337548 - hard to access search engine dropdown menu in toolbar search box

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Search, defect)

Description

[Josh Aas]

Firefox 2 branch debug build on Mac OS X from 2006.5.10

It is really hard for me to access the dropdown menu for selecting a search engine. I have to click about 6 times in the area where the magnifying glass and the little black triangle is in order to get the menu to drop down.

Comment 1

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

Our tenative conclusion on irc earlier tonight was that the biggest part of the problem was not having enough space between the glass and the triangle: not only do you not have blank space to miss in, but it actually makes the triangle look smaller than it does in Winstripe.

Comment 2

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

I'm not sure if the spacing can be fixed by giving this new art on OS X, but the essence of this problem is that right now the search button and drop down triangle don't look like things you can click. Part of that, as Phil says, is the spacing issue, and part of it is just that the thing doesn't look clickable.

Comment 3

[Josh Aas]

Beltzner - its more than that because I know I can click on those things to get a dropdown menu and it doesn't work.

Comment 4

[Joe Hughes]

*** Bug 337598 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 5

[Joe Hughes]

I think this has to do with the pinstripe CSS used to lay out the variable-width searchbox on the Mac.

Comment 6

[Joe Hughes]

(Basically, the left side of the drop-down triangle works, and the right side doesn't.)

Comment 7

[Joe Hughes]

Attachment: Makes entire drop-down triangle a hit target, at the cost of moving it 2 pixels further out of the curved end of the search box

Comment 8

[Joe Hughes]

Attachment: Before (top) and after (bottom) for the patch I just posted

Comment 9

[Joe Hughes]

There definitely is a hit-testing problem introduced by the bug 337292 work.  I've attached a patch that fixes that (though at the cost of introducing two pixels of horizontal space between the drop-down triangle and the right edge of the searchbox.

Comment 10

[Joe Hughes]

Landed on branch at mconnor and schrep's behest since schrep wants to push the a2 release to tomorrow morning anyway.

Comment 11

[Tracy Walker [:tracy]]

verified with Mac Bone Echo build from 2006-05-12-05

should this be marked fixed?  It's better than before, but is still a tiny space one must click. 

Note: The tooltip for the ad engines button says "Search Google". But that is true on Windows as well.

Comment 12

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

I think the current fix is a workaround, but not the final solution. We need a better one by beta 2 at the latest. Choice of search partners is something we need to make sure we're providing in a clear and discoverable fashion, and indeed, was one of the reasons we started the whole redesign of the searchbox.

(note: this might get fixed by the visual refresh thing, too - when I file a bug to track that later today, I'll add this as a blocker to it)

Comment 13

[Joe Hughes]

Also landed on trunk.  Resolving this one for now; for the more general issue of increasing the visual size of the drop-down target on the Mac, use bug 337725.