1910879 - Translate selection pop-up should be moveable

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Translations, enhancement)

Description

[Zade Viggers [:zade]]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:128.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/128.0

Steps to reproduce:

I highlighted some Spanish text and right clicked and clicked the option to translate it to English

Actual results:

The pop-up appeared with the translation, but it was on top of some other content on the page that I wanted to look at, whilst also referencing the english translation. I couldn't move the pop-up, I could only close it.

Expected results:

The pop-up should either be fully draggable or have a handle to drag it somewhere else so I can move it if it's in the way.

Comment 1

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

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

Comment 2

[Erik Nordin [:nordzilla]]

Attachment: multiple-locations-example.webm

Hi Zade, thanks so much for filing a bug.

In our early investigations into the feasibility of implementing this feature, one of the limitations of Firefox's XUL panels that was clear from the start is the lack of functionality to click and drag the panels around the screen. While it's likely possible to implement this, the functionality does not currently exist, and executing such an implementation would be a whole project in and of itself, with correctness concerns across various operating systems and graphics protocols. You can find more details in Bug 1865002.

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In the absence of being able to click and drag the panel after it opens, it does allow you to open the panel at the same location of wherever you opened the context menu (see attached video). I have found, in my own usage of the panel, that I have developed an intuitive sense of opening the panel at the location where I want to see the text. There are times when I would like it side-by-side with the source text, above the source text, or at times directly on top of the source text.

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For now, I am going to mark this bug as INVALID 1) because at this time there are no plans that I am aware of to implement click-and-drag functionality for Firefox's XUL panels and 2) because the panel does allow users to open it at any desired location on the screen.

If you feel passionately about this functionality, I would suggest filing a new bug under Core :: XUL for allowing XUL panels to be click-and-draggable, where we can have a wider discussion about that general functionality.

Lastly, if you have any further comments or questions related to this specific bug and discussion, please feel free to continue commenting here.

Comment 3

[Zade Viggers [:zade]]

Thanks Erik. The solution of opening the menu in different places works very well (just a little hard to discover). If the drag to move functionality isn't already there, it's probably a good decision to not implement if for the sake of a single panel.