50615 - Better icons for askFormat dialog

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(MailNews Core :: Composition, defect, P3)

Description

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

The icons (one yellow, one green and one red) used in the ask format dialog when 
sending an html message to a non html recipient are too confusing and not 
compliant with UI guideline.

We must replace them by the standard question mark icon and position it in the 
top left corner of the dialog.

Comment 1

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

> not compliant with UI guideline.

Well, no wonder, I never saw it. Can somebody please give this guideline?

I object to using the hstandard questiondialog. The icons serve a purpose:
objections in bug 38433 were that the user might not notice, that there are
different version of the dialog. The icons are intended to make this visually
clear.

Comment 2

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

s/questiondialog/question icon

Comment 3

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

About UI guideline, I was refering to Macintosh UI guideline and Window UI 
guideline (I don't have the reference with me, please check Apple & Microsoft 
web site).

Ben I understand you concern but until we get a better solution to notice the 
user the dialog has different meanings (I personnaly don't have one yet), we 
must put the question mark icon instead.

Comment 4

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Re UI guideline: you mean the placement? This is extremely easy to fix.

So, what are the concrete problems with the icons? I'd like to fix them, but I
can't, if I don't know, what's wrong. Having icons for one particular dialog
isn't wrong in itself.

Comment 5

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

Good Dialogs/alerts have either a question mark icon, an exclamation icon or a notification icon depending if you are 
asking the user complementary information, warning the user or notifying the user before processing an action.

In this case, your icons don't enter any of those categories! For all the comment I receive about them until now, they 
are more confusing than helpful. Also, they are ugly, ugly and ugly! That why I am asking you to replace them. We 
will figure later what we can do else to make sure the user notice that the dialog content is not always the same.

Now, we can discuss which of the question mark or the warning icon is the most appropriate for this dialog! Maybe 
we can play with this factor: Question mark for translation with not of few formatting loose, warning icon else. 

Comment 6

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

> Good Dialogs/alerts have either
(claim 1)

Says who?

> they are more confusing than helpful. Also, they are ugly, ugly and ugly!

This is what I'm asking: why that? I think, we should discuss this on the
newsgroup.

> Maybe we can play with this factor: Question mark for translation with not of
> few formatting loose, warning icon else.

Yes, that sounds better to me. (But there's still no difference between the
first two cases.)

I will do so *for now*, but if I come up with cool icons, and a majority
disagrees with claim 1, I can add them, OK?

Comment 7

[selmer (gone)]

Ben, Jean-Francois' comments were based on our UI spec.  If you disagree with
that spec, please take that up with the UI team such as [e-mail].
Until the spec changes, your icons don't match the rest of the product and
really can't be accepted.

Comment 8

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

aaaahhh!

Semler wrote:
> Ben, Jean-Francois' comments were based on our UI spec.

I wrote:
> Well, no wonder, I never saw it. Can somebody please give this guideline?

Ducarroz wrote:
> About UI guideline, I was refering to Macintosh UI guideline and Window UI 
> guideline

> If you disagree with
> that spec, please take that up with the UI team such as [e-mail].

I can hardly disagree with something I don't know. I am willing to conform to
your spec for the modern skin (assuming it doesn't state claim 1), but I need to
see it first. German, can you please give me that spec or post it, so I can
follow it? (Will mail this request, too.)

Comment 9

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

Ben, even if you haven't seen the Mozilla UI spec, you have probably seen the look of other windows, alert, dialogs in 
the project!! Please remove those icons until you or somebody else propose better one that fit the product.

Comment 10

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

> Please remove those icons until you or somebody else propose better one that
> fit the product.

OK.

Comment 11

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Are you sure, they have to be in the top-left corner? This looks pretty odd. I
think, at least Unix icons are usually in the middle-left. Anyway, I'll make
this skinnable and will use top-left for all skins but Classic Unix for now.

Comment 12

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

> About UI guideline, I was refering to Macintosh UI guideline and Window UI
> guideline
...
> Ben, Jean-Francois' comments were based on our UI spec.

Well, which is it?

If the comments were based on the Macintosh and Windows UI guidelines, they are 
wrong, because Mac OS doesn't use a question mark icon in any of its dialogs 
<http://devworld.apple.com/techpubs/mac/HIGOS8Guide/thig-42.html#MARKER-9-27>, 
and because the Windows UI guidelines specifically tell you *not* to use the 
question icon for any dialog <http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?
URL=/library/books/winguide/ch09f.htm>.

And if the comments were based on `our UI spec', they are wrong, because there 
is no such spec (unless it's *extremely* well hidden on mozilla.org -- I 
certainly can't find it).

Comment 13

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Attachment: Fix, version 1

Comment 14

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

ducarroz: please review.

Comment 15

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

R=ducarroz. Thanks Ben.

Comment 16

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Checked in.

I'll leave this bug open until we have nicer specific icons or decided to leave
as is.

Changing SUMMARY from "Icon in askFormat dialog should be replaced by question
icon and moved in topleft corner" to "Better icons for askFormat dialog".
Adjusting keywords, Milestone.

German: I am still waiting for the spec...

BTW: I checked it: Unix (at least GTK) indeed uses vertical align middle for
icons in dialogs. I did not made Classic Unix specific changes, because Classic
Unix doesn't even really exist yet :-(.

Comment 17

[Michael La Guardia]

given that this is fixed per last series of comments, marking nsbeta3-

Comment 18

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Changing personal priorities. Giving away most of my bugs :-( (reassigning to
default owner).

I will still track these bugs closely. If you need my input, feel free to ask me.

New owner: Please do *not* close these bugs (as WONTFIX or whatever you may
find) unless they are fixed. Rather, reassign to <[e-mail]>, if you
don't want to work on them.

Comment 19

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

What we have today is ok. Sorry Ben but this is a won't fix.

Comment 20

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

ok. *sigh*