33723 - Need to display empty menus differently (currently display as tiny boxes)

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: XUL, defect, P3)

Description

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.7 [en] (Win95; U)
BuildID:    20000328

In the Bookmarks menu on the menu bar, under the current skin, empty folders and 
bookmarks look the same - just the title. NS 4.x gets around this by using icons 
on menus (and also by not displaying empty folders in the menus at all, but that 
could be a bug in NS 4.x). This is rather confusing.

I would suggest either adding icons to this menu, not adding empty folders 
to it at all, or adding them but giving them a Right Arrow which expands to a 
single-entry menu saying "(Empty)".

Comment 1

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Moving my own bug to UI:DF for further consideration :-)

Gerv

Comment 2

[Claudius Gayle]

the icons are there now so I assume this bug is just to evaluate the suggestion to add the <empty> to submenus for empty 
folders? I think it's a good idea </.02¢>

Comment 3

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

While the Bookmarks window is still open, when a new folder is created it has a 
1-pixel-by-1-pixel menu when clicked in the Bookmarks Toolbar. Isn't that
enough? :-)

(The minimal menu is just a symptom of a more general bug -- does anyone want to 
file `Menus with zero items still appear', and CC me on it?)

Empty folders should probably still appear in the toolbar, otherwise there will 
be problems of the contents of the toolbar appearing not to match the bookmarks 
file itself. And of course I might create an empty folder on the toolbar for the 
express purpose of dragging links into it later.

Perhaps a better solution would be to do the `[Empty]' thing, like Windows does 
with empty folders in the Start menu.

Comment 4

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug is no longer a problem as originally stated, since the personal toolbar 
bookmarks now look different, and have different icons for bookmarks and 
folders. We could either close it, or convert it to a RFE for "Empty" (which I 
think isn't necessary, as the folders animate on opening, which is enough of a 
visual clue).

Gerv

Comment 5

[Brendan Donohoe]

An <EMPTY> menu would be nice, making it very clear what's going.  The icon 
animation is good, too, but very subtle.  However, any enhancement here is very 
low priority.  Marking RFE, M18, and reassigning to XP Toolkit/Menus.

Comment 6

[Peter Trudelle]

mass-moving all bugs to m21 that are not dofood+, or nsbeta2+

Comment 7

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Rewriting title to reflect new status of bug.

Gerv

Comment 8

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

*spam*: transferring current XP Menu bugs over to jrgm, the new component owner.
feel free to add me to the cc list (unless am the Reporter) of any of these, if
you have any questions/etc.

Comment 9

[Brendan Donohoe]

*** Bug 41621 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 10

[Brendan Donohoe]

This behavior is showing up in more places than just sub-menus, 
including the URL drop-down which doesn't have the benefit of an 
animated folder icon.  I recommend raising the priority of putting an 
'<empty>' string into empty menus.  This will not only improve usability for 
the general public, it'll make the product look more professional and 
polished (the 1x1 square that currently appears looks like an oversight).

Comment 11

[Brendan Donohoe]

*** Bug 41621 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 12

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

For the URL drop-down, `(No previous addresses)' (or even nothing at all) would 
make more sense than `(Empty)' would. Could menus be given some way of specifying 
their empty text?

Comment 13

[Blake Ross]

*** Bug 49730 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 14

[John Morrison]

*** Bug 67591 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 15

[John Morrison]

*** Bug 67591 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 16

[Håkan Waara]

Nominating for 0.9

Comment 17

[Håkan Waara]

*** Bug 68428 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 18

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is now a 5x5 square, but it's still not ideal. Menus should be able to 
specify their empty text, definitely. It should be shown greyed out by default. 

Gerv

Comment 19

[:deanis74]

These little empty menu boxes bug me.  Can we do this in two steps?  The first
would be to add a disabled menu item that reads "(Empty)", just like Windows
does.  The second would be an RFE to make that text string customizable by the
menu itself.

Comment 20

[:deanis74]

*** Bug 85035 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 21

[[e-mail]]

A possible problem with this is that it's difficult to tell if the menu is
really empty - content and RDF can both update them dynamically - IIRC the
content update can alter the effect of the RDF update so there isn't a late
enough event to catch. Or is there?

Comment 22

[Jim Bruce]

This works nicely now, except that neil's comment on a problem became true (at
least as of 0.9.3); If you drag a bookmark to a folder that is emtpy; you then
get two items, one of which is the empty item.  It stays until restart AFAICT. 
Didn't see this bug anywhere else after a short search.

Comment 23

[:deanis74]

Jim, that's bug 79411.  Marking fixed (or should that be worksforme?...
whatever) based on:

- Jim's comments
- that I now get an "(Empty)" item in the bookmarks menu when I create an empty
bookmarks folder
- I get a "(Nothing Available)" entry when I clear the Location Bar and then
display the drop-down.

Comment 24

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

*** Bug 103895 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***