CFA/Search-Notes

« Comparative Feature Analyses

Purpose

Examine a bunch of browsers, existing Firefox Add-ons, and web services to generate a report that describes:

• Which capabilities each has (look at preferences panel for details about how search is customizable)
• A summary of where each is different/unique
• Some conclusions about which aspects seem most innovative and interesting that we might want to consider for Firefox

Research

General capabilities

The following will be done in a table with notes and observations following as footnotes.

• keyword.URL
• adding new search engines
• one-time use of search engine
• search shortcuts/keywords
• look at http://wiki.mozilla.org/Search

• Pause/Resume - Same session
• Pause/Resume - Across sessions
• Pause/Resume - Auto-pause downloads on network failure
• Pause/Resume - Auto-resume downloads on network reconnect
• Download History - View
• Download History - Sort (alpha, date, type, size, etc)
• Download History - Edit (clear one, selected, all)
• Download History - Autoexpire items
• Protocols - FTP
• Protocols - Torrent
• Protocols - Other
• Download Queues - Create/manage new queues
• Download Queues - Create/manage multiple queues
• Download Queues - Start/pause/resume/stop/cancel downloading
• Download Queues - Schedule downloading
• Download Queues - Save/restore queues
• Download Speed - Throttling
• Download Speed - Acceleration
• Download linked file
• Download selected linked files
• Download all linked files
• Download Manager - View
• Download Manager - Auto-close/Hide
• Download Manager - View/go to file
• Download Manager - Open file
• Download Manager - Move/Manipulate files
• Download Manager - Mark file as a favourite
• Download Manager - Tag/group/categorize/organize files
• Download Manager - Search
• Download Manager - Advanced search
• Download Manager - Default download directory
• Download Manager - Customizable download directory
• Download Manager - Multiple customizable download directories
• Download Manager - Smart download directories
• Accessibility Features (y/n?)
• Anti-virus integration
• Download Prefs (list per browser, not in table)
• Download Manager screenshots (one per browser, not in table)

Browsers to investigate

• Firefox 2 - look for addons that do interesting search-related stuff
• Camino
• Flock
• iCab
• IE 7
• Maxthon 2
• Netscape
• OmniWeb
• Opera
• Safari - look at Insquisitor addon for Mac
• SeaMonkey
• Shiira

Firefox Add-ons to investigate

• DownloadStudio Integration link

References

• Download Manager notes