178161 - [AltSS] Can't use alternate stylesheets in Mozilla Firebird

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: Menus, enhancement)

Description

[Winnie]

Why was this feature stripped from Phoenix builds? I'm using 0.4 now and Use
Style is not in the View menu.

Comment 1

[André Dahlqvist]

Good question. Marking this as an enhancement and setting status to NEW.

Comment 2

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

This is a design decision, not a bug and the Phoenix team has already said that
this should be implemented as an extension (probably with a site-navigation
toolbar) and not as part of the core browser

Comment 3

[Sébastien Delahaye]

*** Bug 199510 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 4

[Roland Mainz]

Asa Dotzler wrote:
> This is a design decision, not a bug and the Phoenix team has already said 
> that this should be implemented as an extension (probably with a 
> site-navigation toolbar) and not as part of the core browser

The lack of this feature causes HUGE pain for people who want to use MathML - is
that "wanted", too?

Comment 5

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

*** Bug 199510 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 6

[fantasai]

"User agents should allow users to select from alternate style sheets."
-- http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/present/styles.html#h-14.3.1

If you want to mark this as dependent on 83663, fine, but it should not be
an "extension" that the user must seek to enable.

If there are other technical reasons why this should not be implemented, I need
to know.

Thanks,
fantasai

Comment 7

[David Hyatt]

--> me

Comment 8

[David Hyatt]

The current plan is to make alternate stylesheets part of the "<link> toolbar."  The UI will be more 
evident than it is now, in that the toolbar will actually appear to offer the choice of alternate sheets 
(making it more obvious that the sheets are available).

The "<link> toolbar" extension will be a removable extension, but we'll have it installed by default 
(disabled) so that you can easily turn it on.

Comment 9

[fantasai]

> The current plan is to make alternate stylesheets part of the "<link> toolbar."
> ...

Wonderful! But you still need menu items corresponding to the toolbar bit, and
those should be part of the core menus. /That/ is what this bug is about.

Comment 10

[David Hyatt]

The new Mozilla browser is going to be extremely layered, offering a range of features from a 
barebones browser installation up to the fully loaded installation.  Alternate stylesheet UI (IMO) 
falls somewhere in the middle.  It's not something you'd put into the most basic installation.  

Comment 11

[fantasai]

> It's not something you'd put into the most basic installation.

If you look on alternate styles only as offering a set of stylistic choices,
then perhaps that would be true. Whether the page uses a blue or green
background is not particularly important. However, alternate styles go beyond
that.

I have, for example, a page in which I use alternate styles to switch between
full tag descriptions, short (mainly syntactic) descriptions, and a definition
list giving the tag name and a one-line purpose.

Other pages use alternate styles to display editing information--by using
"display: none" on <del> and no special styling of <ins> by default and using
"text-decoration: line-through" and "color: red; font-weight: bold" on those
elements in an alternate sheet. This information will not be accessible without
alternate style support. (Or without disabling all styles and relying on
ua.css.)

With powerful style sheets, the manipulations on an XML document can have
drastic effects on what information is displayed and how it is organized and
transmitted to the reader. Therefore I believe this switch is core functionality
that belongs in a barebones browser.

I argue also that the placement and expression of a "disable styles" switch
should be consistent regardless of what extensions are installed. The
logical place for this switch is a "None" option in the Use Style menu. Make
the menu optional and you lose this consistency.

Comment 12

[Nilson Cain]

The W3C also reccommends that all browsers have one.  I want to se it in by
default, not as an extension.

Comment 13

[Simon Paquet [:sipaq]]

Taking QA Contact as designated owner of Firebird-Menus. Sorry for bugspam.

Comment 14

[Karl Guertin]

This should be WONTFIX as suggested by Asa earlier.

Extensions implementing this:
http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/#linktoolbar
http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/#styleselector

Moreover I have yet to see a site in the wild that do not provide users with
javascript links to change the pages. e.g. the mozilla 1.0 start page
(http://www.mozilla.org/start/1.0) and extensionroom
(http://extensionroom.mozdev.org) does this. Most users don't need this and
those that do can either have style links provided as part of a cross-browser
solution or download the extension.

Comment 15

[fantasai]

> Moreover I have yet to see a site in the wild that do not provide users with
> javascript links to change the pages.

Because there's no reliable UI for it. A style switcher really is not something
that belongs in the page content. It is also not something that should depend on
having a scripting language enabled.

Comment 16

[David Hyatt]

Fixed.  Firebird now supports alternate stylesheet selection via an icon in the
status bar.

Comment 17

[Simon Paquet [:sipaq]]

verified with 2003010 W2K build.

Comment 18

[David Tenser [:djst]]

Hyatt, will this feature be accessible using the keyboard in some way? Either
via keyboard shortcuts or by also adding it to the main menu. Otherwise this
feature will not be accessible for users without a mouse.