Closed Bug 187488 Opened 22 years ago Closed 22 years ago

No site navigation bar (link navbar)

Categories

(Firefox :: Toolbars and Customization, enhancement)

Product:
Firefox
Component:
Toolbars and Customization
Type:
enhancement
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

()

Status:
VERIFIED WONTFIX

People

(Reporter: gerald.niel, Assigned: hyatt)

References

Details

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.3a) Gecko/20021207 Phoenix/0.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.3a) Gecko/20021207 Phoenix/0.5

There is no possibility to display the site navigation bar like with Mozilla > 1.1
Sorry for my english...


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.
To the best of my knowledge, Phoenix does not use a site navigation bar. So this
is INVALID.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 22 years ago
Resolution: --- → INVALID
reopening, it is a a request for enhancement and not a bug report about
concerning current features.
I think that it is up to the phoenix project leaders to decide whether this
feature will be implemented or not
Severity: minor → enhancement
Status: RESOLVED → UNCONFIRMED
OS: Linux → All
Hardware: PC → All
Resolution: INVALID → ---
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
Sorry for the spam, but I also think it would be great to have an optional
navigation bar like in Mozilla. I hope this bug won't be marked as WONTFIX.
Could this feature become an extension request ?
Like the ones on texturizer.net ?
I would imagine that the site nav bar was removed from Phoenix early on for
clutter and bloat reduction purposes, though I could be wrong. It's conspicuous
by its absence, which is why I think that it was removed.


There's no formal system of extension requests. Extensions are generally made by
people who wish to see a specific thing or feature, so they go ahead and make an
extension (or, in some cases, hack an existing Mozilla extension).

This one probably wouldn't be too hard to do... the code after all is already in
Mozilla so it would just be a matter of reassembling it and hooking it in (at
least I think so).
Phoenix developers are not going to implement the site navigation bar. This
would be an ideal candidate for a 3rd party extension.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 22 years ago → 22 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
I'll have a go at turning it into a Px extension, in between fighting bugs in
Compact Menu and keeping up with themes for Moz and Px
Great !
But... The option "Show only as needed" don't work. The bar ils always displayed.

that has its own bug : http://mozdev.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=3071

however Link Toolbar extension has been tweaked :

http://downloads.mozdev.org/cdn/linkToolbar/linkToolbar-20030207.xpi

is now a movable item [although the option that doesn't work remains : )]
Taking QA Contact
QA Contact: asa → bugzilla
VERIFYING obvious WONTFIX bugs.  Filter on firebirdWontFix to filter these bugs.
 I skipped a few that I'm unsure about from their summary and will manually go
through them.
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
*** Bug 217130 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I hope you reconsider the WONTFIX-status of this bug/RFE because the Link
Toolbar as well as the style switcher are potentially very important for
disabled people and I'm unsure if you can expect them to download an extension...

Even if those people won't use the Link Toolbar itself, the removal of it won't
really encourage the use of <link>-elements in general. The fact that it's
disabled (I think) by default in Mozilla and not readily available in Firefox
automatically sets the "Don't care"-bit in the mind of already careless
web-developers.

The extension
http://downloads.mozdev.org/cdn/linkToolbar/linkToolbar.xpi
has a size of 23kb so the bloat argument is quite questionable.

Perhaps the right way would be the default inclusion of certain extensions -
like Link Toolbar - if they are of very general use.

Please don't get me wrong, I understand your general idea of removing bloat by
putting as much as possible into extensions but there is a certain line that
should be drawn.

Obviously, you wouldn't remove things like Bookmarks or History even though I'm
sure that it would be quite possible to implements them as extensions because
everyone agrees that those are an integral part of a browser. But I think just
because IE does not have a Link Toolbar it isn't less integral for a proper browser.

It's behaviour is more or less defined in/by the HTML4 spec...

On the other hand, the Link Toolbar Extension is much better than Mozilla's
original Site Navigation Bar so it wasn't a bad idea at all to initially remove
it. It's really beautiful, thank you, Chris Neale!
I totally agree with Joern Huxhorn, the site navigation bar should be included
in the installer for the following reasons:
. It will not bloat as its performance and size is quite light.
. In case it is thought that it will add confusion to the firefox interface,
then it could be added as an option in the advanced installation (an extension
as it could be the Dom Inspector).
. Link elements takes part in the html specification , in case of the site
navigation bar does not exist, these elements could be taken as not-existents
and the few web developers which use them, will have no motivation to use it. It
would be like deciding to eliminate a great part of the CSS2 support, only
because the most part of the web developers do not use it, as the only think in IE.
 As for the extension installation
(http://downloads.mozdev.org/cdn/linkToolbar/linkToolbar.xpi): 
  
 I can not use it because my Firefox 0.9 is translated into Spanish and it does
not support the mixture with other languages extensions yet. The following
message appears in red at the bottom:<toolbarbutton id="link-top" disabled="true" 
 It will be another added problem for using Firefox.
Blocks: 282239
No longer blocks: 282239
Blocks: 282239
(In reply to comment #15)

> . In case it is thought that it will add confusion to the firefox interface,
> then it could be added as an option in the advanced installation (an extension
> as it could be the Dom Inspector).

Why not put it in the status bar?
That area is used for notifying existence of RSS feeds, site security, style
switcher etc. 
Simply have an icon appear when document links are available, and a pop-up menu
with the links the document defines. The HTML spec doesn't say is *has* to be a
toolbar, and I can see why developers might think that Mozilla's site nav
toolbar is interface clutter.


*** Bug 291658 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 300457 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 336612 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Not interessed in Firefox anymore if Firefox won't conform to W3C recommandations.
QA Contact: bugzilla → toolbars
*** Bug 343342 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I really miss this feature from iCab/Opera/Mozilla/SeaMonkey since I made
Pheonix my default browser (later Firebird, later Firefox). In fact, I was
pretty disappointed when Mozilla turned it off by default.

Why have so many browsers abandoned the concept of consistent site navigation?
My website http://webcoder.info/ requires a link bar; it has minimal link UI in
the markup, because I prefer not to clutter the page content with nav noise.
(cont.)

I agree completely with comment #14 and comment #15. By removing the link nav bar, Microsoft and Mozilla have effectively killed the whole concept of consistent site tree nav. Both organizations bear some responsibility for the ecology of the Internet, and killing a feature that would increase website usability seems egregious.

Pheonix's initial raison d'etre, minimal UI, required many painful cuts, and is a laudable goal--it is likely the primary reason for Firefox's increasing market penetration. The strongest argument against adding a site nav bar goes something like "Everyone has a pet feature that they want. If all of them get their way, Firefox reverts to SeaMonkey." That is a perfectly reasonable reply, but: the overhead of adding a little extra UI to provide access to links that are parsed for the Page Info dialog anyway is negligible (Opera and iCab continue to provide it), and is easily outweighed by the benefit of adding it.

It seems possible that a marketing push could repackage the reintroduction of the site nav bar as the next big browser advance. Honestly, what other ideas are coming that could claim simplified navigation? I think you'd find that better nav is an issue with some traction.

Take a look at your DVD remote. How complex is that interface? What would you remove? Chapter skip? Rewind? You could remove these and let the user simply use the direction and select keys, leaving them to the inconsistent and capricious navigation provided by the menu screens on each DVD. Market that and see how it does. People understand and successfully use consistent nav buttons on a day-to-day basis already. DVD remotes aren't considered unnecessarily  bloated. Try marketing a "simplified" universal remote, and see how well it sells. People will complain "I can't rewind!" or "I can't skip ahead!" The only difference here is that the feature was ignored to death before it became indispensable. It seems as if nonlinear content should have a nav scheme at least as capable as linear content.
Strangely, this discussion was never continued after 2007, despite there being unanswered comments in support of resurrecting this feature.

Now, in 2009, I am adding another supportive voice to the discussion.
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