170454 - Pref to disable scrollbars=no

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(SeaMonkey :: UI Design, enhancement)

Description

[Max Alekseyev]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (OS/2; U; Warp 4.5; en-US; rv:1.2b) Gecko/20020923
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (OS/2; U; Warp 4.5; en-US; rv:1.2b) Gecko/20020923

Testcase html is coming

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open testcase html
2. Click on link "How does Proxy bidding work?"
3. It will be opened in a new window with no scrollbars

Comment 1

[Max Alekseyev]

Attachment: testcase html

Comment 2

[Dylan Foley]

The page in question uses JavaScript to open the link in eBay's little popup
help window. However, the page that is linked to:

http://pages.ebay.ca/help/buyerguide/bidding-prxy.html

is not designed to be opened in a little popup help window. No bugs here.

Comment 3

[Max Alekseyev]

Why do the user should care if page was designed or not to be opened in pop-up
window? Why not simply to provide scrollbars if the content does not fit the window?

Another example from bug 178102 : http://www.checkfree.com/
Open the page, click on "Tell me more" link to get a pop-up window. If you're
lucky enough to have all the text inside the window then press Ctrl+Gray+ to
increase font size. You'll get a part of the text outside the window and no
scrollbars.

Sometimes such behavior is a real pain. Because either you have all the text
inside but unreadable because of small font, or large enough readable font with
a part of the text outside the window. ;-(

Comment 4

[Chris Lyon]

I see scrollbars in the testcase provided and on http://www.checkfree.com/ with
font sized increased.  Using 20021130.

max, can you reproduce the bug on a new build of Mozilla?

Comment 5

[Max Alekseyev]

I've just installed OS/2 build 2002112912 (the latest available for OS/2 at the
moment).

I still see the bug with http://www.checkfree.com/

With testcase html I have scrollbars in pop-up window BUT there is another
problem now. Mozilla opens a link in main window as well as in pop-up one while
it should open link in pop-up window only. 
Chris, do you that weird behavior?

Comment 6

[Max Alekseyev]

I've filled up bug 182998 for that strange behavior.

And I don't have scrollbars at http://www.checkfree.com/ with Linux build
2002120121. Adding the link to URL...

Comment 7

[Chris Lyon]

My mistake, I can reproduce the missing scrollbar in checkfree.

However, that ia bug 173072.

Resolving as duplicate, since the original problem (the popup) is now gone.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 173072 ***

Comment 8

[Max Alekseyev]

Disagree. The major feature of bug 173072 is solid grey bars instead of scrollbars.
Here we don't see any bars.

Comment 9

[Chris Lyon]

I see the solid gray bars in Windows, that's why I duped it.

Comment 10

[Max Alekseyev]

No bars in OS/2 and Linux builds 2002120112.

Comment 11

[Kenneth Herron]

I'm using linux nightly 2003020805. The original testcase seems to work fine;
the popup window is displayed with scrollbars.

In the checkfree example, the popup window doesn't contain scrollbars even after
zooming or resizing. The window is opened via:

    javascript:openWindow('tellmemoreb/index.htm', 'remote', '300', '300');

which ends up calling

    window.open('tellmemoreb/index.htm', 'remote', 'width=300,height=300');

The third arg is the "windowfeatures" parameter. According to the js reference
at <http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/communicator/jsref/index.htm>:

"If windowName does not specify an existing window and you do not supply the
windowFeatures parameter, all of the features which have a yes/no choice are yes
by default. However, if you do supply the windowFeatures parameter, then the
titlebar and hotkeys are still yes by default, but the other features which have
a yes/no choice are no by default."

Here the window.open() call contains a windowfeatures parameter, which doesn't
specify a "scrollbars" value. The default is thus no, so the window shouldn't
have scrollbars. Mozilla's behavior is correct.

This bug is about the proxy-bidding popup, which appears to work correctly.
Resolving wfm.

Comment 12

[Max Alekseyev]

Ok. Let's formulate the problem in a way similar to bug 101509

Comment 13

[Jesse Ruderman]

See also bug 179692, "Always show scrollbars if needed, ignoring scrollbars=no".
 The difference between 179692 and this bug is that this bug asks for a pref.

Comment 14

[Gérard Talbot]

I have a similar bug: see bug 179692.

>Why not simply to provide scrollbars if the content does not fit the window?
I absolutely agree. It's been working like this in all document based PC
applications in the last 20 years. Suddenly, sub-windows created by browsers no
longer work intuitively like that. Web developers are paid to make their content
fit their own created sub-windows (popup) and when they fail - whatever the
reason here - then a normal standard fallback should happen. That's bug 179692.

I confirm what was said in comment #11.

Most webdesigners are not aware of most rules applied on the windowFeatures list
string. Even more web designers are unaware of the default browser css margin
declaration on the body on both 
MSIE body {margin:15px 10px;} and 
Mozilla-based browsers body {margin:8px;}

Most webdevelopers assume that scrollbars=yes will generate scrollbars even if
not needed when "If yes, creates horizontal and vertical scrollbars when the
Document grows larger than the window dimensions." MSIE makes the problem
furthermore difficult by including a default {overflow-y:scroll;} css
declaration on the documentElement, so popup windows have often a dimmed,
disabled, inactive vertical scrollbar.

In any case, I do NOT think disabling scrollbars=no as a pref is the way to go. 

Comment 15

[Max Alekseyev]

If "a normal standard fallback" is a presence of scrollbars, then we can dup
this bug to bug 179692.
Everything I care about is an ability to access page content even if it has
resizable=no and scrollbars=no attributes. Will it be a pref, or smart enough
behavior of Mozilla doesn't matter. 
I've already expressed my point of view in comment #3.

Comment 16

[Kenneth Herron]

Mozilla has prefs to disable scrollbars=no and other window.open() defaults. See
bug 107949.

As noted, we also have bug 179692, which covers scrollbars=no from a different
direction.

If you want something that isn't covered by these two bugs, it'd be best to open
a new bug or add commentary to the existing reports.

The original subject of this bug is no longer an issue. Resolving WFM.