Closed Bug 203098 Opened 21 years ago Closed 21 years ago

need pref UI for show/hide tab bar and enable/disable smooth scrolling

Categories

(Firefox :: Settings UI, defect)

x86
All
defect
Not set
normal

Tracking

()

VERIFIED WONTFIX
Firebird0.7

People

(Reporter: asa, Assigned: bugs)

Details

Attachments

(2 files)

We should get these in for 0.6. Hyatt declares it so.
Target Milestone: --- → Phoenix0.6
I think that having a visible pref enable/disable smooth scroll is just unnecessary.
Currently, the smooth scroll implementation is buggy and not sufficient, we
should simply disable it and reenable it when ready.
> the smooth scroll implementation is buggy and not sufficient, we
> should simply disable it and reenable it when ready.

hear! hear!
Jason, advocacy comments like that are not appropriate in Bugzilla. This is a
tool used by the development and testing contributors to coordinate development
and testing activity. Advocacy comments and other non-technical ranting is not
allowed. 

This is what your comment accomplished:
It sent worthless bugmail spam to up to a dozen people - me (who filed this bug
and doesn't need your reminder that it exists or your agreement or disagreement
with it), Ben Goodger, (the bug assignee who doesn't need or care about your
advocacy one way or the other) and about 10 other people that were courteous
enough to just Cc: themselves without comment.

Here are some of the things your comment didn't accomplish:
It didn't incent me or ben to start working on it or to change our plans for how
to work on it.  It didn't add any technical value to the bug that would have
helped someone else start working on it.

Bugzilla comments are supposed to add value to a bug.  Your comment didn't. Just
because you can comment in a bug doesn't mean that you should. Please email me
if you have any questions.

Under what situations is smooth scrolling buggy?  I haven't been able to find
any problem with it myself.

It seems reasonable enough to have a preference.  That way if it does cause
trouble for people, they can disable it.
This bug brings the old discussion back about what to do with the new Options
window. Where would these options be placed?

The show/hide tab bar is easy to fit into the already existing frame "Windows
and Tabs" in the General panel, but where would the Smooth Scrolling option be
placed? The only place where it would fit with the current layout is in the
General panel, but I would certainly not call it a general option needed for
many people.

Maybe it would be better to just disable the smooth scrolling for now and wait
with the UI pref until the Options window becomes more scalable*?

*) I suggested before that the Fonts & Colors panel should be replaced with a
new panel called Advanced with a scrollable list of checkboxes. The smooth
scrolling pref would fit in perfectly there. (Fonts & Colors would instead
become a button in the General panel.)
i agree with that replacement. such an advanced panel has been requested alot.
sure it mustn't get bloated, but still there should be the most frequently asked
preferences by advanced users - normal users won't have to use the advanced tab,
profi users may use about:config 

so.. once again: I vote for putting it in an "advanced" panel replacing the
"fonts and colors"
This is related to bug 203070 which was filed shortly before this one, but at
any rate something needs to be done because smooth scrolling is very miserable
in Linux (in response to comment #4).

Would not 'Web Features' be the best place for this pref? Smooth scrolling fits
the definition of a web feature as well as anything else. The size of the box
for whitelisted pop-up sites could be reduced to accomodate it without losing
anything.
Okay, that's interesting.  I'm using Linux and smooth scrolling works great.  Is
the problem related to 2D accelleration?
*** Bug 204268 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I find smooth scrolling mildy annoying on a laptop and LCD monitors since there
is  ghosting affect caused by fast motion. Otherwise, on a normal CRT monitor,
smooth scrolling is ideal. 
Target Milestone: Phoenix0.6 → Phoenix0.7
I don't think there should be a visible smooth scrolling pref.  I think we
should have it enabled by default, which will hopefully cause people to file any
bugs that they find.  We should fix any problems that come up instead of masking
them with a pref to turn the feature off.  We are, after all, only at release 0.6.
I personally hate smooth scrolling in any incarnation. I simply don't need it to
help my browsing. IE gets THIS right by putting it as well as other frequently
used Advanced options in an easily accessible tab, while leaving obscure prefs
(of which there r few) in the registry (which Mozilla shouldn't imitate if at
all possible, btw).

I don't fancy auto image resizing (tho I know many love it) or smooth scrolling.
Such important UI features should be configurable, as they affect user
experience more than many other features. I believe they should be added to the
Options dialog.
tyl2@cornell.edu, Bugzilla is not the place to discuss your personal likes and
dislikes. Please take that to mozillazine or IRC. If you have any questions
about what is or isn't appropriate bugzilla usage please email me.
I know that resize image is not part of this bug, but the issue of personal
preference surrounding it is much the same. About an even split seem to like
and dislike each of these, so my patch includes both. If we don't do something
about automatic image resizing we'll probably be dealing with bug reports for
ages to come...

Anyway, this patch puts both in the Web Features pane. The whitelist box gets
shrunk by default and does not cause any problems as most people don't have
that many sites there anyway.

I don't know what to do about show/hide tab bar. It only fits in General right
now but that doesn't actually make much sense. This suggestion is probably
anathema but we could add an eighth pane called "Tabbed Browser" and dump some
tab preferences there, plus a few from TBE. The only other possibility I can
think of is to add a "Tab Functions" button to Web Features that calls up
another dialog (like for java) with a few good tabbing features there. I
suppose such a button could go in General as well.
Attachment #123787 - Flags: review?(ben)
Running Linux with GTK2 and XFT enabled, default theme.
Doesn't need UI. 

If smooth scrolling is fautly on other platforms, then all-*.js files should
turn it off by default until it doesn't suck. 
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 21 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
... so what I mean is file a bug on turning off smooth scrolling on those
platforms where it doesn't work well via all-*.js defaults files. 
Bug 203070 deals with smooth scroll "sucking" on Linux (essentially anyway).

At any rate there are plenty of users who are not power users who dislike smooth
scrolling even when it doesn't suck. What is the rationale for enabling a
feature such as this that is going to be the source of newbie complaints and
probably bug reports/RfEs for ages to come without a visible way to turn it off?

What about the other half of this bug - show/hide tab bar - now that this bug
has been WONTFIXed? Bug 191746 covers it I suppose.

As for my patch, should this bug be reopened, the debacle that is GTK2+XFT on
KDE has resulted in an oversized Options dialog, meaning my previous screenshot
is inaccurate for most builds. Without GTK2, the Web Features pane is much more
cramped, especially with both of the added prefs in place. I think there's still
enough room, but it is a lot more cramped. If there really isn't enough room I'd
ditch the image resize pref because at least now the magnifying glass makes it
pretty clear that the image can be enlarged.
also, the image resizing wouldn't need to be a pref if we just remembered the
the last state the user selected.

--Asa
> also, the image resizing wouldn't need to be a pref if we just remembered
> the last state the user selected.

Yes, that would certainly be the best solution to that problem. Is there a bug
filed for that? (Sorry for the bugspam.)
Comment on attachment 123787 [details] [diff] [review]
Adds smooth scrolling and resize image prefs to Web Features pane

removing obsolete review request
Attachment #123787 - Flags: review?(ben)
taking QA contact, sorry about the bugspam
QA Contact: asa → mconnor
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
sorry for bugspam, long-overdue mass reassign of ancient QA contact bugs,
filter on "beltznerLovesGoats" to get rid of this mass change
QA Contact: mconnor → preferences
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