41621 - URL History dropdown needs polish when empty

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 33723

(Core :: XUL, defect, P3)

Description

[Fredrik Sundberg]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; m16) Gecko/20000605
BuildID:    2000060508

If you press the URL history dropdown list when it is emty you will see a dot
(or short vertical line) at the bottom left corner of the dropdown button.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. make sure the url history list is empty
2. press the url history button in the browser location bar



Actual Results:  you will get the aboved mentioned behavior	

Expected Results:  nothing will happen (or...like in IE5.5 an empty box will be
shown)

Comment 1

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

What I think you're seeing is a menu popup with no items in it. IIRC, this also 
happens the first time you try to open a Personal Toolbar folder menu when the 
folder has no items in it.

So there are two bugs here, I think.
* The auto-complete list shouldn't try to open when it contains no items.
* When any bit of chrome anywhere tries to open a menu with no items in it, the
  menu code should either do an assert (so we can track down those cases more
  easily), or just not bother opening. CCing pinkerton who can decide which of
  these two approaches makes more sense.

Comment 2

[Blake Ross]

confirming, lowering severity (i fail to see how this polish is critical), 
cc'ing radha

personally i think the url history dropdown button should just be disabled if 
its menu contains no URL's

Comment 3

[Peter "jag" Annema]

Sometimes an empty list is useful feedback to a user.
Like for the auto-completion, an empty menu can signal 'no matching "known"
URLs' back to the user, where not showing a menu at all is less clear.

Shouldn't this be Platform/OS All All btw, or Other Other?

Comment 4

[Brendan Donohoe]

This is essentially the same problem that was reported a while back with 
bug #33723: empty menus and submenus should display <Empty> in the 
menu instead of the current 1x1 square.  I think this menu qualifies for the 
same treatment, which should be standard behavior for any empty menu.

Marking duplicate and suggesting a raise in priority for #33723.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 33723 ***

Comment 5

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

No, that's not good enough. If Navigator started popping down a menu saying 
`(Empty)' every time I started typing a unique URL into the location bar, that 
would stop being funny *very* quickly.

Either we want an empty box, as in IE, or no menu at all; neither of these would 
be catered for by bug 33723 as currently described. Reopening.

Comment 6

[Brendan Donohoe]

Now why on earth would you even consider the menu automatically 
popping open when it has nothing to display?!?  That's absurd.  If a user 
clicks on the menu to open it themselves and there is nothing to display, 
then the menu should do something graceful like display <empty>.  If 
you're typing a URL, the only time the menu should ever pop open is if it 
has something to show you.

If you want to open a bug about the behavior of when this menu 
automatically opens, feel free.  That's not the same issue as what 
happens when an empty menu is opened manually.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 33723 ***

Comment 7

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Verified dup.