172517 - Per-toolbar button size/type settings

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Toolkit :: Toolbars and Toolbar Customization, enhancement)

Description

[Darren Salt]

This patch provides a way of setting the button size and type on a per-toolbar
basis, using a modified version of the (global) mechanism already provided by
the customisation window.

Comment 1

[Darren Salt]

Attachment: Per-toolbar icon size/type patch

Comment 2

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Setting bug status to New. Hewitt said he was thinking about doing this. 

Comment 3

[David Hyatt]

You need to avoid using getElementsByTagName.  It's very slow.

Comment 4

[Darren Salt]

WRT getElementsByTagName, see bug 171702 comment 19.

Comment 5

[djk]

Attachment: diff against attachment 101643

Darren,

I made a change to the patch you submitted, to correct this situation:

1) (enter customize dialog); Make sure "All toolbars" is set to mode: "Icons"
with "use small icons" checked; Also make sure that at lease one 'normal'
toolbar button (eg Print) is on the Bookmarks Toolbar; (exit customize dialog)
2) (enter customize dialog); Set Navigation Toolbar to "Icons and Text" with
"use small icons" UNchecked
3) Set Bookmarks Toolbar to "Text" ("use small icons" is checked, but disabled)

4) Select "All toolbars" from the left dropdown
   (note that neither mode: "Icons" nor "use small icons" are reflected in the
toolbar states - that's fine, as we haven't selected any mode or icon changes
yet)
5) Uncheck "use small icons"

Actual results: nothing changed on the toolbars ("use small icons" correctly
becomes unchecked from the Bookmarks Toolbar settings, though)
Expected results: all toolbars should switch to icon-only mode, using large
icons, to reflect *both* the current "All toolbars" settings shown on the
panel.

Basically, I think that if either the toolbar mode or iconsize is updated on
"All toolbars", then the other setting should take effect as well, to ensure
consistancy between what is displayed on the panel and how the toolbars are
shown.

Comment 6

[Darren Salt]

I disagree: it's possible that the user may want to switch all toolbars to large
icons while leaving some set to text only. It would be better to display 'mixed'
states (or to leave it as it is!) than to force both settings to be applied to
the toolbars than to limit the user's choice.

I would prefer to display mixed settings when not all toolbars have the same
state. The 'all toolbars' and 'new toolbars' settings should probably be
decoupled at the same time... I'll have a look at this.

Comment 7

[djk]

First, thank you for creating 2 great patches to Phoenix; I'm using this patch
along with the menubar toolbar patch.

It still doesn't mean I can't disagree with you. :-)

> I disagree: it's possible that the user may want to switch all toolbars to 
> large icons while leaving some set to text only.

I thought that's why individual toolbars are on the dropdown, so they can each
have customizable settings for mode and iconsize.

I just find it inconsistant when I'm (supposedly) editing settings for "All
toolbars" <em>and I make a change which updates the UI</em> why all my UI
settings are not picked up at the same time.

> It would be better to display 'mixed'
> states (or to leave it as it is!) than to force both settings to be applied to
> the toolbars than to limit the user's choice.

You can always tweak a particular setting for a toolbar on that toolbar's prefs;
user choice is not limited.

> I would prefer to display mixed settings when not all toolbars have the same
> state. The 'all toolbars' and 'new toolbars' settings should probably be
> decoupled at the same time... I'll have a look at this.

I agree with this point.  As I recall, Windows uses a grey hash pattern (but not
a disabled control) in a checkbox if that checkbox is neither checked or
cleared, but depends on some default or detailed settings.  You cycle through
the three states by clicking; checking makes all 'sub-checkboxes' checked,
unchecking makes all 'sub-checkboxes' cleared, and the grey hash leaves the
'sub-checkboxes' as they were.

I don't know if there is such a state in the DOM, though.

Also, the 'immediate apply' makes this even more difficult to implement.  Maybe
some sort of 'apply current mode and size to all toolbars' button instead...

Comment 8

[Darren Salt]

Attachment: Per-toolbar icon size/type patch (v2)

>> I would prefer to display mixed settings when not all toolbars have the 
>> same state. The 'all toolbars' and 'new toolbars' settings should probably 
>> be decoupled at the same time... I'll have a look at this.

> I agree with this point.  As I recall, Windows uses a grey hash pattern (but 

> not a disabled control) in a checkbox if that checkbox is neither checked or 

> cleared, but depends on some default or detailed settings. [...]
> I don't know if there is such a state in the DOM, though.

I don't see one, and I'm fairly sure that some extensions such as the prefs bar
would have made use of it.

> Also, the 'immediate apply' makes this even more difficult to implement. 
> Maybe some sort of 'apply current mode and size to all toolbars' button 
> instead...

Not really; all that's needed for the tristate checkbox (ugh, horrible name) is
for it to have a setting which says whether the 'mixed' state is
user-selectable.

For now, I've implemented this using the 'disabled' flag.

Comment 9

[djk]

Just tried the new patch.  I think I could live with it, once there is a
tri-state checkbox.  Disabled should not have to be used like this. :-)

Maybe there already is a tri-state?  I found bug 119628 which looks promising;
the patch looks like it's updating an existing tri-state checkbox widget...  I
dunno.

There is some kind of problem with this most recent patch, though.  Haven't had
time to debug it.

1) (enter customize dialog); Make sure "All toolbars" is set to mode: "Icons"
with "use small icons" checked; Also make sure that at least one 'normal'
toolbar button (eg Print) is on the Bookmarks Toolbar; (exit customize dialog)
2) (enter customize dialog); uncheck the 'small icons' checkbox for the Nav toolbar
3) Switch to "All toolbars"
4) Switch back to "Navigation Toolbar"

Notice the checkbox is now checked, incorrectly.

Comment 10

[Darren Salt]

Whoops. Thinko; s/!= "large"/== "small"/g and it'll start working properly.

Comment 11

[djk]

Attachment: Per-toolbar icon size/type patch (v2.1)

This patch reflects that we were too hung up on representing icon size with a
checkbox.

I changed the iconsize to use a menulist instead, and handled ambiguous
settings the way Darren did with the modelist.
I also localized the "All toolbars" and "New toolbars" and changed a few
existing labels in the dtd.

I could see a problem with this approach if there's something else in the code
which depends on the iconsize being a checkbox rather than a menulist.	I
didn't see anything else, and the code appears to work...  Feedback about this
point would be appreciated.

Comment 12

[jfftck]

Attachment: My design idea for the customize screen

I think we need to change it to a menu, with more options.

For the sizes we could have:
Tiny - 16x16
Small - 24x24
Medium - 32x32
large - 40x40
Extra Large - 48x48

And for the text an option to set it to the right of the icon.

I also think the Restore Default Set should be moved to the lower left corner.

I would like to know what you think about this design, the current theme does
not have to use all of the options, but it will give theme creators something
to add on with.

Comment 13

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Comment on attachment 102576 [details] [diff] [review]
Per-toolbar icon size/type patch (v2.1)

hyatt, can you take a look at this patch and see if it's something we want, and
if so then does it look good? Thanks.

Comment 14

[djk]

Just a little note about this patch:

Since the 'menubar toolbar' doesn't have a toolbarname, a blank appears in the
toolbar selection dropdown (on the left) for that toolbar.  Selecting the blank
entry correctly sets the settings for that toolbar, however.  Just the name is
blank.

Comment 15

[Simon Paquet [:sipaq]]

Taking QA Contact

Comment 16

[Simon Paquet [:sipaq]]

*** Bug 216380 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 17

[Bart Kuik]

What I'd like to see is that certain buttons (esp. the 'back' button) can span
multiple toolbars.

Now I have on the upper (menu) toolbar the buttons 'back', 'refresh' an 'stop',
and the location bar and the menu. The navigation-toolbar is disabled, and on
the bookmarks toolbar are the 'home' and 'bookmarks' buttons together with the
toolbar's bookmarks.

The single most used button is certainly the 'back' button, but to get it bigger
than the others, I must make the whole toolbar larger. I'd like to have an
option to let the 'back' button span two toolbars, while keeping the other
buttons small. Is this possible?

Comment 18

[Sekundes]

Maybe we can consider some ideas from the latest version of Opera.
Any toolbars can be selected and highlighted by clicking on them and setting its
properties, it is quite intuitive and easy to use.
Size/type settings for each button should be made too as we could have some
interesting effects. For example, we can set big icons for back button but small
icons for forward button to emulate the toolbar like that AERO interface by
microsoft, which is http://winsupersite.com/images/showcase/lh-winhec-04.png.

Comment 19

[James Ross]

*** Bug 245735 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 20

[Roland]

Personally - looking at the screenshot I was horrified at the deepness of the
proposed menu structure.

As much as I like the grain level customizability - the Firefox is not about that.
The UI should stay simple yet easily customizable ... within limits.

Main thing I would expect of the customizable toolbar is to be able to set
per-toolbar icon sizes. Not more. Or at least not from UI. 

If there is some really compelling reason why I would want to set some
individual button sizes to be different from the rest of icons on the same
toolbar, I don't see any.

Currently I can go into  localstore.rdf and set my preferred per-toolbar icon
sizes manually. I would happily see few additional menu entries besides
"Customize..." when I right-click on the toolbar. Maybe something along these lines:

 +------------------------+
 | v Navigation Toolbar   |
 | v Bookmarks toolbar    |
 +------------------------+
 | * Use Large Icons      |
 | o Use Small Icons      |
 +------------------------+
 | Customize ...          |
 +------------------------+

Where "Use Large/Small Icons" entry would set the icon size of the toolbar whose
context was right-clicked. Also the same menu structure would perfectly suite in
the View -> Toolbars submenu, where Small/Large icon settings would be applied
to all the toolbars.
It's easy, it's intuitive and no unnecessary clutter.

Comment 21

[daka0007]

An addition to the description of this bug:

It is not only possible to have different icon sizes on different toolbars, it
is the default behaviour. On a fresh profile the navigation toolbar icons are
large, while dropping a button to the bookmarks toolbar gives a small icon.

The current gui has the possibility to break that behaviour (selecting "use
small icons") but not to restore it. This is of course unacceptable - causing
the "use small icons" checkbox to be a "paria" for anyone who customized their
toolbars according to the default icon sizes.

Comment 22

[Jesse Ruderman]

*** Bug 272689 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 25

[Philip Chee]

The patch in Bug 394288 would implement per-toolbar button size/type in SeaMonkey. Somebody could copy the implementation there.

Comment 26

[Andreas Goetz]

This is _really_ annoying. Once "braking" my profile, there's no way to go back to my preferred settings. I'd really wish this could be fixed for FF3.

Comment 27

[Philip Chee]

> there's no way to go back
> to my preferred settings. I'd really wish this could be fixed for FF3.

This extension might be of interest to you. It adds several configuration options to each toolbar: <http://totaltoolbar.mozdev.org/>

Comment 28

[Philip Chee]

FYI I've implemented per toolbar icon size/mode controls for SeaMonkey in Bug 428216

Comment 29

[Frank Yan (:fryn)]

We're moving in a different direction with toolbars with the Australis project: making it easier to customize Firefox while simplifying the settings and preventing users from getting into difficult-to-reverse configuration or shooting themselves in the foot.