87536 - RFE: alternative to oncontextmenu event

Status: REOPENED

(Core :: XUL, enhancement)

Description

[Dylan Schiemann]

RFE

A simple API to add and remove custom items of the context menu.

There has been much discussion over whether authors should be allowed to disable
a contextmenu on right click in order to add their own custom menu.

An alternative solution would be to allow authors to add their own items to the
menu.  An interface available through JavaScript could work something like this:

Interface ContextMenu

Attributes

name of type string

length of type integer returns the number of custome menu items added

maximumLength of type integer represents the maximum number of menu items that
may be added


Methods

addMenuItem()

	Return Value: index of type integer representing the index in the context menu

	Exceptions
	
	INDEX_SIZE_ERR: Raised if the maximum number of custom menu item additions has
been exceeded


removeMenuItem(index)

	if index is not specified, the last menu item is removed.
	
	Exceptions
	
	NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if the maximum number of custom menu item additions has
been exceeded
	


addEventListener("command",listener,false)

where only one type of event, command, is supported.  command is typically a
click.  false is for capture since event capturing is not well-defined here.

This is very rough, but I thought it would be better to post this now than
continue to delay until I have more time to think about the exact details of the
interface.  For example, should the constructor  include the name and the listener?

Comments?

Comment 1

[joki (gone)]

Should go to context menu owner.

Comment 2

[Koike Kazuhiko]

Mozilla has oncontextmenu event now.

Comment 3

[Dylan Schiemann]

This was not requesting an oncontextmenu event... but an RFE for ading items to
the standard context menu.

Comment 4

[Dylan Schiemann]

Adobe's SVG Viewer 3.0 added a similar idea for their context menu... see
http://www.protocol7.com/svg-wiki/default.asp?CustomizingContextMenu for
details.  I think it would make a good start.  I know this won't be thought
about until post 1.0.

Comment 5

[Alex Vincent [:WeirdAl]]

Hm.  I was working on something mildly similar to this last night.  I figured
out how in DOM to access the context menu of a textbox specifically for
prepending and appending items to a context menu, and how to override the
textbox's default context menu entirely.

Basically, I organized it so the script detects for two attributes,
contextPrepend and contextAppend.  These attributes would be space-separated id
values for <popup /> elements.

// code hack for modifying default textbox context menu

function InsertTextboxContextMenus(textbox) {
  var hbox = document.getAnonymousNodes(textbox)[0];
  var contextId = hbox.getAttribute("context")
  if (contextId == "_child") {
    var menupopup = document.getAnonymousNodes(hbox)[1];
  } else {
    menupopup = document.getElementById(contextId);
  }

  var response = menupopup.cloneNode(true);

  var prepend = textbox.getAttribute("contextPrepend").split(/\s+/);
  var menuFirstChild = response.childNodes[0]
  for (var j = 0; j < prepend.length; j++) {
    var prependMenu = document.getElementById(prepend[j]);
    if (prependMenu) {
      for (var i = 0; i < prependMenu.childNodes.length; i++) {
        response.insertBefore(prependMenu.childNodes[i].cloneNode(true),
menuFirstChild);
      }
    }
  }

  var append = textbox.getAttribute("contextAppend").split(/\s+/);
  for (j = 0; j < append.length; j++) {
    var appendMenu = document.getElementById(append[j]);
    if (appendMenu) {
      for (i = 0; i < appendMenu.childNodes.length; i++) {
        response.appendChild(appendMenu.childNodes[i].cloneNode(true));
      }
    }
  }
  // make it unique and reset the context to the new menu.
  response.id += Math.random().toString().substr(2);
  menupopup.parentNode.appendChild(response)
  hbox.setAttribute("context", response.id);
}

On one level it works (I also had a function, overrideTextboxContextMenu, that
would forcibly redirect the textbox's anonymous hbox node to have the parent
textbox's context attribute).  But when I tried to use it in DOM Inspector code
I was editing, (bug 112922) I received an unusual exception:

Error: controller has no properties
Source File: chrome://global/content/bindings/textbox.xml#input-box.doCommand()
Line: 3

The file in question doesn't include a doCommand() method... and DOM Inspector does.

My two cents -- don't know if they help here.

Comment 6

[John Drinkwater (:beta)]

This should probably be closed, as Firefox supports HTML5’s context menus now.
For an example http://davidwalsh.name/html5-context-menu

Comment 7

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The bug assignee is inactive on Bugzilla, so the assignee is being reset.