357951 - Double clicking on the tab overflow scroll buttons should scroll by the width of the tab bar

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, enhancement)

Description

[Michael Ventnor]

Much of the criticism for our implementation of tab overflow is how it is really slow and awkward for power users to manage. However, I have a proposal to make the overflow tolerable and quick for power users of Firefox.

Most power users are familiar with the usefulness of the middle-mouse button. So, I thought that clicking the overflow buttons with the middle mouse button should scroll by a large amount. Ideally, by the width of the tab strip.

I made an implementation of this and found that I could go from one end of the tab strip to the other, with about 25 tabs open, in 3 mouse clicks. This was with the default minTabWidth. In my opinion, this would help make tab overflow a lot more tolerable while adding no feature or UI bloat whatsoever.

Nonetheless, I need your thoughts.

Comment 1

[Michael Ventnor]

Attachment: Patch

Just to give you an idea of what I did.

Comment 2

[Michael Ventnor]

Attachment: Patch v2

Clean up the code a bit by removing unnecessary parameter-passing.

Comment 3

[Asaf Romano (gone)]

Comment on attachment 249550 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch v2

onmousedown="_startScroll(event);" shodld work as well

Comment 4

[Michael Ventnor]

(In reply to comment #3)
> (From update of attachment 249550 [details] [diff] [review] [edit])
> onmousedown="_startScroll(event);" shodld work as well
> 

It doesn't. Not wrapping _startScroll in a function(event){ } statement breaks it too.

Comment 5

[Asaf Romano (gone)]

Comment on attachment 249550 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch v2

Also, removeEvnetListener doesn't work this way AFAICT since you're creating a new function. As noted, you could just keep using onmousedown.

Comment 6

[Michael Ventnor]

Attachment: Patch v3

Ah, I found the reason why onmousedown didn't work. There is some code duplication in tabbrowser.xml. It was still passing a number to _startScroll instead of the mouse event like I want.

Comment 7

[Asaf Romano (gone)]

Comment on attachment 249606 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch v3

We should only do this for tabbrowser IMO.

Comment 8

[Asaf Romano (gone)]

Comment on attachment 249606 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch v3

comment 7

Comment 9

[Michael Ventnor]

Attachment: Like this?

Do you mean just changing the values for tabbrowser but not in the scrollbox implementation like in this patch? If not please make it more clear to me.

I tested this and it works, which questions why the scrollbox implementation is there in the first place.

Comment 10

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

Hey Michael,

Middle click carries a "open in new tab / close tab" semantic already on the tabstrip, so I wonder if we can't think of a better accelerator here. I was thinking double click ... is it possible to detect that?

Comment 11

[Asaf Romano (gone)]

Comment on attachment 253811 [details] [diff] [review]
Like this?

comment 10

Comment 12

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to comment #10)
> I wonder if we can't think of a better accelerator here. I was
> thinking double click ... is it possible to detect that?

Yes, it is. I have working code for that and can submit the corresponding patch once bug 347363 is fixed.

Michael, feel free to reassign this bug to you if you were still actively working on it. FWIW, based on the current patch for bug 347363, you should utilize ensureElementIsVisible() instead of scrollByPixels().

Comment 13

[Michael Ventnor]

By all means, take it.

Comment 14

[John Mellor (Jomel)]

Since we're expecting users to press this several times in a row, double-click seems slightly awkward. For example Michael's example of scrolling through 24 tabs in three mouseclicks translates into 6 mouseclicks. Although on the plus side it is quite easily discoverable (possibly too easily, since there are legitimate cases for scrolling by e.g. two tabs at a time).

Comment 15

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

With smooth scrolling (bug 347363), scrolling by two tabs with a double click isn't supported. It could be implemented though. Either way, the user will discover it. As somebody who usually has 40+ tabs in a single window, I find scrolling by the width of the tab bar more useful. I just hold the mouse button pressed in order to scroll by two tabs.

By the way, my current implementation makes triple clicking scroll to the beginning resp. end of the tab bar.

Comment 16

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Attachment: patch

Comment 17

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Attachment: patch

strict warning fixed

Comment 18

[Neil Deakin]

Comment on attachment 276922 [details] [diff] [review]
patch

>+
>+          if (aEvent.detail == 2) {
>+            // scroll by the width of the tab bar; make sure that the next

scroll by the width of the scrollbox...

Comment 19

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Attachment: for checkin

Comment 20

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Attachment: synced with trunk

somebody check this in, please.

Comment 21

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Attachment: synced with trunk

Comment 22

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Checking in browser/base/content/tabbrowser.xml;
/cvsroot/mozilla/browser/base/content/tabbrowser.xml,v  <--  tabbrowser.xml
new revision: 1.240; previous revision: 1.239
done
Checking in toolkit/content/widgets/scrollbox.xml;
/cvsroot/mozilla/toolkit/content/widgets/scrollbox.xml,v  <--  scrollbox.xml
new revision: 1.27; previous revision: 1.26
done