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List:       kfm-devel
Subject:    IE smart tags vs. smart lookup
From:       Jeff Sacksteder <jwsacksteder () ramprecision ! com>
Date:       2001-06-12 15:41:24
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I would like to propose a feature for discussion relating to MS 'smart
tags'. For anyone not familiar with this feature, IE will make certain
keywords in rendered text look like links to the user, which when followed,
point to whatever MS wants them to point to. For a good example of this
check out this link-
http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/columns/0,4164,2772297,00.html

I think the good part is the ability make links in addition to the ones the
authors explicitly created in the document. The bad part, the reason
everyone is irritated by this, is that the meta-links are indistinguishable
from normal links. I think Konqueror should should have the following
behaviour; Highlight a word as if you were going to copy it to the clipboard
and right-click the word or phrase. A context menu appears populated with a
list of entries from the 'enhanced browsing' feature. Select the type of
lookup you want and open the results in a new window. Don't understand a
word? Right-click and look it up in the Mirriam-Webster dictionary. Need an
acronym defined? Right-click and get results from the Internet Acronym
Database. Want to translate a word from another language? Right-click and
feed it to babelfish.

It would be obvious to the user that they were invoking a lookup process,
not following a link. It would pop up a new window so as not to disrupt the
existing web view. It would be extensible, since it would use the same
predefined resources included with Konqueror already. The user would control
how and where the search was done. This is not just matching IE
feature-for-feature, this is beating them at their own game. 

The ultimate goal of these features, however unstated, is to make the web
purely mousable. That is, to eliminate the need to type search terms into
little boxes. It sounds trivial, but it is more convenient for users and MS
will have it soon. This would also be nice for kiosks that don't have
keyboards. I have not yet entered this as a wishlist item. Let's open this
for discussion and evaluation.

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