429925 - Remove column picker control

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Andrés Delfino]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; OpenBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070819 Firefox/2.0.0.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; OpenBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070819 Firefox/2.0.0.6

From bug 429668 comment 0:

The column picker control that appears to the far right of the window is not
native to any of the current platforms we ship on, we should remove it from the
library window. Alternate ways of changing the set of available columns
include the view menu and right clicking on any of the column headers.

Quick list:

Trees in Firefox:

addonsTree
addonsTree
bookmarks
bookmarks
bookmarks-view
bookmarks-view
ca-tree
ca-tree
configTree
configTree
cookiesList
cookiesList
crltree
crltree
device_tree
device_tree
directoryTree
directoryTree
editBMPanel_folderTree
editBMPanel_folderTree
email-tree
email-tree
engineList
engineList
folderTree
folderTree
folderTree
folderTree
foldersTree
foldersTree
historyTree
historyTree
imagetree
imagetree
info_tree
info_tree
metatree
metatree
orphan-tree
orphan-tree
permissionsTree
permissionsTree
placeContent
placeContent
placesList
placesList
prettyDumpTree
prettyDumpTree
rejectsTree
rejectsTree
server-tree
server-tree
signonsTree
signonsTree
treesetDump
treesetDump
user-tree
user-tree

I attach the output of:
grep -RE '<tree '

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Comment 1

[Andrés Delfino]

Attachment: Tree list.

Comment 2

[Andrés Delfino]

Sorry, quick tree list (by ID) was suppoused to be:

addonsTree
bookmarks
bookmarks-view
ca-tree
configTree
cookiesList
crltree
device_tree
directoryTree
editBMPanel_folderTree
email-tree
engineList
folderTree
folderTree
foldersTree
historyTree
imagetree
info_tree
metatree
orphan-tree
permissionsTree
placeContent
placesList
prettyDumpTree
rejectsTree
server-tree
signonsTree
treesetDump
user-tree

Comment 3

[Andrés Delfino]

I update, now with trees that don't have hidecolumnpicker="true":

ca-tree
configTree
crltree
directoryTree
email-tree
folderTree
imagetree
orphan-tree
server-tree
user-tree

Comment 4

[Andrés Delfino]

Attachment: Tree list updated, all trees which do show a column picker.

Comment 5

[Kai Liu]

The column picker makes a lot of sense: it notifies the user that the columns can be modified, and it's nice for people without right mouse buttons (Macs).

So in the absence of a view menu or toolbar item (and who'd want to implement that for a certificate dialog?), the column pickers make sense... which basically narrows the field of makes-sense-to-remove pickers down to just the places library...

...and if you account for the fact that most of the things listed are very obscure and are not things that ordinary people will ever see (about:config? certificate manager?), then that too narrows it down to just the places library... which I thought had recently been fixed?

Comment 6

[Andrés Delfino]

(In reply to comment #5)
> The column picker makes a lot of sense: it notifies the user that the columns
> can be modified, and it's nice for people without right mouse buttons (Macs).
> 
> So in the absence of a view menu or toolbar item (and who'd want to implement
> that for a certificate dialog?), the column pickers make sense... which
> basically narrows the field of makes-sense-to-remove pickers down to just the
> places library...
> 
> ...and if you account for the fact that most of the things listed are very
> obscure and are not things that ordinary people will ever see (about:config?
> certificate manager?), then that too narrows it down to just the places
> library... which I thought had recently been fixed?
> 

The issue here is consistency. Right now, users might try to use one of the two approaches in the other scenario, which will fail.

You have to decide which approach to use, and follow it consistently.

Comment 7

[era+mozilla]

From bug 94407 comment 31, which in turn quotes my Ubuntu bug #306438:
> Right-clicking on the column names in the address book
> includes a "Delete" option in the menu. Unfortunately,
> this does not "delete" the highlighted column, but rather,
> the highlighted contact. Ouch. Making matters worse,
> there is no undo.
> 
> Probably the simple fix would be to have right-click
> on the column headings in the address book display a
> different menu, or no menu at all.

Comment 8

[Steffen Wilberg]

There's no View menu to show/hide columns anywhere, like the certificate manager, about:config, or Page Info, except the Places Library.

Right-clicking on the column headers doesn't work anywhere except the Library  either, so we need to fix that (in a general way) before removing column pickers.

Of course we could just backout the removal of the column picker (bug 429668) for consistency...
The column picker is useful for indicating that there may be hidden columns, like the Library, or Page Info - Media. It's much less useful if all columns are visible already like in about:config.