1005596 - Aurora31.0a2: Starting a new tab does not honor custom rows and columns

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: New Tab Page, defect)

Description

[CAK]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/31.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20140503004003

Steps to reproduce:

My newtab rows and columns are set as:

browser.newtabpage.columns = 10
browser.newtabpage.rows=6

Start Aurora in safe mode. Click on + (New Tab)


Actual results:

The grid shown is a 5(rows) x 6(columns) grid (zoomed-in). If I leave the tab by clicking another tab and then return to the new tab created the grid changes to 9x6 (as it should? - I'm not sure if there's a maximum to the number of columns allowed on newtab grid).

If I am in any other url and type about:newtab in the address bar the grid shown is 9x6 (as it should?). 


Expected results:

The grid shown should be a 10x6 grid as per my custom settings (or 9x6 if the maximum columns allowed are 9)

Comment 1

[CAK]

After further research: It appears that the zoom level for about:newtab is not remembered i.e. every time a new tab is opened the zoom level is at 100%. The weird thing is that if another tab is clicked and then return to the last new tab the zoom level is where it should be (as if the page refreshes).

Further research: It appears that the page DOES refresh to keep the zoom level of the site remembered from another tab. So if the newtab is opened in multiple tabs then returning to the last new tab forces it to refresh to the last zoom level set.

My settings are now:
browser.newtabpage.columns=11
browser.newtabpage.rows=11

Zooming-out (to 40%) will give me 10 columns and 11 rows.

Changing the columns setting again:
Setting the browser.newtabpage.columns=15 gives me the following:
At zoom level 40% - 15 columns (i.e. as per setting)
At zoom level 30% - 14 columns (i.e. columnsSet-1)
It has something to do with the NEW search text box. When the columns "fit" nicely to the width of the text box they appear fine. If they don't then 1 is dropped to accommodate.

Comment 2

[Elbart]

I think this is the intended behavior for ensuring a minimum size of the tiles when displaying the ad-tiles after bug 980014.
The user is not supposed to freely choose and change the displayed grid-layout anymore.

Comment 3

[Saad Shamsaee]

default is 3 rows and 3 columns, but in FF31 that has added search bar shows just 2 rows. but if i set view to full screen, shows true (3x3). but if change 3 for rows or columns to more, not change and still is 3x3.

Comment 4

[Liz Henry (:lizzard) (relman/hg->git project)]

I can confirm that CAK's issue happens for Firefox 31; setting my maximum columns to 10, and zooming out to shrink the tiles, only displays 9 tiles across no matter how far I zoom out. 

Setting my max columns to 11 displays 11 tiles across. 

I'm not clear if there's an intended maximum for the number of rows.  

Mardak, do you have any clarification here? I'm not sure whether to confirm this as a bug because I'm unsure what behavior we're intending. Maybe we could make sure there's some explanations of current newtab/tiles behavior, and minimum tile size, in the support knowledgebase.

Comment 5

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

(In reply to Elbart from comment #2)
> The user is not supposed to freely choose and change the displayed
> grid-layout anymore.
The preference allows people to choose how many maximum rows and columns to display no the new tab page. I just set mine to 20x20 to test and when zoomed all the way out, I end up seeing 16 columns and 14 rows.

(In reply to Liz Henry :lizzard from comment #4)
> I can confirm that CAK's issue happens for Firefox 31; setting my maximum
> columns to 10, and zooming out to shrink the tiles, only displays 9 tiles
> across no matter how far I zoom out. 
That sounds like a bug with how sizes get rounded then added up with multiple tiles, although when I test with 10x10 myself, it shows 10 columns if I zoom out enough.

Comment 6

[Liz Henry (:lizzard) (relman/hg->git project)]

OK, well, that sounds like enough to mark this "confirmed" since the behavior is inconsistent.

Comment 7

[Liz Henry (:lizzard) (relman/hg->git project)]

Number of columns is inconsistent depending on zoom level.
Zoom level does appear to be remembered on opening more than one new tab. 
There are other issues with the ways many columns behave while zoomed out, but it may be best to report those as new bugs.

Comment 8

[Elbart]

(In reply to Ed Lee :Mardak from comment #5)
> (In reply to Elbart from comment #2)
> > The user is not supposed to freely choose and change the displayed
> > grid-layout anymore.
> The preference allows people to choose how many maximum rows and columns to
> display no the new tab page. I just set mine to 20x20 to test and when
> zoomed all the way out, I end up seeing 16 columns and 14 rows.

That's a change of behavior compared to previous versions. The preference was describing the number of tiles to display *at all times*, not "whenever possible".
And the user can't choose how many tiles to show as 
1. the zoomlevel doesn't stick,
2. when zooming out, the text becomes unreadable, and
3. because of the enforced and non-overrideable minimum tile-size at 100% zoom.

> (In reply to Liz Henry :lizzard from comment #4)
> > I can confirm that CAK's issue happens for Firefox 31; setting my maximum
> > columns to 10, and zooming out to shrink the tiles, only displays 9 tiles
> > across no matter how far I zoom out. 
> That sounds like a bug with how sizes get rounded then added up with
> multiple tiles, although when I test with 10x10 myself, it shows 10 columns
> if I zoom out enough.

The described bug sounds like bug 998058.

Comment 9

[CAK]

Re-testing FF30 and FF32 (after new upgrades). 

a. FF30 still works as it should. Starting a new page shows all my tiles as set at the zoom level I selected before (10 cols x 9 rows).

b. FF32 (having the new Search Box) does not work as it should. It starts at 6 cols x 5 rows ignoring my custom settings of 10 cols x 9 rows. Zooming out the best I can get is 9 cols (as per Liz Herny's observation)

Comment 10

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

See bug 1026561 for an alternate route of fixing this issue.

Comment 12

[Karol Haltenberger]

In agreement with Elbart the browser.newtabpage.columns/rows settings should set the FIXED number of tiles, not maximum, there can always be a browser.newtabpage.maxcolumns/maxrows for that, or at least a switch to disable this automatic thing.

The newly introduced and totally redundant (the location bar and the search tool already) search bar does not help either especially since it can not be disabled.

These changes may be usable for mobile devices, but not for desktops and should not be forced on everyone.

Comment 13

[CAK]

(In reply to Karol Haltenberger from comment #12)
> In agreement with Elbart the browser.newtabpage.columns/rows settings should set the FIXED number of 
> tiles, not maximum, there can always be a browser.newtabpage.maxcolumns/maxrows for that, or at least a
> switch to disable this automatic thing.

The newtabpage as it is now in Fx31/32/33 is a lot more useful to me than the one in 34. In 34 (my default browser) I need to zoom out every time to view my tiles. because as Elbart said the zooming doesn't stick (using a 10x10 setup)

> The newly introduced and totally redundant (the location bar and the search
> tool already) search bar does not help either especially since it can not be
> disabled.
> 
> These changes may be usable for mobile devices, but not for desktops and
> should not be forced on everyone.

Hear, hear.
We already have requests/complaints from many users on Twitter (AoA) asking about how to remove it. (resorting to the userContent.css solution)

Comment 14

[Lars T. Hansen]

In about:config I changed browser.newtab.preload from true (the default value) to false

Now about:newtab always displays the number of rows and columns I had set in about:config.

Comment 15

[FoxSez]

I second the opinion that browser.newtabpage.columns/rows settings should set the number of tiles at all times, not maximum number of tiles to be displayed. Some people (like myself) pin sites so as to use new tab page to access the sites they use often. In order for this to work, the number of tiles that thew new page shows must be consistent at all times. 

I do find it strange that this wasn't a problem for me until 33.0.2 update. Before, the settings worked as fixed number of tiles. The tiles had simply resized itself as necessary. It does not anymore.  and Comment 14's suggestion of changing browser.newtab.preload setting to false did NOT correct this bug for me.

Comment 16

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

I believe comment 14 is talking about zooming out on about:newtab and having it persist for future newtabs. See bug 1031661

Comment 17

[noitidart]

Maybe we can switch to using list style instead of thumbnails or use mini thumbnails for pinned sites/top sites. I was hoping we would do something like predictive newtab. i dont really like the thumnbail stuff (its too a la everything else). preditive new tab is awesome we should merge that with top sites/pinned sites and deploy that :D

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/prospector-predictive-newtab/

Comment 18

[Sergey Rozhenko]

The best fix so far: https://userstyles.org/styles/106289/about-newtab-patch-fix-for-firefox-33
Needs some tweaking: I removed changes to #newtab-grid that it does and changed height and width of #newtab-grid > .newtab-cell to 18% and 20% respectably.

Comment 19

[Jessilyn Davis]

Hello!

This bug has been closed due to inactivity and/or the potential for this bug to no longer be an issue with the new Discovery Stream-powered New Tab experience.

Please help us triage by reopening if this issue still persists and should be addressed.

Thanks!