105801 - problems with Contributors tab in About dialog

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: UI Design, defect)

Description

[Alexey Chernyak]

Build: 2001101909

In my last patch from bug 95768 I have included a fix for About dialog to
actually display contributors info in the Contributors tab - which never worked
since it's creation.
It does work now, however this uncovered a few issues:

1. When you try to display the modal About dialog, the browser appears frozen
until the contributors page is downloaded off the web (unless it's cached) Which
is a quite negative experience especially for people with slow connections. And
I'm not sure what will happen if you are not connected to the net at all.

2. The initial size of the About dialog is not wide enough to accomodate the
Mozilla title image.


The first issue is a real downer, I was about to kill Mozilla process when the
About dialog finally popped up. The second one is a minor glitch.

If this can't be fixed, I think that tab should be removed completely.

Possible solutions are (if they are feasible?):
1. not load the contributors page until the tab is activated.
2. give some feedback to indicate that something is happening - an hour glass
cursor maybe.
3. make the about:contributors page local

Comment 1

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

-> Apps

Comment 2

[R.K.Aa.]

*** Bug 106893 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 3

[Peter Lairo]

at least make it local until you can find a better solution.

I think keeping it local is probably the best solution anyways. There is no need
to have relatively "new" contributors listed there. They will appear in the next
release on the *local* contributors tab.

Solution 1 is coolest but has many problems to solve. What do you do if the user
is offline? Try to go online and really **** him off just to get a list of names
the user is likely only casually interested in? At least, while downloading the
list, you need a "Downloading newest list of contributors. This will only take a
few seconds..."

PS. Far more important is to finally have the ability to *select* and
*copy/paste* text from these dialogues (Help-About).

Comment 4

[Peter Trudelle]

->andreww, a nice chewy one ;-)

Comment 5

[andreww]

accepting.  Interesting challenge.

Comment 6

[andreww]

shuehan is working on tabs issues right now.

Comment 7

[andreww]

argh - wrong bug!

Comment 8

[andreww]

Attachment: patch to about.dtd and about.xul

Comment 9

[andreww]

Attachment: new file: about-contrib.xul

Comment 10

[andreww]

Attachment: patch to jar.mn

Comment 11

[timeless]

r=timeless

Comment 12

[Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email)]

Rather than adding a new file, why not kick off the load of about:credits when
the user first selects that tab?

Comment 13

[Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email)]

or, if that latency is not desired, setting a timeout in the dialog's onload
handler, e.g.

function startup()
{
.. other init code ..

setTimeout("loadCredits()", 0);
}

function loadCredits()
{
... load about:credits ...
}

Comment 14

[andreww]

good idea. Ill redo this so I doesnt need another file.

Comment 15

[andreww]

Attachment: changes to about.xul and jar.mn

Comment 16

[andreww]

Attachment: new file about.js

Comment 17

[Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email)]

Comment on attachment 63594 [details]
new file about.js

add a license to this file and sr=[e-mail]

Comment 18

[Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email)]

Comment on attachment 63593 [details] [diff] [review]
changes to about.xul and jar.mn

sr=[e-mail]

Comment 19

[andreww]

ok fixed license issue from ben and fixed tabs and inline styles issues 
from timeless.  Got r= from timeless in IRC contingent on those fixes.

Comment 20

[andreww]

fix checked in.

Comment 21

[Martin Poirier]

*** Bug 106584 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 22

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

rs vrfy: the contributors tab content loads fine, but one still needs to scroll
horizontally to see it all. is that expected? tested using 2002.01.24.0x comm bits.