36203 - Bookmark menu on Personal Toolbar is redundant

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(SeaMonkey :: General, defect, P3)

Description

[chriss]

The Bookmark UI takes up valuable real estate from the personal toolbar, since
it essentially duplicates the bookmark menu drop down. Instead I want the
personal toolbar to give me one click access to my favorite bookmarks and a
redundant menu item gives me one less personal bookmark to place there.

Recommend removing the Bookmark menu from the personal toolbar.

Comment 1

[german]

Yes we have too many Bookmark access points. The point was to examine which ones 
will be most often used.
I would recommend the opposite, removing the main menu "Bookmarks" and moving 
"Bookmarks" to a second level menu item of the Tasks menu, based on what I have 
seen in the usability tests. That menu item fills the purpose of a) providing 
keyboard access to Bookmarks and b)giving access to bookmarks from all 
applications. 
In keeping the "Bookmarks" button we would put the Bookmarks bar in a more 
obvious context, ie. because it is there people recognize more easily what the 
bar is for. Furthermore we are planning on giving limited editing capabilities to 
the bookmarks popup button such that the list popping up allows for bookmarks 
being dragged into as well minimal re-arranging. This has long been planned and 
based on user requests and is something a menu cannot (and should not) do. I'd 
love to hear other opinions so I am goign to post this bug n.p.m.ui

Comment 2

[K Chayka]

I like the way the Netscape bookmark button works - add, file and edit are the 
first 3 menu items, followed by the actual bookmarks.  If the personal toolbar 
button had the same features, I would have no problem with bookmarks moving to a 
submenu item.  Without full editing capabilities from the ptb, better leave it a 
separate menu item.  And is FILE going to happen (please say yes)?  

Comment 3

[Eli Goldberg]

I'm QA Assigning this to Claudius, who tests bookmarks, and is more likely to 
have strong opinions on this subject than I do. ;)

Comment 4

[Ben Ruppel]

I think the top level bookmark menu should be merged with the personal
toolbar.  It is logical that both of these fucntions act as the root of web
destinations.  Worst case is somebody doesn't want to clutter their
personal toolbar, in which case they make a directory within the toolbar
called "Bookmarks".  Hiding the personal toolbar would cause the
traditional "Bookmarks" menuitem to reappear, and it would contain the
"Personal Toolbar" bookmarks in the root.
What do you think?

Comment 5

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Yeah, what slate said. Remove the Bookmarks button from the Personal Toolbar.
Rename the Personal Toolbar as the `Bookmarks Toolbar'. And make the contents of
the Bookmarks Toolbar follow the root structure of the bookmarks file, rather
than the a particular folder in that bookmarks file.

In one fell swoop, this would achieve the following:
* remove one of the redundant access points to bookmarks;
* remove confusion about the difference between the contents of the Personal
  Toolbar and the contents of the Bookmarks file (so you wouldn't have so much
  confusion about the purpose of the Personal Toolbar to begin with, so you
  wouldn't need to stick a Bookmarks button in there after all);
* provide subtle encouragement for people to file their bookmarks effectively
  (without forcing them to), since if they don't the bookmarks will fall off the
  end of the toolbar.

As for German's suggestion of moving the Bookmarks menu to a submenu of the
Tasks menu ... well, German, sometimes I wonder if you're joking when you say
things like that. Bookmarks are supposed to provide *quick* access to URLs, even
for those people who have their Personal Toolbar hidden. Hiding a menu (which
is, by its very nature, already highly nested) as a submenu inside another menu
would just make life unnecessarily difficult.

Comment 6

[Claudius Gayle]

the personal toolbar is for lightning quick access to the 10 or so bookmarks I use the very most. Your idea would force me to 
stick them in folders or sort them in such a way that my favorite favorites would be first, which is kinda clunky.

the personal toolbar allows me to tailor what bookmarks i see in my browser window for maximum effectivenes, without the clutter 
of the possibly dozens of folders and hundreds of bookmarks in my bm file. IF I wanted to see all of  them I would just create a 
folder that had all of my bookmarks and stick it in my personal toolbar - oh wait that's already done for me! It's called the 
'Bookmarks' button on my personal toolbar.</.02>

Comment 7

[Jesse Ruderman]

The idea of reappropriating the personal toolbar as the "bookmarks toolbar" is 
interesting, and I might agree with you guys.  Here are a few more advantages 
and disadvantages of the change that might not have been mentioned here:

Advantages:

- Family members won't have to fight over control of the top-level bookmarks.

Disadvantages:

- I'm stuck using a bunch of screen space for my bookmarks, even if I don't 
have nine sites that I'd like to show up at the top of my screen all the time.
- The menu appears farther down on the screen.

Comment 8

[shuang (gone)]

Users have multiple ways to use bookmarks, some prefer one way, some the other. 
We can't "fix" users by asking or giving them only one way to do things. Our 
intention here is to provide convinence and let users do the tasks easily. so 
consider current design works for most of the users, and mark this one WON'TFIX.

Comment 9

[Blake Ross]

vrfy wontfix; this is optional now