1414966 - allow non-image-only pageAction icons

Status: NEW

(WebExtensions :: General, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Robert Helmer [:rhelmer]]

Page actions currently use an image, with a very restrictive width and height.

It's desirable in some cases to use text, transitions, etc.

An example of native Firefox UI which does this is the zoom control, which appears in the right-hand side of the URL bar, shows the current zoom level as text, and uses a CSS transition to draw the user's attention when it appears.

It's possible to do a very poor approximation of this by drawing the page action icon using canvas, but the width restriction makes it not really legible enough, and it's quite complex to do transitions.

The underlying XUL element for zoom control is a <toolbarbutton>, which I think it'd be appropriate to use for page actions generally (by default could just contain a single image and behave as it does today).

Comment 1

[Mike Conca [:mconca]]

:shorlander, I'm interested in your opinion of this request. Is the ability to provide a CSS transition for a page action (or browser action on the toolbar) something we should open up to extensions?  The examples often cited are the page zoom icon (as in this bug) as well as the download toolbar button (that fills up as the file is downloaded).

It is a very common request and would allow extension developers to provide creative, equivalent functionality to what the default browser provides. On the other hand, we don't want to impact the native UX of the browser with page and/or browser action buttons that constantly demand the user's attention.  Is there any middle ground, perhaps by limiting form(s) of CSS transitions?

Comment 2

[Firefox Bug Husbandry Bot]

Bulk move of bugs per https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1483958

Comment 3

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

Clear a needinfo that is pending on an inactive user.

Inactive users most likely will not respond; if the missing information is essential and cannot be collected another way, the bug maybe should be closed as INCOMPLETE.

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