[Design] Thoughts on a browser parcel

[Roger Eaton]

The Annotated Web

There is a third way to integrate a browser with Chandler.  It is clunky but it should work and given the discussion so far, looks to be the best doable alternative.

To recap, the first alternative would be to embed a browser in Chandler, probably using wxMozilla.  Mitch Kapor (http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/design/2003-December/002787.html) and Heikki Toivonen
(http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/design/2003-December/002788.html) from osaf have said that there will be too much UI work going this way.  They should know, so we scratch the embedded browser option even though it feels right because we get a
slick product and the user doesn't have to do anything special.

The second alternative is to create a link between Mozilla and Chandler.  I take it this means a plugin toolbar in Mozilla.  There are problems with this approach and the fact that osaf recommends this over the embedded-browser option tells me there
really are hidden costs in embedding a browser.  For one thing, most people use Explorer, so either you need to create another plugin for the proprietary and possibly hostile Explorer code and maybe jostle with the Google toolbar, or you require users to
install Mozilla, which is a huge hurdle for the user.  Moreover, there are any number of other browsers that will need their own plug ins, and there remains the fact that the users will need to download and install a plugin, a lesser hurdle than
installing a new browser, but still significant.  Altogether this seems a very poor option.  There is one way that might work, and that would be to include Mozilla+ChandlerToolbar in the Chandler distribution so it is all one install for the user.  Under
this scenario, there would be a button in the Chandler interface to kickoff Mozilla.  Has this idea been discussed?

Against that background, a clunky third option might not be so bad after all.  This is to embed a server in Chandler instead of a browser.  A button in the Chandler interface will invoke the users preferred browser to access a "personal portal" page that
comes with Chandler via the embedded server.  The important ideas are 1) the embedded server always adds a "Chandler" header and footer to whatever page is being served, including the portal page, 2) Chandler as a second window besides the browser will be
able to offer options ala Selva's suggestions (http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/design/2003-December/002799.html), and 3) the server will turn itself into a proxy server by replacing all links to the web with links to itself that embed the true
link as a cgi parameter.

The big problem with this option is that use of the url address window in the browser will exit Chandler.  The Chandler header that is added to every page browsed will have to have a url address window in the html -- this is almost the definition of clunk
and makes me for one want to run back to the embedded browser idea -- except that it has been nixed by osaf!  The embedded server will have to act as a browser at least to the extent of fetching pages that are in frames, so it can manipulate the links.
Also, clearly, https links should not be directed through the embedded server.

With this third option, the InterMix voice of humanity product I am designing -- see http://blog.voiceofhumanity.net -- will be more loosely attached to Chandler than it would be under the embedded browser option.  So I guess that is a plus from my point
of view (though I wish with all my heart that Chandler succeeds).  As a point of interest the InterMix implementation of the embedded server will be called the "Annotated Web" or AntWeb for short.  Chandler users will be able to set up "community portals"
in addition to their personal portal.  As users browse the web through a community portal, they will be able to add annotations, ratings and keywords to web pages that will be visible to all who enter the web through that same portal.  I see the Annotated
Web as the ground floor of a bottom up, peer to peer, hierarchical structure that will integrate communities right on up the scale to humanity as a whole.


-- Roger Eaton

rogereaton at earthlink.net
http://blog.voiceofhumanity.net
(310) 390-5220