576503 - New Filter UI desecrates existing visual paradigm

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: Toolbars and Tabs, defect)

Description

[zed]

The new filter bar in 3.1 violates existing de facto style guides for a couple of reasons: 

- The down arrow on the magnifying glass normally indicates a dropdown menu, not a toggle state.

- The toggle state of the icon tab itself, emulating the tab coloring, is inverse to the selected state of the tabs.. ie: when toggled off, the state of the filter "tab" is the same as when a normal tab is highlighted.

Comment 1

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

From http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tJxF8zTuLdEj9pUcxnLAemA&output=html

ux-consistency: "User experience principle: in general software should be internally consistent with itself, and externally consistent with similar interfaces to leverage the user's existing knowledge."

This applies to the arrow always being used for dropdown menu instead of a toggle state. One could argue that UX discovery is part of this (that the arrow would indicate where the menu would pop up), but since the filter bar is on by default, that part is already being taken care of.

Comment 2

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I'm not sure this still exists

Comment 3

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

This is no more the case.