1194269 - Image title/link target in context menu not visible for image links

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Jan Henning [:JanH]]

Since the context menu layout was changed a while ago, in case of image links the context menu allows you to switch between the image context menu and the link context menu.
The buttons for switching between the two states now occupy the top row of the context menu, which is normally used for previewing the target URL, respectively showing the image title.

Splitting the menu that way is certainly useful, because otherwise you'd end up with one very tall context menu, but it also means that in case of image links, neither the target URL nor the image title are visible.

For an example, long press the comic on http://xkcd.com/1551/

Comment 1

[Jan Henning [:JanH]]

Afterthought: Chrome Dev has fixed the truncation of the image title (for Firefox this is bug 768291), but because they're using one unified, large context menu, for image links the target URL takes precedence and the page title isn't shown.

Firefox's design might actually enable us to show both: Show the target URL in the "link" part of the context menu and the image title after switching to the "image" part of the context menu.

Comment 2

[Michael Comella (:mcomella) [NI reported issues only: ex-Mozilla]]

Anthony, do you have any thoughts here?

Comment 3

[Anthony Lam (:antlam) Find me, @antlam on Slack!]

I can see your point JanH. I have a question though, I'm wondering why you feel it's important to see the URL or the image title in this use case? Versus say, have the ability to switch between text and image?

Comment 4

[Jan Henning [:JanH]]

I think I now remember one reason why the split context menu was introduced - with the current share sub-menu using icons, there's no easy way to differentiate between sharing the link and sharing the image itself. Hence the split context menu was introduced, with the side effect of keeping menu height in check as well.

Why I think it's important?
In case of web comics, the image title can actually be part of the content. If I can't see the image title, I'm missing out on something, even if it's usually only a minor additional gag. xkcd is probably the most prominent example here, but I've occasionally seen it being used elsewhere as well, even though I don't even read that many web comics.
More generally speaking, especially in case of links, the URL/title occasionally provides me with a further clue whether I actually want open that link or not.

From a consistency point of view, on the one hand, link/image URLs/titles are apparently deemed important enough to be shown in the context menu, but on the other hand, in the case of image links, they're suddenly not *that* important any more and get dropped. So either they provide no real value to the user, in which case there's no need to show them at all, or if we feel that they *do* provide some value, they should be shown all the time, including for combined image links.

(In reply to Anthony Lam (:antlam) from comment #3)
> Versus say, have the ability to switch between text and image?

I'm not quite sure what you have in mind here. Could you please elaborate?

Comment 5

[John Vandenberg]

On Desktop there is a Page Info dialog which contains all of this info.  Afaik, this is missing on Android.  If it existed, it would provide a way to access extra information which isnt suitable for the context menu

Comment 6

[Dan Jacobson]

On Bug 1404817 I note the big loss of information for a long press on a:
1. Hyperlink that happens to contain an image. vs.
2. One that does not.

Comment 7

[BMO Automation]

We have completed our launch of our new Firefox on Android. The development of the new versions use GitHub for issue tracking. If the bug report still reproduces in a current version of [Firefox on Android nightly](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fenix) an issue can be reported at the [Fenix GitHub project](https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/). If you want to discuss your report please use [Mozilla's chat](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Matrix#Connect_to_Matrix) server https://chat.mozilla.org and join the [#fenix](https://chat.mozilla.org/#/room/#fenix:mozilla.org) channel.