52106 - <menulist> menus should pop up with chosen option under cursor

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: XUL, defect, P3)

Description

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Build: 2000090820, Mac OS 9.0

Steps to reproduce:
* Get a job at an Internet cafe which uses IE 5 for Windows.
* Offer to help a customer who hasn't used computers before, but wants to `get a
  Hotmail address'. Show said customer the basics of using a mouse.
* Take customer to <http://lc6.law5.hotmail.passport.com/cgi-bin/register>.
* Watch as customer fills out `First Name' and `Last Name'.
* Remind customer that they must specify that they're in New Zealand, not the
  United States, otherwise Hotmail will insist that they enter a Zip code which
  they don't have.
* Watch as customer clicks on the triangle-button part of the `Country/Region'
  popup menu and scans the list of countries. United States, United States
  Outlying Islands, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Vatican City State ...
* Grit your teeth in annoyance as, JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE with the same level of
  computer experience in the same situation, this user fails to work out how to
  choose an item (`New Zealand') above the current one (`United States') in the
  popup menu, and has to ask you for help.
* Repeat your silent wish that Windows popup menus worked like Mac ones, so that
  the method of getting to an item above the current one wasn't so smegging
  difficult to work out.

Erm, yes. At the moment, <menulist>s on the Mac are behaving like ordinary
<menu>s, and they shouldn't. They should pop up with the currently chosen item 
right under the cursor. Being a natural pessimist I don't expect you'll apply 
this behavior to <menulist>s in Windows, too, but if you did my job would be 
quite a bit more enjoyable.

Comment 1

[:deanis74]

I'm all for this on Mac.  And I'm all for MS improving their poor implementation 
of combo boxes on Windows.  But until they do, this should be Mac-only.

Comment 2

[Peter Trudelle]

->future

Comment 3

[Mike Pinkerton (not reading bugmail)]

pushing out

Comment 4

[Mike Pinkerton (not reading bugmail)]

not gonna happen in 098

Comment 5

[saari (gone)]

I'm thinking nsbeta1-... low severity. Push it out

Comment 6

[Mike Pinkerton (not reading bugmail)]

fffffffuture

Comment 7

[Simon Paquet [:sipaq]]

This bug is targeted at a Mac classic platform/OS, which is no longer supported
by mozilla.org. Please re-target it to another platform/OS if this bug applies
there as well or resolve this bug.

I will resolve this bug as WONTFIX in four weeks if no action has been taken.
To filter this and similar messages out, please filter for "mac_cla_reorg".

Comment 8

[Håkan Waara]

This is still relevant. We should fix it in our menu code.

Comment 9

[Neil Deakin]

Attachment: Open menulist at position of selected item

I had this patch sitting around for a while and polished it off.

It enables this for all menulists, but disables it for e10s selects for now. It didn't work perfectly and we can do that in another bug.

Two differences from native behaviour:

1. When the menulist popup would extend off the edge of the screen, the OS normally displays arrows to scroll so that the position is maintained over the selection. For very small popups, it instead flips them to be onscreen ignoring the selection. This patch does the latter always due to some sizing issues I want to investigate more.
2. Click and drag to open the menu on the OS closes the menu if the mouseup occurs outside the popup. We could solve this with a mouse capture check or something in a followup bug.

Comment 10

[Neil Deakin]

Note also that this is obviously Mac specific but you can use this behaviour on non-Mac with <menupopup position="selection">

Comment 11

[Markus Stange [:mstange]]

Comment on attachment 8757297 [details] [diff] [review]
Open menulist at position of selected item

Review of attachment 8757297 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Sorry for the long delay here. This patch improves things; if we start to use native menus for this at some point we can still back out this patch. I thought I might get a chance to play with that sooner, but I haven't gotten around to it yet, so let's land this in the meantime.
And judging by bug 1091592 it seems like we might not even want native-looking popups for <select>s any more. :(

Comment 12

[Neil Deakin]

https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=try&revision=b01f6f34230f

Comment 13

[Neil Deakin]

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/13f74c2a6ec21d33f6be5e5797d1219db65a8f75
Bug 52106, open menulist popup with selection over cursor, r=mstange

Comment 14

[Wes Kocher (:KWierso) (Not reading bugmail; email directly if needed)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/13f74c2a6ec2