1028741 - "match case" option in page search should be a checkbox, not a button

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Toolkit :: Find Toolbar, defect)

Description

[teo8976]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/35.0.1916.153 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

Ctrl+F
Look at the search area that appears at the bottom of the page.


Actual results:

there's a "match case" button. It's weird that it looks like a button because it's an option that you can  activate or deactivate


Expected results:

It should look like a checkbox. 

There's no reason to violate an established (and sensible) convention here.

Also, why not put it next to the search box instead of on the opposite side? It even took me a while to realize this option was available!

Comment 1

[[:Aleksej]]

Merge with bug 416660 (both are buttons now)?

> Also, why not put it next to the search box instead of on the opposite side?

There is probably a bug for that.

Comment 2

[Mike de Boer [:mikedeboer]]

Since toggle buttons are a well-established convention nowadays, I don't think we'll be changing them to checkbox controls.

Comment 3

[teo8976]

> Since toggle buttons are a well-established convention nowadays,

Can you name a few example? 

Even if they are, I'm pretty sure they are usually not as badly designed as this one. Note that:
- when it's not selected, you can't even tell it's a button. It's mere text.
- when it is selected, it just looks like a button, which you couldn't tell is selected (except by comparison to how it looked like when not selected).

Toggle buttons may be well-established, but **** UI design isn't. A checkbox would be much more intuitive, without the need to reinvent anything.

Comment 4

[Mike de Boer [:mikedeboer]]

(In reply to teo8976 from comment #3)
> Can you name a few example? 

I'm talking about the text formatting controls in word processor toolbars, like MS Word and OpenOffice, for example. We (almost) always favor native styling to one we must invent and maintain ourselves.
It also depends a bit on the OS in use; OSX has text-only toggle buttons in many apps that ship with it, like Mail.app and Calendar.app. But icon+label buttons are also not uncommon across any OS.
Mobile operating systems experiment even more with various state-toggle controls to avoid having to use the good old bulky checkbox.

> Even if they are, I'm pretty sure they are usually not as badly designed as
> this one. Note that:
> - when it's not selected, you can't even tell it's a button. It's mere text.
> - when it is selected, it just looks like a button, which you couldn't tell
> is selected (except by comparison to how it looked like when not selected).
> 
> Toggle buttons may be well-established, but **** UI design isn't. A checkbox
> would be much more intuitive, without the need to reinvent anything.

I can't argue with this point, it's a matter of taste after all. But I hope to re-assure you with the following: it's much more likely that any usability issues within the findbar will be addressed with a next iteration of the findbars' design in its entirety, instead of this bug specifically.