101167 - Help | About opens in new window, Help | About Plugins opens in the same window

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 250624

(SeaMonkey :: UI Design, defect)

Description

[Jeremy M. Dolan]

about: opens in new window, about:plugins (or anything else) opens in the same

This is incredibly inconsistant, slow (until new window perf is addressed),
annoying, and unexpected (since they are both in the help menu next to each
other and sound similar).

Comment 1

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

worksforme with 092208 windows build. 

Comment 2

[Jeremy M. Dolan]

Hrm, yes, typing in 'about:' and hitting enter loads in the same window.

However, Help->About Mozilla opens a new window, while Help->About plugins does
not. This may be linux specific.

Comment 3

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

->apps

Comment 4

[timeless]

.

Comment 5

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is inconsistent. It needs fixing. I suggest opening Help | About Plugins in
a new window, as people generally expect Help | About boxes to be modal dialogs
or other forms of "new window", so we shouldn't change that.

Gerv

Comment 6

[Neil Marshall]

is this a dupe of Bug 96940?

Comment 7

[Daniel Lichtenberger]

Yes. Your patch works fine.

Comment 8

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 96940 ***

Comment 9

[Zach Lipton [:zach]]

yup!

Comment 10

[Jeremy M. Dolan]

Reopening, as bug 96940 was WONTFIXed, which I agree with. For the same reasons
that was WONTFIXed, help->about should be made to open in the CURRENT windows as
well.

Not only is this inconsistent within Mozilla, it's 4xp. And to top it off, our
new window perf is still abysmal and not likely to improve greatly before 1.0.
Find another app where Help->About takes 9 seconds to open and another 3 to close.

Comment 11

[János Holányi]

CAVEAT: if you make Help->About items open in the same window, you will delete
the data entered and not submit yet in forms in the window you'll open About's into.

This is true especially if the user has
'Compare the page in the cache to the page on the network Every time I view the
page' set under Preferences/Advanced/Cache.

So in that case (me, for example) there will be no way to get back the
previously entered data.

I believe that every menu option should open new windows for what they want to
display and not mess with the user's active window in any and all of the cases
(as for example, in the case of the Preferences or Search options)

Also, imagine how annoying would it be if the user has an IMP (webmail) session
open and Moz would open the About page in the same window... :)

Thanks.

Comment 12

[André Dahlqvist]

Bug 96940 has been reopened - shouldn't we merge these two bugs to help it
easier to follow?

Comment 13

[Jo Hermans]

*** Bug 165116 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 14

[Michael Lefevre]

*** Bug 156780 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 15

[Jeremy M. Dolan]

Attachment: Do the right thing. Finally

1 year ago, Gerv said this "needs fixing". Let's fix it.

Patch attached to make About Mozilla use the current window. This is Correct:

a) It's 4xp.
b) No dataloss, you can always click back.
c) Speed. New windows are slow. Very slow
d) Opening a new window disobeys tab prefs
e) Obeying tab prefs would be very confusing if the About window was sent to
the
   backgroun
f) Parity with About Plugins, which users have been able to cope with opening
   in the current window.

Please r/sr/a this. Once it's in I can do another patch to remove the silly
modal dialog pref and it's UI in the debug pref pane. I'm not bothering now
until I know this is actually approved.

Comment 16

[timeless]

uid is being phased out.

Comment 17

[Thomas F. O'Connell]

I just got Moz 1.3, and when I go to Help->About Mozilla, a new window pops up,
but it's blank. Is this a known issue? A separate bug?

Comment 18

[R.K.Aa.]

there's a patch in bug 250624

Comment 19

[OstGote!]

Resolving to a bug with a current patch for a consistent handling.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 250624 ***