61362 - reorganize the preferences

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 114521

(SeaMonkey :: Preferences, enhancement, P2)

Description

[Niko Pavlicek]

I think we should reorganize the preferences, e.g. there should be a category
"Privacy and Security" (including 'Cookies','Images','Forms','Passwords', the
'Enable features that help interprete web pages' part of "Advanced" and
optionally in the future prefs for the PSM) because there are too much entrys in
the "advanced"-category.
A proposal for a second new category is something like "Locally stored" or
"Offline" including 'Cache','Connection'(?),'Desktop Integration','Software
Installation' and perhaps also 'History' and 'Location Bar'

Comment 1

[Warner Young]

Good idea, I second it.

Comment 2

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

doesn't this bug already exist...? anyhow, confirming --i agree, esp concerning
the privacy/security suggestion.

Comment 3

[Blake Ross]

matthew has the plans for prefs redesign.

Comment 4

[Niko Pavlicek]

just thought it would be better to have a "Tools" category for History, Helper
Apps, Cache, Location Bar, Software Installation just like in the "Tasks" menu.
Perhaps this would be the first place where users are looking especially for the
history and the helper apps. this also would be a category in which the Cache fits.
could we mozilla1.0 this? Would be great to have a good looking
pref-organization in the release!!

Comment 5

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Niko -- sure, if you're going to implement it, you can set the milestone field to 
whatever you like. But bugs don't fix themselves, y'know.

URL has preliminary mockups for a MozConfig utility for editing
cross-application prefs, which would be a superset of the Internet control panels 
on Windows and Mac OS (and yes, it has a `Privacy & Security' category). Later I 
will add mockups for application-specific prefs dialogs which would share much of 
the same UI. In particular, they would use the same UI for the `Display' branch 
(optionally inheriting the settings from MozConfig), but would replace the 
`General' branch from MozConfig with their own application-specific branch (e.g. 
`Navigator').

Please address messages about the design to the n.p.m.prefs group, not to this 
bug.

Comment 6

[Samir Gehani]

*** Bug 77534 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7

[Samir Gehani]

Taking.

Comment 8

[Zach Lipton [:zach]]

Pasting some comments from the recently-duplicated bug 77534 in here 
for design reference:

=====================================================
Description:

As a new user of 6.01 but a Netscape user for 5 years, I found it very 
confusing 
that some preferences for components are in the browser and some 
need to be set 
from within the component itself. 

Example: Reading the documentation for how to import a buddy list, it 
said 
Launch and sign on to Instant Messenger in Netscape 6. From the file 
menu, 
choose Import Buddy List."
Since I was using IM within the sidebar, and it says "in Netscape 6" I 
thought 
it meant that File menu, when I really had to launch IM separately.

Another example: I wanted to check my "save in Sent folder" mail 
preference. I 
started to "freak" upon seeing that there weren't server options but then 
remembered my IM experience so went to see if Mail had a separate 
preferences 
menu. 

Simple solution: Within the first preference panel for each component in 
the 
Browser preference menu, point people to launch the individual 
component to 
access other preference options that they don't find here.

------- Additional Comments From [e-mail] 2001-04-25 08:38 
-------

There are 3 issues here.
(a) NIM [should be filed as a separate bug and moved to bugscape]
(b) Mail Account Prefs.  This was actually a result of the original mail 
landing which didn't have time to fully integrate with the main preferences 
dialog.  At some point they decided that they couldn't easily integrate into 
preferences so they haven't tried.

(c) Include pointer to other preference Dialogs.
IMO this is the most useful of the concerns raised here.

Comment 9

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

samir, also check out bug 71381.

Comment 10

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

mpt, the url here is obsolete --do you have a new location for this? iirc, it
had a tabbed-based UI, yes?

Comment 11

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Yes, it did use tabs -- but I abandoned it, because it made the prefs UI more 
complicated rather than less. See the first paragraph of <http://
web.archive.org/web/20010509103936/critique.net.nz/project/mozilla/prefs/
tardis/>.

Anyway, this bug never had anything to do with tabs. What this bug requested 
has since been implemented: a `Privacy & Security' branch containing cookies, 
images, forms, and password prefs. As a result, Mozilla's prefs as a whole have 
become even harder to use, since the images and forms prefs aren't logically to 
do with either privacy or security, and since the existence of the branch has 
been used as an excuse to provide far too much UI for SSL options.

So I guess this bug could be resolved as worksformebutnotforanynormalhuman.

Comment 12

[Daniel Wang]

marking dupe to the meta bug. File separate bug report for separate
requests.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 114521 ***

Comment 13

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

fine with me.