106328 - Enable custom bookmark icons.

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: Bookmarks & History, enhancement)

Description

[Peter Trudelle]

This is a tracking bug for Navigator team feature work.
Implement custom icons for bookmarks - Ben estimated 3 days. (back end support
in  parser/datasource, provision of UI probably through properties dialog for
choosing an image).  Need spec, design? Todd says IE has this with no UI, we
shouldn't need one either.

Comment 1

[Ben Ruppel]

Might want a hidden pref so people who don't like it can turn it off.  Some of
those icons can get annoying/confusing when there are a lot of them.

Comment 2

[Jesse Ruderman]

Other things to be decided: 

- Are we going to copy IE and look for favicon.ico files automatically (bug 
32087), or are we going to look for something like <link rel="icon">?

- Will we pull the icon when we first load the page (hurts perf) or when the 
user bookmarks the page (hurts privacy)?

Comment 3

[Tim Larson]

I think those issues have been well-discussed in bug 32087 already.  We should look for <link rel="icon"> in the page (not favicon.ico on the server), and we should do so when the page loads (not when the user bookmarks).  I consider IE's implementation to be twice broken because of these issues.  Let's not duplicate their mistakes.  Mozilla can be better than IE.

Please support the HTTP "Link:" header as Hixie suggested over there too.  I'd also suggested caching these images in a separate location than other documents. And the question remains: to scale or not to scale?  

Comment 4

[timeless]

Attachment: The UI that IE doesn't have

Comment 5

[Jesse Ruderman]

timeless: this bug is about site icons, not user-specified icons.

Comment 6

[Peter Trudelle]

Actually, this is about custom bookmark icons in general, so I appreciate
timeless pointing out the IE UI, though that doesn't necessarily make it a
requirement for us to implement.

Comment 7

[Peter of the Norse]

> timeless: this bug is about site icons, not user-specified icons.

Can't it be both? A good way would be to add an
ICON="http://www.mozilla.org/icon.png" to the bookmark file that users can
change or add if they want. (Although I suspect everyone was already thinking
this.) 

Comment 8

[timeless]

Attachment: properties for Netscape.com (this is an ie generated icon)

to be fair, i should have attached a picture of say netscape.com as a bookmark
or something. So here it is, this properties window is because I used ie6
(w98se) to bookmark that website [note that this favicon isn't the default from
netscape enterprise servers, it's just very close ;-)] and it picked up the
favicon.ico that was there.

Comment 9

[timeless]

Attachment: msn.com, ugly isn't it?

msn.com is interesting, it appears the icon is really 16x16, so it scales to
32x32 and that's *not* a pretty sight...

Do we want to consider using a non blocky scaling algorithm when it's available
(this is a feature that's coming w/ full zoom support, i don't know the bug
number or the timetable, but trudelle probably does)?

Comment 10

[Tim Larson]

I think I mentioned the scaling issue on bug 2800 or bug 84728.  16x16 icons are
fine for Mozilla UI, but something else (non-blocky scaling or a different icon)
is needed for the system UI.  MacOS uses 32x32, I think NeXT used 48x48, and
MacOS X uses 128x128.  Should the Mozilla UI use the <link rel="icon"> and
create something new like <link rel="desktop-icon"> for larger versions that
could be scaled?  I believe Windows .ico files can contain multiple images, so
IE hasn't had this problem.  I don't think scaling will work across the board. 
Icons that look good relatively large can become blobs at small sizes.

Comment 11

[Tim Larson]

Woops, brain cramp.  I was thinking of bug 32087.  Got confused by the <link>
reference.

Comment 12

[Alex Bishop]

> I believe Windows .ico files can contain multiple images, so IE hasn't had this
> problem.

I think Windows .ico files can only contain one icon but .exe and .dll files can
contain multiple icons (the idea is to provide multiple sizes - generally 16x16
and 32x32 plus 48x48 in XP - and colour depths - generally 16 colour and 256
colour plus 16 bit colour in XP). The IE shortcut icon specifications
(http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/dhtml/howto/shortcuticon.asp) state
that  an icon must be 16x16 pixels, which is probably why they look crap at 32x32.

Comment 13

[timeless]

Attachment: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

this may or may not work for you, but there are 10 images in this file.  w/ a
bit of effort, you should be able to see all of them in explorer w/o using a
resource editor.

Finding a usable resource editor is a neat trick.  I probably have 10, but
they're all inflexible or broken in some fassion.  Borland Resource Workshop
was used to generate the first 8 icons, and Borland C++Builder's ImageEdit was
used to generate two of the others.  MSVC was throwing fits so i couldn't even
get it to open a normal icon.  the watcom (oops not installed on this box?) and
lcc (weditres-fails to load file), dev-c++ resource editors tend to be inferior
to the ones already mentioned.	the ms pdk iconeditor is probably in that class
too.

Comment 14

[Peter Trudelle]

mass reassign of pchen bookmark bugs to ben

Comment 15

[Jaime Rodriguez, Jr.]

What's the target and priority for this one? Are we still planning to have it
done for MachV?

Comment 16

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

I believe tpringle confirmed that "Custom Bookmark Icons" == favicons, so I'd
say this bug has been fixed. Props to hyatt. 

Comment 17

[Matthew Miller]

Wait, hold on. Per timeless's comments, *custom* implies user-specified icons,
not just site-specified. Unless I'm missing something, that ability still isn't
here.

(Also, with bug #113430, I wouldn't say that even site favicons in the bookmarks
work in any meaningful sense of the word.)

Comment 18

[timeless]

Comment #6 is all that matters.  Ben: if you're going to take the loophole then 
please fix the summary (tpringle's statement is fine for internal speak, but 
in bugzilla.mozilla.org it isn't) and file a new bug containing the relevant 
comments. Otherwise it's quite reasonable for someone to reopen.

Comment 19

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

This is a tracking bug for Peter Trudelle. As far as I'm concerned, the
objectives have been met. File a new bug for user-customizable icons. 

The icons are custom, custom for the site authors. 

Comment 20

[Peter Trudelle]

If anyone wants anything else, let them file their own bug, this one is mine and
it is verified fixed.