67595 - min-width/max-width of menus should be smaller

Status: NEW

(Core :: XUL, defect, P3)

Description

[Håkan Waara]

I think that all menuitems and popupmenus should resize to the menu's longest
string width, to make use of as little area on the screen as possible.

This is very important for people with small screens, if they travel through
long Bookmarks menus with many subfolders and such.

This is currently how MacOS handles menusizes I think...

Comment 1

[Warner Young]

It seems to me that this is already happening.  What menus don't show correctly?

Comment 2

[timeless]

iirc we have a min width.
=>skins.

Comment 3

[Håkan Waara]

Attachment: This menu isn't resized as far as I can see...

Comment 4

[timeless]

yes; that's the min-width attribute.

Comment 5

[Mike Pinkerton (not reading bugmail)]

so is this invalid?

Comment 6

[timeless]

it's up to hewitt or the voice of the people or i don't know [german?].

personally I don't see the point in having a min-width.  [ie I agree w/ hwaara]

Comment 7

[Håkan Waara]

All I want is the menus to resize to the longest string-width + a few pixels.
Right now it is just wasting space, like in the attached screenshot.

Comment 8

[german]

same here, I don't see the need for a minimum width (other then the reservd 
spaces at the edge for chars, triangle etc and edge pixels). Since they are 
context menus the less context they cover up the better.

Comment 9

[Joe Hewitt (gone)]

*** Bug 68029 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 10

[Joe Hewitt (gone)]

*** Bug 58248 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 11

[Joe Hewitt (gone)]

The reason for a min-width is if a menu were to have really small contents, like
say, simply a bunch of one-letter menuitems, it would be difficult to grab them
because you might overshoot.

I propose 10em as a reasonable min-width.  With this setting, some of our
smaller context menus, like on the textfield, are now a more reasonable size.

I also propose setting 38em as the max-width for menus.

Can I get an r= on those sizes?

Comment 12

[Greg Miller]

Comments on one of the duped bugs indicated that the current width on Classic is
42em, and that's too narrow for some page titles in bookmarks to be
distinguishable. It's a particularly large problem with eBay, where the ending
dates of auctions get chopped off.

I'd prefer something more like the width Modern had, back before Classic was
fixed and Modern regressed.

Comment 13

[timeless]

hewitt, i think i'd prefer 6em.

Comment 14

[Blake Ross]

I think we're going to have to bite the bullet and come up with a better, more 
logical way to size menus.  We're never going to reach a suitable size that 
works for every type of menu.  Currently we have menus that our far too wide, 
and terrible looking menus that are actually cut off (this is fine for menus 
like Bookmarks, but certainly not okay for normal menuitems).

Comment 15

[Blake Ross]

Also, I think we should be considering the 99% case.  How often are we going to 
have menus with only one- or two-character items?  If the answer is "not many," 
and I suspect that it is, then let's do the Right Thing and remove the min-
width...

Comment 16

[timeless]

i don't want a max-width either and i don't see a need for a min-width.  
Toolkit should prevent us from making a menu that's wider than max windowwidth.

Comment 17

[german]

So I suggest then to not use any min-width or max-width. In either case any
value chosen may not be appropriate for the users screen setting.

Comment 18

[Joe Hewitt (gone)]

*** Bug 70943 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 19

[Joe Hewitt (gone)]

Mass reassigning some of my theme bugs to Shuehan.

Comment 20

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field for this bug is relatively low, S3. However, the bug has 3 duplicates.
:enndeakin, could you consider increasing the bug severity?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 21

[BugBot (nomail) [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The last needinfo from me was triggered in error by recent activity on the bug. I'm clearing the needinfo since this is a very old bug and I don't know if it's still relevant.