144606 - Command+B opens, but does not close, the Sidebar drawer

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(Camino Graveyard :: Bookmarks, defect)

Description

[Brent Stephens]

Although Cmd+B works to open this drawer, it does not close it as well. 
Probably a simple bug, basically a small usability flaw.

Comment 1

[Greg K.]

Confirmed using Chimera/20020602. Revising Summary.

Comment 2

[saari (gone)]

->pinkerton

Comment 3

[saari (gone)]

really this time

Comment 4

[Mike Pinkerton (not reading bugmail)]

if cmd-b opened a new window, would you expect cmd-b again to close that window?

Comment 5

[Ian Thompson]

If a drawer is just another window:

- shouldn't cmd-W close it?
- shouldn't it have a closebox at the top?
- shouldn't hitting cmd-B open another bookmarks drawer (I'm not talking about
making a new browser window and hitting cmd-B again)?

But of course, none of those statements are true, because drawers behave
differently. If drawers acted like windows, there'd be no reason to have drawers
in the first place. Instead, look at how a drawer is implemented in Mail.app:

- "Show Mailboxes"/shift-cmd-M opens a drawer showing the user's mailboxes
- when the drawer is open, the menu item becomes "Hide Mailboxes", and
shift-cmd-M closes the drawer

There's a problem with implementing the same behavior in Navigator, though.
cmd-B is wired to "Show Bookmarks in Sidebar", not "Show Sidebar". Maybe there
should probably be a way to show/hide the sidebar using a single shortcut
combination, but it can't be tied to "Show Bookmarks in Sidebar"--"Hide
Bookmarks in Sidebar" makes no sense. 

Comment 6

[saari (gone)]

Since we can remove the sidebar button from the toolbar, it may be unwise to
just future this...

Comment 7

[Jeff Hume]

Are there any plans to have bookmakrs in a seperate window as well as in the
sidebar? If so cmd-B should be assigned to that window and there should just be
a shortcut to toggle the sidebar. Having two menu items - "Show bookmarks" and
"Show bookmarks in sidebar" would clutter things.

Perhaps there should be a toggle sidebar shortcut and then items for showing
history and bookmarks. The user would use the appropriate shortcut to open what
they wanted and eliminate the step of switching tabs in the drawer. But since
there isn't any additional selection process when closing the drawer a toggle
shortcut is needed, much like the button in the toolbar.

A drawer is a window, except it is a special window. It is attached to another
window and is opened and closed while the parent window is open. It wouldn't
make sense to have seperate commands to open and close it, that is very
unintuitive. NSDrawer has a toggle action for a reason. If you look at other
apps with drawers they behave in the manner I am refering too.

Comment 8

[Greg K.]

*** Bug 155707 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 9

[Max Horn]

I also think that Cmd-B should toggle the drawer. This is expected behaviour for a drawer 
or similar UI elements - Jeff explained this nicely, so I won't repeat the reasons. Instead a 
list of examples in well established applications that use a toggle command for similar 
stuff:
* Internet Explorer (Cmd-B for their toolbar)
* OmniWeb (Cmd-B for their bookmark drawer)
* QuickTime Player (Cmd-K)
* Mail.app (Cmd-Shift-M to show/hide your mailboxes)

Nothing in the HIG says it's bad to toggle a drawer; on the contrary, <http://
developer.apple.com/techpubs/macosx/Essentials/AquaHIGuidelines/AHIGWindows/
Drawers.html> explicitly states that drawers may be controlled in a "Show & Hide" 
fashion.

Comment 10

[Prachi Gauriar]

Mike, what's the status on this? I've finally downloaded the source entire tree,
and I'm most certainly willing to help. 

I think the resolution on this really depends on whether other things (like
history) are going to go into the sidebar as tabs. If there are, then Show
Bookmarks in Sidebar has a completely different meaning, and should work as follows:

Show Bookmark in Sidebar:
   If Sidebar is open
     Bring Bookmarks tab to front
   Else
     Open Sidebar and bring Bookmarks tab to front

If this is the case, there should be a separate item that toggles the sidebar.
This item would go in the View menu and dynamically change to reflect whether
the action shows or hides the Sidebar.

If there aren't going to be other items in the sidebar(which I doubt), then the
tab should be removed and the menu item should dynamically change to reflect
whether the sidebar will be shown or hidden. 

Again, I think that the former of the two is the way we want to do this. In that
case, this bug should be marked invalid. 

Comment 11

[Max Horn]

I disagree, Prachi. IMHO, even if the sidebar contains multiple tabs, this is valid. The logic 
then should be:

Show/Hide Bookmarks:
   if sidebar is open
     bring bookmarks tab to front
   else if siedbar shows bookmarks
     close Sidebar
   else
     open Sidebar and bring bookmarks tab to front

Comment 12

[Prachi Gauriar]

Max, I think what you want is a separate command for toggling the sidebar. I
think that such a menu item is a good idea, and bug 152975 requests this
behavior. However, the menu item in question is not meant to toggle the Sidebar.
It is meant to show the Bookmarks in the Sidebar (as its title implies). 

Either change the title, or add a new menu item, but changing this menu item's
behavior seems wrong.

Comment 13

[Mike Pinkerton (not reading bugmail)]

i'm of the mind that we should do something similar to what Prachi suggested,
but i'm loathe to add another menu item for basically the same thing as we
already have. I can see both sides, and why users would expect cmd-b to also
close the drawer. of course, that doesn't mean it's right ;)

perhaps we need to do a quick-and-dirty usability test here. simon, any thoughts?

Comment 14

[Prachi Gauriar]

Just for reference, today I posted a patch to bug 152975 so that there is a
separate menu item for Show/Hide Sidebar. The menu item should exist if there's
a toolbar item to do it, because you really should be able to perform the action
even if the user doesn't have the item in his/her toolbar. 

Anyway, if that patch goes through, I think this bug should be invalidated.
Through that logic, this bug depends on 152975, right?

Comment 15

[Simon Fraser [no longer active]]

Should we just dup this to bug 152975?

The problem here is whether we have stuff in the sidebar other than bookmarks.
Do users think of it as "the sidebar", or "the bookmarks drawer"?

I think we can only resolve this issue when we've decided whether the sidebar
contains other stuff.

Comment 16

[Simon Fraser [no longer active]]

Executive decision: Command-B (Show Bookmarks) should open the drawer if it's
not visible, and select the Bookmarks tab there (if it is not already the only
tab/the visible tab). Show Bookmarks) will not close an open drawer, or do
anything else.

Comment 17

[Mike Pinkerton (not reading bugmail)]

plan is to have a separate menu item for open/close of the sidebar. WONTFIX

Comment 18

[Simon Fraser [no longer active]]

When verfying this, switch the pref to show the history tab
("chimera.show_history", true), then open the sidebar and switch to the history
tab. Then do Command-B, and make sure that it switches to the Bookmarks tab.
Also make sure that if the sidebar is closed, it opens to show the bookmarks tab.

Comment 19

[Prachi Gauriar]

Verified in build 2002080805 according to criteria in comment 18.