Bug#639748: chromium: please add a side pane for bookmarks (like the one in Galeon)

[Francesco Poli (wintermute)]

Package: chromium
Version: 13.0.782.107~r94237-1
Severity: wishlist

Hi!

While trying out Chromium, I noticed that the way to access bookmarks
is terribly slow and uncomfortable: the bookmarks bar shown in the
"new tab page" (or always shown, if you check "Always show the bookmarks
bar" in the preferences) only makes the first few bookmark folders visible;
everything else is hidden in a drop down menu that doesn't appear until
I click on the » symbol; then I have to scroll down and find the bookmarks
I am interested in, one at a time... The "Other Bookmarks" section suffers
from similar issues.
All this is really slow and unpractical, especially if you have a good
number of bookmarks.

Another problem with the bookmarks bar is that it eats up vertical space
(especially if it is always shown). With nowadays wide-screen LCD panels,
vertical space is not too abundant, while horizontal space is more
than enough to accomodate for a side pane.

What I would really love seeing implemented in Chromium is a side pane
similar to the one implemented in Galeon.
Start Galeon and hit [F9] to see it in action: it shows all your
bookmarks in a nice expandable tree-like representation, where you can
easily scroll, expand some folders and choose the bookmarks you are
interested in, open them up in new tabs, or even edit them, add new
ones, delete existing ones, and so forth...
It even includes a "Find:" box, where you can easily search your
large bookmark collection.
And the side pane is always there, ready to be used to access bookmarks,
until you hit [F9] again, of course. Galeon also remembers to
automatically show the side pane at startup, if it was visible the last
time Galeon was closed.

I really lack this feature in Chromium.
May this be implemented, please?


-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (800, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.0.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages chromium depends on:
ii  chromium-inspector 13.0.782.107~r94237-1 page inspector for the chromium br
ii  libasound2         1.0.24.1-2            shared library for ALSA applicatio
ii  libbz2-1.0         1.0.5-6               high-quality block-sorting file co
ii  libc6              2.13-16               Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib
ii  libcairo2          1.10.2-6.1            The Cairo 2D vector graphics libra
ii  libcups2           1.4.8-2               Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
ii  libdbus-1-3        1.4.14-1              simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libdbus-glib-1-2   0.94-4                simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libevent-1.4-2     1.4.13-stable-1       An asynchronous event notification
ii  libexpat1          2.0.1-7               XML parsing C library - runtime li
ii  libflac8           1.2.1-5               Free Lossless Audio Codec - runtim
ii  libfontconfig1     2.8.0-3               generic font configuration library
ii  libfreetype6       2.4.6-1               FreeType 2 font engine, shared lib
ii  libgcc1            1:4.6.1-4             GCC support library
ii  libgconf2-4        2.32.4-1              GNOME configuration database syste
ii  libgcrypt11        1.4.6-9               LGPL Crypto library - runtime libr
ii  libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 2.23.5-3              GDK Pixbuf library
ii  libglib2.0-0       2.28.6-1              The GLib library of C routines
ii  libgtk2.0-0        2.24.4-3              The GTK+ graphical user interface 
ii  libjpeg62          6b1-2                 Independent JPEG Group's JPEG runt
ii  libnspr4-0d        4.8.9-1               NetScape Portable Runtime Library
ii  libnss3-1d         3.12.11-1             Network Security Service libraries
ii  libpango1.0-0      1.28.4-1              Layout and rendering of internatio
ii  libpng12-0         1.2.46-3              PNG library - runtime
ii  libspeex1          1.2~rc1-1             The Speex codec runtime library
ii  libstdc++6         4.6.1-4               GNU Standard C++ Library v3
ii  libvpx0            0.9.7.p1-1            VP8 video codec (shared library)
ii  libwebp0           0.1.2-1               Lossy compression of digital photo
ii  libx11-6           2:1.4.4-1             X11 client-side library
ii  libxext6           2:1.3.0-3             X11 miscellaneous extension librar
ii  libxml2            2.7.8.dfsg-4          GNOME XML library
ii  libxrender1        1:0.9.6-2             X Rendering Extension client libra
ii  libxslt1.1         1.1.26-8              XSLT 1.0 processing library - runt
ii  libxss1            1:1.2.1-2             X11 Screen Saver extension library
ii  xdg-utils          1.1.0~rc1-2           desktop integration utilities from
ii  zlib1g             1:1.2.3.4.dfsg-3      compression library - runtime

chromium recommends no packages.

Versions of packages chromium suggests:
pn  chromium-l10n                 <none>     (no description available)

-- no debconf information