lacks a
> feature that we take for granted on all our web browsers and that most of
> us would be lost without -- a "back" button! 

I dunno -- I don't sit in single browsers all that much.  I mostly
navigate by opening new windows, and so going back is very easy.  This
seems to be the model that Squeak's browsers support best.

To contrast, Celeste doesn't allow this, and I get frustrated by it.  I
can't for example, easily go find the last message I wrote on this topic
to the Squeak list, because I'd have to take off 3 filters, put in 2-3
more, and then (here's the problem) put *back* the original 3 filters
off the top of my head.

Overall, Multiple-Windows seems like a safer default.  If you use
Multiple Windows and are wrong, then the user must close a few extra
windows.  If you use Single Window and are wrong, then users might
decide not to do certain queries at all, because they don't want to
trash their current viewing context.

Window-per-context could be viewed as late-binding the browsing
strategy.  :)

-Lex




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