1705686 - Why remove the application menu icons in proton ?

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Menus, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Lurux]

Attachment: firefox menu.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:87.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/87.0

Steps to reproduce:

Open the hamburger (or "application") menu on Firefox Nightly (proton design)

Actual results:

There are a lot of good things about the proton redesign, and I think the simplified application menu is one of them.

However, I don't understand the reason to remove the icons from the application menu; while I used to be able to quickly scan through the menu using icons as a reference, I'll now be forced to read everything to get where I want - especially since the items have moved so I can't remember where they are !

Expected results:

Generally speaking, having icons in these kind of menus is both more usable and aesthetically pleasing, so I'd like to suggest the design team to reevaluate their decision to remove the icons from the application menu.

Having all the icons in the menu may feel clunky, but keeping the icons only for the most important items would help to emphasize them and make them more visible.

See the attached montage: what's so wrong about this ?

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox::Menus' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please revert this change in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[Lurux]

Seems like I don't have access to this...

Comment 3

[Negritas Sergiu, Desktop QA]

Thank you for your contribution Lurux! I will add this enhancement to New to keep a track of it and hopefully it will be taken into consideration in the future.

Thank you!

Comment 4

[regs]

This is absolutely wrong. Menus are pain to navigate without icons.

Comment 5

[Shane Hughes [:aminomancer]]

• rude advocacy

Comment 6

[Álvaro G]

I didn't know why I was having such a hard time reading the menus now, I need the icons back!

Comment 7

[Matthijs Wensveen]

Duplicate of #1696658? I would really like the icons back as well.

Comment 8

[Matthijs Wensveen]

Proper link: Bug 1696658

Comment 9

[regs]

(In reply to Matthijs Wensveen from comment #8)

Proper link: Bug 1696658

That one was closed. This one questions realization of intended behavior of Proton feature as wrong.

Comment 10

[[e-mail]]

Another argument for keeping the app menu icons is for consistency with other places that still use icons:

• The overflow menu [1]
• Context menus (for extension-provided actions) [2]
• The sidebar header (though its combobox hides icons for native items) [2]
• The sidebar in about:preferences and about:addons [3]
• Favicons
• The Bookmarks sidebar, History sidebar, and Library (which shows icons next to non-site items like tags, history dates, and bookmark categories/folders)
• The URL bar label for browser-provided and extension-provided pages (like the "Firefox" icon+label for about: pages, and the jigsaw icon next to "Extension (<extension name>)" for extension setting pages)
• The Site Information doorhanger (which shows a padlock icon next to "Connection secure" and "You are securely connected to this site")
• The Tracking Protection doorhanger (which shows icons next to each category of content that Tracking Protection oversees)

If icons are useful in some places, then it stands to reason they're just as useful in the app menu.

[1] In fact, some app menu actions also exist as toolbar/overflow menu buttons. This means it's possible to add an app menu item to the overflow menu, where it has an icon in the latter but not in the former. Unless the app/overflow menus have different enough usecases to warrant different icon philosophies, this feels needlessly inconsistent.
[2] If the justification for the app menu lacking icons is that it cannot contain extension-provided actions (which consistently provide icons wherever they appear), then it's inconsistent with the fact that context menus & the sidebar header combobox contain both native actions without icons & extension-provided actions with icons.
[3] The about: page sidebars are admittedly a bit different, since unlike menus, they're in browser content which can shrink, and use icons as a fallback when there's no room to show icons+labels. Still, these sidebars suggest a visual pattern of icons+labels in native browser UI.

Comment 11

[Shane Hughes [:aminomancer]]

• advocacy

Comment 12

[[e-mail]]

And for what it's worth, Firefox Android's app menu still uses icons, even after its own Proton refresh.

Comment 13

[08xjcec48]

User feedback: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/bring-back-menu-icons/idi-p/46