629969 - Don't show status messages for XHR requests

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Vladimir Vukicevic [:vlad] [:vladv] (needinfo me, slow to respond)]

(Originally posted in bug 628654 comment #70.)

This change (bug 628654) essentially makes it impossible for anyone trying to do any kind of
full-screen web app, such as they might be doing with our new fast fancy
hardware accelerated graphics support.  The notification bar shows up *all the
time* when you do any kind of XHR request, and is incredibly distracting
because it keeps blinking in and out.

We made the decision very early on to remove the status bar; if we now want to
bring back the status bar, let's do that, but let's not do this half-baked
distracting thing.  We should kill this off IMO, go with the first goals for Firefox 4, and not try to second-guess ourselves in the 11th hour here.

Comment 1

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

> This change (bug 628654) essentially makes it impossible for anyone trying to
> do any kind of
> full-screen web app, such as they might be doing with our new fast fancy
> hardware accelerated graphics support.  The notification bar shows up *all the
> time* when you do any kind of XHR request, and is incredibly distracting
> because it keeps blinking in and out.

So there are multiple fast requests and the popup appears/disappears repeatedly?
Bug 628654 comment 0 states that "there is a concern that the browser feels slower for that removal since messages about page load status were removed". I'm not sure that's accurate. I can't speak for the people having made this decision, but I think the main concern is that for slow requests, we should give feedback about what's taking long. To that end I'd suggest hiding the popup for the first second or so.

Comment 2

[jag (Peter Annema)]

Suppressing status updates for the first second won't help with XHR that e.g. downloads a bunch of bitmaps or data (think Google Body Browser). I think we should leave XHR progress feedback to the web apps.

Comment 3

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Attachment: patch to suppress status messages when the throbber doesn't spin

How about this?

Comment 4

[jag (Peter Annema)]

Comment on attachment 508209 [details] [diff] [review]
patch to suppress status messages when the throbber doesn't spin

Looks good. I'll give you r=jag too.

Comment 5

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to comment #4)
> I'll give you r=jag too.

I'm not sure if I can use that, but I'll try.

Comment 6

[Benoit Jacob [:bjacob] (mostly away)]

Not sure if attachment 508209 [details] [diff] [review] already does that, but --- how about just removing status messages when in full-screen mode, for starters? That should be an easy consensus.

Comment 7

[jag (Peter Annema)]

Benoit, would you mind filing a new bug with that proposal? This bug addresses the flickering that comes from XHR (common in web apps) etc., whether you're in full-screen mode or not.

Comment 8

[Brendan Eich [:brendan]]

(In reply to comment #5)
> (In reply to comment #4)
> > I'll give you r=jag too.
> 
> I'm not sure if I can use that, but I'll try.

Jag's an old timer, from the dawn of XUL. He's still a SeaMonkey peer, FWIW.

/be

Comment 9

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/4a05e5eaca00

Comment 11

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

(In reply to comment #8)
> Jag's an old timer, from the dawn of XUL. He's still a SeaMonkey peer, FWIW.

... and he's still a super-reviewer. ;)