Closed Bug 632066 Opened 13 years ago Closed 13 years ago

Display of link targets with long queries isn't very usable

Categories

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect)

x86
Windows 7
defect
Not set
normal

Tracking

()

RESOLVED FIXED

People

(Reporter: benjamin.lerner, Unassigned)

References

Details

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User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:2.0b10) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0b10
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:2.0b10) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0b10

I was reading a slashdot article, which linked to a google query.  I know it's a google query because when I hovered over the link, I could see "http//www.google.com/ in the link preview in the address bar.  But I have absolutely no idea what the query terms are, because they're elided in the ... of the shortened query that's visible in the address bar.  See the attached screenshot.  I have a wide screen, and there wasn't enough room to see the only two parts of the url (hostname and query term) that I cared about.

Reproducible: Always




I know there's been discussion about moving (temporarily or otherwise) the link target preview out of the address bar and into a tooltip in the lower-left, where it "used to be", and some discussion about how the left edge of the link preview isn't currently predictable.  I'm not arguing for or against those behaviors, necessarily, but I would like to see something similar to Chrome's behavior, where initially the browser shows the elided and shortened URL, and if you stay hovered over the link for longer, shows the entire URL.  Perhaps something akin to WinAmp, that used to scrub the song title back and forth within a narrow display area, might work?
Try Beta 11 when it's out (or a Nightly http://nightly.mozilla.org/) to see that this is a non-Issue now ...
I've tried b11 nightlies; I'm aware that the link has moved to the bottom-left and is no longer elided.  I was under the impression from the newsgroup discussions that that tooltip was temporary UI until the user-experience folks and the devs had sufficient time to implement the full UI plan, whatever that winds up being.  My point in this bug is to just raise awareness that wherever the preview ultimately winds up, eliding from the middle of the URL hinders readability, as might eliding from the end as the b11 tooltip does (though admittedly, that's less likely given the current idiomatic usage of query parameters in many websites to put the important query terms up front).
(In reply to comment #2)
> Try Beta 11 when it's out (or a Nightly http://nightly.mozilla.org/) to see
> that this is a non-Issue now ...

This is resolved fixed in 

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:2.0b12pre) Gecko/20110207 Firefox/4.0b12pre

We will keep further track of this though, if it should reappear as a feature.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 13 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
Fixed by bug 541656, I assume.
Depends on: 541656
Yes...assuming that the UI in bug 541656 is permanent.  Per comment 4, URL display shortening is something to keep track of, if the UI for showing them is changed over time.
Actually...I take this back.  It's not fixed in b11.  Visit http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/02/06/1926206/Woman-Gets-Revenge-Courtesy-of-Google-Images, and hover over the "descriptively captioned photos" link.  The link still shows up in the address bar, to the right of the chevron, and it's still elided.

It's true that once I *click* on the link, a tooltip opens up in the lower corner telling me where I've navigated to.  But that's too late to avoid clicking on unknown links.
Status: RESOLVED → UNCONFIRMED
Resolution: FIXED → ---
The fix for bug 541656 is in nightlies and will be in b12.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 13 years ago13 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
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