Re: "Use Small Icons" UI redesign propsal

[Mike Beltzner]

Hi Quan: this should go to dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org or nntp://mozilla.dev.apps.firefox

cheers,
mike

On 10-Jun-08, at 6:37 PM, Quan wrote:

> Hi, (didn't know where else to propose this, so point me in the right
> direction if there's a better place)
>
> Currently, the icon default sizes for the toolbars are:
>
> menubar = small icons
> navbar = large icons
> bookmark toolbar = small icons
>
> To change this you need to tick the "Use Small Icons" (the tickbox in
> View > Toolbars > Customize...) and you get:
>
> menubar = small icons
> navbar = small icons
> bookmark toolbar = small icons
>
> If you then untick the "Use Small Icons" you get
>
> menubar = large icons
> navbar = large icons
> bookmark toolbar = large icons
>
> The only way to get back to the default state is to click the button
> "Restore Default Set", but this does not just affect icon sizes, it
> affects button positions and other UI customizations. 3 set behaviors,
> out of a total possible of 8, across a tickbox and a button which
> affects other customizations is not a good UI.
>
> This is in desperate need of a UI redesign. Chatting on irc://
> irc.mozilla.org/Firefox
> a few suggestions were put forth:
>
> 1: Having a "Use Small / Large icons" type option when right click
> each different toolbar.
>
> 2: Having a (perhaps hidden) buttons on each toolbar that allows
> certain properties to be easily changed.
>
> 3: Having small icons and large icons all displayed in the
> customization (perhaps separated by a tabs) so the user can put
> whatever icons they want where
>
> 4: Putting a drop down box with toolbar names next to the "Use Small
> Icons" tickbox so you can select which toolbar you want affected.
>
>
> The idea is to make a simple, clutterless and unambiguous redesign. I
> feel any of these ideas (although I don't think they're all ideal)
> would be better than the current state of affairs.
>
> What do people think?
>
> Related bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=295997
>
> -- Regards
> -- Damian Shaw
> _______________________________________________
> dev-planning mailing list
> dev-pl...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-planning

[Philip Chee]

Perhaps something like: <http://flickr.com/photos/aleytys/2038121424/>

See the following bugs:
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=394288>
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=428216>

Basically each individual toolbar can have their own defaults and their
own settings. In the latest patch I've changed the "Use global settings"
to "Use default settings" which should do what the OP wants but needs to
be applied to each toolbar.

I have patches in those bugs waiting for review from Neil. Once these
are baked in, someone could port them to Firefox.

A patch I wrote for the toolkit side of things had already been checked
in some time ago so if you have a "defaulticonsize" and/or "defaultmode"
attribute on a toolbar, The reset to defaults option in the customize
toolbar window will respect those.

Phil

Phil

--
Philip Chee <phi...@aleytys.pc.my>, <phili...@gmail.com>
http://flashblock.mozdev.org/ http://xsidebar.mozdev.org
Guard us from the she-wolf and the wolf, and guard us from the thief,
oh Night, and so be good for us to pass.

[Quan]

Hey, thanks for the fast reply

I quite like the right click idea but I would like to raise the issue
about discoverability. As raised in Firefox UI bugs, only the minority
of users are willing to right click on any object, most users only
right click on things if they think they are allowed or are told
explicitly to do so. But otherwise I think it's quite a good
implementation.

-- Regards
-- Damian

On Jun 11, 5:26 am, Philip Chee <philip.c...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Perhaps something like: <http://flickr.com/photos/aleytys/2038121424/>
>
> See the following bugs:
> <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=394288>
> <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=428216>
>
> Basically each individual toolbar can have their own defaults and their
> own settings. In the latest patch I've changed the "Use global settings"
> to "Use default settings" which should do what the OP wants but needs to
> be applied to each toolbar.
>
> I have patches in those bugs waiting for review from Neil. Once these
> are baked in, someone could port them to Firefox.
>
> A patch I wrote for the toolkit side of things had already been checked
> in some time ago so if you have a "defaulticonsize" and/or "defaultmode"
> attribute on a toolbar, The reset to defaults option in the customize
> toolbar window will respect those.
>
> Phil
>

> --
> Philip Chee <phi...@aleytys.pc.my>, <philip.c...@gmail.com>http://flashblock.mozdev.org/http://xsidebar.mozdev.org

[Dave Gomberg]

At 05:58 6/11/2008, Quan wrote:
>only the minority
>of users are willing to right click on any object, most users only
>right click on things if they think they are allowed or are told
>explicitly to do so.

Good point. How about establishing a Windows-wide convention that
if the rollover text is in italics then it means there is a useful
right click menu available?

--
Dave Gomberg, San Francisco NE5EE gomberg1 at wcf dot com
All addresses, phones, etc. at http://www.wcf.com/ham/info.html
-----------------------------------------------------------------

[Philip Chee]

On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 05:58:57 -0700 (PDT), Quan wrote:

> I quite like the right click idea but I would like to raise the issue
> about discoverability. As raised in Firefox UI bugs, only the minority
> of users are willing to right click on any object, most users only
> right click on things if they think they are allowed or are told
> explicitly to do so. But otherwise I think it's quite a good
> implementation.

Well in order to reach the "Customize Toolbar..." menu, you have to
right-click to get the context menu anyway, right?

Phil

--
Philip Chee <phi...@aleytys.pc.my>, <phili...@gmail.com>
http://flashblock.mozdev.org/ http://xsidebar.mozdev.org

Guard us from the she-wolf and the wolf, and guard us from the thief,
oh Night, and so be good for us to pass.

[ ]The moon is made of a green cheese. J.Heywood (1497-1580)
* TagZilla 0.066.6

[Kai Liu]

> Well in order to reach the "Customize Toolbar..." menu, you have to
> right-click to get the context menu anyway, right?
>

Or dig through the View menu...

But I think it's still fairly safe to assume that those who are advanced
enough to try to customize the toolbar probably know about context menus.

[alta88[nntp]]

heh, just use an extension.

[Quan]

Honestly I don't think "View > Toolbars > Customize..." is too hard to
find, but I am willing to concede the point that users who are
customizing their interface will probably try right clicking on any
particular object. That said I don't think that it should just be
accepted for any given UI that everything can be put in right click
(see clear list button debacle).

As for the mention of using an extension, am I right in thinking while
power features should be for extensions this shouldn't mean that
should mean what features are in Firefox are restrictive and
ambiguous?

[fitty six]

This is one of those situations where we can't even (easily) follow OS
conventions. On windows right-clicking a toolbar like the quicklaunch bar
will give you View > Large/small icons. On OS X there's really only the dock
that can be resized like this, and that one uses dynamic pixel sizes. On
Linux, KDE & Gnome both seem to prefer putting the panel size in the
properties of the panel. One nice thing Linux seems to do is use vectored
icons, so you can set the bar size by pixel height instead of just the
simple large/small.

Dynamic sized toolbars is probably a little beyond the scope of this, since
I'm not even sure we could support SVG Icons on a toolbar as-is (and it
might even involve an icon redesign), but I do think that would be a nice
'little thing' to have some day. One of the only suggestions that would even
work for dynamic toolbar sizes is the dropdown with the toolbars in it, but
I don't like that UI in the slightest (seems clunky to me, though I think I
have seen similar on linux). Instead I think it'd almost be worth it to add
some kind of toolbar settings UI in the customize that lists all the
toolbars, and provides settings for each, ie. Toolbar height for each &
icon/text setting for each, but unfortunately this is only 2 settings, which
is too few for a 'toolbar properties' on each toolbar, and a very odd UI as
proposed.

I kind of like the idea of giving different sized pallets. While this
wouldn't work well with the above plan, it could even allow the user to
mix/match small icons, large icons, text+icons, text only, etc which would
be exceptionally useful if we ever decided to make the top-level menu items
toolbar items, so we could iconize the top-level menus. The biggest problem
with this is the idea that the user would have to remove a small button
before zie could place the large button, or vice versa, unless we could
think of a clever solution to this I think this one is ruled out on that
alone.

The one we've mostly agreed is easiest at this point is the right-click use
small/large icons. Discoverability is always a problem, but perhaps
(although I really don't like the UI design) we could actually do both the
right-click and the dropdown, since the 2 wouldn't be in conflict in any
way.

I've mentioned before that I don't like the entire Customize toolbar UI,
but, as yet, I've not been able to think of a better solution for
customizing toolbars, firefox pretty much has the best solution I've
actually seen in-use.

[Joe Drew]

On Jun 11, 8:58 am, Quan <zur...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I quite like the right click idea but I would like to raise the issue
> about discoverability. As raised in Firefox UI bugs, only the minority
> of users are willing to right click on any object, most users only
> right click on things if they think they are allowed or are told
> explicitly to do so. But otherwise I think it's quite a good
> implementation.

I had a sudden brainstorm about this: what if users could choose the
large or small icon state of individual buttons? The View > Toolbars >
Customize dialog could list both (maybe with a toggle between the
two).

There's probably a bunch of backend XUL stuff that would be needed to
make this work, and it doesn't precisely map to the "usual way"
toolbars are customized, but it would solve the problem of needing to
somehow manage whether you've chosen small vs large icons. It'd be
obvious: they're two different buttons, either (or perhaps both?) of
which you can choose.

Joe

[Joe Drew]

And then I read that this was considered and rejected. Go me! (I still
think it's the best way.)

[David McRitchie]

"Philip Chee" wrote:
> Basically each individual toolbar can have their own defaults and their
> own settings.

I would like for each toolbar to be able to be easily set to exact pixel height..
One of the things I dislike most is the wasted space above/below icons.
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/icons/ff2_chrome.jpg

--
David McRitchie, extensions I use are briefly documented on my site
Firefox Custom: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/firefox/firefox.htm