281864 - Help menu has the Firefox Help misnamed and needlessly duplicates the about menu item

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 245012

(Firefox :: Menus, defect)

Description

[Thom Peters]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

The Help menu item for the application's help is misnamed and has no keyboard
shortcut. The keyboard shortcut for the application's help should be Command-?
but it doesn't do anything in Firefox.

Also, the "About Mozilla Firefox" doesn't belong in the Help menu.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
Select the Help menu.
Actual Results:  
The Help menu doesn't have the expected appearance according to the guidelines
and other applications.

Expected Results:  
On Mac OS X, the Help menu has the first item for the applications help. The
Help menu also does not contain the about application menu item.

Therefore, in Firefox, the Help menu item "Help Contents" should be "Firefox
Help". Also, this item should have the keyboard shortcut as Command-? .

The Help menu shouldn't contain the "About Mozilla Firefox" menu item and should
be removed. The about menu item belongs in the application menu, and is already
located there.

I consider part of this to be a major feature that is broken because I expect
Command-? to bring up the help without having to use the menu. This is a
standard on Mac OS X.

The "About Mozilla Firefox" menu item in the Help menu is unnecessary clutter,
again creating a discontinuity in the expected interface.

The Mac OS X guidelines are freely available and easy to peruse. A little time
researching the user interface guidelines in the beginning saves a lot of time
by not having to continuously change it later piece by piece. And it keeps the
program from sticking out like a sore thumb.

It also saves the users time from having to file a separate bug report for each
and every interface flaw when it should have been researched by the developers.

You know what, forget it. Don't worry about it. I'll just continue to use Safari
since it follows the guidelines and doesn't harass me with extra windows and it
doesn't lock me out (become modal) when setting preferences, customizing the
toolbar, or entering an encrypted page.

If nobody is going to research the user interface guidelines for Mac OS X, then
at least create a separate bug reporting system for the user interface. Then
users can easily guide you in the interface without having to separate a common
item into multiple bug reports. However, that would be as silly as not
researching and following the guidelines.

Seriously, I've taken notes for each time I've encountered one of Firefox's
interface flaws with the standard user interface on the Mac. It's the size of a
large essay, and yet I've only just begun using Firefox for barely five minutes.
Worse, as I've been filling out this bug report I keep running into more
interface flaws. That could mean there's so much more. It's so frustrating
trying to use FireFox.

Isn't there some sort of "Ease of Use" user interface committee?
Or is it just a "What Would Be Nifty To Try Out Even If It Interferes With The
User's Work Flow" interface committee instead?

Ugh! And double "ugh!". *sigh* Nevermind. Nevermind...

Comment 1

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

See also bug 253693. Work in this area is already being done and ensuring
conformance to the HIG is an important part of the work being done for Firefox
1.1, especially on Mac.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 245012 ***