Closed Bug 62727 Opened 25 years ago Closed 24 years ago

Poor wording in form manager prefs

Categories

(Toolkit :: Form Manager, defect, P3)

Product:
Toolkit
Component:
Form Manager
Type:
defect

Tracking

()

Status:
VERIFIED FIXED

People

(Reporter: Sebastian, Assigned: morse)

Details

Attachments

(2 files)

patches to use "stored" consistently
3.52 KB, patch
Details | Diff | Splinter Review
Patch to remove ellipsis
3.89 KB, patch
Details | Diff | Splinter Review
The Advanced->Forms prefs contain the buttons "View saved data..." and "View sites...". While it was clear to me, that "view sites" show the addresses of webpages I saved form data for, I had not figured out until today what the true meaning of "View saved data" was. I believed it contains the data which I saved on the "View sites" addresses (which would be consequent). I never thought that I need to proactively fill in data there, which would be automatically inserted later. So it is not a "View saved data" but a "Edit my data" function, which makes more clear that I have to fill in stuff here.
I'm not sure if you are aware, but that dialog just had a radical face lift as of yesterday. The old dialog was just what it's name said -- a viewer to see what data you had captured as a result of issuing the save-form-data command. There really was no other way to enter your data. This new dialog is both a viewer and an editor of your saved data. So the fact that you just discovered today it is actually a good thing -- it was just put into the build yesterday so you discovered it pretty quickly. The wording to access the item is actually inconsistent as I just realized. From the preference panel it says "view saved data" whereas on the task menu it says "view captured form data". Furthermore, the other items on the task menu say "view stored cookies" and "view stored passwords" and the other items on the pref panel say "view saved passwords" and "view stored cookies". So there's certainly a need to unify this wording (saved? captured? stored?) and I'm open for the correct wording. Copying verah on this so she can make the decision. BTW, another bug report related to this change was also filed this morning. That's bug 62749 so you might want to look at my comments there as well.
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
Whiteboard: [x]
I'm inclined to use the word "stored" rather than "saved," since the user is essentially building a storage place for important information. So we'd have these, in the submenus and as button labels: View Stored Passwords View Stored Cookies View Stored Form Data This doesn't address the fact that users can edit as well as view these items. (In the case of passwords -- really logins -- and cookies, the user can remove them from the list as well as view them.) Does this seem like a big problem? If so, then we could try these: Manage Stored Passwords Manage Stored Cookies Manage Stored Form Data These seem clearest to me, though I have to admit I balk at having a cascading menu that goes "Form Manager --> Manage Stored Form Data." Sigh. I wish we could have a "Privacy and Security" menu, with all these items at the top level, and dividers in-between the groups. (But attention from UI would be even better. I'm not much of a UI designer.) I'd stick with "Save Form Data" in the Edit menu.
This is obvious a 'view' to be killed. View instead of... interview, yeah right!?!? The last reporter that asked the president: "Mr. President, may I 'view' you?" is still missing... Last question, are you dressed to kill? Come on, smack that sucker! Friendly, HJ (Hey Scotty, beam me up!)
Netscape Nav triage team: this is a Netscape beta stopper.
Keywords: nsbeta1
Attaching patches. Turns out there were some lines in pref-wallet.dtd that had long ago been broken out in their own file -- pref-password.dtd. However the lines were never removed from pref-wallet.dtd. Since these lines are involved in this patch, I'm cleaning that up as well by removing those redundant lines.
I'd like Matthew's input on the wording here, because that still seems archaic. And while you're at it, please remove the ellipsis (...) from viewSignons.label.
As other UI elements use "Remember" in connection with form data, why not use "memorized" rather than "stored"? Sure, it's longer, but it is more precise, and it avoids mixing metaphors. /be
Blake, I'm confused. Who's Mathew and what input did he give here? I don't see any comments from anyone named Mathew in this bug report. Good point about the ellipses. I'll attach another patch that removes them.
Brendan, "stored" was the word agreed to by Vera. The word "memorized" sounds somewhat stilted.
From http://www.m-w.com: Stilted, adjective: 1a) POMPOUS, LOFTY; 1b) FORMAL, STIFF. "Memorized" is plain, so 1a doesn't fit. If you argue that 1b applies, then does it not also apply to "Remember"? Perhaps not. The mixed metaphor still rankles, but I'll defer to some quorum of morse, verah, and mpt. I've had my moment! /be
Morse: How do you do, I'm Matthew. I give UI advice. Brendan: `Memorized' is stilted (stiff, awkward) because it is very uncommon in the UI of other apps, and because there are alternatives with fewer syllables. So now you know. I think `View' doesn't really belong, since (as Vera said) the dialog allows editing as well as viewing. Instead of replacing it with `Manage', we could ditch the verb entirely, giving us more room for description. How about `Stored Form Text ...' and `Form Settings ...'? (I think we should have ellipses here, since we're opening a modal dialog from a modal dialog.)
Sorry, I misread Blake's comment. He said "I'd like Mathew's input" but I read that as "I like Mathew's input" implying that you had already given some input here. Hence my confusion. I don't care if there are ellipses or not -- that's not even the topic of this bug report. What is the topic is inconsistent usage of stored/saved/captured and that's what my patch addresses. Nearly every menu choice under Cookie-Manager, Image-Manager, Form-Manager, and Password-Manager start off with a verb. If you leave off the "view" as you suggested, you will have an inconsistency here. As an example, under password manager you will have: Stored Password Change Personal Security Password Log Out --- Encrypt Sensitive Information Obscure Sensitive Information Clear Sensitive Information I would be bothered by this lack of parallelism.
No wonder we can't get software out the door. Lets spend our time on more important issues. Morse's proposed changes look fine and understandable to me. r:pnunn
I agree
We can't ship software because we have trivial UI discussions? Who is the we, anyways? Mozilla.org isn't shipping software. Please quantify how much time Morse is `wasting' while other people debate appropriate UI text and let me know, okay?
sr=alecf
Fix checked in.
Status: ASSIGNED → RESOLVED
Closed: 24 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
Whiteboard: [x]
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.13) Gecko/20080313 SeaMonkey/1.1.9 Used SeaMonkey to verify since Firefox no longer has a Forms option.
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
Product: Core → Toolkit
QA Contact: tpreston → form.manager
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