1332270 - Set a tooltip for a contextMenus item

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(WebExtensions :: Frontend, defect)

Description

[kernp25]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:53.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/53.0
Build ID: 20170119030211




Expected results:

browser.contextMenus.create({
  id: "log-selection",
  title: "Log '%s' to the console",
  tooltip: "This is a tooltip!"
  contexts: ["selection"]
});

browser.contextMenus.update("log-selection", {
  tooltip: "This is a different tooltip!"
});

This allows use to set a tooltip for the item.

Comment 1

[Andy McKay]

Tooltips in context menus only appear when you have an only in a context menu. These can't be created from a WebExtension.

Comment 2

[kernp25]

It also not works with setting the tooltiptext attribute?

Comment 3

[Andy McKay]

Sorry I typo'd there "have an icon in a context menu", eg: reload. 

Why would you need a tooltip on text in a context menu? I've never seen a UI do that.

Comment 4

[winflip]

An extension I'm maintaining with 50k users needs this functionality. Please consider reopening this issue. See screenshots https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/gtranslate/

Comment 5

[Andy McKay]

There is nowhere in Firefox that uses a tooltip on a context menu. The idea of a tooltip (some text) to explain some text seems wrong to me and makes no sense.

I can see from the screenshot what the add-on author has done, but there are other ways to accomplish this.

Comment 6

[winflip]

For 50k users (+ the users of whatever other current addons that use this functionality) there has been a tooltip on a context menu for more than a decade. Just because it seems wrong to you is no reason to deny all those people the interface they're used too. Forcing other people to only make use of things the way it makes sense to you, or in whatever way the creator of the thing intended, is stifling to creativity and innovation, because using and combining things in unexpected ways has always been what creative people do.

Next to those ideological reasons, there's also some emotional reasons. We addon developers just recently had to port to a new api, and now again, and we also know how adverse users are to change, and then we see we can't even remake what we had before. Because it "makes no sense" to 1 guy somewhere. It's pretty frustrating.

Comment 7

[Slava]

As an experienced usability & UX designer I can say this: 

1) General purpose: From usability perspective, a tooltip is used to show full text when text inside UI is clipped all across the web and desktop software. User's default intuitive action has been trained for decades to hover any text that is clipped or has "..." after it, waiting for full text to appear. Tooltip for full text is one of the two primary purposes of the tooltip. (The other one is additional explanation to the short text.)

2) Being an active IT professional I use

3) @Andy, whether it makes sense to you or not, allowing tooltip above clipped translaton menu item has clear benefits. In the particular situation of gtranslate addon, tooltip saves user waiting/loading time, reduces browser netwrok/cpu/memory usage for each request, and creates a better work flow (no new tabs open / no jumps and original page content is still visible, which is very important for focus). In other words, it is a usability improvement to the browsing experience with the product you develop. You are being requested by the addon maintainer to implement an improvement for your product, which would allow a pretty large group of users to benefit from. Actually, you are being requested to recover lost usability that already has proven itself among users for years. And your response is to deny it because, quote "it seems wrong to me and makes no sense". 

This is how I summarize this situation: Your personal attitude forms a barrier between current and improved UX. 

Advice: Reconsider objectively weighing the actual benefits.

Comment 8

[Slava]

Point 2 cut off, sorry about that. Being an active IT professional I use, design and test professional software and web applications. Tooltips on menu itmes is not a new concept.

Comment 9

[marczellm]

(In reply to Andy McKay [:andym] from comment #5)
> There is nowhere in Firefox that uses a tooltip on a context menu. The idea
> of a tooltip (some text) to explain some text seems wrong to me and makes no
> sense.
> 
> I can see from the screenshot what the add-on author has done, but there are
> other ways to accomplish this.

What would those other ways be?

Comment 10

[Chuck Baker]

I've just discovered this bug while porting one of my XUL extensions to Quantum.  I use a tooltip on a context menu item to inform the user of details of what happens when the menu item is clicked.

In another extension of mine, I only display a truncated version of text for the menu item's label (to keep the context menu from being unruly).  I would like to have a tooltip to expose the full text of that label.

The idea of a tooltip (some text) to explain some text seems absolutely desirable to me and makes perfect sense.

Comment 11

[Chuck Baker]

And another thing - tooltips are allowed on buttons, and context menu items are functionally the same as buttons.

Comment 12

[Pierre Bertet]

Any chance for this bug to be reopened?