54802 - Add clipboard buttons for Composer

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: Composer, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

I think, Cut, Copy and Paste are far more frequently used than New/Open/Save or
Print. Anyway, IMO, the clipboards actions deserve buttons. Menu and keyboard
shortcuts are slow, context-menus not too obvious.

Comment 1

[rubydoo123]

setting to future for review and evaluation post-rtm

Comment 2

[[e-mail]]

Attachment: Proposed patch (content only)

Comment 3

[Kathleen :Brade]

we don't have room on the toolbar for this
-->brade

Comment 4

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Then remove e.g. the composer icon in the left. Remove hline too and you have
place for 3 buttons.

Comment 5

[Akkana Peck]

Ben: you have no idea how much we agree with you about removing that enormous
icon from the left!  There's a bug on that already but the theme is not under
our control.

Comment 6

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

heh. Just add the buttons and then claim that the static icon makes the toolbar
too wide *g*.

Comment 7

[[e-mail]]

CCing [e-mail] in case he needs to design the button icons.

Comment 8

[Charles Manske]

Keyboard shortcuts are slow??? I never use anything but them! 
We desparately need configurable toolbar, and/or some control over the button 
width that works for all themes.

Comment 9

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Charles Manske, they are slow, if you happen to have no hand on the keyboard.
Also, they are not "accessible" for newbies - they prefer buttons.

Comment 10

[german]

without proper button management, we will have too many buttons on the editor
toolbar. This is not so much an issue of pixel space but one of human perception
limits. Ading this buttons would require resorting the whole toolbar and better
grouping (maybe collapsing mult. items into one), so that the top level number
of items looks less overwhelming for the default setup for this toolbar
(regardless whether or not toolbars become customizable later).

Comment 11

[Kathleen :Brade]

Correction:  We *ALREADY* have too many icons on the toolbars in Composer.
German is correct, there is too much there now for people to really grasp.  We 
need to rework it (which is not a high priority) or have configurable toolbars.

Targetting this bug for Future until we have configurable toolbars or come up 
with a design to add the tools without overwhelming the user with options.

Comment 12

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

For the record: I don't think that configurability will help us here, because
these buttons are primarily for newbies and thus should be in the default setup.

Comment 13

[[e-mail]]

Classic allows more buttons to fit on the toolbar if you add this:

Index: editor.css
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/mozilla/themes/classic/editor/editor.css,v
retrieving revision 1.7
diff -u -r1.7 editor.css
--- editor.css  2001/05/11 00:32:39     1.7
+++ editor.css  2001/08/31 07:56:38
@@ -73,4 +73,9 @@
     border-bottom         : 1px solid ThreeDFace !important;
   }

+#EditToolbar > .button-toolbar-2,
+#EditToolbar > .menubutton-dual > .menubutton-dual-ex-button
+  {
+    min-width             : 0px;
+  }

Comment 14

[Syd Logan]

spam composer change

Comment 15

[[e-mail]]

If this patch is waiting for toolbar customization,
can this bug be updated appropriately?

Comment 16

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

This shouldn't be dependent on toolbar customization if the clipboard buttons
should be present by default, and I agree with Ben that they should be.

Default buttons in Wordpad (Windows):
*   New Open Save | Print Preview | Cut Copy Paste Undo | Time/Date
                                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Default buttons in WorldText (Mac OS):
*   Left Center Right Left-Justify Full-Justify | Cut Copy Paste
                                                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Default buttons in FrontPage (Windows):
*   New Open Save | Print Preview | Cut Copy Paste | Undo Redo | 16 more ...
                                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Default buttons in Composer 4.x (all platforms):
*   New Open Save Publish Browse | Cut Copy Paste | Print Preview | 6 more ...
                                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I suggest for Composer now:
*   New Open Save | Undo Redo | Cut Copy Paste Insert | Browse

`Insert' would be a menubutton of the items available to insert (image, table,
horizontal rule, etc). To have horizontal rule and table as top-level items on
the toolbar, while the far more often-used Cut, Copy, and Paste commands are not
present, seems very odd indeed.

Comment 17

[Charles Manske]

If we must have clipboard items, I'd suggest this for composer
New Open [Save/Publish] | Cut Copy Paste | Browse Print Spell | Insert
or:
New Open [Save/Publish] | Browse Print Spell | Cut Copy Paste | Insert

Note that this is 10 buttons, where we currently have 11

Comment 18

[Kathleen :Brade]

Instead of putting the insert html objects in a dropdown (which is very awkward
to use compared to what is there now), I favor instead creating a 3rd toolbar.
(note: all of these would be shorter toolbars to not lose vertical editing space)

I propose this:

File tb:   New Open Save/Publish Browse | Find Print Spell | Undo Cut Copy Paste
Insert tb: ParagraphFormat | Image HRule Table Link Anchor | Symbols [others?]
Format tb: colors small big b i u | bullet number | indents | alignment

I'm sure this needs a bit more massaging (since I just made it up).
The bottom two toolbars probably need some more rearranging.  Perhaps to split
up "block" vs "non-block"?

note:  I don't think redo should be on the toolbars.

Comment 19

[Charles Manske]

I agree that a third toolbar is a good idea! We would definitely need smaller
icons than those in the first toolbar to reduce vertical height and maybe not
include the word labels? (in the best case make them optional as we do in 4.x)
If you think of a "list" as more like an object, then how about putting them
on the 2nd toolbar instead of the paragraph style?
[Bullet-List] [Number-List] [Image] [Table] [H.Line] [Link] [Anchor]
[Paragraph] [colors] [size] [B] [I] [U] [<-] [->] [3 alig ]
(Note difference in order -- I don't like current [Anchor] [HLine] [Link] order.)
It seems that lists are used often, so I put them at the beginning.
I could see them at the end as well, and swap the align buttons with 
outdent/indent so the list buttons might be right above outdent/indent (if we
are lucky!)

Comment 20

[Akkana Peck]

Please, can we have a text-only option for composer toolbars?  Many of us find
tiny toolbar icons very hard to understand (the current composer icons are much
clearer than in 4.x, but if they get too small they'll be impossible to figure
out), or find text clearer than icons in general; and text is inherently
vertically short compared to images.

Comment 21

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Since you are talking about adding another toolbar, I posted to the newsgroup:
<news://news.mozilla.org/[e-mail]>.

Comment 22

[Charles Manske]

Adding support for text-only is a good idea, but would have to be implemented for
all toolbars, not just composer.

Comment 23

[Simon Fraser [no longer active]]

We need input from UI designers before throwing buttons for every basic function 
on the toolbar. Personally, I hate the idea.

Comment 24

[[e-mail]]

Attachment: New patch - customizable toolbars - backend only

Comment 25

[Kathleen :Brade]

Comment on attachment 115868 [details] [diff] [review]
New patch - customizable toolbars - backend only

r=brade

Comment 26

[Alec Flett]

Comment on attachment 115868 [details] [diff] [review]
New patch - customizable toolbars - backend only

sr=alecf

Comment 27

[Kathleen :Brade]

-->neil

Comment 28

[[e-mail]]

Attachment: More stuff

This adds the find button (which brade asked for) plus the pref panel (but with
the cut/copy/paste/find prefs disabled for now) plus new code to handle
removing separators with nothing to separate (not obvious because of a themes
bug).

Comment 29

[Alec Flett]

Comment on attachment 117072 [details] [diff] [review]
More stuff

sr=alecf

Comment 30

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

classic icons (and css) have landed.

as soon as we get modern, we can stop disabling cut/copy/paste/find in the
toolbar prefs.

Comment 31

[[e-mail]]

Attachment: Patch to enable the prefs

Comment 32

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

see bug 196126, which hooks up help reference for the composer toolbar pref panel.

Comment 33

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

we will soon have the modern icons, in time for 1.4 final.

so we should be able to fix this for 1.4 final.

I'll land that last patch from neil, with the fix for bug #199358

Comment 34

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

fixed, you can now hide/show these toolbar icons in modern & classic.

r/sr/a=sspitzer on neil's supplimental patch.

Comment 35

[Chris Petersen]

Using the 2003-05-20-03 Macho build, Cut , Paste , and Copy toolbar icons are
displayed in Classic and Modern themes (when enabled in Preferences - Composer -
Toolbars). Also, verifying the icons are functional when copying a selection,
cutting a selection, and pasting a selection. 

However, I noticed no tooltip is displayed when hovering over either cut, copy,
or paste.. Is there are bug on this issue ?

Comment 36

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

chris, see bug 206499 for the missing tooltips issue.

Comment 37

[Chris Petersen]

Verified on 2003-05-21-08 Win32 trunk and 2003-05-20-03 Macho trunk builds.
Thanks  for the note regarding the tooltip bug.