1601330 - Consider breaking the width link between URLbar and displayed results.

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Address Bar, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Gian-Carlo Pascutto [:gcp]]

I've mentioned this in some other bugs, but I wanted to file it separately as to not confuse the issues.

Currently, the URLbar results panel sizes itself to the URLbar, e.g. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1597221

However, there doesn't seem to be a pressing reason for this. The URLBar displays URLs, not site titles (they go on the window title). But the URLbar results panel has to display both! Thus, the URLbar results panel has less room, and has to jump through hoops to still fit in the extra information, such as bug 1601325, badging favicons, suppressing https, etc.

At the very least, when working in "Add search bar in toolbar" mode, the results panel could expand to include that (I assume this is one of the widest panels Firefox users are prone to have and thus reducing the room for the awesombar). But generally, one could imagine that expanding the results panel to the right could be desirable.

Comment 1

[Gian-Carlo Pascutto [:gcp]]

Attachment: Safari behavior

I attach a screenshot showing that Safari on macOS behaves like I explained, i.e. it breaks the sizing link if the urlbar is relatively small.

Comment 2

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

The fact is in our design the input field and the panel are a single thing visually, and UX thinks that's important, thus we don't want to break it. We have other ways to improve usability in small windows that we addressed or are being worked on.

Comment 3

[Gian-Carlo Pascutto [:gcp]]

The fact is in our design the input field and the panel are a single thing visually, and UX thinks that's important, thus we don't want to break it.

Yes, that's sensible. That is also in fact what Safari tries to do in most circumstances (by default the panel follows the size of the URLbar exactly). But if there's really not enough room because the URLbar is small, it will prefer the usability of enlarging the size over keeping the consistency. There's only so much you can do in a tiny panel, even with clever tricks.

Comment 4

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

It's not just the fact the panel is same size as the input field, they must look like part of a single widget.

Comment 5

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

The megabar design is finalized now and we're not going to change this.