12514 - Toolbar spacer bars

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Core :: DOM: Editor, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Michael Lowe]

It would be good if semantic groups of toolbar buttons were seperated by
vertical spacer bars, such as those seen in the Messenger.   This seems to make
it easier to visually parse the buttons.   For example, the toolbar buttons
could become:

[ New  Open  Save | Print  Spell | Find | Link  Anchor | Image  H.Line  Table ]

[ Normal  Font  Size  Colour | Bold  Italic  Underline | R.Bullet  N.Bullet
I.Left I.Right | Alignment ]

Comment 1

[Kathleen :Brade]

reassign to myself for now; set to M15; set to all platforms/os

Comment 2

[Michael Lowe]

Attachment: Patch file

Comment 3

[Michael Lowe]

Attached patch file implements my intentions, by rearranging a few toolbar
buttons and adding a few seperators.  I believe this is a more logical
arrangement than before.

Comment 4

[Kathleen :Brade]

Thanks for the patch file submission.

I'll add separators to the following locations (please let me know if you want
this changed--I changed it slightly from what your patch had):
  New Open Save | Print Find Spell | Image HLine Table | Link Anchor | Preview
  Normal Para | Font Size Colors | B I U | oList #List Outdent Indent | Alignment

Comment 5

[Michael Lowe]

I'm happy with what you suggested.

Comment 6

[Kathleen :Brade]

checked in; marking FIXED.

Comment 7

[sujay]

michael lowe, can you mark this one verified fixed?
I'm visually trying to see the toolbar to see how things
are grouped and I don't see any changes...maybe this is a code level
fix...

Comment 8

[Michael Lowe]

This checkin was clobbereed by a later one from [e-mail].   Needs to
be redone.

Comment 9

[Kathleen :Brade]

accepting bug; I will put them back in.  Sujay you should be able to verify this
since it is a cosmetic/appearance thing (on the toolbar).

Comment 10

[Kathleen :Brade]

fixed again

Comment 11

[sujay]

okay I see it now....piece of cake...verified in 9/9 build.

Comment 12

[Michael Lowe]

There is still one remaining spacer missing: the one between the paragraph style
and the character style popups.  Reopening.

Comment 13

[Kathleen :Brade]

Michael--could you be more specific?  From your comments above I see that you
wanted the toolbar to look like:

[ Normal  Font  Size  Colour | Bold  Italic  Underline | R.Bullet  N.Bullet
I.Left I.Right | Alignment ]

This is how the toolbar currently is broken up.  I don't think we need any
additional spacers since our groupings are now in the 5 +/- 2 range.

Comment 14

[Michael Lowe]

You originally had the toolbar as (see your 08/30/99 10:58 comments above):

Normal Para | Font Size Colors | B I U | oList #List Outdent Indent | Alignment
           ^^^
           This spacer is missing in redone version.

Comment 15

[Kathleen :Brade]

oops; sorry!  michael--which way do you want it?
I think your original proposal is better (otherwise there are too many groupings
on the 2nd toolbar).

If you do want this changed, I don't think we'll get this fixed for beta; sorry!

Comment 16

[Michael Lowe]

My prefered option now is your original proposal, with one slight modification:

New Open Save | Print Find Spell | Image HLine Table | Link Anchor | Preview
Normal Para | Font Size Colors B I U | oList #List Outdent Indent | Alignment

This above proposal moves the current serarator from [ Colours | B I U ] to [
Normal Para | Font ].   This change does not add any separators, but moves
one separator to delineate the Paragraph and Character style groups.

Comment 17

[Kathleen :Brade]

M15 (post-beta)

Comment 18

[german]

if the color controls are used outside fonts as well it is probably a good idea
to split them apart from the font editing controls as to not suggest that color
only applies to selected text. In fact I would put colors after B I U.

On a unrelated not I would also seriosly think about dropping some of the icons
as they do not add anything of value to the button such as for anchor, link,
spell, preview etc. Text only is often sufficient/more recognizable for that
stuff.

Comment 19

[Michael Lowe]

>On a unrelated not I would also seriosly think about dropping some of the
>icons as they do not add anything of value to the button such as for anchor,
>link, spell, preview etc. Text only is often sufficient/more recognizable
>for that stuff.

I think there is a need for consistency across all the toolbar buttons.   They
should all have icons or they should all not.

Comment 20

[Michael Lowe]

Attachment: New patch file

Comment 21

[Michael Lowe]

Added patch file for suggested remaining editor toolbar changes.   Note that the
Mail compose toolbar will also need matching changes.

Comment 22

[Kathleen :Brade]

I checked in some changes to fix this in Composer.  Do you like the changes?  
What (if anything) should change?  Right now, the fix is only in for the main 
Composer window.  We will need to make the corresponding changes for mail compose 
and AIM once we agree on where the space/separators should go.

Comment 23

[Kathleen :Brade]

OK; I like the spacer on the top toolbar in Composer but it could be a few pixels 
narrower (not too much though!).  On the bottom toolbar, the gaps are too big.

Reassign to cmanske.
Charley--can you do some css stuff to make the formatting toolbar gaps smaller?

Comment 24

[Charles Manske]

The toolbar separator in global.css is too wide, so I used a smaller version
in Editor.css. I will suggest adding that to the global files as part of the 
big XUL rewrite that we are currently doing.

Comment 25

[sujay]

verified in 4/3 build.