100902 - non-critical dialog boxes require too much attention

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(SeaMonkey :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Tom]

Non-critical dialog boxes, like the dialog box informing me that I don't have
the Flash plugin, require too much attention.  First, they pop up in a location
not necessarily related to the main window, making it hard to guess sometimes
which window put them up.  Second, they need to be dismissed explicitly.

Suggestions:

* Associate dialogs with the window they correspond do; they could appear in a
dynamically sized pane at the bottom of the window.

* If it's not critical that I'm making a response, don't block the corresponding
window; simply dismiss the dialog if I interact with the window in some other way.

* For dialogs that were created by explicit user action (e.g., the "Find in this
page..." dialog), give them focus when they appear.

These apply to the annoying "you don't have the plugin" dialog, as well as to
the "Find in this page" dialog, and probably others that pop up less frequently.

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

See:

1)  bug 83754 -- that would replace the plugin dialog with an in-page iframe

2)  bug 59314 -- "Alerts should be content-modal, not window-modal"

3)  bug 28586 -- "Should use error page, not dialog, for inaccessible pages"

We _do_ focus the Find dialog (though that's currently broken, but there's a bug
I can't find at the moment filed and with a patch).

setting status to NEW to have those first two bullet points looked at....

Comment 2

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

> * Associate dialogs with the window they correspond do

That's bug 65521.

> * If it's not critical that I'm making a response, don't block the
> corresponding window; simply dismiss the dialog if I interact with the window
> in some other way.

That would be inconsistent with every program I've seen (with the exception of
Dorling Kindersley CD-ROMs), and inconsistent behavior for such a well-known
feature as alerts would really be more confusing than useful. If it's not
critical that you make a response to an alert, Mozilla shouldn't be using an
alert anyway, and you should file bugs on specific instances of that.

This bug has four suggestions, one of which would really be a bad idea, and
three of which are duplicates. So, marking invalid. Please, in future, keep to
one patchable problem per bug report. Thanks.