1588415 - Set a min-width on urlbar-input

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect, P3)

Description

[Max Power]

Attachment: Capture.PNG

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:69.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/69.0

Steps to reproduce:

When FireFox is a relatively small window (not filling the screen), I tried to type a new address.

Actual results:

The address bar was too pressed by the unresizing Toolbar (where default buttons and other Extension icons are) and the EV-SSL label, the input field was not even visible.

Expected results:

Chrome lets you resize the address bar easily (place the mouse cursor between the address bar and the ToolBar, and the cursor becomes resizing cursor and lets you resize the address bar).

I found that FireFox allows resizing the Toolbar by moving items to the "Overflow" portion, but that is not easily accessible. You have to click "Customise" and move the items one-by-one. When FireFox is filling the screen, there is lots of space, I want the items to be shown again. Then I would have to repeat the process back.

Why not simply allow users to resize the address bar/ ToolBar as Chrome does? It is far more intuitive and quicker than "customising" the Toolbar each time.

Comment 1

[Gingerbread Man]

Gijs, you were opposed to this in bug 1433103 which is largely the same thing. Any change of opinion given the above?

(In reply to Homer Simpson from comment #0)

the EV-SSL label

Bug 1572936 removed it.

(place the mouse cursor between the address bar and the ToolBar, and the cursor becomes resizing cursor and lets you resize the address bar).

If the search bar is enabled, placing the cursor between it and the address bar lets you resize them.

I found that FireFox allows resizing the Toolbar by moving items to the "Overflow" portion, but that is not easily accessible. You have to click "Customise" and move the items one-by-one.

You can also right-click each item and choose Pin to Overflow Menu.

Comment 2

[Max Power]

I have tried adding the search filed and resizing it. But that was not what I wanted. It resized the proportion of the address bar and the search field. What I wanted was resizing the proportion of the address bar and the right side of the tool bar where extension icons are (I mistakenly thought that area's name was Toolbar, but not it seems the whole line is called Toolbar).

Thanks for the right-click way; I did not notice that. Certainly it is faster than using the customise menu, but it still is not as fast as resizing the extension icon area like Chrome. It seems that each such icon is a separate entry. With this current structure, maybe Chrome-like behaviour is not possible. If there is a new type of entry like an "extension icons bar", and extension icons are added on that bar, instead of being directly added to the Toolbar, more intelligent resizing options would be possible like automatic overflow menu. But that would require quite a lot of work so...

Comment 3

[:Gijs (he/him)]

My reasoning in bug 1433103 was that it was strictly related to the search bar, which isn't normally present anymore, and the suggestion there would be complex to get to work at all. Here too, the request as stated doesn't really work - what Chrome does is resize the add-on area, not the location bar - the location bar takes up whatever space is left. We can't easily do the same thing because add-ons can be placed anywhere, and users do do that, and removing that ability would be a big step back in customizability. That is, if the add-on icons are spread across the toolbar it isn't possible to meaningfully "resize the add-on area".

Current nightly (soon to be beta) gets rid of the EV label inside the address bar so hopefully the... unfortunate... situation in the screenshot is no longer as easy to hit (though the minimum size of the location bar was also changed).

(In reply to Homer Simpson from comment #0)

Why not simply allow users to resize the address bar/ ToolBar as Chrome does? It is far more intuitive and quicker than "customising" the Toolbar each time.

This happens automatically once Firefox detects there's not enough space, plus you have the manual control that was described already.

If we want to fix anything here, I think it's that we want to ensure the minimum size for the url input field is increased when it is cluttered up by other items (like the zoom control or other page actions), such that we automatically move excess icons into the overflow menu. This is what you want based on your description: when the window is big, more add-on icons; when the window is smaller, fewer add-on icons.

However, that has another downside, which is that the required minimum size would change when switching tabs - because some tabs would be zoomed in (or have a container label, or a reader mode indicator, or more/fewer add-on page actions, which are hidden when not available). If we always assume the "worst case", I bet the minimum size would be so large that the default set of icons (without add-ons) would no longer fit on small screen sizes.

So I'm not sure what the "right" fix is here. Dão, do you have ideas?

Comment 4

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

With bug 1572936 being fixed I think we're entering edge case territory here. What I think we should do regardless is set a minimum width on the address bar's <input> so that many page action buttons being present doesn't prevent the user from typing in the address bar.

Comment 5

[Harry Twyford]

The UX spec in bug 1598563 shows much more of the URL at small window widths.

Comment 6

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to Harry Twyford [:harry] from comment #5)

The UX spec in bug 1598563 shows much more of the URL at small window widths.

This bug is already mostly fixed. We should just set a min-width on the input as mentioned in comment 4.

Comment 7

[James Teow [:jteow]]

Just re-iterating that comment 4 by Dao should be the way to fix this issue.