529767 - heights of status and find bars changes when lightweight theme is applied

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Theme, defect)

Description

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

When no lightweight theme is applied to the browser window, and then you preview a persona on getpersonas.com, the height of the status bar (and, if visible, the find bar) decreases suddenly, which is jarring and unpleasant for users.  In fact, over the life of the Personas extension, bugs like this, when they occurred, were one of the most common user complaints.

Applying a lightweight theme (or removing one) shouldn't cause chrome to jump suddenly, so the heights of the status and find bars should remain the same when a lightweight theme is applied.

Comment 1

[Markus Stange [:mstange]]

Sounds like I'm not the only one who prefers the first patch in bug 520644.

Comment 2

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

It's not a question of my preference.  We inadvertently broke this several times in Personas and heard about it every time.  Perhaps some users don't notice, but many others do, and it's a bad experience for them.

Comment 3

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

This might be a slightly different issue for the Personas extension, since its primary UI for switching themes is in the status bar. Also, how many users are going to change themes while the find bar is open?

Comment 4

[Markus Stange [:mstange]]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Also, how many users are
> going to change themes while the find bar is open?

This doesn't matter at least on Mac; if we fix the height of the statusbar, the findbar will stay in its place too (it doesn't change its height anyway).

Comment 5

[Johnathan Nightingale [:johnath]]

Yeah - I agree that the findbar issue is sort of niche, but the status bar bouncing (and changing content scrollbar heights) on hover is a bit ugly - is there history I'm missing about why that would be intentional, Dao, or are you just suggesting it's not a particularly pressing problem?

Comment 6

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

I certainly don't think it's particularly pressing. And it was partly intentional in that the lightweight theme styling makes the chrome consume only as much space as needed; it needs less than the default styling because it removes borders around chrome elements. We're talking very few pixels, so it's only a tiny win, but it's also a lasting one. The bouncing is only a single moment. That said, the lightweight theme styling isn't the best opportunity to slim down the chrome and make room for the content; we rather need to keep it slim regardless of whether a lightweight theme is applied.