637634 - Create a subsection in the appmenu for extension menu entries

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Menus, enhancement)

Description

[[:ocz]]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:2.0b13pre) Gecko/20110228 Firefox/4.0b13pre
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:2.0b13pre) Gecko/20110228 Firefox/4.0b13pre

Create an area (another vbox with a catchy id i.e.: id=Extention_area, tools_area or something) in the Appmenu to house Appmenu-items of add-ons and encourage developers to use it.

References to other bugs:
I know, in Bug 599779 - "Create a submenu under "Add-ons" for extension menu entries" this has been declared to be a wontfix.
Bug 578844 - "make app menu fully accessible to add-ons" has a similar purpose.

Reasons:
I know it's late in the development, but with landing of the final release, more add-on developers will patch their add-ons for FF4.0 and will copy items of the tools-menu to the Appmenu.
My experiences with the tools-menu is, that it gets cluttered really fast and that the add-on items are allover the place. If not provided with a place to put them, they will appear in the Appmenu by the developers judgment. This could be a serious matter and difficult to be corrected afterwards, as at that point the add-ons have been updated and then may be standing as they are.

Adding a vbox has several benefits:
1. It's simple and shouldn't break anything.
2. It makes it easier for developers to place items.
3. It prevents chaotic cluttering. The items will come one way or another. 
4. It makes add-on items easier to find and manage overall.

At point 4.: If an item has been placed under that node, it's a rather simple task to identify it. Creating a manager, that toggles the visibility of the items and keeps the cluttering in check, would be a piece of cake. The alternative way would be to check the appmenu-tree for non-standard items.
This might be important, as it is, like mention in the reference bugs above, a bad thing to be purely at the mercy of the add-on developers.

Possible design:
Quite simple. The only item in it by default could be a menu separator. If it's empty it can be collapsed or not displayed. If you want an even simpler approach, place the Web developer item within it. This way it's always filled, ergo always visibly and on the top of it, this doesn't change the current look of the menu.
It would be also possible to give another background color to the area (without the separator and web developer, of course), to make it simpler to spot, that those items are belonging to extensions.

Ranting:
So far I only saw one extension, that placed an item into the menu. "Session Manager" places it in dependence of appmenu_webDeveloper. The position is perfect. The best one could do, but the way of doing it, is still pitiful. Please have mercy. More chaotic approaches will surely come and bite us into our...
You don't want to create another sticky nickname like "Awefulbar", do you?
The Application "Look-whats-today-on-the-)menu, or something.

Reproducible: Didn't try

Comment 1

[Jennifer Morrow [:Boriss] (UX)]

:ocz, I assume you're talking about the Windows Firefox menu, rather than the OSX tools menu?  If all this vbox do is make it easier for add-ons to add a menu item to the current Windows Firefox menu, it's probably not a problem.  Not sure if a subsection is the best way to do it, CC'ing Unfocused