Open Bug 638793 Opened 14 years ago Updated 3 years ago

Link target popup should only switch to the right hand side if it was obscuring the find result

Categories

(Firefox :: Toolbars and Customization, enhancement)

Product:
Firefox
Component:
Toolbars and Customization
Platform:
x86
All
Type:
enhancement

Tracking

()

People

(Reporter: timofei.shatrov, Unassigned)

References

Details

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0 Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0 When Find bar is activated, link targets appear on right side (at first I thought they were gone). This is inconsistent and makes it harder for user to concentrate on what he wants to do: he must look in both bottom corners to see link target and search text simultaneously. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Press Ctrl-F to trigger Find Bar 2. Hover over a link 3. Observe where the link target url appears Actual Results: Link target url appears on the right, out of sight of the user who was at the moment looking at bottom left. Expected Results: Link target url appears on the left, where it should be most of the time, unless it obscures the page content.
Thanks for the report. This change was actually intentional, to stop the find bar covering up what you are searching for, so marking as invalid. See bug 631270 for the reasoning. Thanks!
Blocks: 631270
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 14 years ago
Resolution: --- → INVALID
OS: Linux → All
Version: unspecified → Trunk
It shouldn't go to the right unless it actually obscures the search result. Also, it is possible that it will obscure the search result even while being to the right. Firefox should detect where to put it as to not obscure anything, with left being the default position. This bug should be reopened.
Status: RESOLVED → UNCONFIRMED
Resolution: INVALID → ---
Also, this bug is especially bad because the bug that hid the Find bar after switching to another tab was backed out, so Find bar is pretty persistent, and one needs to go out of their way to close the Find bar in order to have the link targets go back to their familiar left corner.
Morphing title to reflect comment 2.
Summary: Link target appears on left or right side depending on whether Find Bar is active or not → Link target popup should only switch to the right hand side if it was obscuring the find result
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
Severity: normal → enhancement
The idea of moving the status text to the right side simply seems like the wrong way to go about solving the original issue. The status text is an important part of web browsing and should have a predictable location. Making the movement of the status bar "more intelligent" does not address the fact that it is the wrong solution in the first place. The find-region should be adjusted to not include the area overlaid by the status text.
<offtopic> I was driven nuts by this jumping status bar. I hate it with all my heart. I was confused a bit when link status was moved to urlbar and loading status was dropped altogether but I've learned to like it. But I can`t stand this jumping Chrome status bar. I really don't understand why I have to search for status bar itself. It was decided that it's bad for users to learn that their status bar have moved way up on screen but for some reason it's OK to have it in some indefinite position at the bottom of screen so that user could not find it with 100% probability in first try. </offtopic> Now, what if search text is right at the bottom of page and there's no space left for status bar? Should it be moved to the top of the page or maybe entirely hidden? Imaginary test case. I have a purely designed page with no footer and padding so that text goes right to the end of page (like on the most print versions of articles all over the web). And I search for some quote. It's a long text of a ten or so words at the very end of article and search matches last two lines of text on the page. Where in this case status bar should be placed?
No new information from my side, but I strongly suggest the current behavior (switching the status bar from left to right) is changed. I too find it very confusing and I thought it is a bug.
Add me to the list of those who hate the way the link popup changes from left to right. It should say on the left. I often leave the find bar up after using it and it is very distracting that the link popup shifts to the left. I usually think something is broken and then think to look to the right. If I am actively using find it is unlikely that I will be hovering over a link so obscuring a find result is very unlikely. Far more likely is that I will leave up the find bar then this "bug" will annoy me. In the unlikely case of the find result being obscured I would just scroll the screen. At least put in an about:config option to change this behavior. I would be happy if it always stayed on the left, even if "obscuring". Aside: I've also always hated the way the find result is all the way at the bottom of the screen. Often what I want to find is below the find result. Much better would be to locate the find result offset from the bottom, perhaps by a fixed percentage. This could be introduced gently by just adding the percentage offset into an about:config option (0% would preserve the present behavior).
It is fundamental usability rule: same element should always appear in same place in interface. Moving status bar from left to right is completely wrong and inacceptable behavior. It should not be moved even it overlaps highlighted search result. A possible acceptable solution is to make status bar semi-transparent when needed. But it definitely should never be moved from left to right at all -- such moving is big mistake that should be fixed as soon as possible. Another solution is to temporarily decrease height of page display area (by cutting its bottom part) to make bottom part of page visible and therefore not overlapped by status bar at all. Current behavior is very unusable and annoying. Thanks.
Just a short update: Still the same with Firefox 6 Beta 1 :-(
Until a patch lands that improves the implementation, it will still be present. There are no patches attached to this bug...
(In reply to comment #11) Do you know who exactly has invented and implemented current wrong behavior in Firefox 4?
Merge/dupe with bug 640132 ? It is abut the same issue.
The expected behaviour, and the one i think we all want, is that the link target popup ALWAYS shows in the left side, whether the find bar is active or not. The ONLY case in which it should change to the right, is if the mouse hovers over the pop-up, or if a find results is behind it, and of course, the moment the mouse moves away of the left side, or the search result is no longer in the left-bottom side of the page, (either by scrolling the page further, or junmping to another result), the popup SHOULD jump back to the left side. In ANY OTHER CASE, it should be in the left side, ALWAYS. It is absurd to move it to the right by default whenever the find bar is active, even if we haven't even started to search anything!
This ping-pong effect is giving me a headache, please leave it in the location bar.
Switching from FF 3.6.x to 9.0.1 a few days ago I was constantly puzzled about the link target popup suddenly appearing on the wrong screen side (first didn't even saw it at all as the OP) - for no apparent reason. (Finding this bug report now I see the reason at least ...) Whish: No flicker, no wobble please, stay on one (the standard, first reading direction) side. Thank you in advance.
Those who tired to wait for a fix, can fix the issue themselves with user stylesheet: http://tanalin.com/en/blog/2012/01/firefox-statusbar-fix/
No longer blocks: 631250
Depends on: 631250
Severity: normal → S3
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