167951 - Make it possible to resize form fields (resizable textareas)

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: Layout: Form Controls, enhancement, P5)

Description

[René Stach]

Hi,

many sites offer tinies textareas e.g. to capture customer feedback. If you have
much to say, the textareas quickly get filled and writing is very unnice. In
these situations I wish to be able to simple resize the textarea that I am
writing into to make a 30cols 10 rows teatarea one with 70 cols and 30 rows
which is more comfortable for writing/editing texts.

René

Comment 1

[Stephen P. Morse]

reassigning

Comment 2

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

confirming RFE; note that this is trivially doable with DOM inspector...

Comment 3

[René Stach]

Even if it is doable with DOM inspector, this is not the most comfortable way to
do it. Why can't I just grab an edge with my mouse and drag the textarea bigger
or smaller like resizing any browser window? That's how I (as stupid user) wish
that should be doable.

Comment 4

[Sander]

*** Bug 205209 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 5

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Contrary to the summary and the "Resizable Form Fields" extension, this should only apply to textareas.

Comment 6

[John P Baker]

In fact, the reference in the firefox 3 status meeting notes should probably
be to the "Resizeable Textarea" extension ( https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/3818/ ) from which "Resizable Form Fields"
was developed.

Comment 8

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

Requesting blocking1.9? on behalf of the bug that was just duped here.

Comment 9

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

I wonder if Netscape Navigator 9 implements this in a clean way. If they could submit a patch upstream, that would be awesome. Are there any intact contacts?

Comment 13

[chAlx]

Many dupes in 2008: seems that Safari have this feature flashed in the minds..

Now I have to insert additional JavaScript into every HTML page I load (into win32 Seamonkey), just to attach resize functions to onmouse* events. Sure this feature should be implemented in the render core with configurable options for keyboard/mouse control and elements to use (textareas, text inputs, selects, objects (Bug 410988) etc.)

For less annoying control look I'd suggest to use a trigger key (Alt or Ctrl) to get this resize controls visible/workable.

Comment 14

[u294409]

> For less annoying control look I'd suggest to use a trigger key (Alt or Ctrl)
to get this resize controls visible/workable.

Disagree. Little resize gripper doesn't hurt and helps newbies discover them.

Comment 15

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

Is this bug purely about TEXTAREAs, or would this bug cover SELECT elements as well?

Comment 17

[chAlx]

> Little resize gripper doesn't hurt and helps newbies discover them.

In textareas only ;) Ok, it doesn't make a sense, but in a best case all newbie features should be 'offable' in advanced options (e.g. about:config).

> Is this bug purely about TEXTAREAs, or would this bug cover SELECT elements as
> well?

I think this ticket should be stricted to textareas and forced to resolve/wontfix in a short time. There are many core tweaks to do but these small user-friendly features defines the choice of millions.

Comment 18

[Lucas Malor (mail: c6kfnkn2uc AT snkmail DOT c0m)]

Bug 410988 propose a larger set of object to be resizeable. IMO it suggests a more general and useful approach.

Comment 19

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Putting this on the radar for 1.9.1, asking for blocking to pick up wanted. As more websites are offering content-creation regions, it's becoming more common that users might want a little more space. There are ways for websites to do this (cf: Wordpress) but it would be good to get to parity with webkit, here.

(In reply to comment #9)
> I wonder if Netscape Navigator 9 implements this in a clean way. If they could
> submit a patch upstream, that would be awesome. Are there any intact contacts?

Chris Finke, maybe? Chris, any ideas if there's stuff we can upstream here?

(In reply to comment #18)
> Bug 410988 propose a larger set of object to be resizeable. IMO it suggests a
> more general and useful approach.

I don't want to see conflation issues here. Let's keep these separate, as the primary functional gain for this is content creation for text. I think the results are far, far less predictable for arbitrary <object> resizing.

Comment 20

[MuldeR]

I totally sign this request :-)

Google Chrome has exactly that feature by default and it's very useful!

Comment 21

[Philip Chee]

> Putting this on the radar for 1.9.1, asking for blocking to pick up wanted. As
> more websites are offering content-creation regions, it's becoming more common
> that users might want a little more space.

AMO (developer and editor tools) is a particular culprit that comes to mind. Giving really teeny boxes to type your comments/reviews in.

Comment 23

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

We need to fix this for the next version of Firefox. Typing in text areas is becoming more commonplace, and it's an extremely helpful feature to have.

Enn: have time to look into this? Can you take?

Comment 24

[Lucas Malor (mail: c6kfnkn2uc AT snkmail DOT c0m)]

Please read Bug 442228 Comment #1. 

PS: I do _not_ want to mix issues.

Comment 25

[Timothy Miller]

Allowing the user to enable resize for all fields regardless of the CSS flag might be nice.  There's correctness/compliance, and then there's adding features that don't cause any harm because people like them and they're a good idea.  Safari users really like this feature.

Comment 26

[chAlx]

As I can see the implementation of CSS 'resize' property is very useful for all but it won't let us to resize all these existing textareas with default properties.

But with the 'resize' property there could be a bit another option for this bug enhancement: "Set initial resize value to 'both' instead of 'none'".
Moreover, the special textarea option could have 3 values: 'Never' (now case), 'Always' (Safari way) and 'CSS-controlled' (using initial 'both' or 'none' according to previous option if no value is set).

Comment 27

[Micah Gersten]

Ubuntu Bug:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/402621

Comment 28

[d]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=410988 - That bug is basically the same, but covers things like Flash, Videos etc. It would be nice to resize a <video> element with your mouse.

Comment 29

[RNicoletto]

FYI, Greasemonkey + Resizeable Text Fields script (http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/42433) it's a nice workaround IMHO.

Comment 30

[Johnathan Nightingale [:johnath]]

After discussion: this is wanted, not blocking. But it would need to make beta (next week, basically) - risky to take in an RC.

Comment 31

[Neil Deakin]

I added some patches for this in bug 442228.

https://build.mozilla.org/tryserver-builds/[e-mail]-resize-textbox/ should have builds with this feature to try out.

Comment 32

[Joe Drew (not getting mail)]

Neil, how far from completion is your work on this feature?

Comment 33

[Neil Deakin]

It just needs to be checked in.

Comment 34

[Joe Drew (not getting mail)]

Could you attach the patch and get it reviewed then? :)

Comment 35

[Joe Drew (not getting mail)]

Neil tells me that the relevant patch is in bug 442228, and it just got its final reviews a couple of days ago.

Comment 36

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

Documented in the textarea element:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/HTML/Element/textarea

Documentation of -moz-resize itself is coming up momentarily.