178185 - Restore Grippies to toolbars & menu bar.

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 175091

(SeaMonkey :: UI Design, defect)

Description

[John A.]

Bug 112534 removed them, I suspect without the knowledge of most.  If you want
them restored, or at least available via a prefs.js option, please vote for this
bug.

The abovementioned "bug" cites several others that are "solved" by the removal
of this convenient feature. That is merely a cop out. They just need help fixing
those bugs, and are too proud to say it.

Comment 1

[John A.]

Just a bit of clarification: This is regarding the recent removal of the toolbar
"grippies" on the left side that let you quickly and conveniently collapse the
tool & menu bars for more display space.

Comment 2

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Um... This was what was called a Module Owner Decision. As in, the owner of this
code (Blake Ross) has decided that the grippies should be removed.  This is his
prerogative, as module owner.

If you feel that Blake made a mistake, you should mail him or bring this up in
the newsgroups.  If you feel that Blake is a bad module owner, you should
contact [e-mail] (this is not likely to get far, btw, since he's in
fact a decent module owner).  But since he'd need to approve the restoration of
the grippies anyway, filing a bug on it is not useful unless you've changed his
mind first.

Comment 3

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

v

Comment 4

[John A.]

The decision was apparently made based on the perception that noboy uses the
feature, but I can't see that any effort was made to verify that.

This is an attempt to give folks who do use it a voice to let Blake know that it
is a usefull and wanted feature.

Comment 5

[Phillip M. Jones, C.E.T.]

Obviously, The bug owner doesn't use a small (Below 17" Monitor). This is not meant to be a "smart alec" Remark. Its meant 
seriously.

Comment 6

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

The decision was made based on observations of users in usability studies.  Said
observations were the feature leads to massive user confusion.

The newsgroups are a much more appropriate place for advocacy and voicing issues
than the bug database.  For one thing, they are much more public and reach a
much bigger fraction of the community than a bug would or could.

Comment 7

[John A.]

I have to question those studies. I supported Netscape users, starting with
version 1.0 (Netscape, not Mozilla :) ,) and never had one user have any trouble
with collapsable toolbars. Any support people reading this care to share there
experience? How often did you have users have trouble with this?

Where did they get the users for these tests? Had they used Netscape with this
feature before, or at all? How much experience with computer use did they have?
When was the study done?

Any way to get to the results and/or raw data?

Comment 8

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

They were internal Netscape studies.... Getting the data is hard; I've tried
before but it seems removing the Netscape proprietary information is too big a
hassle or something (or so they say).

Comment 9

[Daniel Wang]

dupe of bug 175091

Comment 10

[Daniel Wang]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 175091 ***

Comment 11

[John Levon]

v dup

Comment 12

[James Carr]

surely if we are going to start removing features that confuse the most stupid
users we need to get rid of a lot more. im all in favour of making confusing
things options that are are off by default, but surely removing them altogether
is going too far. i for one have used this feature and am annoyed by it's removal. 

Comment 13

[Phillip M. Jones, C.E.T.]

I never thought it was a confusing feature I liked and used it myself

Comment 14

[Phillip M. Jones, C.E.T.]

To me removing something like this, is due to someone having to much time on there hands, and just need something to do.