252602 - About box is resizable

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: General, defect, P5)

Description

[Thijs Kinkhorst]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040719 Firefox/0.9.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040719 Firefox/0.9.1

Really minor: the About Box is a resizable window and has a Maximize button;
there's no use to allow that and resizing screws up the layout.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open About Box
2a. Press Maximize Button, or
2b. Drag one of the corners to resize.

Comment 1

[shadytrees]

Can't confirm on Windows, at least. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1;
en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040724 Firefox/0.9.1+ (bangbang023)

Comment 2

[Angelo]

confirming this on Linux with latest nigthly

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040725 Firefox/0.9.1+

Comment 3

[logan]

Import, Bookmark Properties and About all exhibit this behavior for me; openbox3.

xprop shows the following:
_NET_WM_ALLOWED_ACTIONS(ATOM) = _NET_WM_ACTION_CHANGE_DESKTOP,
_NET_WM_ACTION_SHADE, _NET_WM_ACTION_CLOSE, _NET_WM_ACTION_MOVE,
_NET_WM_ACTION_MINIMIZE, _NET_WM_ACTION_RESIZE

Notice _NET_WM_ACTION_RESIZE :P

Comment 4

[Neil Paris]

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040727 Firefox/0.9.1+

Confirming

Comment 5

[logan]

Maybe NativeCreate() in widget/src/gtk2/nsWindow.cpp just needs some:
  gtk_window_set_resizable() or gtk_window_set_policy() ?

Comment 6

[José Jeria]

*** Bug 259172 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 8

[fantasticfears]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=412676

Comment 9

[fantasticfears]

(In reply to comment #8)
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=412676

sorry, made a mistake...

Comment 11

[Chad Freeman]

Attachment: v1 patch

As per https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/window.open#section_8, windows are always resizable - so removing that ability is not an option.  Changing the dialog flag to 'yes' does, however, remove the minimize/maximize buttons.

Comment 12

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

Comment on attachment 595259 [details] [diff] [review]
v1 patch

It looks like this would regress bug 608934, which isn't desirable. We might need to implement better back-end widget support for different window options, if the current possibilities don't get us what we want.

That might be tricky, but the relevant GTK code is in widget/gtk2/nsWindow.cpp's nsWindow::Create, which gets data passed in via nsWidgetInitData passed in from nsAppShellService::JustCreateTopWindow, which in turns gets it's info via aChromeMask, and so on.

I'm not knowledgeable enough about GTK to know if there are easy changes we can make to get a dialog that has close buttons, isn't resizable, etc. Karl may be able to help with that.

Comment 13

[JeffreyDecker]

(In reply to Gavin Sharp (use [e-mail] for email) from comment #12)

In reference to comment 11 by Chad, the link he posted states that since firefox 3 all secondary windows should be resizable. The about windows in the versions for Mac and Windows however, have the minimize and maximize buttons disabled. Chads patch fixes this all linux distributions but causes problems on gnome3 because the exit button at the top of the window is also no long there.  

With that being said, should a new bug be filed and this one be removed as the scope of the bug has changed since originally reported? If not could we build on top of Chads original fix by also adding a "Close" button to the about box? A close button used to be present in older versions of Firefox and the close button would appear on all operating systems. Just some thoughts.

Comment 14

[Ian Nartowicz]

Seems like this bug at least should be closed.  The resize behaviour of the About dialog seems quite acceptable now.

We need to accept that dialogs can be resized.  That change was discussed ad nauseam in its own bug and is here to stay.  Even before that change, dialogs were fully resizable on some platforms.  Similarly, I think we should accept that on some Linux window managers at least dialogs will have a titlebar and various buttons despite what we might try to code, so I don't see the point in a further bug.

Comment 15

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Wow, this is a blast from the past. I remember when, 15 years ago, "Some Unix window managers will make all windows resizable anyway" was used as an argument to make all Mozilla windows resizable on every platform, even when they had no resizable contents. That argument was rejected as defeatism then, and it's no more valid when applied solely to Linux now. The vast majority of Linux users are using a window manager that does obey _NET_WM_ACTION_RESIZE, and unsetting it does not harm users of window managers that don't.

Then as now, there was also confusion (demonstrated in comment 13 and comment 14) between resizability and being a dialog. Most dialogs shouldn't be resizable, but some should, for example file pickers. And most non-dialogs should be resizable, but not all, for example the About box. Whether a window should be resizable depends on how much of its contents would benefit from being resized, *not* on whether it's a dialog or not.

I've reported the Thunderbird equivalent as bug 986354.

Comment 16

[Seetu]

I would like to work on this bug, Could you please assign me this one?

Comment 17

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

It's not necessary to be assigned to work on a patch! Let me know if I can help.

Comment 18

[Swapnil Rustagi]

I would like to work on this.

Comment 19

[Swapnil Rustagi]

Can the Browser Toolkit not access the About box?

Comment 20

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

The severity field for this bug is relatively low, S4. However, the bug has 3 duplicates.
:mossop, could you consider increasing the bug severity?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 21

[BugBot (nomail) [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The last needinfo from me was triggered in error by recent activity on the bug. I'm clearing the needinfo since this is a very old bug and I don't know if it's still relevant.

Comment 22

[Joaquín Serna]

This should be fixable by telling GTK that the window is not resizable like this: gtk_window_set_resizable(GTK_WINDOW(window), FALSE);
Don't know how the about window is opened but that should be sufficient.