Closed Bug 259228 Opened 20 years ago Closed 15 years ago

Edit Card dialog too high for some localizations.

Categories

(MailNews Core :: Address Book, defect)

defect
Not set
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED FIXED
Thunderbird 3.0b2

People

(Reporter: henrik, Unassigned)

References

Details

(Keywords: l12y)

Attachments

(1 file, 1 obsolete file)

In some localizations (Khemer reported this) the vertical space needed is much
(100%) bigger than needed in english. 

This makes the "Edit Card" dialog grow to more than the available screen size.

What have been suggested in the l10n groups was to:
* Split the "Address" tab into 2 tabs. One for "Home" and one for "Work"
* Move the Phones part of "contact" to the respective Home and work
* Decrease the notes field height.

Benefits:
* The height is almost halfed.
* The contact tab is now solely for contacting we can do in thunderbird, 
(cleaner seperation)


(There is a minor UI glitch that could be fixed in the same round. The group box
around "Notes" should be removed and replaced by an ordinary label.It is not
nice to have group boxes around single item.)
Summary: Edit Card dialog too heigh for some localizations. → Edit Card dialog too high for some localizations.
Height is affected by font size.

You can see the dialog height regardless of localization, even in english, by
using the same font size.

The size of the font used by the dialog is determined by the operating system.

QUESTION:  What is the default font size in computers delivered with Asian locales?


(And in US computers?  I, like many programmers, have set it smaller so I can
see more text.)


A workaround is set the O.S. to a smaller font size.

For example, on w2k
  Start | Settings | Control Panel | Display
    Appearence (tab)
      Click on the text in the grey dialog box.
      Set the "Size:" dropdown to something smaller.
      Click "Apply"  

I set it to 8, which on my screen causes chinese/kanji characters to appear 9
pixels high in dialogs, and parentheses to appear 11 pixels high (2 pixels
underneath for underlines).  The result characters are usually legible but
clearly squeezed.  In some characters (電, first character in email and
telephone in ja-JP), parts have been merged together so there are fewer boxes,
and in other characters (連), some lines that should have space between them do
not.  At this size, the height of the "New Card" dialog is about 575 pixels.

It is much more readable if I set it to 9, so the kanji characters appear 12
pixels high in dialogs.  At this size, the height of the "New Card" dialog is
about 614 pixels tall.

If I set it to 10 (perhaps the default?), the kanji characters still appear 12
pixels high in dialogs, and there is another pixel of space between lines of
text.  At this size, the "New Card" dialog is about 634 pixels high, so the Ok &
cancel buttons are cut off.

Knowing the default font size may help determine the approach.  If there are
just a few pixels to get rid of, then maybe can reduce spacing (say, above the
tabs).  Or use headings/separators rather than outlines.  (Or squeeze the "Add
to" address book drop down on the same line as the OK/cancel buttons?)
By the images in bug 259959 it looks like the spacing corresponds to font size
12 ("extra large" in XP).  The reporter's requested reorganization is required
to make it fit at that size.

I suspect Asian computers are sold with font size 12 ("extra large") as the
default size, as the larger size is required to present full detail in
chinese/kanji characters.

The workaround (use a smaller system font size) may be workable for people who
don't mind the smaller font, but not attractive to new users who expect it to
work out of the box.
(patch -p 2 -i file.patch)

Here's a simple patch that should address the issue for both
abNewCardDialog.xul and abEditCardDialog.xul with a minimum of change.

Groups of fields are still in same order, but divided among more tabs.
Contact info (internet / phone) is still one one page, so don't have to guess
whether a mobile phone is a personal phone or a work phone.

Old:
  /Contacts\  /Address\  /Other\
    Name	Home	   Custom
    Internet	Work	   Notes
    Phone

New:
  /Name\    /Contacts\	 /Home\   /Work\   /Other\
    Name      Internet	   Home     Work     Custom
	      Phone			     Notes

The notes field is made flexible so it fills the space available.

The height of the resulting dialog using size 12 fonts (extra large) is 543
pixels, which is less than the ~560 pixels that appear to be available above
the task bar in http://www.khmeros.info/tools/bugs/option_general.JPG
Attachment #167781 - Flags: review?(mscott)
(patch -l -p 2 -i file.patch)

(Instead of dividing tabs):
In Address Book card dialogs:
Adds overflow:auto to Contact and Address panel vboxes, so scrollbar appears if
screen too short, so use can reach lower fields.  For Other panel, adds flex to
notes textbox.
Adds resizable so user can stretch window to eliminate scrollbars, persist so
stretched size is remembered, and minheight so no scrollbars appear in default
windows western font size (size 8).
Attachment #167781 - Attachment is obsolete: true
Attachment #167781 - Flags: review?(mscott)
Attachment #168076 - Flags: review?(mscott)
Comment on attachment 168076 [details] [diff] [review]
In address book card dialogs, add overflow:auto to contact and address tab vboxes

overflow scrollbars is not the desired solution. We typically add width and
heights to dialogs as DTD entities so localizers can make them wider or taller
Attachment #168076 - Flags: review?(mscott) → review-
(In reply to comment #5)
> (From update of attachment 168076 [details] [diff] [review] [edit])
> overflow scrollbars is not the desired solution. We typically add width and
> heights to dialogs as DTD entities so localizers can make them wider 
> or taller

Please reconsider or re-explain an alternative.  The last statement above
misunderstands the problem.  The problem is not that the dialog is too small to
hold the content.  The problem is that the dialog is too big to fit on the
800x600 screen, so making the dialog *even larger* will not fix the problem.  

(The overflow:auto allows users to with 800x600 screen to still use the dialog
by scrolling even though the dialog content is larger than their screen.)
Using the 20050712 build, the New Card window is too tall for my 800x600 screen.
I can make the window smaller, but there is no scrollbar and much of the
window's contents remain invisible and practically unusable. I don't know
anything about localization, because this is just an en-US build. Nor do I know
why a scrollbar is not the desired solution, but it's the solution I desire
right now :)
I am moving this bug to the core address book component as this problem affects
SeaMonkey as well.

I am also adding a dependency on bug 63941 which deals with just the en
localisations being too big for low screen resolutions. I don't think duping it
would be appropriate in this case.
Assignee: mscott → nobody
Component: Address Book → MailNews: Address Book
Depends on: 63941
Flags: review-
Product: Thunderbird → Core
QA Contact: addressbook
Version: unspecified → Trunk
Product: Core → MailNews Core
Now that bug 63941 is fixed, I would expect that this bug is either greatly improved or fixed. Henrik, can you retry now please?
I don't think Henrik is tied to Mozilla Localizations anymore. I'd say this bug can be closed now, though, since the layout has changed from a vertical stacked, one-column to a wide, two-columns, not-so-tall one. Maybe L10N teams that suffered from too-high card dialog should comment (es-ES always fitted OK).
Well no-one has commented, so let's close this and if it is still an issue, Localizations can reopen or file a new bug. Hence fixed by bug 63491.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 15 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
Target Milestone: --- → Thunderbird 3.0b2
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