1370545 - Icons with directionality built-in should be flipped for RTL

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Theme, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

The following icons are not currently flipped/mirrored but should be flipped/mirrored for RTL:

Sidebars (due to window close buttons in icon)
Bookmarks menu button (due to bullets/icons appearing on opposite side)
Library (so the "last" book on the shelf is leaning)
Save Page (the "end" of the page should be dog-eared)
Find (icon should be leaning forward)
Share This Page (airplane should be moving forward)
Developer (icon should be leaning forward)
New Window (due to window close buttons in icon)
Open File (manila folder should have label at start-side)

These can all be done by adding a few new selectors to http://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/d441cb24482c2e5448accaf07379445059937080/browser/themes/shared/toolbarbutton-icons.inc.css#23

Also for these two icons I'm either not clear on if we should do the change or exactly how the change would be done:
WebIDE (unclear if pencil normally leans other way when writing RTL languages by RTL-first writers)
Pageshot (may be more difficult since this is a system-addon)

Comment 1

[:Gijs (he/him)]

FWIW, I think we should leave the sidebars out of this given bug 1366851.

Comment 2

[sharu]

Hi, Can you give a more accurate description for the bug. I am interested in this bug. Can you tell me for which web page is this code for. Please guide me as this is my first bug.

Comment 3

[hanbin.chang]

I am not sure if this is already picked up by someone, but if not, I would like to work on this. I  am new to Bugzilla and I would appreciate some assistance. I do have all the test environment set up on my virtual machine.
thanks,

Comment 4

[hanbin.chang]

(In reply to hanbin.chang from comment #3)
> I am not sure if this is already picked up by someone, but if not, I would
> like to work on this. I  am new to Bugzilla and I would appreciate some
> assistance. I do have all the test environment set up on my virtual machine.
> thanks,

Comment 5

[Tomer Cohen :tomer]

(In reply to Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me) from comment #0)
> The following icons are not currently flipped/mirrored but should be
> flipped/mirrored for RTL:
What is the reason for having these icons mirrored? As a native right to left language speaker, I don't really see any importance for having the paper plane icon flying to the left instead of the right, and having mirrored icons will cause inconsistency between versions and between different applications. Some icons may look better after flipping, but most icons will be less recognizable to the average user. 

Comment 6

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

I tried to supply reasoning specific to each icon in comment #0.

Which inconsistency between versions and different applications are you concerned about? I don't know of any other applications that use our icon set.

Which icons would be less recognizable to the average user?

Of the icons listed in comment 0, 

Sidebars (fixed by bug 1366851)
Bookmarks menu button (not applicable with new photon button design of star tray and separate star)
Library (fixed by bug 1355922)

That leaves the following icons, which I've ranked by priority of the remaining set:
P1: New Window (due to window close buttons in icon)
P2: Save Page (the "end" of the page should be dog-eared)
P2: Find (icon should be leaning forward)
P2: Share This Page (airplane should be moving forward)
P2: Developer (icon should be leaning forward)
P2: Open File (manila folder should have label at start-side)

The P2 icons are not as important as P1, since they don't try to replicate a scaled down version of our UI.

@hanbin.chang, please feel free to work on the bug. I will assign it to you when you attach a patch. You can use searchfox.org to search for these icons in our CSS, and the Browser Toolbox[1] to inspect the CSS for each of these buttons and make adjustments to how they work. The new rules should be added here http://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/09c065976fd4f18d4ad764d7cb4bbc684bf56714/browser/themes/shared/toolbarbutton-icons.inc.css#16-25

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Browser_Toolbox

Comment 7

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me) from comment #6)
> Library (fixed by bug 1355922)

We reverted this in bug 1385713.

> P1: New Window (due to window close buttons in icon)

There's no close button in there anymore.

> P2: Save Page (the "end" of the page should be dog-eared)

This is a folder now, not a page.

> P2: Share This Page (airplane should be moving forward)

This doesn't exist anymore.

> P2: Find (icon should be leaning forward)
> P2: Developer (icon should be leaning forward)

I'm not sure that "forward" means much here. If anything, shouldn't these depend on whether you're left- or right-handed?

> P2: Open File (manila folder should have label at start-side)

AFAIK we don't mirror folder icons anywhere else. Do OSes do this?

I'll remove good-first-bug since I don't think it's clear enough what should be done here.

Comment 8

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

Yeah, I think we can close this now as invalid. Thanks for writing up the summary in comment #7.