55819 - Mozilla folder window should have nice background picture

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(SeaMonkey :: General, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Zach Lipton [:zach]]

I was thinking the other day about mozilla, and discovered that the window 
or directory that it comes in, is extremely ugly. For M18 and beyond, we 
should still have all the access to things, but without making the window 
appear cluttered. I realize that we will have to do something different for 
each platform, but on the mac, I have an icon image that I think would fit 
well in the top of the window. Then have the main things (such as the app)  
in a row at the bottom, and put less important things below the window.

Comment 1

[Zach Lipton [:zach]]

Attachment: what it should look like (mac)

Comment 2

[Doron Rosenberg (IBM)]

you lost me...

Comment 3

[Zach Lipton [:zach]]

Sorry. What I mean is that the window that the application is in 
(directory/window) doesn't look nice and is cluttered with items. Is that 
better?

Comment 4

[Zach Lipton [:zach]]

sorry for the spam here, but I need to test something

Comment 5

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

OK, this is a bug requesting that we improve the directory structure within the
/mozilla folder.  Not sure who should get this.  I suppose the closes thing we
have to a usability component is UI:Design Feedback.  

Comment 6

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

A pastel background logo for the Mozilla folder window might be nice on Win98 and 
later, but I don't think there's any way of doing it on Mac OS, GNOME or KDE. 
CCing random Mac/Linux people to find out. (Well Ben, you're not so random -- 
this is also a bug about the usability of directory structures, as we were 
discussing a while ago.)

The cluttered directory structure itself is a dup of bug 32486, which you can 
reopen if you like. The actual arrangement of the icons (they're not neatly lined 
up on Mac OS by default) should be filed as a separate bug.

[By the way Zach, please don't attach PICTs in future. They're very large, and 
not very XP.]

Comment 7

[Zach Lipton [:zach]]

There is a way to do it on mac. That's how I did the image that I attached. I 
used pict-2-icons 
(http://download.cnet.com/downloads/0-10242-100-906485.html?tag=st.d
l.10005_103_1.lst.td_906485) to do it and I am sure that there is a way on 
the mac.

I don't know about linux. Sorry about the pict, but it's what a mac 
screenshot makes, and I didn't have anything to convert it at the moment. 
I'll convert it later

Comment 8

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Directory? Ugly? Rows? huh?

I cannot open the attachment. Please attach a PNG, cutted to the window.

Are you talking about shipping some prearrangement of the file icons in some
file manager?

I don't know of any such thing for GNOME (Nautilus is not released yet).

BTW: Users are not supposed to do anything in the program folder other than
things explicitly told to them.

Comment 9

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Attachment: PNG version of the previous attachment

Comment 10

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Ok, I just showed that to a Mac-using friend of mine and said `What would you 
think if you opened a folder and saw that?' She said, `I'd think, "What's that 
great big hairy thing doing in my computer?"'.

Even for a pastel background image, I have never seen any other program on Mac OS 
do this, so I'm not sure it would be favorably received. Windows likes to put 
dinky background pictures in its folder windows though (e.g. the cogwheels in the 
`Windows' folder), so maybe this should be Windows-only.

Ben, the `Mozilla Folder' on Mac contains icons for opening `Navigator', 
`Messenger', `Address Book' etc directly (and is currently the only place to find 
such shortcuts). So expecting the user not to go in there is not really an 
option.

Comment 11

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

> the `Mozilla Folder' is currently the only place to find such shortcuts

*This* is a bug. Doesn't the Mac have something like a start menu?

Comment 12

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Yes (the Apple menu, and the Launcher), but that's bug 28174. Regardless, a Mac 
user's hard disk is his/her own space, and installed programs shouldn't be messy.

About to attach screenshots of nicely laid out folders (with nice directory 
structures) from fresh installations of other programs.

Comment 13

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Attachment: Internet Explorer and Outlook Express folder windows

Comment 14

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Attachment: Anarchie folder window

Comment 15

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Matthew,
I argue that the program folder is the program's space.

Do I understand the proposed screenshot correctly that the huge icon does
nothing? Then we should remove it and just use it as icon for the "mozilla"
binary, but way smaller.

I agree that the folder should get some cleanup, especially the libraries (that
I see on Unix) should be moved into a subfolder, but that's XPCOM work and not
at all urgent.

Comment 16

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Matthew,
Re screenshots: Thanks for converting the first one. The second (MSIE and OE)
doesn't load for me. The third (Anarchie) looks like a folder in the start menu.
Note that Mozilla is heavily component based.

Comment 17

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Attachment: Internet Explorer and Outlook Express folder windows (JPEG version)

Comment 18

[Andrew Thompson]

Woah, WoAH WOAH there!

Cross platform expectations mismatch!
First, a word about folders - 

The source of MPT and BenB's disagreement between whether an app's folder is its 
own space or the user's is down to a difference between the way the Mac and 
Windows handle this stuff.

On the Mac, one would create		(these are "the defaults")

Hard Disk:Application:Mozilla 1.0
or
Hard Disk:Internet:Mozilla 1.0

On Windows one would create
c:\program files\mozilla\Mozilla 1.0

*and*

c:\\winntprofiles\default user\start menu\Mozilla 1.0	(and something similar on 
98)

Point is, on the Mac the application's folder is all there is, whereas on Windows 
there is an application folder and a folder in the start menu that has 3-4 items 
in it, probably a shortcut to the app and a couple of other items of dubious 
utility (e.g. putting the uninstaller in there where it can be accidentally 
clicked is a common faux pas)

So you're both right - on Windows, for better or worse the contents of c:\program 
files is usually opaque. However a Mac user would expect to have to open and use 
the contents of Hard Disk:Applications: regularly.

OK, so I have lots to say here, and I think we'll need feedback on whether these 
need to be seperate bugs, or whether they already exist as bugs:

A polite mac intaller creates the application's folder, leaves it open and quits. 
Then the user can make any aliases ( == shortcuts == symbolic links) that they 
desire.

You might *ASK* if they want a shortcut on the desktop. You *DON'T* go around 
stuffing things into the Apple menu. Don't even think about it!

On Windows one gets the application folder, the start menu group, a desktop icon 
(though better installers *ASK* I think Matthew has a bug on this?) and if you're 
really unlucky something in the system tray and in that launcher thing in the 
taskbar (sorry, I have NT4 w/o active deskcrap so I don't know what the Win98 UI 
features are called). 

Point is windows installers are more promiscuous. I live with it - its what 
people expect so we should probably ask if we can spam the desktop at least.

So, one part of this is:

Reduce clutter in the Mac folder by moving everything a level where only users 
who go looking for it will find it. Easy. We have a bug for this. Actually one 
could argue some of Mozilla should be installed into the Application Support 
folder, but lets not go into that here... requires much detailed discusssion.

About the background image:

Zach's picture is a vainglourious hack someone discovered - you see, the Mac 
doesn't move icons around without you doing something... so someone figured if 
you create a whole bunch of folders with custom icons and no names, and cut up a 
picture to fit the icons, and arrange the folders "just so" in a window, you can 
make a big picture.

This gets used on magazine cover CD ROMS, where it works nicely, because CD ROMs 
are *READ ONLY*. We shouldn't do this because we're writing to a writable disk, 
and so the minute the users moves one of the folders, the whole picture will be 
hosed and probably nearly impossible to recreate by hand. Bad idea I think.

That said, Mac OS X allows custom window backgrounds for any window... so we 
could probably ship a really pretty window with any background image we choose. 
We should be using a package based install on Mac OS X though... I think, depends 
on how componentised Mozilla is when its done. 

So not sensibly possible on Mac OS 9. On Mac OS X very doable, but that's FUTURE.

Mathew - do we have aequate bugs open on installer behaviours?

[zach for future reference shift-comman-4 on Mac OS > 8 (8.5?) allows you to 
select the region to screencapture so you don't need to grab such a huge area]

Comment 19

[Andrew Thompson]

yes, note on Matthew's IE5 image, its being installed by dragging off of a *
locked* disk image. The instructions with the arrows are using the same folder 
image hack Zach described.

This is actually quite a nice implementation...

Comment 20

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Ok, then.
* This bug can be for a nice folder background picture for the Web Page view of
  the Mozilla folder on Windows 98 and later. (Mac OS X can wait until we have a
  polished Mac OS X port, methinks.)
* Asking where to put shortcuts is bug 28174.
* Problems with the directory structure itself will now be covered in the
  newly-reopened bug 32486.

Comment 21

[Zach Lipton [:zach]]

ok then, we should keep the image idea in mind if we start burning 
mozilla CD's. 

Comment 22

[hangas]

Sending to Ben as mozilla UI owner

Comment 23

[Zach Lipton [:zach]]

Chaning the qa contact on these bugs to me. MPT will be moving to the 
owner of this component shortly. I would like to thank him for all his hard 
work as he moves roles in mozilla.org...Yada, Yada, Yada...

Comment 24

[Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email)]

Mac, -> Paul Chen, cc'Pink. Not sure if OS X lets you do this, and if not, 
whether or not it's worth the effort just for OS 9.x

Comment 25

[Peter Trudelle]

uhh, some time in the future...

Comment 26

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

->default assignee

Comment 27

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Wontfix. On reflection, I think this would look unavoidably tacky.