More preference window tweaks landed on trunk

Waldo · Post by **Waldo** » July 24th, 2006, 3:09 pm

Update: spellcheck UI has been added to Advanced-General options; the checkbox toggles between enabling spellchecking by default for multiline text controls and disabling it entirely. (The right-click menu option to toggle checking always works regardless of the preference value.) If you've used about:config to set the option to 2 (spellcheck single-line controls as well), then that choice should be preserved if you don't touch that UI when fiddling with other preferences in the area and closing the window. (Toggling any number of times and then closing, however, will never result in 2 being the value of the preference, tho -- you'd need to hit about:config to restore it.)

I'm 99% sure there are no bugs in the spellcheck UI, but testing that just to be safe wouldn't hurt.

a;skdjfajf;ak · Post by **a;skdjfajf;ak** » July 24th, 2006, 3:30 pm

Spell check seems to turn on/off just fine. Single field also goes on/off ok with the right-click option.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20060724 Minefield/3.0a1,Firefox ID:2006072414 [cairo]

Canyonero · Post by **Canyonero** » July 24th, 2006, 7:01 pm

Just out of curiosity, why was the homepage stuff reverted back to the old UI? I liked the new implementation despite its little flaws. Plus, the buttons look really crappy on Classic Windows interface.

While I'm looking, a few other personal prefs/comments:

"Always check to make sure _ is the default browser" - To me this is a one time pref, shown the first time you launch. No need to be in the UI again. Same with the "Warn me when I open lots of tabs at once." They show up the first time you run into the problem, and you decide whether or not to ever see them again. No need to waste space with them.

I'm in favor of moving the word Javascript outta the pref box too. Perhaps just the word scripts? I think that's come up before and gotten people mad though.

Feed Reader needs to be disabled when Live Bookmarks are selected, but I'm guessing that one is known. I don't understand why Addon prefs and Phishing detection are grouped together though, but the phishing prefs don't make sense anyway and aren't done, so maybe that's just temporary, eh?

The only other thing that bugs me is the word "Always" is used in a lot of unnecessary places. "Always check to make sure..." listed up above. "Always subscribe with a Live Bookmark" "Always clear my private data..." "Always use the cursor keys..." In my opinion, most of 'em could be removed without changing the meaning of the pref.

Elder Young · Post by **Elder Young** » July 24th, 2006, 10:05 pm

Waldo wrote:
Elder Young wrote:This looks good to me, other than the bottom of the border for warning messages is cut off. Is this a known issue?

Vaguely; I've heard persistent rumors about this problem in various places, although I'm not seeing it on Linux. Could you file a bug, make it block bug 340677, and assign it to jwalden (plus sign) bmo (at) mit (dot) edu so I don't forget it?

I've submitted <A HREF="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=345808">Bug 345808</A>, and I marked it as blocking 340677. I didn't assign it to you because I don't know how to assign bugs to specific folks. Sorry.

Post by **BenBasson** » July 24th, 2006, 10:24 pm

Assigned as requested.

aronin · Post by **aronin** » July 24th, 2006, 11:01 pm

I don't see whats the purpose of 'Hide the Tab Bar only when one web site is open'. It has just one use case and still warrants a space in the Preferences Panel. Besides, it prominently changes the UI once a user opens multiple tabs (bad usability IMO).

My basic issue with this option is something different though. Lets say a user downloads Firefox (by himself, not configured and set up by a friend etc). Is there anyway that he will know that this browser supports Tabbed Browsing? Tab Bar is not shown, New Tab Button is not shown... hence there is no UI indicator for Tabbed Browsing discoverability. Just for reference, every other browser has one or the other way of telling a first time user that the browser supports Tabbed Browsing... just not Firefox.

Two possible solutions to this discoverability problem:

1. Put the 'New Tab' button on the toolbar by default
2. Remove the preference for hiding the tab bar when one web site open (i.e. always show the tab bar or atleast deselect the preference by default.... I would ideally have a hidden preference for this or no preference at all... IMHO this preference is not required)

Filed https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=345811 for 'Better Visual Discoverability of Tabbed Browsing in Firefox'

Thumper · Post by **Thumper** » July 25th, 2006, 2:04 am

Waldo wrote:Incorrect. Feeds is a result of being crunched for space in the window, and the phishing stuff (some of which is going away soon -- there are various political issues surrounding this that have blocked updating the UI :-\ )

Yeah, it was the product placement I was referring to as Netscape-itis. Anyway, this looks quite a bit nicer.

- Chris

toscha42 · Post by **toscha42** » July 25th, 2006, 4:25 am

Waldo wrote:I'm not the icon-master. Someone else will be following up on that eventually...

Will there be a chance to have *no* icons at all in the preferences UI for those running Firefox / Minefield in TextOnly mode? General settings like these should IMHO apply also to 'sub-UIs'.

Ciao
Toscha

RaiseMachine · Post by **RaiseMachine** » July 25th, 2006, 4:56 am

aronin wrote:2. Remove the preference for hiding the tab bar when one web site open (i.e. always show the tab bar or atleast deselect the preference by default.... I would ideally have a hidden preference for this or no preference at all... IMHO this preference is not required)

There already is one: browser.tabs.autoHide which reflects the option from the UI. Remove the UI option by all means, no reason to remove the pref though.

Post by **BenBasson** » July 25th, 2006, 10:36 am

aronin wrote:Two possible solutions to this discoverability problem

The main discoverability problem was tabbed browsing being off by default. It isn't anymore. Hurrah!

ehume · Post by **ehume** » July 25th, 2006, 4:19 pm

As for the tabbar disappearing when there is only one: why waste the space with a display that nets you no information? IMO, screen real estate is precious. You may wish to waste yours, but I am thankful that I can recycle that real estate. After all, this flat panel display was expensive . . .

pikaunforgiven · Post by **pikaunforgiven** » July 25th, 2006, 7:28 pm

im kinda with ehume on this one. its nice having the tab bar hidden when doing certain things (such as playing an online browser-based game or pr0n) so you have a little more viewing room. F11 somewhat alleviates this, but its still nice to also be able to multitask even with a single browser tab open.

mrtech · Post by **mrtech** » July 25th, 2006, 8:12 pm

my 2 cents:
- Tabs and Feeds needs a groupbox with or without a title for consistency
- Feed Reader option should be below the "When I click..." and should be disabled if with live bookmark is selected
- On the security tab the first groupbox should be merged into the "Warnings" groupbox and it should be moved to the top.
- "Check Spelling as I type" really shouldn't be part of Advanced "general-browsing" but should be in the Content tab with block, load and enable, etc
- Aren't Feeds really Content, should there be a tabbed section in Content or are tabs in the panels not favored anymore?
- System Defaults for default browser needs to be moved to Advanced tab

For all panels I favor the default contrast that the Advanced tab has between the window's background and the lighter color of the tabs, it makes reading the options much easier than having the system default font and font color against the gray default background (at least on windows platform)

Waldo · Post by **Waldo** » July 27th, 2006, 6:17 pm

Canyonero wrote:Just out of curiosity, why was the homepage stuff reverted back to the old UI?

A few issues, among them the problem that it's difficult to go from a URL to a bookmark name in Firefox 2 bookmarks code, which was one of the big reasons to have the previous UI. Also, there was some wonkiness with interaction between everything that doesn't exist in the simpler previous implementation.

Canyonero wrote:"Always check to make sure _ is the default browser" - To me this is a one time pref, shown the first time you launch. No need to be in the UI again. Same with the "Warn me when I open lots of tabs at once." They show up the first time you run into the problem, and you decide whether or not to ever see them again. No need to waste space with them.

This is an issue of user control; you should never make the user feel like he's not in control. Once he's made a choice, he no longer has control over these preferences without having to search or ask for help, and that's not a good thing.

Canyonero wrote:Feed Reader needs to be disabled when Live Bookmarks are selected, but I'm guessing that one is known.

No, this is intentional, because you can have a reader selected without using a reader as the default action.

Waldo · Post by **Waldo** » July 27th, 2006, 6:38 pm

By the way, I just committed another patch to feeds code to align the feeds backend with the preference front-end. I don't think there are any problems with it, but if you want to test out the feed preferences, subscription UI, preview page, etc. for anything you might see that's wrong, I'd appreciate it. Thanks! :-)