Window menu in Mac OS X sorted alphabetically
Categories
(Core :: Widget: Cocoa, defect, P5)
Tracking
()
People
(Reporter: gkerbaugh, Unassigned)
References
(Regression)
Details
(Keywords: regression)
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:107.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/107.0
Steps to reproduce:
I opened multiple windows on Mac OS X version 11.7 and clicked on the "Window" menu to see the open windows listed by title.
Actual results:
The list of windows was ordered alphabetically. That's useless to me; I don't pay attention to the titles when opening the windows and certainly don't remember them.
Expected results:
In all versions before 108 the list of open windows was ordered in the order in which they were opened. It would be help me if I could put the most recent window at the top of the list but top or bottom, ordering by usage it the only order that is of any use to me. I had to go back to 107 and won't update until the behavior is fixed.
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Comment 1•3 years ago
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The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox::Menus' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.
That's exactly where the bug report belongs. Thank you very much.
Ditto on this bug. I rely on the windows staying in an explicit order, not displayed in alphabetical order.
Also, I am finding in 108.0 that the window title is not changing reliably with the tab being viewed.
By explicit order, I mean in the order opened. Also, open windows are disappearing from the Window list and can only be found by a search. They DO appear in the list that pops up if one clicks and holds on the Firefox icon in the Dock.
Thanks for the details David. The listing of open windows in the menu that pops up when clicking and holding the Firefox icon in the Dock has been ordered alphabetically for some time now. I was disappointed when I discovered that but at least then there was still one listing ordered by the times the windows were opened. I'd rather put up with all of the current bugs than lose that so I've stopped updating. I hope they update this bug when they fix they problem or I'm going to have one awfully out-of-date browser.
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Comment 6•3 years ago
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At first glance, this behavior appears to be the same as in Safari. Is this the case for you as well?
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Updated•3 years ago
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That's too bad. I'm convinced that there are Firefox developers with higher asperations than to try to emulate the worst application they can find. Most of Firefox is better than that. NONE of your other menus are ordered alphabetically and there are excellent reasons for that.
One could hope that Apple would follow their own Human Interface Guidelines but alas, there are bad developers everywhere. Their Guidelines cannot be specific because the logic of each menu is different. Fortunately, your other menus have some logic applied to them. What the Guidelines have to say about the ordering of menus in general can be found in the "Organization" section of the "Menus" page:
"To help people find the item they’re looking for, you can organize menu items according to frequency of use, object importance, functional categories, or another prioritization scheme that fits the way people use your app."
"People tend to start scanning a menu from the top, so listing high-priority items and groups first often means that people can find what they want without scanning the entire menu."
While not specific, these and other suggestions clearly recommend defining a priority of the menu items, not just their labels! Their criteria for that priority is that it "fits the way people use your app." Without looking, how many of the titles of web pages currently open in Firefox can you name?
I do have applications whose windows are labeled with the name of the file they present and the Window menu of some of those apps are ordered alphabetically but at least the name of the file is something the user might know. I may know a key word or two in most titles of my open windows but never the whole title. The title often isn't even reflected in the name of the link I clicked to get there. I've even seen titles that had nothing logically to do with the web page. I suggest that knowing the titles of web pages isn't an important part of most people's browser usage. Maybe it's me but I usually know a lot more about when I opened pages than what their title is.
Very often I open browser windows in groups of closely related pages. If you grouped together pages were opened about the same time, you would really improve the usefulness of the Window menu. Even grouping them according to the day the pages were opened would enhance usage significantly because when pages were opened often has significance to users. However, even without grouping, those pages used to appear together in your Window menu! Making the order depend on something users don't know that is determined by someone else is the opposite direction.
Please don't "fix" what decidedly ain't broke.
Gary
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Comment 8•3 years ago
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The ordering of window titles in the window menu is controlled by macOS. Apple welcomes feedback like yours through their Feedback Assistant.
How dare you close this with a lie! If Apple controlled the order of the menu then the previous hundreds of your versions couldn't have behaved as they do. I went back to an older version of Firefox and tested it on two versions of Mac OS! I quoted to you what Apple says about the order and the word alphabetical appears NOWHERE on the page!
Where do I appeal a decision based on a lie?
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Comment 10•3 years ago
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(In reply to Gary from comment #9)
How dare you close this with a lie! If Apple controlled the order of the menu then the previous hundreds of your versions couldn't have behaved as they do. I went back to an older version of Firefox and tested it on two versions of Mac OS! I quoted to you what Apple says about the order and the word alphabetical appears NOWHERE on the page!
Where do I appeal a decision based on a lie?
Based on the forcefulness of your comment I can't gauge how receptive you are to the technical reasons for this change, but I hope you will appreciate the attempt: The previous ordering was controlled by Firefox, as you have discovered. I have not been able to track down the precise reasons why this had to be done in the past. However, it is fair to assume that a "very long time ago", apps on macOS (or OS X) had to track their own windows. In order to gain functionality such as what was implemented in bug 1642138, we could no longer track our own list of windows and had to hand this control over to macOS. The specific changes that removed tracking of our own list of windows occurred in macWindowMenu.js.
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Comment 11•3 years ago
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Hah! The best way to gauge my receptiveness to reasons for the change is to offer some. Of course this does and I am so thanks. (the more technical the better) Naturally I don't favor the tradeoff but I understand this explanation.
I particularly appreciate the tip about the macWindowMenu JavaScript file! I know JavaScript so if the implementation of the functions it calls hasn't changed, maybe I can update and then replace some new JavaScript with old to get the old behavior.
Gary
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Reporter | |
Comment 12•3 years ago
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By the way, I didn't do anything to increase the font size. All I did was to use a line with two dashes to separate the text from my name. This time I'll just use an empty line.
Gary
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