1429544 - Subdialogs can become larger than the viewport and become hard/impossible to use

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Settings UI, defect, P3)

Description

[Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy)]

In discussing bug 1425535, we were looking at the proxy settings in preferences.

One problem with it is that, if the Firefox window is small enough, you will not be able to access the entire dialog.  

The second, more a suggestion on an approach at making the dialog smaller; rather than using radio buttons for the initial selection, I think a dropdown might work better.  Depending on the dropdown selection, we may show additional options.

bug 1425535 will also have to add some element to the dialog to indicate the extension that has control over those settings.

Comment 1

[Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy)]

Correction, bug 1428486 is about the UX for the extension control.

Comment 2

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

This isn't the only dialog that suffers from this problem, but likely one of the worst.

Radio buttons work better for this dialog than a dropdown. A dropdown would still end up showing a large dialog in the Manual Proxy Configuration state, and when the number of options are less than 7 it is generally better to use radio buttons since they allow for quicker visually scanning of the interface and potential outcomes before making a choice.

I would prefer that we make the body of the box vertically flex, keeping the header and footer always visible and showing a scrollbar in the body of the dialog.

Comment 4

[:Gijs (out for now; he/him)]

This recently regressed with bug 1379338, so not really a dupe (though related). It's now much worse than in bug 1159233 (which was about really quite (vertically) small windows).

Myk, can you take a look?

Comment 5

[:Gijs (out for now; he/him)]

As timeless pointed out on IRC,

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/0adedb70b788#l43.13

looks suspect.

Comment 6

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

Attachment: remove obsolete rule that disables scrolling in pref subdialogs

Before bug 1379338, toolkit/content/xul.css contained the ruleset:

>prefwindow[type="child"] > prefpane > .content-box {
>  -moz-box-flex: 1;
>  overflow: -moz-hidden-unscrollable;
>}

In bug 1379338, I translated that to this ruleset:

>.prefwindow[type="child"] > .prefpane {
>  -moz-box-flex: 1;
>  overflow: -moz-hidden-unscrollable;
>}

But it turns out that the old ruleset wasn't actually being applied, because prefpanes weren't the direct children of prefwindows in the old implementation.  Presumably they had been originally, but at some point they were moved into a deck inside an hbox.

So the rule was obsolete, and I shouldn't have translated it.  The fix is to remove the translation.

(Note: this doesn't address bug 1159233, it only fixes the regression from bug 1379338.)

Comment 8

[Sam Foster [:sfoster] (he/him)]

Giving this a priority to get it off the triage list.

Comment 10

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/1ff4392042af
remove obsolete rule that disables scrolling in pref subdialogs; r=dao

Comment 11

[Narcis Beleuzu [:NarcisB]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/1ff4392042af