1169529 - New about:sessionrestore UI's list of tabs to restore is still too small

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Session Restore, defect)

Description

[Gingerbread Man]

Attachment: Firefox 37 versus Nightly 2015-05-27.png

Filed following bug 1125952, comment 30.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:41.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/41.0
Build ID: 20150527135446
Resolution: 1024×768

Steps to reproduce:
1. about:config?filter=max_resumed_crashes ← set both preferences to 0
2. Have numerous tabs open.
3. Terminate the Firefox process from Task Manager or what have you.

Actual results:
When restarting Firefox, the list of tabs in the “Well, this is embarrassing” page only lists 5½ items at a time.

Expected results:
In Firefox 37, the list showed 9 items at a time. Either the same or a comparable number of items would be ideal.

Comment 1

[Kestrel]

The number of items depends on the window height. 

Ideally the top notice would dynamically collapse as you scroll down so more of the window is filled with the list.

Comment 2

[Shahrukh]

1. Go back to the original font and line spacing that's way more efficient of screen whitespace and has less of a "kindergarten reader" look (everything doesn't have to look like it was created with Wordpress).

2. Why complicate stuff with scrolling text boxes inside mats inside frames inside ...? Just print the entire list in a plain old table -- Windows scrolling (anyone remember that? :-)) is perfectly adequate for the job.

And why even 9 at a time? I would like to see at least 30 on one screen (assuming a maximized Firefox window and a monitor with at least 900 or 1080 pixels vertical resolution). You can alternate between a white and light grey background shading every 5 rows for visual separation, but even that's hardly necessary--this is a crash recovery screen after all.

Comment 3

[Gingerbread Man]

(In reply to Shahrukh from comment #2)
> And why even 9 at a time?

I thought it was clear, but 9 and 5½ are just examples of how many items fit in the list previously, compared to now (as mentioned, Windows XP at 1024×768). The report is about either restoring the same functionality as before, or something closer to it.

Comment 4

[Tim Nguyen :ntim]

Although the older efficiency wasn't restored, bug 1125952 reintroduced the old behaviour (stretching to the window height).
Possible ways to improve this :
- Lower top and bottom margins
- reduce tree font size
- reduce title font size
Stephen or Michael, what do you think about these solutions ?

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I'd be very pleased to see all of those suggestions done, and agree even the original line count fell short of ideal for anyone with >50 tabs. Please let's not sacrifice functionality for the sake of appearance.

Comment 7

[Tim Nguyen :ntim]

Getting this off my list. Will reassign myself once I get a response from UX

Comment 8

[(Currently slow to respond) Philipp Sackl [:phlsa] (Firefox UX) please use needinfo]

Hm, we could probably also make the footer with the buttons fixed while the rest of the UI scrolls out of view, which would resolve this issue without the need to change the style.

Comment 9

[Tim Nguyen :ntim]

(In reply to Philipp Sackl [:phlsa] (Firefox UX) please use needinfo from comment #8)
> Hm, we could probably also make the footer with the buttons fixed while the
> rest of the UI scrolls out of view, which would resolve this issue without
> the need to change the style.

That's what we currently do, with a lot of margin between the bottom of the page and the table.

I'm suggesting a few solutions in comment 4, what do you think about those ?

Comment 10

[Rogier]

(In reply to Tim Nguyen [:ntim] from comment #9)
> (In reply to Philipp Sackl [:phlsa] (Firefox UX) please use needinfo from
> comment #8)
> > Hm, we could probably also make the footer with the buttons fixed while the
> > rest of the UI scrolls out of view, which would resolve this issue without
> > the need to change the style.
> 
> That's what we currently do, with a lot of margin between the bottom of the
> page and the table.

I don't know if you're talking about a recent commit, or about the stable version ? I just downloaded firefox 43.0.4 (apparently the latest) from the mozilla website, and by default, just 7 lines of tabs are visible in the session restore window. I can scroll in the area of the tabs, which only occupies about 30% of the screen height, but not more than 7 lines remain visible. In particular, the top 50% of the window (i.e. the header) does not scroll out of view.

If the header were to scroll out of view, the number of visible tab lines woud probably increase to about 20... That would be a *big* improvement.

I can also zoom out (ctrl-minus), which reduces the header size, and increases the number of lines of tabs. As the zoom level seems to be persistent, it seems to me that a tab-tree font size change is not really required...

> > Hm, we could probably also make the footer with the buttons fixed while the
> > rest of the UI scrolls out of view, which would resolve this issue without
> > the need to change the style.

Personally, I would be more than happy if the header were to scroll out of view (maybe leaving just a title ?). No other changes necessary as far as I'm concerned. Still, you might also consider:
- reducing the empty space above the main message ('Well, this is embarassing') at lower zoom levels. That space does not scale nicely when zooming out: its relative size becomes progressively larger.
- reducing the initial zoom level of the page when a lot of windows/tabs are open.
- and/or: adding buttons 'zoom out (show more tabs)' / 'zoom in (show less tabs)'. It seems redundant, but I suspect many people do not realize zooming out improves the situation :-)

Comment 11

[(Currently slow to respond) Philipp Sackl [:phlsa] (Firefox UX) please use needinfo]

Attachment: sessionrestore-scrolling.png

(In reply to Tim Nguyen [:ntim] (mostly busy until Feb. 12th) from comment #9)
> (In reply to Philipp Sackl [:phlsa] (Firefox UX) please use needinfo from
> comment #8)
> > Hm, we could probably also make the footer with the buttons fixed while the
> > rest of the UI scrolls out of view, which would resolve this issue without
> > the need to change the style.
> 
> That's what we currently do, with a lot of margin between the bottom of the
> page and the table.
> 
> I'm suggesting a few solutions in comment 4, what do you think about those ?

I think we're talking about slightly different things. See the attachment for what I mean.

Your suggestions are good and they would definitely help! They would also require us to change some of the visual design bits that are currently shared between various in-content pages, which is why I was looking for something that only changed the behavior.

That being said, I'm not convinced that the outcome would warrant the effort of designing and building the thing here (for either solution)...

Comment 12

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Horrible situation today - I have 500+ tabs, and not even 5 tabs are shown in the view at a time.  I have to scroll 100 times, and also can't see a window's worth of tabs at a time. Truely horrible for reviewing and deselecting tabs

Comment 13

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Holy crap this is still truly horrible. 

idea: Can the list be placed below "Restore Session" and "Start New Session" buttons so the display port can made bigger without going to a redesign phase?

Comment 14

[Marcel Partap]

I totally subscribe to the "Truely horrible" judgement Wayne has given 5 years ago. May Someone™ please up the height and the width of the actual list box to x/y 90%/70% or something in the stylesheets? The list's current usability impairment when restoring many tabs is somewhat comical.. 😆
Maybe Erica or Tim can tinker the browser/themes/shared/aboutSessionRestore.css to fill the view when the tab list is expanded?

Comment 15

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

Sorry, I'm no longer involved, and neither is Erica I think.

Comment 16

[Marcel Partap]

Thanks ok, just queried you because you were the last guys touching that CSS..
This is one of the gravest usability issues for tab horders and I already tried fixing in the browser inspector but I didn't quite grok the CSS layout..

Comment 17

[Itiel]

Attachment: Bug 1169529 - Increase the likelihood of displaying more tabs to restore in about:sessionrestore r?gijs

This will still depend on window size and zoom.

Comment 18

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/72161d401731
Increase the likelihood of displaying more tabs to restore in about:sessionrestore r=desktop-theme-reviewers,dao

Comment 19

[Marian-Vasile Laza]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/72161d401731

Comment 20

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Marian-Vasile Laza from comment #19)

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/72161d401731

Worth noting this was backed out for 108 on beta in https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-beta/rev/d49c937bc2e046430bb9468a57ad5151b49bd8ed to fix bug 1801061. The fix from Itiel to improve matters here will ride with 109 instead (which has a more complex fix for that bug that we didn't feel comfortable uplifting to 108 on RC day).

Comment 21

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The leave-open keyword is there and there is no activity for 6 months.
:dao, maybe it's time to close this bug?
For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 22

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Please file new bugs in case there are remaining issues here.