258881 - Make PrefBar Standard

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(SeaMonkey :: UI Design, enhancement)

Description

[David E. Ross]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040803
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040803

Implement the Preferences Toolbar (PrefBar) as a standard feature of Mozilla
instead of an extension.  This is one of the most popular extensions.  

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:





Bug #236381 might have been avoided if PrefBar were integrated (and thus tested)
with Mozilla.

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

First off, is the prefbar author interested in contributing his/her code to
Mozilla.org?

Comment 2

[HJ]

So you are using Mozilla 1.7.2 and asking for, one of the many add-ons in my
opinion, to be included into the Mozilla Suite, because of some bug? 

Also, please tell me again, why do we have extensions/add-ons?

In reply to comment 1; you are joking, right?

Comment 3

[David E. Ross]

Re comment #2: 
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041217
(I left 1.7.2 four months ago.  I didn't think it was necessary to indicate my
progression of updates here.)

Yes, I am guessing.  But from various newsgroup discussions, I suspect that
PrefBar is one of the most popular extensions.  When an extension becomes so
popular, it raises the question: Why is this capability not inherent in Mozilla
itself?  The extension is so desired that it suggests a lack -- a deficiency --
in the basic product.  

Perhaps someone should monitor the pattern of downloads of Mozilla 1.8a, 1.8b,
or final 1.8 before and after the fix to the bug in which PrefBar is broken
under 1.8a6 (Mozdev 8653 at <http://bugzilla.mozdev.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8653>)
and try to correlate that with downloads of the fixed PrefBar (when that fix
becomes available).  I expect a number of users will defer using Mozilla 1.8
until after PrefBar is made compatible.  If this conjecture were to prove true,
it would support my contention that PrefBar should be inherent in Mozilla and
not relegated to being an extension.  

Comment 4

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

> In reply to comment 1; you are joking, right?

No, I am not.  As things stand, the author of prefbar has complete control over
the code, as I understand.  If the code were contributed to Mozilla.org, that
would no longer be the case.

That may be something the author is not willing to do.

In any case, explicit permission from the author is required to use this code in
Mozilla, since the author holds copyright on it.  So this question needs to be
settled before any of the rest of this discussion can go forward.

Comment 5

[David E. Ross]

The current PrefBar developer (Manuel Reimer) has decided to defer consideration
of this issue for now -- but has not rejected the idea.  See the Mozdev bug at
<http://bugzilla.mozdev.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7670>.  

Perhaps someone from the Mozilla Foundation might clarify the issue for Reimer
so that he can make an informed decision.  

Comment 6

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Compared to the hundreds of thousands of downloads a Mozilla milestone gets, how
popular is "popular"?

I'm not in control of the Suite UI, but I suspect whoever is won't want to make
it _more_ complicated...

Gerv

Comment 7

[Worcester12345]

(In reply to comment #6)
> Compared to the hundreds of thousands of downloads a Mozilla milestone gets, how
> popular is "popular"?
> 
> I'm not in control of the Suite UI, but I suspect whoever is won't want to make
> it _more_ complicated...
> 
> Gerv

I thought the reason for prefbar was to make it less complicated.

Comment 8

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
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Comment 9

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

related:
bug 176224
bug 380
bug 17199

Comment 11

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

fix typo
> related:
> bug 176224
> bug 7380
> bug 17199

Comment 12

[Chris Thomas (CTho) [formerly [e-mail] [e-mail]]]

Neil, WONTFIX?  As I understand it, PrefBar is way too complicated to be part of the default.

Comment 13

[[e-mail]]

It looks as if PrefBar simply provides alternative access to existing functionality (e.g. changing UA string without using about:config).
As such, I feel that it should remain as an extension.

Comment 14

[Chris Thomas (CTho) [formerly [e-mail] [e-mail]]]

WONTFIXing per comment 13

Comment 15

[David E. Ross]

Comment #13 is exceptionally weak justification for declaring this WONTFIX.  The same logic should mean that no futher changes will be made to the Preferences window since all preferences can be set via about:config.  

The popularity of PrefBar arises because it is user oriented.  Users don't have to know the names of the preference variables to set or change them.  

In my current configuration, I have the following PrefBar items enabled:  Home, to go to my preferred home page; Tabs, to open a new tab; Bkmarks, to open Bookmark Manager; Profiles, to open Profile Manager; Image Ctrl, to choose between Srvr Imgs, All Imgs, and No Imgs; Popups, to enable or disable popups; FlashBlk, to enable or disable FlashBlock; Clr Cache, to clear my cache; Font-, to reduce the size of displayed text; Font+, to increase the size of displayed text; Font=, to restore my default font size for displayed text; Colors, to enable or disable colors and backgrounds specified by Web pages; noCSS, to remove the effects of style sheets (used in accessibility testing); and User Agent, to change the UA string seen by Web servers.  

Note that some of these I created myself after significant research into the related variables.  Also others provide an immediate toolbar access to a tool rather than to a preference, thereby eliminating the need to navigate from the menu bar through submenues for tools used very frequently.  With the above PrefBar repertoire, I no longer display my Personal Toolbar.