258692 - "Sort by name" should sort siblings, not children

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect)

Description

[Jesse Ruderman]

"Sort by name" only appears when you right-click a folder, and it sorts the
clicked item's children.  I think it should sort an item with its siblings instead.

Arguments for sorting siblings:
* Consistency with IE.
* "Sort by name" will be easier to find when it's in every context menu.
* There is currently no way to sort the root bookmarks folder, and I can't think
of another way to make it easy to sort the root bookmarks folder.

Arguments for sorting children:
* It's what a geek would expect to happen after right-clicking a folder and
selecting "Sort by name".

Comment 1

[Vladimir Vukicevic [:vlad] [:vladv] (needinfo me, slow to respond)]

Geek or no geek, right-clicking on a folder and selecting "Sort by Name" and
having the siblings of that folder get sorted (and having that folder
potentially move position) makes zero sense.  IE does it this way, yes; but I
think at some point we need to draw the line and not emulate IE's (IMO) bad UI.

There being no way to sort the root folder is a problem though, I agree.  I'll
have to think about that one..

Comment 2

[Michael]

I liked the implementation that Sort Bookmarks extension has. Provide another
option under manage bookmarks in the bookmarks menu called Sort Bookmarks. When
run this sorts all the bookmarks in the root and in subfolders except in the
bookmark toolbar folder. It also puts folders before bookmarks and sorts only
within the separators.

I would still have the right click on folder to sort by name only for that
folder and not root as that does make sense.

Comment 3

[Hussam Al-Tayeb]

//"Sort by name" should sort siblings, not children//
I totally agree with Vlad that it should not sort siblings. It should however
optionally sort children recursively. IMO, the only missing thing is the
optional recursive sorting.
If people want to imitate IE, then just use IE. 

Firefox is good because it does not clone IE or another borwser. Keep it as it
is, just add "optional" recursive sorting.

Comment 4

[Grey Nicholson (they/them)]

In my opinion, right-clicking a bookmark should sort its siblings;
right-clicking a folder should sort its children.

Comment 5

[Ger Teunis]

(In reply to comment #4)
> In my opinion, right-clicking a bookmark should sort its siblings;
> right-clicking a folder should sort its children.

I agree, this is the best solution.

Comment 6

[Jeremy Priest]

I concur. I'm more use to what Sort Bookmarks Extension did.
Now that Firefox has implemented this. 
The Extension may not work. (haven't tested this yet.)
But if you intend to take over what an extension's been doing,
I'd think you'd want to take it all the way.
I don't think we want to "imitate" anybody but keep things familiar.
By not having this sort bookmarks option apparent throught the bookmarks pane
would "bug" a lot of users.
It bugs me now personally. But I'd just moved everything into folders one being
new bookmarks to statisfy myself for now and not have a root list.

My 2 cents.

Comment 7

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

plussing for 1.0 so we're sure to at least make a decision here. This is a new
feature, we won't have a lot of time for feedback, but we should gather what we
can and do what we can to make sure we're making the feature behave as users
will expect and appreciate before 1.0

Comment 8

[Neil Parks]

Please see bug #211023, comment #46.

The bookmark sorting as currently incorporated into FF leaves much to be
desired.    If I create a new folder, it appears at the bottom of the bookmarks
menu, following all other folders and following all the standalone bookmarks.

The Sort Bookmarks extension would fix that.  The internal sort function does not.

Comment 9

[Blake Ross]

We discussed this a bit today. I think we pestered vlad so much that he agreed
that this should work like Windows and IE. Vlad, if you change your mind, can
you ping me about this again? I'm very interested in the outcome of this bug.

Comment 10

[Hussam Al-Tayeb]

If you do make it sort siblings, just make sure to make it work with seperators.

Comment 11

[Ney André de Mello Zunino]

(In reply to comment #4)
> In my opinion, right-clicking a bookmark should sort its siblings;
> right-clicking a folder should sort its children.

I also see this as the best solution. It is consistent with (most) users'
expectations and also solves the problem of sorting the root folder.

Just another issue I would like to raise: as it is now, the sorting function in
FF 1.0PR hides the bookmarks menus as it executes, making it annoying to sort
several folders, especially those deep in the hierarchy. It would be great if
the menus could remain visible and allow the user to see the effect of the
sorting right there.

Comment 12

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

This has nothing to do with bookmark groups either.

Comment 13

[Vladimir Vukicevic [:vlad] [:vladv] (needinfo me, slow to respond)]

Attachment: 258692-sortbyname-sort-siblings-0.patch

always sort siblings on right-click sort by name.

Comment 14

[Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email)]

Comment on attachment 160202 [details] [diff] [review]
258692-sortbyname-sort-siblings-0.patch

r+a=[e-mail]

Comment 15

[Vladimir Vukicevic [:vlad] [:vladv] (needinfo me, slow to respond)]

in on aviary.

Comment 16

[Oliver Saier]

(In reply to comment #0)
> Arguments for sorting children:
> * It's what a geek would expect to happen after right-clicking a folder and
> selecting "Sort by name".
According to your standards, I am a complete geek then. That's good to know.
Whatever. As it is now, sorting by name invariably removes my separators, so
it's a no-use (could not find any bug for this so it may just be me?)
PS. Absolutely no offense but I don't quite get the point in spending time over
this anyway, given that Torisugari's Sort Bookmarks extension works like a charm
(would just be a bit better imo if the ui was in the manager and not in the
tools menu though).

Comment 17

[Ger Teunis]

(In reply to comment #16)
> (In reply to comment #0)
>... sorting by name invariably removes my separators, so
> it's a no-use (could not find any bug for this so it may just be me?)...

I've filed this on
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=262329

Comment 18

[Ney André de Mello Zunino]

(In reply to comment #11)

> Just another issue I would like to raise: as it is now, the sorting function in
> FF 1.0PR hides the bookmarks menus as it executes, making it annoying to sort
> several folders, especially those deep in the hierarchy. It would be great if
> the menus could remain visible and allow the user to see the effect of the
> sorting right there.

All right. In the latest nightly (19 Oct 2004), the "sort by name" command seems
to be working on the level currently selected, which allows one to sort the root
folder. However, the above issue from comment #11 remains to be addressed. Does
anybody know if there is an open bug report which covers it already? If not, I
will enter one.

Thanks.

Comment 19

[Ryan Polk (Quark)]

*** Bug 265415 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 20

[Marco Gabbiani]

Sort by name works for the dropdown menus from the bookmarks button on the
toolbar.  This emulates the functionality of the sort extension that was
available from v0.8.  However sorting in bookmarks manager and the bookmarks
sidebar still sorts siblings (as did the extension I refer to).  Would it be
possible to have this bug be re-opened.

For deeply nested heirarchies with thousands of subfolders and bookmarks this
fix is desperately needed.  My (very tedious) workaround to date has been
renaming subfolders with an underscrore prefix so that they sort first.

Comment 21

[Jesse Ruderman]

See also bug 308345, the opposite of this bug.

Comment 22

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

sorry for bugspam, long-overdue mass reassign of ancient QA contact bugs, filter on "beltznerLovesGoats" to get rid of this mass change