415958 - remove the background and border of the Search engine button on Linux

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Theme, defect)

Description

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Attachment: current look

It looks like it imitates the Location Bar's dropmarker, to no avail. I propose we remove the background and the border.

Comment 1

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Attachment: proposal

What do you think?

Comment 2

[Michael Ventnor]

I'd be in favour of this if we can make the dropdown arrow more than just a piddly dot, which is what it looks like without the background.

Dao, Linux has a -moz-appearance: toolbarbutton-dropdown rule that draws a native GTK arrow that points down, which is what we use to draw the arrows of the unified dropdown and any folders on the bookmark toolbar. Can you see if you can use that?

I wonder if a GTK arrow can go down to a space that small though. Maybe you could slightly remove some of the left padding of the search engine icon to give the arrow slightly more room.

Comment 3

[Michael Monreal [:micmon]]

Why remove the background here and keep it for the identity area? Both are "buttons"... I don't really see why the arrow is needed at all, many GTK search entries have a "button" on the left side which lets you change search options (see Evolution, see Banshee...)

More interesting is the question what to do with search engine discovery. The "glow" does not really work here because the arrows of various GTK themes differ in size and shape...

Comment 4

[Michael Monreal [:micmon]]

Ah, btw, I still think the discovery I explained in bug 405443 would make most sense...

But, if it is as simple as Reed said, bug 412322 would solve this all (real button look, no arrow, change of background color for discovered search engine).

Comment 5

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to comment #2)
> I'd be in favour of this if we can make the dropdown arrow more than just a
> piddly dot, which is what it looks like without the background.

How's that related to the background?

> Dao, Linux has a -moz-appearance: toolbarbutton-dropdown rule that draws a
> native GTK arrow that points down, which is what we use to draw the arrows of
> the unified dropdown and any folders on the bookmark toolbar. Can you see if
> you can use that?

As Michael Monreal mentions, you'd need to rework the "glow" for this.

(In reply to comment #3)
> Why remove the background here and keep it for the identity area?

The identity button can have a label that must not look editable. Also, it doesn't have to problem of being right next to the Location bar's dropdown button.

Comment 6

[Michael Ventnor]

(In reply to comment #5)
> (In reply to comment #2)
> > I'd be in favour of this if we can make the dropdown arrow more than just a
> > piddly dot, which is what it looks like without the background.
> 
> How's that related to the background?

Maybe its just me, but I find it harder to recognize as a shape when you have so much more surface area of the same colour.

Comment 7

[Teune van Steeg]

Attachment: Two other proposals

For reference: the proposed look with a native arrow, and the look as requested by bug 412322. I have been doing some work on that bug and it requires a lot of tweaking/hacking to get that right.

So code wise I would prefer the solution proposed here, but I also prefer it because I think the button has a very heavy look to it (next to the location bar dropdown), which I personally don't like very much. 

And FWIW I agree that a native arrow would be a big plus, if the discovery could be solved.

Comment 8

[Michael Ventnor]

Maybe the entire background of the button could be turned a bright blue on discovery? Like in bug 412322 but blue instead of yellow.

Comment 9

[Teune van Steeg]

(In reply to comment #8)
> Maybe the entire background of the button could be turned a bright blue on
> discovery? Like in bug 412322 but blue instead of yellow.
> 

That can be done, if we choose to use a button.

Comment 10

[Michael Ventnor]

It doesn't have to be a button, just the area could be turned blue.

Comment 11

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

I would like us to maintain the same appearance for the search engine button and the identity button.  I agree that the drop marker makes the toolbar looks unbalanced, but I think this is best solved by de-emphasizing the drop marker to only show a button appearance on hover.  Dao implemented this on Windows:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=297257

I know this doesn't technically mesh well with the normal appearance of gtk drop down fields, but it gives the theme a very clean and minimalist look.  Also, this field is already more complicated than a traditional drop down, so making some visual modifications feels warranted.  

Outside of OS visual integration, we've been trying to establish that controls inside of the field act on the contents of the field itself (bookmark it, send to a search engine) while button like caps on the left side of the field involve the context of the information in the field (third party identity verification, what search engine you are going to use).  Since the location bar drop down acts on the contents (replacing it with something else), under this distinction it should be inside instead of a button capped on the end.  But again, we came up with this distinction totally outside of OS visual integration.

I'm all for native drop down arrows.

> Maybe the entire background of the button could be turned a bright blue on
> discovery?

Yeah, I would like us to do this for all themes.

Comment 12

[Michael Ventnor]

There isn't really an interface guideline clause about this on Linux. In that case the best course of action is cross-platform adherence, which involves keeping the button background. But I have more plans for it in a bug I am about to file.

Comment 13

[Michael Ventnor]

I filed bug 416061 for the glow to become a complete background change, and to use a native arrow.

Comment 14

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Attachment: possible patch

Comment 15

[Bill Gianopoulos [:WG9s]]

(In reply to comment #14)
> Created an attachment (id=302419) [details]
> possible patch
> 

I tried this patch, and on my system at least (fedora core 6 with Clearlooks theme), I do not see the border that this seems to be trying to add for the addengines="true" case.

Comment 16

[Elmar Ludwig]

Doesn't work for me either, though I see nothing wrong about it. It looks like somehow the CSS selector does not apply to the searchbar-dropmarker-image element(?)

Comment 17

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Attachment: patch

This depends on bug 430627.

Comment 18

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Attachment: screenshot

Comment 19

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Comment on attachment 475042 [details] [diff] [review]
patch

Trivial patch, brings gnomestripe in line with win- and pinstripe.

Comment 20

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/8757a527d7f5