1385688 - [Suggestion] Dictionary menu available by default

Status: NEW

(Toolkit :: Add-ons Manager, defect, P5)

Description

[u561404]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:56.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/56.0
Build ID: 20170729100254




Expected results:

In the Extensions menu, the Dictionary line appears by default and not after you have already added a dictionary.

Comment 1

[Andrew Swan [:aswan]]

It is by design that we don't show it if there aren't any dictionaries installed.  Can you explain why you prefer different behavior?

Comment 2

[u561404]

Personally I accidentally discovered the dictionaries and thus the spell checker of Firefox. (Which is very useful to me since I am writing in French, English and Russian)

I do not understand why hide this option by default, which is handy.

For example people use more and more webmail, this avoids having to make a correction by way of Word (what I was doing before)

One could imagine that the dictionary is installed with the default language (in case there are several dictionaries, the best one would be chosen)

It is a way to draw attention to an unrecognised functionality, if you ease access, you insisted on its use.

One could also take the problem the other way, why "Extentions" appears by default while basic there is no install?

Comment 3

[Andrew Swan [:aswan]]

Markus over to you

Comment 4

[YF (Yang)]

As a reminder, show "Dictionary" by default may be noise for certain languages, such as Chinese, no dictionary available. However, this is not unacceptable, the Experiments and Services are less useful for users too in my view.

Comment 5

[YF (Yang)]

Digress:
The Experiments panel can be hidden (like System add-ons, see them in about:support), because they are short, low amount of information, difficult to find source, uncontrollable. The team can use a blog or bulletin board to illustrate the upcoming or already running experiments, as well as the Bug number, and even the intended purpose, the results, follow-up.

Comment 6

[Markus Jaritz [:markus] (UX)]

Showing Dictionaries might make more sense for some locales than others, but the consideration that it can be a useful but yet unknown feature is very interesting. We are currently working on a re-design of about:addons and add-on management as a whole and will take this into consideration. (not a lot if people visit about:addons, so only showing it there, without making people aware in other ways, would not add a lot of benefit probalby... but could be a test.) 
(cc'ing Emanuela as she is working on the re-design.)

Comment 7

[emanuela [ux]]

Yes, it is indeed a useful information to know. 

@Post-Scriptum can you please tell us more about your experience. Like, how did you discover the dictionary (you already mention it was 'by accident', I'd like to know more about it)? How did you install one or more dictionaries and for how long how you're using them?

Comment 8

[u561404]

Hello,
My girlfriend is Kazakh, I am French, so I communicate with my in-laws in a mixture of French / English and Russian.

I had to prepare a PC for my in-laws, my Russian was not particularly good, I first prepared the PC in French, then I spent Windows and the various programs in Russian.

At the time I had not found an option to change the language of Firefox (today I found it) so I had installed an addon to dynamically change the display language of FF, but for That it works, the add-on required that the language packs be installed.

Language pack I found on the site of the add-on of Firefox. I'm not completely blind ^^ and I'm curious, I wondered what the difference between the language packs and the dictionaries I was seeing on the column next door.

So I installed the French dictionary to test on my PC. At first I did not understand and it was by writing an email that my spelling mistakes her emphasize in red, my brain made the link with Word and a right click to finish making me understand.

Since I have always installed the French / Russian / and UK language packs (there are two I take the best rated one)
And I find it very practical, especially since where I work I am forced to undergo a Google Chrome in English and I never find a way to add dictionaries, while with Firefox, once That we have the line in about:addon, no need to look for hours on the internet, a search and if the community has one available it appears directly.

And as I said in a previous post, people are using more and more webmail, chatting / forum / facebook / twetter etc via their browser, so I think that would be a useful feature.

By extension one might even be able to imagine sorts of correspondence table of language to make page translations in dynamic (but one moves away from the subject)

P.-S : I using it for a year and a half.

Comment 9

[u561404]

(In reply to Post-Scriptum from comment #8)

I use Firefox since I was 15, so I spent 13 years discovering the dictionary...

Comment 10

[Andrew Swan [:aswan]]

Markus/Emanuela: is there a bug for the about:addons redesign? (this is the first I've heard of it)
Regardless, what should we do with this bug?  Unless there's some pressing reason do to this now, I'm inclined to close this bug and let you consider this in the redesign project.

Comment 11

[Markus Jaritz [:markus] (UX)]

There was no tracking bug for our efforts so far. Created one now to keep track of all the related bugs that float around. Added this one too. And I'd like to keep it open as an input for UX.

Comment 13

[Virtual_ManPL [:Virtual] 🇵🇱 - (please needinfo? me - so I will see your comment/message/reply/question/etc.)]

(In reply to Andrew Swan [:aswan] from comment #1)
> It is by design that we don't show it if there aren't any dictionaries
> installed.  Can you explain why you prefer different behavior?

It's to show users, that they can install other dictionaries,
like their native language and some others like English (US), English (GB) and etc.

In simple way, making this feature more discoverable.

The same thing could be also done to Language Packs (Locales).