92429 - Need key icon for new security dialogs

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core Graveyard :: Security: UI, defect)

Description

[Håkan Waara]

I am working on a few bugs to fix up the PSM's UI a bit, and we are currently
using the alert-icon for our alerts.

However, I believe it would be clearer if these alerts used a key icon (which
immediately is associated to security, for most people).

This would be high gain because people would understand what the alert was all
about before they had read the text.

Comment 1

[Bob Lord]

Are there functional areas other than security that have their own alert icons?

Comment 2

[timeless]

Afaik no, at some point Profile Manager might get a users icon or borrow the 
PSM lock icon.  Account Manager is currently just lots and lots of text and 
radios and checks and has very few prompts.

The icons would probably not be owned by security since they could be used by 
Profile Manager, Mail News and Network

Comment 3

[Håkan Waara]

Generally, I don't think all types of different 'problems' we pop up on the user
should have different icons - we should be consistent, but I consider a security
alert special in this regard.

Often, there are alerts the user barely read the alert text, blindly clicking
the "Cancel" or whatever button, but in critical cases such as this, when it has
to do with security, we should special-case it.

Request for passwords / Security problems should use this key icons in their
alert as opposed to the exclamation-mark icon.

Comment 4

[Joe Hewitt (gone)]

graphics == marlon

Comment 5

[marlon bishop]

how about a lock image instead of a key?   We have a few alerts which will
receive images - exclamation point, question mark, lock, i believe. targeting ->
0.9.4

Comment 6

[Håkan Waara]

Yeah a lock would be cool.

Comment 7

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

A key icon should only be used in alerts which ask for a user name and/or
password. The security alerts Håkan is interested in (about expired certificates
etc) are ordinary dangerous-decision alerts, and should use a /!\ icon. They
shouldn't use a special key/padlock/whatever icon for the same reason that
save-changes alerts shouldn't use a disk icon, or that the delete bookmark alert
shouldn't use a flaming bookmark icon; doing so would dilute the meaning of all
the icons, make it harder to tell whether or not a particular situation was
dangerous, and slow the user down.

Alerts should use one of four icons: a stop sign icon for errors, an `i' icon
for messages, a `!' icon for dangerous decisions, or a key icon for asking for a
password. Any alert using an icon other than those four (such as a question mark
icon, for example) is a bug.

Comment 8

[marlon bishop]

fyi, a stop sign isn't very well localizable. which is why we are using an "X".  

the question mark icon is fine as long as it is related to the Help system in
some way.

we were planing on using the padlock in conjunction with the warning triangle. 
there's nothing wrong with an additional custom message icon, we aren't diluting
anything.  

Comment 9

[Joe Hewitt (gone)]

Attachment: patch

Comment 10

[Joe Hewitt (gone)]

Attachment: ignore this

Comment 11

[Joe Hewitt (gone)]

Attachment: icon images to place in themes/modern/global/icons

Comment 12

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

I'll land hewitt's patch (and the new icons) on the trunk and branch, but there 
seems like there are pieces missing before we can mark this bug fixed.

1) changes to mozilla/security to use the new icons

for example, should 
mozilla/security/manager/pki/resources/content/newserver.xul be switched over 
to use security-icon instead of alert-icon?

2) do we intend to use the new secure-alert icon when ever a security related 
alert pops up?  if so, we'll need to think about how to do that, since right 
now we just do alert().  [should we add secureAlert()?  secureConfirm()?]

3) what about for other things beside alerts?  does nsIPrompt need to be extend 
to have a "secure" parameter, and then if so, use the "secure" versions of the 
icons?

or are those covered by other bugs that should depend on this one?

Comment 13

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

new icons and .css change landed on the trunk.

Comment 14

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Comment on attachment 48254 [details]
icon images to place in themes/modern/global/icons

a=asa for checkin to the 0.9.4 branch

Comment 15

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

new icons landed on 0.9.4 branch as well.

Comment 16

[Håkan Waara]

Seth, I think you should log separate bugs on that issue.

Comment 17

[Conrad Carlen (not reading bugmail)]

Overhaul of the nsIPrompt/nsIPromptService ifaces is being discussed on bug 95649.

Comment 18

[Stephane Saux]

What changes if any are required of PSM because of these changes.  0.9.4 is past
the ui freeze, and the localization freeze is coming up.  PSM has no bandwidth
to generated or land fixes related to this.  We need to know asap whether we're
exposed. 

Comment 19

[marlon bishop]

my job is finished here, reassigning -> [e-mail]

Comment 20

[Bob Lord]

Moving to ssaux.  And I think he'll want to move this off the 094 radar.

Comment 21

[lchiang]

we probably need to take this by the end of the week; otherwise, may be harder 
to get into the 0.9.4 branch at a later time. Per pdt mtg.

Comment 22

[Stephane Saux]

moving to 0.9.5

Comment 23

[Jaime Rodriguez, Jr.]

End of the week has passed. Who's gonna get this done?

Comment 24

[chris hofmann]

moving off the radar...  let us know if this is a mistake.

Comment 25

[Stephane Saux]

Moving to 0.9.6
-> rangansen for follow up and check in.

Comment 26

[Stephane Saux]

So I actually spent the time reading the bug history

There is no PSM patch for what PSM has to do to use the new Icons that have been
checked in.

 Seth Spitzer  on 2001-09-04 23:10 points out one example of where
mozilla/security code needs changes in order to use the new icons.

 So the tasks are: 
1) find out all the places where PSM should use the icons.
2) make changes in a dev environment.
3) the PSM team reviews the UI impact it has on securities features.

I'm therefore removing the patch, review keywords (there's no patch), and moving
this bug to PSM. We will decide how to allocate resources to accomplish the
above three tasks.

Comment 27

[Nelson Bolyard (seldom reads bugmail)]

reassign former PSM engineers' bugs to nobody