1418064 - show full category name in about:addons sidebar

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

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

Description

[Oriol Brufau [:Oriol]]

1. Install an old version of some add-on, e.g. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/versions/1.14.16
2. Go to about:addons and disable updates for that add-on
3. Click "Check for Updates".

Result: a new entry is added in the sidebar: "Available Updat... [1]"
Expected: the sidebar should be wider so that all text fits.

From bug 1400379 comment 6,
> It might be nice to make the sidebar a bit wider

Currently #categories has width:240px, and width:242px would be enough for English. But maybe a bit more for locales with longer words.

Comment 1

[Markus Jaritz [:markus] (UX)]

Attachment: Screen Shot 2017-11-17 at 13.54.59-fullpage.png

Anything we do here, would most likely only help English. Unless we make it much wider, or have lines wrap instead of truncate.

I am reluctant to just change the sidebar width, just for a optical fix for English, as the sidebar is the same with for all pages. So this would also affect preferences.

For a small optical fix for English, we could set margin-right: -4px; on .category-badge. But for that I would like to know where else badge is used.

Comment 2

[Oriol Brufau [:Oriol]]

What if 240px was just a default width, but allow the sidebar to grow wider if necessary?

Comment 3

[Markus Jaritz [:markus] (UX)]

(In reply to Oriol Brufau [:Oriol] from comment #2)
> What if 240px was just a default width, but allow the sidebar to grow wider
> if necessary?
That will lead to uncontrollable width for other locals.

Comment 4

[Oriol Brufau [:Oriol]]

Yes. But this is how it behaved before Firefox 57, so it can't be that bad.

Comment 5

[Markus Jaritz [:markus] (UX)]

I noticed that the add-ons manager deviates from the regular sidebar-behavior by truncating items, if they do not fit in 1 line, where the standard behavior should be breaking the text in 2 lines. (as seen in preferences)
Fixing this would solve your stated problem.

Comment 6

[Mark Striemer [:mstriemer]]

(In reply to Markus Jaritz [:designakt] (UX) from comment #5)
> I noticed that the add-ons manager deviates from the regular
> sidebar-behavior by truncating items, if they do not fit in 1 line, where
> the standard behavior should be breaking the text in 2 lines. (as seen in
> preferences)
> Fixing this would solve your stated problem.

This was the original fix that was implemented in bug 1393099. Unfortunately it didn't work correctly. There is no badge in the other sections with this sidebar and it doesn't interact well with the badge. In some locales it made the text move to the top and the wrapping was over-aggressive.

The text was updated to truncate instead of scrolling horizontally (which was the default behaviour after other 57 updates) since hovering the item will show the tool tip text.

Comment 7

[Markus Jaritz [:markus] (UX)]

Attachment: AddonManager-Sidebar-DE-EL-IT.gif

(In reply to Mark Striemer [:mstriemer] from comment #6)
> There is no badge in the other sections with this sidebar and it doesn't interact well with the badge. In some locales it made the text move to the top and the wrapping was over-aggressive.
> 
> The text was updated to truncate instead of scrolling horizontally (which was the default behaviour after other 57 updates) since hovering the item will show the tool tip text.

Mark, can you please fix the badge behavior to be able to wrap text and have text be consistently displayed across in-content pages. The current solution is bad news for locals with text much longer than English, like German, Italian or Greek. And relying on a tool-tip for people to be able to read a full category name is very bad user experience.
(See attachment for how the sidebar looks like in those languages.)

Comment 8

[Mark Striemer [:mstriemer]]

This was looking like a fairly large undertaking before, but maybe I can come up with something better on a second look. Adding it to my backlog.

Comment 9

[Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy)]

new sidebar handles this