311737 - make .autocomplete-history-popup max-height em instead of px, and longer

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: Autocomplete, enhancement)

Description

[Felix Miata]

The current max-height of 180px gives high resolution users fewer entries
without scrolling than low resolution users. At 800x600 and 1024x768 on win @ 96
DPI, the current 180px provides up to 10 entries in the list without need to
scroll, while on my 1280x960 OS/2 system @ 120 DPI only 7 entries.

Patch coming . . .

Comment 1

[Felix Miata]

Attachment: patch - changes max-height from 180px to 32em

This sets the max-height to 32em, which displays about 20 entries without need
to scroll. At 96 DPI on win @ 800x600 the list is about 60% of the screen
height, and at 1024x768 about 50% of the screen height. On 1280x960 on OS/2 @
120 DPI the window also is 50% of the screen height.

I didn't test the patch directly, but instead used in userChrome.css put the
following: .autocomplete-history-popup {max-height: 32em !important;}

Comment 2

[Ian Neal]

I do not do superreviews so perhaps you need to swap round the requests as neil
can do sr's.

Comment 3

[Ian Neal]

It might be nice to see some before and after screen captures

Comment 4

[Ian Neal]

From testing in windows it increases the number of visible entries from 10 to 20
is the effect you intended?

Comment 5

[Felix Miata]

Attachment: win98 96 DPI 800x600 max-height: 180px

Comment 6

[Felix Miata]

Attachment: win98 96 DPI 800x600 max-height: 32em

Comment 7

[Felix Miata]

Attachment: win98 96 DPI 1024x768 max-height: 180px

Comment 8

[Felix Miata]

Attachment: win98 96 DPI 1024x768 max-height: 32em

Comment 9

[Felix Miata]

Attachment: winXP 120 DPI 1280x960 max-height: 180px

Comment 10

[Felix Miata]

Attachment: winXP 120 DPI 1280x960 max-height: 32em

Comment 11

[Felix Miata]

Attachment: winXP 144 DPI 1600x1200 max-height: 180px

Comment 12

[Felix Miata]

Attachment: winXP 144 DPI 1600x1200 max-height: 32em

Comment 13

[Ian Neal]

Comment on attachment 198976 [details] [diff] [review]
patch - changes max-height from 180px to 32em

You need to get a proper diff and I'm still not 100% convinced that 32em is the
right size either. What you probably need to look at is what em 180px at 96DPI
is and see how that works at other resolutions/DPI.

Comment 14

[Felix Miata]

Attachment: win98 96 DPI 640x480 max-height: 32em

Still a couple of rows' worth of unused space in the viewport even at this
small size. I think 20 is a perfectly reasonable approximate number of entries,
much more useful than the 7-10 provided by 180px at 1600x1200 or lower
resolution.

Comment 15

[Felix Miata]

Results of some other em heights @ 96 DPI on W98:
16em = 10.0 visible rows
18em = 11.5 visible rows
19em = 12.0 visible rows
21em = 13.5 visible rows
22em = 14.0 visible rows
25em = 16.0 visible rows
28em = 18.0 visible rows

Comment 16

[Felix Miata]

On Linux @1792x1344 168 DPI, 180px=5.5 rows, 16em=11.5 rows, 25em=18 rows,
32em=23 rows
On Linux @1400x1050 120 DPI, 180px=7 rows, 16em=10.5 rows, 25em=16.5 rows,
32em=21 rows

Firefox 1.5b2 on Linux 1400x1050 @ 120 DPI is 14 rows
Firefox 1.5b2 on Linux 1792x1344 @ 168 DPI is 14 rows
Firefox 1.0.7 on OS/2 1280x960 @ 120 DPI is 14 rows
Firefox 1.0.7 on Win98 800x600@ 96 DPI is 14 rows
Firefox 1.0.7 on Win98 1024x768 @ 96 DPI is 14 rows
Firefox 1.5b1 on WinXP 1280x960 @ 120 DPI is 14 rows

I looked in Domi to try and figure out how Firefox sets to 14, but couldn't
manage it. :-(

Comment 17

[Felix Miata]

Attachment: win98 96 DPI 800x600 max-height: 28em

Comment 18

[Felix Miata]

Attachment: win98 96 DPI 640x480 max-height: 23.5em

Comment 19

[Felix Miata]

Attachment: Linux 108 DPI 1400x1050 max-height: 25em

Comment 20

[Felix Miata]

Attachment: Linux 108 DPI 1400x1050 max-height: 180px

Comment 21

[Felix Miata]

Bug 179666, which is fixed but has no patch attached, points to a bonsai link. I
can't make any sense of how it works, but it apparently explains the FF 14 row
limit (this.maxRows = 14; ). FF apparently was 7 initially, and was doubled to
result in 14.

Comment 22

[[e-mail]]

(In reply to comment #21)
FF uses typed history autocomplete search, whereas suite uses URLbar history.

Note that IE also uses 14 lines of URLbar history. Does that suggest 22em?

Comment 23

[Felix Miata]

(In reply to comment #22)
>FF uses typed history autocomplete search, whereas suite uses URLbar history.

I have no idea how they are distinguishable. Maybe they aren't when autocomplete
is turned off, which is always the case for my profiles.

> Note that IE also uses 14 lines of URLbar history. Does that suggest 22em?

It suggests using more than 22em. One of the things I most hate about doze is
that it is rife with window heights and visible portions of select lists that
are arbitrarily short (as was in bug 238137). 14 rows for doze seems unusually
long, but nevertheless arbitrarily short. Surely for SM to be better it should
have at least 2 more rows than FF or IE.

Opera 8.5 on WXP @ 120 DPI displays 21 rows.

Comment 24

[Robert Kaiser]

I guess the difference between the em and the number of lines (not that 1em is
supposed to be the default line height for a given font size) must be the
padding inside the tre cells...

Anyways, I think that 20 lines is way too much, as it's too far to navigate
(with mouse or keyboard) to the search engine entry we have at the bottom at
typing stuff into URLbar. I suggest having something between 10 and 15 lines.
Using em instead of px sounds fairly good to me though.

Comment 25

[[e-mail]]

OK, so I guess we all know what autocomplete is.

In Firefox, pressing the dropmarker triggers a magic empty autocomplete. Their
global history responds by listing typed history. In addition, the change to
which you referred in comment 21 temporarily changes the height of the
autocomplete to 14 rows (it resets back to 6 when you close the list).

In SeaMonkey, pressing the dropmarker opens a menupopup, in much the same way as
a regular menulist works. There is no way to specify a certain number of rows.

Anyway, I would be happy with anything up to about 25em.

Comment 26

[Felix Miata]

Attachment: patch - 180px -> 25em (~16 rows, 2 more than FF & IE)

Comment 27

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

Fix checked in.

Comment 28

[Stefan [:stefanh]]

Comment on attachment 199286 [details] [diff] [review]
patch - 180px -> 25em (~16 rows, 2 more than FF & IE)

Do we want this in 1.1a?

Comment 29

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

Comment on attachment 199286 [details] [diff] [review]
patch - 180px -> 25em (~16 rows, 2 more than FF & IE)

Sure.

Comment 30

[Stefan [:stefanh]]

(In reply to comment #29)
> (From update of attachment 199286 [details] [diff] [review] [edit])
> Sure.
> 

Ah, nice. Can you check in the patch as well (on branch)?

Comment 31

[Karsten Düsterloh]

Comment on attachment 199286 [details] [diff] [review]
patch - 180px -> 25em (~16 rows, 2 more than FF & IE)

Checked in on MOZILLA_1_8_BRANCH.