490130 - Tags list of "Edit this Bookmark" popup dialogue is not sorted correctly (wrong sorting: upper-case a to z, lower-case a to z, umlaute) [sort order, not ordered alphabetically]

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect)

Description

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2a1pre) Gecko/20090424 Minefield/3.6a1pre
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2a1pre) Gecko/20090424 Minefield/3.6a1pre

The list of all tags (with checkboxes) that you get by toggling the "Show all tags" button inside the "Edit this bookmark" popup dialogue is not sorted correctly. Current sort order is upper-case a to z, lower-case a to z, then words that begin with upper-case umlauts, finally lower-case umlauts. This is likely to confuse users who are looking for a specific tag in the list, as that sort order doesn't make any sense at all in terms of usability. The dialogue should use at least use the same default sort order as in bookmarks Library > Tags: just sort all tags alphabetically (while ignoring case and umlauts). Ideally, umlauts should be sorted in as ae, oe, ue, but that might be a localization issue to be dealt with seperately.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Have loads of tags with different sorts of initial letters: upper-case, lower-case and German umlauts (ä, ö, ü = ae, oe, ue)
2. Open "Edit this bookmark" popup dialogue by clicking on yellow star
3. Click "Show all tags" button to toggle open the list of all tags (with checkboxes) in the dialogue
 


Actual Results:  
Tags in the list are sorted in a rather unexpected three-fold way that makes it unnecessary difficult to find the right tag (e.g., a tag named "OEM Software" might end up miles away from another tag named "oem").

-- undesired sort order: --
upper-case a to z
lower-case a to z
upper-case umlauts a to z
lower-case umlauts a to z


Expected Results:  
At least use the same default sort order as in bookmarks Library > Tags:
-- desired sort order: --
just sort all tags alphabetically (while ignoring case and umlauts).

Ideally, umlauts should be sorted in as ae, oe, ue, but that might be a localization issue to be dealt with seperately.


The effect of this can be quite annoying as (lower/upper-)case of a given tag is changed (edited) on the fly as you type. Say these are your tags in the wrong order as described in this bug:

OEM <--
Opel
oem software
offer
often
Österreich
österreichisch

Next time you do tag-as-you-type and accidentally type "oem" instead of "OEM", FF will edit the tag's name on the fly, OEM becomes oem (for all affected bookmarks) and thus moves to a completely different place in the (wrong) sort order:

Opel
oem <--
oem software
offer
often
Österreich
österreichisch

Comment 1

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

I assume this affects all platforms and OSs, but I can't check.

Comment 2

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

This bug should be confirmed. It is very visible, easy to confirm, and probably easy to fix.

Maybe my example wasn't good enough?

--- wrong sort order (as reported in this Bug 490130) ---
[blank lines inserted for better overview]

Atag1
Btag1
Ctag1

atag2
btag2
ctag2

Ätag3
Ötag3
Ütag3

ätag4
ötag4
ütag4

[watch how Atag1 and atag2 end up miles apart, just because of different capitalization, plus remember that capitalization of an existing tag can change any time, even against the will of the user, because of bug 490252, so what is at the top of the list today might be at the bottom tomorrow]


--- expected sort order (as in Organize Bookmarks / Library) ---
(strictly alphabetical)

Atag1
atag2
Ätag3
ätag4

Btag1
btag2

Ctag1
ctag2

Ötag3
ötag4

Ütag3
ütag4

Comment 3

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Ping!

Confirmation or some sort of opinion on this bug would still be appreciated.

Comment 4

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2a1pre) Gecko/20090614 Minefield/3.6a1pre

Looking at the current nightly, this bug appears to have been fixed.