4 Sep 2003 mx   » (Journeyer)

I'm back to using epiphany again. I must be getting fussy in my old age, but Galeon is just too slow on my system, and its bookmark system is just plain broken (1.3.5). And I had switched to Galeon because it was a small, light browser. Weird ...

So far this brush with Ephipany is very positive. The bookmark system is really well thought out, which is the opposite impression I got with .0.6-1. Having the bookmarks in a flat table, which can be viewed 'virtually' is really smart, similar to how Evolution does virtual folders (sort of anyway). Flat data is good. My only suggestion for the Epiphany team is that the 'Edit bookmarks' dialog swallows the 'properties' dialog ... at least optionally. Often when I bother to open the bookmark view, it is to power-edit bookmarks, and opening a blasted properties window for each is a PITA.

I read Havoc's call for Making Hardware Just Work. Funny thing, actually, I pulled out a few dust-gathering USB devices the other day, plugged them in, and they Just Worked (rh9/xd2). The devices were a Wacom tablet, and a memory stick. Simple devices, I know, but I was suprised -- in the good way. Havoc's right, that stuff should just work, as when it does it's damned nice.

The tablet driver does have a few odd behaviours, but it wasn't obvious when peeking at the driver source. I'll have to do some testing against the 2k driver, and see if I can guess at what's happening in the hardware there.

I was also reading Mark Finlay's blurb on scanning software. I've actually been quite impressed with xsane, especially compared to Epson's 2k driver. Even my wife (non-geek) found xsane easier to use than epson's driver, and was really impressed that it supported our hp scanner as well (she didn't have to learn yet-another-scanner UI. Windows is actually quite behind in that sort of thing, as many driver-interfaces are driven by vendors, and are not consistent between devices (scanners, video cards, scanners, etc.). Good OCR would be nice, though.

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