102875 - inconsistent bookmark wording and behavior in toolbar and context menus

Status: NEW

(SeaMonkey :: UI Design, defect)

Description

[Leston Buell]

The wording and behavior of the bookmarking mechanisms as accessed from the
toolbar Bookmarks->Add Bookmark and the context menu "Bookmark this Page" are
inconsistent. Here's a description of the current wording and behavior:

1. Toolbar->Bookmarks->Add Bookmark.
   The wording is "Add Bookmark", but it does not spawn an 
   Add Bookmark dialog. Rather, it bookmarks the current page silently.
   You cannot add an arbitrary bookmark, which the label inplies. 
   Only the current page can be bookmarked.

2. Context Menu->Bookmark this Page
   "Bookmark this Page" sounds more like the description for 
   adding a bookmark of the current page silently, but that is not 
   the current behavior. "Bookmark this Page" actually spawns 
   an Add Bookmark dialog. The word "this" is not capitalized, 
   as it is in Toolbar->Search->"Find in This Page".

Desired behavior and wording:

1. It seems that the toolbar and the context menu (as well as Ctrl+D) 
   should have uniform wording and behavior, whichever behavior and 
   wording is decided upon.

2. There should be a way to spawn an Add Bookmark dialog from the toolbar. 
   Currently, one can be spawned only from a context menu. (This is bad, 
   because many users never "discover" right-clicking features.)

3. "Bookmark This Page" should be used whenever it is the current 
   page which is to be bookmarked. The word "this" should be capitalized.

   "Add Bookmark" should be used to add an arbitrary bookmark, rather 
   than a bookmark of the current page, a feature not yet implemented. 
   (I'll file a bug on that if there isn't one already.)

Personally, i think that both the toolbar and the context menu should use
"Bookmark This Page" and that this should spawn a dialog. However, i think that
consistency of wording and behavior between the toolbar and the context menu is
the most important issue.

Comment 1

[[not reading bugmail]]

THere is the Bookmarks->File bookmark and on the personal
toolbar->Bookmarks->File Bookmark which is what your talking about.. makes sense
to me.  So basically you want to drop the add bookmark for Ctrl-D  replace the
File Bookmark for Add-Bookmarks and change the wording to Bookmark this page. 
Then you want a generic dialog such as New Bookmark which the user has to type
in the bookmark.  A feature I hate, because it easier to load the page up and go
file bookmark, (which btw happens to say "add bookmark" for dialog title
-inconsistent to functionality) 
because I want the title for page to be part of the bookmark and I dont want to
type it in.
hmm.  

Comment 2

[Leston Buell]

I'm bummed because i just lost my carefully edited response 
due to a Mozilla crash in Manage Bookmarks. But i'll file a separate bug 
for that. Sigh.

I wasn't aware of Bookmarks->File Bookmark. Thank you for pointing that out. 
The existence of Bookmarks->File Bookmark adds an additional inconsistency. 
Since i'm a bit unclear on your summary of my proposal, and in light of 
"File Bookmark" and some other things i've discovered about current behavior, 
let me state a simpler, and hopefully clearer, proposal.

1. Note that the toolbar's "File Bookmark..." and the context menu's 
   "Bookmark this Page" have identical behavior. Identical behaviors 
   should have identical labels, whatever label is chosen. I propose 
   this one: "Bookmark This Page As..." 

   Whatever label is decided on for these two items, that label should 
   end with "...", as do all other functions which spawn dialogs, 
   such as "Save As..." and "Print..." This is currently not the case 
   in the context menu's "Bookmark this Page".

   Furthermore, capitalization should be consistent if the word "this" is 
   used. Compare with the toolbar's "Find in This Page".

2. Note that the toolbar's current "Add Bookmark"/Ctrl+D function is 
   identical to that of the current "File Bookmark..."/"Bookmark this Page", 
   except that "Add Bookmark" does it silently, without spawning a dialog.
   An analogous pair of functions already exists: "Save" and "Save As...". 
   "Save" saves silently and "Save As..." spawns a dialog. So, i propose 
   that we change "Add Bookmark" to "Bookmark This Page". This gives us 
   the pair:
       "Bookmark This Page"           (bookmarks current page silently)
       "Bookmark This Page As..."     (spawns "Add Bookmark" dialog, 
                                       with info for currently loaded page)

End of proposal. My feeling is that the inconsistencies addressed 
in point (1) should be fixed, even if people don't like the label pair 
i've put forth in point (2).

> Then you want a generic dialog such as New Bookmark which the user has 
> to type in the bookmark.  A feature I hate, because it easier to load 
> the page up and go file bookmark, (which btw happens to say "add bookmark" 
> for dialog title -inconsistent to functionality) because I want the title 
> for page to be part of the bookmark and I dont want to type it in. hmm.  

I've since found that this feature already exists in the toolbar of the 
Bookmarks window, and that's the most logical place for it. So, this 
is a non-issue. Like you, i also usually prefer to bookmark the 
currently loaded page, but sometimes the user is offline or for some other 
reason wants to add bookmarks by copying them from an off-line source, such 
as from a written source. For me, it's usually the latter case.

Comment 3

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

->UI Design. I'm pretty sure this is reported there but I didn't find it in my
quick queries. 

Comment 4

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

This is another bug which will be fixed when bug 75338 is fixed -- the shortcut 
menu item will become `File Bookmark...', behaving exactly the same as the 
`File Bookmark...' item in the `Bookmarks' menu.

Comment 5

[marlon bishop]

Replace [Add Page to Bookmarks] with [Add Page to Bookmarks...] which is no
longer 'silent'. This change is in lieu of a Bookmark feature redesign, which
will streamline the application model for bookmarking. The redesigned Main
Bookmark Menu should have only one Menu item:[Add Page to Bookmarks...]
replacing [File Bookmark...] and absent is [Add Bookmark] - the resulting picker
dialog will allow user to choose silent bookmarking as a preference instead.

i have posted the 2nd draft to the Context Menu Revision 2 document located:

http://mozilla.org/projects/ui/communicator/framework/contextmenus/cmrev2-2.html

Comment 6

[Leston Buell]

(I'm the reporter.) The current arrangement of the main [Bookmarks] menu and the
context menu has addressed the issues for this bug. The wording and behavior is
now consistent between the two for [Bookmark This Page]. Furthermore, the [File
Bookmark...] now has an ellipsis (...) to indicate that it will spawn a dialog.

I hope you didn't mean in your last comment that the [Manage Bookmarks] item
would disappear from the main [Bookmarks] menu.

I also hope that the silent/not silent option you say will be implemented will
preserve the convention that silent operations are labelled without an ellipsis
and that options spawning a dialog do have an ellipsis.

Since the issues in this bug have indeed been addressed, i think that this bug
should be closed. If problems arise with future clean-ups with the GUI, then new
bugs can be opened.

Comment 7

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

Filter "spam" on "guifeatures-nobody-20080610".