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TrailBlazer - The browser history file rethought Pick of the Week
TrailBlazer imageThe macosxhints Rating:
10 of 10
[Score: 10 out of 10]
Yes, it's Thursday and I'm just now getting to the PotW -- It's been a busy week :). And yes, I'm cheating by picking something that was mentioned on slasdhot and other Mac sites earlier in the week. And finally, I'm breaking all my rules by awarding a 10 to an application that clearly needs work.

But in this case, TrailBlazer's 10 is awarded for its ground breaking re-thinking of browser History files. I visit a lot of web sites each day, as I'm sure is true of many of you. I've found that the typical approach to history files is really not very useful in any of the available browsers -- they all take a date- and/or site-specific approach to maintaining History files. If you can remember when you visited a particular site, and/or its name, you'll be able to find it with relative ease in your history file. However, even when I know I went somewhere yesterday, that might narrow the search to 100 or so websites -- still not a quick find. Usually, though, it's more like "Hmm, what was that site I was at earlier this week that discussed 'foobar.' Trying to find a site with this bit of knowledge is basically impossible -- searching History is either very limited (Firefox and OmniWeb 5 beta find words in the page title) or non-existent (Safari).

Enter TrailBlazer. Written in Cocoa and usiing Apple's open-source Web Kit Framework for web page rendering, TrailBlazer represents a completely new take on History. As you browse pages in TrailBlazer's basic browser, you develop a visual history file, with pages organized by date and nice thumbnails, along with arrows showing your progression from site to site. But it also uses the Lucene search engine to index every page, enabling very fast content searching. So now, when I remember that the word 'foobar' was on the site I want to find, I just type 'foobar' into the search box, and the page(s) containing that term are highlighted. Between the visual representation of my browsing history and the powerful search capabilities, finding sites in the History file is a snap with TrailBlazer.

TrailBlazer is not necessarily 'ready for prime time.' I had it crash on me a couple of times, and there are times where it gets very slow and unresponsive. However, as I noted, it's receiving a 10 not for its current application front end, but for the rethinking of the whole concept of a browser History file. Since the project is open source, hopefully some of these ideas will be incorporated over time into browsers that have an open source component (Safari, the Mozilla/Firefox family, OmniWeb). I for one would welcome a greatly improved history function.
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TrailBlazer - The browser history file rethought | 13 comments | Create New Account
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TrailBlazer - The browser history file rethought
Authored by: luhmann on Apr 01, '04 09:43:06AM

It is a nice idea, but it is an awful web browser. I wish it would simply index the history files of Safari or OmniWeb instead of trying to be a browser as well, since it will never replace either one of them as a browser. It is more of a concept piece than functioning software; although, because it uses Apple's webkit, it does actually browse the web - just no tabs, bookmark bar, etc.



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TrailBlazer - The browser history file rethought
Authored by: frankxiv on Apr 01, '04 10:12:12PM

That is exactly what I thought it was. I was very disappointed when I found out it was a browser.

If it was only the history tracker then it would be ok that it has faults. However, if the only way to get the history aspect of it is to use it as a browser then I won't be able to handle all of the shortcomings.

Later, Frank



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TrailBlazer - The browser history file rethought
Authored by: jbtule on Apr 02, '04 02:07:07PM

Well safari and omniweb don't store enough information (specifically the path traversed through pages) to generate this interface from their history files.



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TrailBlazer - The browser history file rethought
Authored by: crarko on Apr 01, '04 10:25:45AM

Yeah, it's buggy as sin; but I would love to see this approach appear in OmniWeb, Safari, or both.

I wish these folks very well indeed in their continued development.



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TrailBlazer - The browser history file rethought
Authored by: Viridian on Apr 01, '04 11:31:18AM

Yes, it is an "awful" browser, but the point of the exercise was to validate the concept, not deliver a full-featured browser. It is an EXCELLENT idea, and one I wish Safari would incorporate in the not-too-distant future.



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TrailBlazer - The browser history file rethought
Authored by: mrandre on Apr 01, '04 01:19:53PM

I'd love to say what I think of this idea, but I couldn't so much as type letters into the location field without inciting the spinning beachball. Definitely a work in progress. I agree that it's good to use a new idea in browser history, and I like a lot of what I saw in their promo video. However, there's a lot of sidescrolling involved, from what I can see. I didn't notice a zoom feature, which I think would be handy.

I like the idea of visual history, and I like seeing the relationships, but I'd prefer if that was optional. I'd like a list view available, and a live search. The list could include the thumbnail. I just think all that visual information is a lot to navigate without a sufficient scheme for getting around. But good ideas. If they can make it less slow, I'd love to take it for a spin.



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OmniWeb's history indexing is complete.
Authored by: wjs_delicious on Apr 01, '04 03:43:47PM

Actually, OmniWeb 4.2 and OmniWeb 5 index all the words in your history, not just the page titles. Omni pioneered this feature, not TrailBlazer. If you open the history drawer in 4.5 and type any words in the search field, you can see it progressively narrowing down your history to just the pages with the words in them.

But, you know, I'm glad you like our invention!

-Wil Shipley
Delicious Monster Software



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OmniWeb's history indexing is complete.
Authored by: robg on Apr 01, '04 03:47:59PM

Hmm, I must have been doing something wrong. When I was testing it, it was only finding words on page titles, not words in the body ... I'll have to try again tonight. Is there much of a delay in the indexing? I was giving it about 10 to 15 minutes, I'd say...

Perhaps I was searching for GIF words, but I'm pretty sure I selected the text first on the real page to make sure it was actually there :)

BTW, 5.0 is looking quite nice ... can't wait to see the final!

-rob.



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OmniWeb's history indexing is complete.
Authored by: jbtule on Apr 02, '04 03:14:53PM

Yes but in 5.0 beta the history search field is at bottom of the window so you really only find it if your looking for it. 4.5 is nicely done though.



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safari history search
Authored by: ber on Apr 01, '04 11:23:16PM

I'm confused about Safari history searching being non-existent. You can search words in page titles by going to the Show All Bookmarks page and typing CMD-F. It's limited to titles and urls but does exists. What have I misread?

Thanks,

brian



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safari history search
Authored by: robg on Apr 01, '04 11:39:44PM

Whoops, my bad -- you can, indeed search that way. I totally missed it :0

-rob.



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TrailBlazer - The browser history file rethought
Authored by: JimRoepcke on Apr 01, '04 11:32:19PM

The polished UI with thumbnails certainly is innovative, as is the integration with indexing and real-time search results (not that it was the first to do that, but maybe the first to do both together), but it's not the first browser to do a tree-oriented / browser-path history feature.

IBM's WebExplorer browser for OS/2 Warp 3.0 in 1994 had a tree/outliner-oriented history. I've missed it for nearly 8 or 9 years that I've been separated from WebExplorer. Nice to see the feature finally come back, but I'd happily live with a simple text-link / outliner type of history than the huge thumnail variety.

Jim



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TrailBlazer - The browser history file rethought
Authored by: imagine on Apr 02, '04 08:16:54AM
Wow, Pick of the Week. BTW we are amazed at the Mac community reaction to this, given that it still has ways to go before it grows into any more than an idea testbed. Thank you all for your criticism and ideas! We have plenty of things to choose to work on for TrailBlazer now.

The irony of being mentioned after posting the premonitions in October is fun stuff! Check it out: Post 1 | Post 2

As you can see in my original posts, we're just hoping TrailBlazer raises some designers' brows at Apple/Omni/etc. and leads to a better browsers in the future. Also to develop our Mac programming skills.

We weren't the first ones to realize the present way History works could be better Once we realized that, we tried to learned and improved from them and mainly user studies. If interested, some insight to the design is now online.

- Josh

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