155482 - Need icon for Quirks vs. Standards Mode

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Toolbars and Customization, enhancement)

Description

[Joseph McLean]

It would be nice to see Mozilla's current rendering mode (quirks or standards)
as a small icon, probably in the window footer bar.  The icon would change to
indicate that Mozilla is rendering in Standards Compliance Mode or Quirks Mode,
providing at-a-glance info without the need to visit the Page Info window each
time.  If adding another icon would confuse/bother the non-interested, it could
be a preferences option -- but I doubt it would be intrusive.    

The benefits of such a feature would help web "developers" to notice when their
webpages are non-compliant -- not just the obvious pages, but the ones they
forgot about.  It would also serve as a bellwether for www standards compliance
in general, as you surf around.  Lastly, it would be a smidge faster/easier to
debug external pages that have Mozilla render issues, as a first step. 

iCab has a similar feature, where the browser has a tiny smiling icon that
appears when a page is standards-compliant.  http://www.icab.de/smile.html

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

we have also a "near standard mode"

Comment 2

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

See bug 47108

Comment 3

[Michael Lefevre]

sounds like a reasonable idea. confirming to prompt someone to decide if this
might  be a good idea.

Comment 4

[timeless]

uid is being phased out.

Comment 5

[Ralf Hauser]

This may be useful for letting a user choose between the two
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=118147

Comment 6

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

This is not layout.  We expose the mode information on the document object; what
the UI wants to do with it is the UI's business.

Comment 7

[vassily "vr" ragosin]

Reading Dave Massy's "Return of the xxxx?" comments, huh? :)

yes, we have web developer toolbar extension that includes this functionality,
but the main reason is raising the awareness about standards and valid code
among the users, have a very clear image presentation (like sad/happy face) and
a tooltip explaining what it means in very simple words (like "Good webpage
code" instead of "Standards compliance mode", "Bad quality webpage code" instead
of "Quirks mode").

I'm voting for this because it will help bring $$$ back to webdesigners :)

Comment 8

[Vitaly Harisov]

Switching product from "Mozilla Application Suite" to "Firefox".

Comment 9

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

Near perfect example of the sort of thing we have extensions for: very useful for a limited set of users, completely baffling and distracting for most.

Comment 10

[Joseph McLean]

Bad code is endemic on the web.  I know that on average, Microsoft's approach has often been to politely respect bad code, rather than admitting that anything's wrong.  That doesn't mean that Mozilla is required to do the opposite, but...

As the "secure" icon shows users when a page is or is not secure, so a standards icon could show users something very important as well.  If Browsers keep hiding errors, there is less impetus for removing them.  

Just my two cents... I don't actually feel fanatic about this.  

-Joseph

Comment 11

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

So, I don't think this is really useful to users, and adding to visual weight isn't okay for the sake of advocacy.