232328 - The column headers appear in the wrong place (stagger headers mode) using Internet Explorer

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Bugzilla :: Query/Bug List, defect)

Description

[Paul Forrester]

User-Agent:       
Build Identifier: 

ID column heading appears 3rd from the left when ID column is actually 1st on 
the left. See attachment.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
This is one way to reproduce the problem. There may well be other ways. I 
haven't yet tested with different conbinations of columns, for example:
1. Go into 'change columns'
2. Make sure all fields are ticked except platform, product, version, os, 
votes, full summary.
3. Select 'Stagger headers' option
4. Submit column changes.
5. Now when I run a query, the ID column heading is out of place.
Actual Results:  
Whenever I run a query, the ID column heading is out of place. ID column 
heading appears 3rd from the left when ID column is actually 1st on the left. 
See attachment.

Expected Results:  
The ID column heading should appear abve the ID column data.

Comment 1

[Paul Forrester]

Attachment: This is a bug list showing the ID column out of place

Comment 2

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

Looks to me like it's in the right place, but it's aligned right when it should
be aligned left....  weird.

Comment 3

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

This appears to be either something you locally broke or it's been fixed at some
point.  I can't reproduce it on 2.16.4 or cvs tip.

Comment 4

[Shane H. W. Travis]

You couldn't reproduce it because you're all browser-snobs. :)

This is easily reproducible using IE 6.0 to look at a bug list. Stagger the 
headers, and the output will appear as it does on the attachment. In Mozilla, 
Firefox, and Netscape it looks like it's supposed to.

This is still an issue as of 2.18rc3.

Comment 5

[Frédéric Buclin]

Confirming this bug with IE 6 and actual version on b.m.o + 2.18rc3

Comment 6

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

Oh, yippie, yet another MSIE workaround. ;)

What in the syntax is breaking IE, do we know?

Comment 7

[Frédéric Buclin]

This looks really ugly with IE6, which remains the most used browser. Requesting
blocking and arising the severity to major.

Comment 8

[Paul Forrester]

I can confirm that noticed the bug on IE 6. You can see that it is IE from the 
screenshot attached.

Comment 9

[Frédéric Buclin]

Attachment: remove right alignment of bug IDs

In buglist.css, we can read:

/* Right align bug IDs. */
.bz_id_column { text-align: right; }


but in table.html.tmpl, we have (for headers):

    <tr align="left">


So Gecko like browsers align bug numbers and the ID header to the left because
they don't understand the <COLGROUP> and <COL> tags (at least there
attributes), while Internet Explorer align them to the right because IE
understands them correctly! I don't know which one takes precedence, either the
CSS file applied to the COL tag or the attribute applied to the TR tag so that
I cannot say if IE is right when right aligning the ID header. But what is sure
is that Gecko like browsers have never respected the .bz_id_column {
text-align: right; } instruction for bug numbers!

So what I suggest is to remove this instruction, first because Gecko like
browsers do not understand it and second because this causes the ugly display
shown in the previous attachment.

What we could do (and it works for all browsers) is to add a TH {text-align:
left} just after the previous instruction so that the header is displayed on
the left even for IE, as expected. Unfortunately, the text is now too far on
the left compared to bug numbers which are still aligned to the right. Still
ugly then so it's a bad idea! :(

Comment 10

[Frédéric Buclin]

Attachment: remove right alignment of bug IDs, v2

here, we keep the class... but empty!

Comment 11

[:glob ✱]

Comment on attachment 168085 [details] [diff] [review]
remove right alignment of bug IDs, v2

r=glob

Comment 12

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

Yeah, looks like the relevant information about Gecko's (lack of) support for
this is at bug 915 comment 162 and following.

But I want Myk's vote on how to fix...  I'm thinking we want the bugs
right-aligned, since that's usually what you do with a column of numbers. 
Should we change the HTML attribute to do align="right" instead of "left"?

Comment 13

[Christian Reis]

FWIW, I think we need align="right".

Comment 14

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

Comment on attachment 168085 [details] [diff] [review]
remove right alignment of bug IDs, v2

for myk: we had conflicting align:right and align:left here.  The patch is only
removing the align:right, which leaves the align:left.	Which one do we really
want to keep?  Should that colunm be right-justified?

Comment 15

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

Myk is gone until Monday

Comment 16

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

Comment on attachment 168085 [details] [diff] [review]
remove right alignment of bug IDs, v2

It's not clear that right-aligning the ID column is better than left-aligning
it.  The column contains numbers, but those numbers may not be scanned
vertically often enough in a way that makes right-alignment useful.

Nevertheless, it's definitely not useful when staggering columns, since the
right edge of staggered column headers doesn't line up with the right-edge of
the columns themselves.

This patch is a reasonable fix for the immediate problem, but down the road we
should see if there's something better than staggering headers, like
abbreviating the ones likely to top narrow columns, which I could even see
becoming the standard and only view if good means exist to match abbreviations
with their expansions (f.e. tooltips).

Comment 17

[Vlad Dascalu]

Frederic: could you make a patch for 2.18 as well?

Comment 18

[Frédéric Buclin]

(In reply to comment #17)
> Frederic: could you make a patch for 2.18 as well?

vladd, this patch applies cleanly to the 2.18 branch. You only have to update
the path from skin/standard/buglist.css to css/buglist.css.

Do you want a new patch with the path updated? I remember a mail from myk who
said you only have to updated the link to the right path or something like that.

Comment 19

[Vlad Dascalu]

Frederic: thanks! I didn't need a new patch, but I needed to know what I have to
do to backport it to 2.18 :-)


Checking in skins/standard/buglist.css;
/cvsroot/mozilla/webtools/bugzilla/skins/standard/buglist.css,v  <--  buglist.css
new revision: 1.7; previous revision: 1.6
done

Checking in css/buglist.css;
/cvsroot/mozilla/webtools/bugzilla/css/Attic/buglist.css,v  <--  buglist.css
new revision: 1.2.4.4; previous revision: 1.2.4.3
done