68217 - the Progress Meter implementation is not "design-flexible" for themes

Status: NEW

(Core :: XUL, enhancement)

Description

[marlon bishop]

In order to allow theme developers, including ourselves, to innovate in the 
display of progress/activity/status, we need a way of handling and defining new 
and perhaps non-traditional types of progress meter widgets in a theme chrome.  

Some ideas to illustrate the problem:

1) Instead of representing progression through the growing bar - we would like to 
"stack" or adding discrete objects linearly (or perhaps not so linearly). like 
dots for example.  so that the as time progresses:   * * * * * *...  and so on.  
Furthermore we would like the flexibility for each object itself to change or 
grow.  For example each increment uses a different image not the same image.  
Also interesting is the possibility of replacing images as in an animation. We 
might need a "dial" or radial or elliptical representation of progress.  One idea 
for implementation of this is a way to control and step through the frames of a 
regular GIF animation - this would be ideal.  Most designers have the tools and 
understand animated GIFs well.

2) There is also the need to have other UI features layered on top of the 
progress meter, so that it appears to be a less salient activity happening 
underneath icons, URL text fields or what have you.

3) Alpha Transparency is always welcomed but that might be part of another bug.

4) Finally, the ability to move the progress meter display around to other 
physical locations for example to the top of the browser window in the Main 
toolbar. So that it can be integrated visually with other features there.

5) Oh yeah, it should be possible to assign two or more different kinds of 
progress display based on context.  For example you may not want a non-
traditional progress meter in a download dialog.

Comment 1

[Peter Trudelle]

Good ideas!  Unfortunately, it is too late to add them to the current cycle, so
we'll have to consider them when planning the next release. ->future

Comment 2

[marlon bishop]

as an example of what's happening

Comment 3

[marlon bishop]

oops wrong bug sorry for spam, please ignore

Comment 4

[Andrew Jackson]

I use stylexp to alter my windows xp theme which features a striped progress bar
skin, in all over programs, such as internet explorer or even the firefox
installer the progress bar fill correctly.  Within Firefox however the progress
bar stretches the progress meter image instead of tiling it as all other windows
applications making it look very ugly.  I think it would be a good idea to
impliment progressive repeating of the progress bar imaging rather than
stretching to represent a percentage of completion.

Comment 5

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

The bug assignee didn't login in Bugzilla in the last 7 months, so the assignee is being reset.