234582 - Add an icon to each menu item

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Menus, enhancement)

Description

[Éderson]

User-Agent:       
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; pt-BR; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040206 Firefox/0.8

Menu: We could have an icon to each option of the menu, instead of no one icon.
It wold be prettier? (not present in any browser)

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Comment 1

[José Jeria]

There is an extension that does this already
http://cute.mozdev.org/index.html

Comment 2

[Jesse Ruderman]

See also bug 145524, "add icons to context menu".

Comment 3

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

or it could be considered bloat and overly cutesy, the CuteMenus extension is
definitely not for everyone

Comment 4

[Éderson]

(In reply to comment #1)
> There is an extension that does this already
> http://cute.mozdev.org/index.html

Why not implement this in Mozilla and Firefox as default?

Comment 5

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

"pretty" isn't a justification for including a feature that increases memory 
use.  "because we can" isn't either.

Is there a usability benefit to this that outweighs the increase in memory 
usage? (don't even start with the "its not that much for computers nowadays" 
arugment, its useless and is a poor justification for bloat)

Comment 6

[Peter van der Woude [:Peter6]]

(In reply to comment #5)

> Is there a usability benefit to this that outweighs the increase in memory 
> usage?

Defenitly, it's a lot easiers to recognise icons than text (I don't think there is any need for me to prove that)
e.g. the [Go] menu with icons lets you choose w/o reading (everyone knows the home-back-forward icons allready).

When I need to use a menu-items I don't use on a day-to-day basis I actually have to read the whole menu to find it (I consider this a bad thing).

Creating a good set of icons for as many of the menu items as possible is another thing though.

We're offcourse way to late on the road to 2.0 to consider this, but it would be a good thing to put this on the map for 3.0.

People with a visual disability should/could benefit from this aswell

Comment 7

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

(In reply to comment #6)
> Defenitly, it's a lot easiers to recognise icons than text (I don't think 

That's true, but really only useful if those icons can actually be instantly recognized and attached to some meaning. Open File ... and Save ... have some pretty standard icons, but things like New Tab ... or JavaScript Console would need new icons which a user would have to learn and familiarize themselves with.

> People with a visual disability should/could benefit from this aswell

You totally lost me here. Their screen-readers will be able to talk about the icons to them, or something?

Comment 8

[Peter van der Woude [:Peter6]]

(In reply to comment #7)
> > People with a visual disability should/could benefit from this aswell
> 
> You totally lost me here. Their screen-readers will be able to talk about the
> icons to them, or something?
> 
I got +5 glasses so i'm pretty handicapped w/o them if i have to read something (I won't even try), but i can still recognise most icons.
I don't need for a screen reader yet though ;-)

Comment 9

[Jay Goldman]

I think I'm going to side with the Mikes on this one - adding an icon to every menu item adds an intense amount of clutter to the UI for a negligible benefit. You muscle memory takes over very quickly with frequently used menu items (e.g.: New Tab is always the second item from the top), so this would really help people to find less frequently used items. As Mike Beltzner pointed out, those items are more likely to be obscure and therefore have an icon that you are less likely to recognize, thereby requiring you to read the item anyway.

I remember reading an explanation of why some of the menu items in MS Word have icons - at one point it was deemed necessary to add icons to the most import items so that they stood out. Over time, developers have deemed the features that they have worked on to be equally important, and so the number of icons has greatly increased. Now it's more of a free-for-all, with some items seeminly randomly earning icons for no obvious benefit (though that's all going away with the infamous "Ribbon" I suppose). 
 
I do understand where Peter is coming from, but people with visual disabilities of that magnitude make up a very small portion of the overall population. It's key that the Firefox UI remain a highly usable platform for the common denominator (I won't say lowest - midrange maybe?), and the beauty of extensions is that they can extend that UI in ways that work perfectly for each user. 

Comment 10

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Leaving this to custom themes and extensions for now.