5921 - Seamonkey About box should open in new window

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: UI Design, defect, P3)

Description

[Eli Goldberg]

* TITLE/SUMMARY
Seamonkey About box should open in new window

* GENERAL FOO
The current behavior of replacing the user's existing web browsing content with
the about box is inconsistent with the behavior of all other applications' About
boxes, and has resulted in a multitude of user complaints from confused users.

(I'd be happy to paste a few of these examples in, but then I'd have to remove
this bug from public view. Or, I could just provide a few use case scenario
examples.)

German agrees with this opinion.

Comment 1

[don]

This is an enhancement.  I'll talk to John about it ...

Comment 2

[leger]

Updating QA Contact.

Comment 3

[Eli Goldberg]

...actually, that should be me. Corrected.

Comment 4

[Matthew Tuck [:CodeMachine]]

This is fine for "About Mozilla" menu item, but I wouldn't want to do it for
"about:", which I imagine will show much the same thing inline.  I'm not sure if
you were implying that.

Comment 5

[Eli Goldberg]

Thanks for making the distinction; yup, I specifically meant the scenario in

which the user selects an About menu item.

Comment 6

[Matthew Tuck [:CodeMachine]]

Marking depends on bug 6000, the about menu item bug.

Comment 7

[Eli Goldberg]

*** Bug 14270 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 8

[Michael Lowe]

Attachment: Patch file

Comment 9

[Michael Lowe]

Attachment: Patch file

Comment 10

[Michael Lowe]

Attachment: About dialog

Comment 11

[Michael Lowe]

Attachment: About resources

Comment 12

[Michael Lowe]

Attached are some XUL & Javascript files which implement a simple about dialog
box in Mozilla.   Hope someone can look it over and check it into the tree.

Comment 13

[davidm]

marking a dup of 6000. I would say the about menu item should do the equivalent
of a  window.open("about:")


*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 6000 ***

Comment 14

[Michael Lowe]

Reassign to German to decide whether the about box should open a seperate
browser window, or a dialog box (like IE and my attachment to this bug).

Comment 15

[Matthew Tuck [:CodeMachine]]

I disagree.  About menu items are expected to be in new windows, and URLs
entered are expected to be inline.

Comment 16

[Michael Lowe]

Matty, could you explain you last comment further.   It is not clear who you are
disagreeing with.

Comment 17

[Matthew Tuck [:CodeMachine]]

I disagree with davidm, noone else has made any assertion recently.

Comment 18

[Michael Lowe]

I think David was also suggesting that the menu item should open a new window.
The difference in opinion between David and myself concerns whether the About
menu item should open a dialog box or a whole new browser window (with or
without the toolbars/sidebar) to display the about: page.   I think the former
is preferable because it is more flexible, and it is what the user expects.
Are you agreeing with the dialog box solution too Matt (it looks like you are,
but it's not 100% explicitly clear)?

Comment 19

[Matthew Tuck [:CodeMachine]]

Sorry, I don't know how I read what I did into that.  I think a dialog would be
better but a new browser window would probably be simpler to implement straight
away.

Comment 20

[Michael Lowe]

Simplicity is not a problem for the dialog box solution, since I've already done
the work.  Even if it has to be changed it would take a trivial ammount of time
to get this checked in.   An About dialog box would make Mozilla look much more
professional and spiffy than the current 4.x about menu solution, or opening a
new browser window.

Comment 21

[german]

It should be a modal dialog (no chrome).
Looking up the about box is a temporary action and should not interrupt or blow
away your current task context.
Re-assigning back to Don as RFE.

Comment 22

[Michael Lowe]

Note that my attached solution is just a modal dialog wrapper for the about:
URL (as per German's spec).   The html code that does this is:

<html:iframe style="border: 1px outset #CCCCDD;" src="about:"/>

Comment 23

[Michael Lowe]

Matt: any chance of getting this checked into the tree soon?   Thanks.

Comment 24

[Zac Spitzer]

When selecting Help->about in composer, the about page is opened in an composer
window. This is with the nightly build for 26-oct-99

Comment 25

[don]

Re-evaluate this after beta 1 ...

Comment 26

[Michael Lowe]

Taking this bug to redo dialog.

Comment 27

[matt]

Michael,
i was all set to check these patches in when the tree opens.
I'm more freed up now after we got some extra help.
Sorry i didn't get this in earlier i just had other things
on my plate.  Give me a yell if you need help.

Comment 28

[Michael Lowe]

Matt: if you're already set to checkin then be my guest - saves having for me to 
do it again.   Otherwise, let me know and I'll take over this bug. Thanks.

Comment 29

[Michael Lowe]

Matt: if you're already set to checkin then be my guest - saves having for me to 
do it again.   Otherwise, let me know and I'll take over this bug. Thanks.

Comment 30

[Michael Lowe]

Checked in

Comment 31

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

Re-opening, as making this dialog modal really seems like the wrong fix to me. 
Suppose someone wants to cut-n-paste or print the dialog, or even refer back to
it while typing in a chatzilla window?

Comment 32

[Michael Lowe]

[e-mail]: what you want is still available if you type in about:mozilla 
into the url bar.   I don't see 99.9% of users needing this sort of control in 
the about box.   Maybe we could add a popup menu to the dialog box to allow 
printing.

Also, I think there should be a global perference for _all_ dialog boxes in 
Mozilla to indicate if they should be modal or non-modal.   The default setting 
should be modal, but 'power-users' like yourself obviously don't like modal 
dialogs.

Comment 33

[leger]

Clearing FIXED resolution due to reopen.

Comment 34

[Akkana Peck]

Why would anyone, even a first-timer, want a help dialog to be modal, so that
you can't check out URLs, copy from the dialog into an editor, or anything else
useful while the dialog is up?

Comment 35

[Michael Lowe]

> Why would anyone, even a first-timer, want a help dialog to be modal, so that
you can't check out URLs, copy from the dialog into an editor, or anything else
useful while the dialog is up?

I don't see how being window modal prevents any of this.   You can copy text 
from a modal dialog, click on urls and how them open into a new browser, and if 
you hook up a popup menu, print the text.

Comment 36

[Stuart Parmenter]

if the dialog is up, and you copy something, you can't paste in to composer
while it is still up.  There is *no* reason for this dialog to be modal.  The
only reason modal dialogs should ever be used is in a case where you have to
stop and have user input before you can continue.  The about box is surely not
one of these.

Comment 37

[Michael Lowe]

> There is *no* reason for this dialog to be modal.  The
only reason modal dialogs should ever be used is in a case where you have to
stop and have user input before you can continue.

I disagree.   I believe studies have shown inexperienced users often open a 
non-modal window, click on something else, and then later try to open the same 
dialog again, leading to _multiple_ open instances of the same dialog.  In this 
case the fix is simple - make the about box non-modal, but only allow at most 
one instance of the dialog.   If the dialog is already open but not in front, 
and the user chooses the "About Mozilla" menu item, the existing about dialog is 
brought to the front.

Comment 38

[Akkana Peck]

Agreeing with Pavlov.  There is no reason this dialog should be modal.  Making
it "one instance only" and "pop to the front if it's already up" is a much
better solution.

Comment 39

[Stuart Parmenter]

sure.  that works fine.

Comment 40

[Michael Lowe]

Reassigning bug to myself.

Comment 41

[Michael Lowe]

Attachment: patch file to change about dialog to single instance non-modal dialog

Comment 42

[Michael Lowe]

Could somebody review the attached patch file so I can check it into the tree 
please - (pavlov, etc?).   This patch file changes the about menu item so it 
opens a non-modal dialog.   Any attempts to open the About dialog while another 
is already open should bring the existing About dialog to the front of the 
screen.

Comment 43

[Blake Ross]

Can we get an update on this bug, please? fixed?

Comment 44

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

The About box works, if you enable `Show About box as modal dialog (woohoo)' in 
Debug preferences. However, it has a couple of bugs which I'm adding as 
dependencies here.

So I'd say this bug can be resolved fixed when:
* the dependencies are fixed (since they're both reasonably serious, and neither
  of them occur with the traditional in-the-browser About display)
* Mozilla is set to always open the About info in a dialog, and the pref
  for it is removed.

Comment 45

[Blake Ross]

Actually, this bug was originally filed to have the about page open in a new 
_Mozilla_ window, instead of inline (like about:) as it had been doing when it 
was reported.  And general concession (as gathered from some of the comments 
here) seems to be that, by default, the about box shouldn't be modal.  Thus, 
this is really FIXED now...  However, on 2/13, Michael attached a patch that 
will seemingly open the About page in a non-modal popup window (which I'd 
prefer over the current system, which opens in it a full new browser window) 
and asked that someone review it.  Any devs out there with a little time on 
their hands?

Comment 46

[Mike]

M16 has been out for a while now, these bugs target milestones need to be 
updated.

Comment 47

[Dawn Endico]

credits in the about dialog are horribly out of date. You're using a copy 
of the real credits page which hasn't been updated since it was checked
in last january. You should use the real credits page at
http://mozilla.org/credits/index.html directly or change the 
build automation so it grabs the page from the web site's
cvs tree instead of trying to keep it in the source tree.

The idea of keeping a second copy of the file in the source
tree is doomed because no one will think to update it 
except for people like pepper who add themselves to the
wrong list.

http://bonsai.mozilla.org/cvslog.cgi?file=mozilla/xpfe/global/resources/content/credits.html

Comment 48

[Eli Goldberg]

It looks like the original bug here is fixed. 

Would anyone like to split off the bugs that have been added to this bug, and 
mark it as RESOLVED for verification?

Comment 49

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Aha... I found this problem, but it seems that Dawn got there a week before me. 
I think we need to let people access the About dialog offline, so we need to 
ship a credits.html. So, this means changing the build automation.

CCing leaf :-)

Gerv

Comment 50

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Leaf: Does the build now pull the credits page from the website to ship it, or 
do we have to remember to check in a new version just before each release? If 
so, whose responsibility is it? :-)

Gerv

Comment 51

[Dawn Endico]

This seems to be a dup of bug 40024. cc'ing benb.

Comment 52

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

credits.html in the source tree is a manual, modified copy of the website's one.
See bug 40024.

Comment 53

[Oliver Klee]

Milestone 0.8 has been released. We should either resolve this bug or update its
milestone.

Comment 54

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

About now opens in new window. Resolving FIXED. We should be looking at bug 
40024, though...

Gerv

Comment 55

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

About now opens in new window. Resolving FIXED. We should be looking at bug 
40024, though...

Gerv

Comment 56

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Ah. This would be Bugzilla breaking again when resolving bugs as part of a 
mid-air collision.

Gerv

Comment 57

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

ReFIXing.

Gerv

Comment 58

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

Help > About Mozilla now opens in a new browser window [2001.05.25.08 moz bits
on linux].