[Design] Thoughts on a browser parcel

Howchmo Howchmo at snackdaddy.com
Wed Dec 10 10:47:10 PST 2003


> As a user I would prefer to not leave my workspace to see the web
> content in another browser.

What do the majority of users expect?  I expect it to work like e-mail, 
my HTML content gets rendered within the application I'm using, when I 
click on a link, it opens it in my default browser.  Chandler shouldn't 
re-invent the browser, that is already entrenched in people's psychology 
as a separate concern.

Mostly users expect HTML to be rendered in e-mail, or I should say, they 
don't care a wit about HTML they just want to look at their message.  In 
Chandler, the same user model will apply.  When a user looks at a 
Chandler item, they will expect it to be rendered richly.  But, the 
majority of users will expect that when they click on a link in the 
item, it will bring it up in their default browser.

A Chandler item is a chandler item and a web page is a web page.  I 
hypothesize that that is what most user's will expect whether they think 
about or not.[1]

I vote no on embedded browser, but yes on embedded HTML render engine.

---------------------

[1] From personal experience using FeedReader (an RSS reader), it 
annoyed immediately that when I clicked on a link it brought it up in 
the internal browser, though I couldn't say why.  Thinking about it, 
there was a mismatch between my internal model of how I expected 
FeedReader to work with how it actually works.



More information about the Design mailing list