409523 - No hint for when a new tab is opened in the background

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect, P3)

Description

[kripkenstein]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9b2) Gecko/2007121016 Firefox/3.0b2
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9b2) Gecko/2007121016 Firefox/3.0b2

In FF 2.0 there was a visual hint when a new tab was opened in the background - a flash on the 'right arrow' on the list of tabs. This was very helpful in showing that indeed a new tab was opened even if there were so many tabs already open that the tab itself wasn't visible. Yet this is missing in FF 3.0.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open enough tabs so that the list of tabs is full.
2. Using middleclick, open a new tab in the background.
Actual Results:  
There is no visual hint that in fact a new tab was opened.

You may have missed and middleclicked only close to the link, and you wouldn't know it.

Expected Results:  
A visual hint of some sort that a new tab was opened. For example like FF 2.0 does, it 'blinks' the right arrow on the list of tabs darker for a second.

My theory: Perhaps something to do with the change to using native GTK+ widgets?

If so, and if the FF 2.0 hinting is not feasible using GTK, then any other type of visual hint would be welcome. It doesn't matter what, so long as the user has an idea that his/her click was indeed registered.

Comment 1

[Sylvain Pasche]

In Firefox 2, the visual feedback was drawn on the right arrow and the all tabs button. On winstripe trunk, the animation is only drawn on the all tabs button on Windows (maybe after bug 387345).

For gnomestripe, there is no animation drawn at all because there is nothing specified in the for the .tabs-alltabs-box-animate selector.

Comment 2

[Sylvain Pasche]

Attachment: Background color for the animation.

winstripe uses a background image for the animation with an orange gradient (http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/source/browser/themes/winstripe/browser/tabbrowser/alltabs-box-overflow-end-bkgnd-animate.png)

This patch uses a solid background orange color instead. Maybe that's not the best thing to do.

Comment 3

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

The animation only matters in the cases where the current and new tabs are far enough apart that both can't be on screen.  Its a bit edgy, not going to continue to block, but if a safe fix appears we'll certainly take it.

Comment 5

[Sylvain Pasche]

How safe do you consider something like attachment 294364 [details] [diff] [review]?

If bug 404774 has few chances to reach the release, maybe that approach is better than nothing.

Comment 6

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Pretty safe, the only question is if it looks right. I know I tried it some time ago on Linux, but I can't remember.

I'd use Highlight rather than #ebc275, and !important shouldn't be needed.

Comment 7

[Sylvain Pasche]

Attachment: using background-color: Highlight

That's looking fine when using Highlight with Human-Murrine theme. In fact the Highlight color of that theme is very close to the orange of #ebc275.

Is it ok for the review? I could check with a few other themes how that's looking.

Comment 8

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Comment on attachment 317416 [details] [diff] [review]
using background-color: Highlight

ui-review wouldn't hurt here. Mind taking a screenshot?

Comment 9

[Sylvain Pasche]

I'll attach some screenshots this evening (European time)

Comment 10

[Sylvain Pasche]

Attachment: Comparison of all tabs button with highlight on several themes

For each theme on the left is the all tabs button without any highlight, like it should look on the tab bar right now. On the right is the button how is looks when a new tab is opened in background (it will progressively fade out to reach the normal color). My impression is that it should play nicely with most of the themes.

Comment 11

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

Comment on attachment 317416 [details] [diff] [review]
using background-color: Highlight

a=beltzner, sure, looks fine to me

Comment 12

[Sylvain Pasche]

Sorry, I saw the "a=beltzner" that's why I added the checkin-needed.

Comment 13

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

Comment on attachment 317416 [details] [diff] [review]
using background-color: Highlight

a1.9=beltzner

Comment 14

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

mozilla/browser/themes/gnomestripe/browser/browser.css 	1.213