106462 - UI support for browser.blink_allowed pref

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 161109

(SeaMonkey :: Preferences, enhancement)

Description

[Chase Tingley]

Split off from bug 19258 to deal with the UI issue -- should
"browser.blink_allowed" be exposed via prefs GUI, and (if so) what should it be
tied to?

There was some debate about how to deal with this in the old bug.  Relevant
comments (hope I didn't miss any):

------- Additional Comments From Matthew Tuck 2000-10-02 09:59 -------

I don't believe blink and animation should be the same pref.  I wouldn't want
blink but would want animation.  Disabling animation is already fairly advanced
over at bug #17686.

As a temporary thing perhaps we could ensure blink is at a period that is known
not to effect epileptics.  I haven't heard of it being a problem in previous
browsers, I would suspect general video is a much bigger problem since it could
go a lot faster.

------- Additional Comments From Skewer 2001-05-12 12:06 -------

This bug gets my vote, and it needs to be nsCatFood too. Nobody likes blinking 
text! It needs to be optional. I want a way to disable blinking text, both in 
the BLINK element and CSS1 text-decoration: blink;. This needs to be accessible 
through the UI and fairly simple to do (clear one checkbox, for example). This 
is a serious enough user satisfaction issue to cause people to switch to a 
different browser. In fact, when I ask people why they don't use Netscape, 
BLINK is usually at the top of their list.

------- Additional Comments From Matthew Thomas (mpt) 2001-05-14 10:27 -------

I don't think this needs any extra UI, beyond that provided for other 
animations. If you want animations but not blinking text, you can edit your 
html.css. But I think most people who don't like flashy moving things will want 
to toggle both at once.

| Category:             Multimedia :::::::::: [  Normal settings :^] |
| +-------------------+                                              |
| |=Navigator=========| [/] Automatically load ima_ges and plugins   |
| |=Display===========|     [/] Allow images as _backgrounds         |
| |  Languages        | [/] Show _animations                         |
| |  Accessibility    |     [/] Allow _looping of animations         |
| |  Fonts            | [/] Play _sounds                             |
| |  Colors & Effects |     [/] Allow loo_ping of sounds             |
| |::Multimedia:::::::|                                              |

As a preliminary implementation, turning off `Allow looping of animations' 
would disable blinking text completely. As a further enhancement, turning off 
`Show animations' would make blinking text only blink three times before 
stopping.


------- Additional Comments From Matthew Thomas (mpt) 2001-05-14 10:35 -------

Errr ... Make that, `Having "Show animations" turned on, but "Allow looping of 
animations" turned off, would make blinking text blink only three times before 
stopping'. Sorry for the confusion.


------- Additional Comments From Skewer 2001-05-14 13:15 -------

I think blinking text needs its own option. Animated images are usually done
tastefully on the web, and the functionality of some websites depends on the
viewer's ability to view animated graphics. Blinking text is totally different.
It's like pestilence in my browser. It serves no purpose except to annoy.

Comment 1

[Skewer]

------- Additional Comments From Skewer 2001-10-12 13:48 -------

Since this is important for a lot of reasons (accessibility to users with
epilepsy, FCC requirements), I think we need to get a front-end built to make
the choice available to an end-user. Organizations which would rather not have
blinking text won't go to the trouble to edit JS config files to remove it - not
when IE doesn't use it at all.

------- Additional Comments From Skewer 2001-10-10 23:24 -------

I think the best existing pref panel to put this on is Appearance/Fonts, as a
checkbox:

[*] Allow documents to use other fonts
[ ] Allow documents to display blinking text

I can't say that I agree with the decision to make blinking text enabled by
default, but I suppose if it wasn't, nobody would ever enable it.

Comment 2

[James Green]

It makes sense to put this into Appearance/Fonts and also to rename the "Fonts"
panel to "Text." This immediately rings bells with most people as encompassing
what they can adjust with regards font selection and text behaviours.

Comment 3

[Skewer]

Until we fix this bug, we need a relnote like there was for NS4.

Comment 4

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Renaming the `Fonts' panel would make it much harder to find where to choose
your default fonts, so that's not really practical.

Anyway, Skewer said (bug 19258 comment 41), and I agree:
|
| I can't say that I agree with the decision to make blinking text enabled by
| default, but I suppose if it wasn't, nobody would ever enable it.

And CSS2 <http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/text.html#lining-striking-props> and the
CSS3 working draft both say:
|
| Conforming user agents are not required to support this value.

Therefore, this pref is completely pointless. Just remove Mozilla's support for
text-decoration: blink. --> Layout

Comment 5

[Skewer]

mpt: I agree with you, but since support for blinking text already exists, that 
has very little chance of happening (doing so would create regression CSS 
compatibility bugs). Unfortunately there is also very little chance blinking 
text will be disabled by default until there is an option in the UI to turn it 
on (darn you <BLINK> lovers at Netscape!!). I wouldn't say that this bug report 
is pointless at all.

Another option for pref panels is to add a new one, Appearance/Animation. We 
could move the prefs for GIF image animation there, too (GIF animation has 
nothing to do with privacy or security).

Comment 6

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

I'm sorry, I don't care if support for blinking text already exists. If that was
used as rationale for every change in Mozilla, the codebase would grow without
bound instead of approaching perfection. Mozilla exists to be used by humans,
not the other way around; the back end should implement things which humans find
useful, rather than the front end being forced to expose every misfeature which
the back end happens to implement.

It is simply not true that removing support for {text-decoration: blink} would
be a CSS regression, as my quote from the spec shows. It may be that the Layout
module owners decide that compatibility with an obsolete version of
<about:mozilla> is important, so that {text-decoration: blink} should be
retained in the layout engine itself. However it is the opinion of this here UI
component assignee that for the particular user of the layout engine known as
Mozilla Navigator (and its derivatives by default), such a misfeature should be
neither on by default nor exposed in the front end.

Comment 7

[Skewer]

I agree, but good luck finding an engineer to patch that and check it in (within
any reasonable length of time).

Comment 8

[Christopher Aillon (sabbatical, not receiving bugmail)]

*** Bug 115001 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 9

[Kevin McCluskey (gone)]

Marking nsbeta1-.

Comment 10

[Andrew Hagen]

Proposed relnote: To prevent text from blinking, create a text file in your
profile directory called user.js. In that file place the following line

user_pref("browser.blink_allowed", false);

Comment 11

[Kevin McCluskey (gone)]

Changing component from layout to preferences. Reassigning.

Comment 12

[Paul Wyskoczka]

nsbeta1- per the nav triage team.

Comment 13

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 161109 ***

Comment 14

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

v dup

Comment 15

[Firefox Bug Husbandry Bot]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1527381