539416 - Implement (?) icon for more info on notification bars (Remote content, Junk, Scam etc.) - was: TB notification bars should be optimized to use less vertical space

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Message Reader UI, enhancement)

Description

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Attachment: 3 info bars from TB and one from FF

Compared to the info bars in Firefox, the Thunderbird info bars are very big and eats up a lot of space from the message preview.

Comment 1

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Will add other bugs as dependencies to this, as different info bars require different amount of changes. Some are as easy as smaller graphics and some css changes, while others could need shorter/changed strings and UI changes.

Comment 2

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

So this bug should probably have the new recommendations for notifications bars which will be used to fix any of the dependent bugs.  Firefox looks like it's only using 16x16 icons where ours are a bit bigger.

Here's what I'd recommend:

* 16x16 icons
* Single line of text
* Total max-height of 34px

And adding that I think it makes a lot of sense for us to always include some kind of help action in these notification bars.  Such that our default format looks like this.

| [icon] "Headline text..."     (Action) (Buttons) (?) [x] |

[icon]                 = 16x16 icon (required?)
"Headline text..."     = Most succinct message to user (required)
(Action) (Buttons)     = Buttons with possible actions related to notification
(?)                    = Small help button which provides secondary text to further explain the "Headline text..."
[x]                    = Close / Ignore button closes and ignores the warning, also prevents the need for an (Ignore) action button (required)

Comment 3

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

I like those guidelines, if we're running out of space, we might be able to kill off the icon and put the (?) there instead.

Comment 4

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Attachment: popup appearance

and here is how the help popup could look like, activated on hover.
Should be easy to do with a bit of css: http://www.kollermedia.at/archive/2008/03/24/easy-css-tooltip/

Comment 5

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

Another thing I was thinking was that we could have a default (Action) button and then use a (gear|v) "gear icon" menu for alternate options.  It would avoid using text for a menu button that is always "other options related to this besides the default action".

Comment 6

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

This bug has largely been obsoleted by bug 540098, and should eventually be closed.
However, I like the idea of the (?) icon for more information on the main message, e.g. for remote content, junk, and scam warnings. It's a bit weird that we're forcing our warnings onto the user and block their remote contents but there's no immediate access to more information as to what is the problem...

The (?) icon part needs to be filed as a new bug if there isn't one already, but for now, I'll just morph the summary here to preserve the idea.

Comment 7

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to Thomas D. (currently busy elsewhere; needinfo?me) from comment #6)
> This bug has largely been obsoleted by bug 540098, and should eventually be
> closed.
Oops, that's bug 562048 of course which made notifications slicker (also using less vertical space).