Silver's Weblog - My First Places

My First Places

So I tried building Firefox with Places a couple of days ago. It ain't pretty. It's definitely good that it isn't being released for a while yet.

Importing my history and bookmarks took 15 minutes and have no UI what so ever. I only didn't kill the Firefox process using 100% CPU because I saw some sqlite files in my profile being created and modified.
The imported data is 74% bigger than the original. This seems like a rather big increase.
My personal toolbar is now empty, and I can't add stuff to it. (The folder in Places for this has the right stuff on, though.)
The URL bar does not update when changing tabs or if the page loads. This means it only ever displays what I last typed.
The URL bar has no autocomplete, either as-you-type or using the drop-down button.
All links appear unvisited, despite clearly being in history.
None of the navigation toolbar works either, so no back/forward/reload/stop. Not even the shortcuts work.
The browser no longer opens my homepage on start, even though it's still configured the same. It just loads about:blank, and if I click the Home button it loads the Google start page!
Add Bookmark menu item does nothing.
Selecting either the History or Subscriptions items in Places itself hangs Firefox for 5 - 10 seconds. I think this is the calendar, rather than the data, as searching the history only takes 1s second.
There is no way to select all dates in the calendar, even though it is (apparently) the default when going to a view.
Expanding or collapsing a folder in Places' top-left box takes 5 - 10 seconds if Subscriptions is selected.
Switching folders keeps the search string, but doesn't search the newly selected folder.
Searching "Current Collection Only" doesn't do anything.
Adding a search filter then can't be removed.
Filters only allow "starts with", "is" and "is on site" for location matching. Where's "contains"? Have to use "Containing the text" for that, which includes the title.
No title search option! Have to search title and URL together.
The icons for items are not fixed, so appear badly inconstant, as they show the favicon.
Properties context-menu item does nothing, at all, anywhere in Places.
Quitting Firefox closes all windows, then spends at least 15 seconds using 100% CPU (saving something I think).

Please don't bother pointing out that Places isn't finished yet - I know that, and it sure shows.

Permalink | Author: Silver | Tags: Firefox, Places | Posted: 11:38PM on Sunday, 05 March, 2006 | Comments: 2

What do you think of Places? Do you like it?

I'm not sure what it's all about.

Most of the time, I don't use the history, so I don't think I'll be using Places much.

Permalink | Author: Martijn | Posted: 05:06PM on Monday, 06 March, 2006

I'm trying not to make a decision about whether I like Places or not until they actually get the thing into a reasonable state.

Browser navigation has been working for a couple of days now, but there's still a long way to go - the URL bar is now autocompleting, but only some items appear, and I have no idea how it picks, but it always misses the ones I want. Yet, going to the Places window and searching finds it.

As far as I know, the point of Places is to combine bookmarks and history, and allow the two to be one - i.e. you'll be able to look at your history, and just blonk any items into your bookmarks, or tag the URLs, and so on. I'm not sure it'll actually be any use though, but we'll see...

Permalink | Author: Silver | Posted: 03:24PM on Wednesday, 08 March, 2006

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