[Browser] restoring browser shows blank tab previews

[Bill Filler]

after closing the browser and reopening, the open tabs are now restored which is great. However when viewing the tabs page, all of the previews are blank which makes for a pretty ugly looking page.

Can we persist these preview images, same as we're doing for the favicon images so that we can restore them when the app starts?
If not, we should minimally show something in the tab preview like "Click to open" or some other graphic

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

Unfortunately this is not a simple problem. We’re currently using a ShaderEffectSource item to capture the contents of a webview and display a paused thumbnail. This works well while the webview is live and has been shown at least once. But when the app is restored after being killed, only the current webview has been shown, all the other webviews are hidden, so there is no capture available.

QML doesn’t expose any built-in way of persisting the contents of an item as an image on disk, which is what would be needed to restore tab previews.

Also note that we’re currently not persisting favicons on disk either, they are being re-downloaded everytime, this is bug #1340585.

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

I’m adding an ubuntu-ux task to get guidance from design on how to work around this technical problem.

[Giorgio Venturi (giorgio-venturi-deactivatedaccount)]

It would be ideal if we could have a screenshot feature. We will need that as well to display 'top sites'.

[Bill Filler (bfiller)]

Until we can support persisting the image, I'd suggest some placeholder text like "Click to open tab" and possibly a default background image such that it's not just a blank tab.

[Giorgio Venturi (giorgio-venturi-deactivatedaccount)]

Could we load the websites when launching the tabs view, maybe with a
progress indication? Do we cache anything in the browser?

On Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 3:54 PM, Bill Filler <email address hidden>
wrote:

> Until we can support persisting the image, I'd suggest some placeholder
> text like "Click to open tab" and possibly a default background image
> such that it's not just a blank tab.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to Ubuntu
> UX.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1357464
>
> Title:
> restoring browser shows blank tab previews
>
> Status in Ubuntu UX bugs:
> Fix Committed
> Status in Web Browser App:
> Confirmed
> Status in “webbrowser-app” package in Ubuntu:
> Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
> after closing the browser and reopening, the open tabs are now
> restored which is great. However when viewing the tabs page, all of
> the previews are blank which makes for a pretty ugly looking page.
>
> Can we persist these preview images, same as we're doing for the favicon
> images so that we can restore them when the app starts?
> If not, we should minimally show something in the tab preview like
> "Click to open" or some other graphic
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-ux/+bug/1357464/+subscriptions
>

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

That’s not the issue. We do load the tabs at startup (all of them actually, this could probably be optimized btw), but until the corresponding webview is shown, no preview is generated.

[Giorgio Venturi (giorgio-venturi-deactivatedaccount)]

I see. Unfortunately, I believe a default graphic is not good enough.

What if the first letters of the page title are not really meaningful? How
can I remember what was inside the tab?

On Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 4:31 PM, Olivier Tilloy <
<email address hidden>> wrote:

> That’s not the issue. We do load the tabs at startup (all of them
> actually, this could probably be optimized btw), but until the
> corresponding webview is shown, no preview is generated.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to Ubuntu
> UX.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1357464
>
> Title:
> restoring browser shows blank tab previews
>
> Status in Ubuntu UX bugs:
> Fix Committed
> Status in Web Browser App:
> Confirmed
> Status in “webbrowser-app” package in Ubuntu:
> Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
> after closing the browser and reopening, the open tabs are now
> restored which is great. However when viewing the tabs page, all of
> the previews are blank which makes for a pretty ugly looking page.
>
> Can we persist these preview images, same as we're doing for the favicon
> images so that we can restore them when the app starts?
> If not, we should minimally show something in the tab preview like
> "Click to open" or some other graphic
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-ux/+bug/1357464/+subscriptions
>

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

I think we all agree that it’s desirable to have a proper capture of the page. What Bill is suggesting is a temporary stop-gap measure to buy us time until we can implement a proper solution (which unfortunately is technically hard). Some sort of "default thumbnail" for tab previews, maybe using the origami style? Sure that won’t solve the problem of identifying at a first glance which tab is which, but it might help make the view look less empty.

[Bill Filler (bfiller)]

>>That’s not the issue. We do load the tabs at startup (all of them actually, this could probably be optimized btw), but until the >>corresponding webview is shown, no preview is generated.

Yes, please don't load all the tabs at startup as that is potentially a large amount of overhead. We should just load the active tab.

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

> Yes, please don't load all the tabs at startup as that is potentially
> a large amount of overhead. We should just load the active tab.

I filed bug #1358599 to track this separate issue.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package webbrowser-app - 0.23+14.10.20140821-0ubuntu1

---------------
webbrowser-app (0.23+14.10.20140821-0ubuntu1) utopic; urgency=low

  [ CI bot ]
  * Resync trunk

  [ Olivier Tilloy ]
  * Instantiate webviews on demand, only when they really need to be
    shown. Show placeholder artwork and text in empty tab previews. (LP:
    #1357464)
 -- Ubuntu daily release <email address hidden> Thu, 21 Aug 2014 16:56:31 +0000