685059 - Remove empty placeholder icon when a page has no favicon

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, enhancement)

Description

[Dan Jacobson]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:8.0a2) Gecko/20110905 Firefox/8.0a2 Iceweasel/8.0a2
Build ID: 20110905042011

Steps to reproduce:

Gentlemen, observe each tab carries a empty dashed rectangle to its left.
These rectangles are in the same spot spinning red circles are in when the page is loading.
But after it is loaded, these useless rectangles just sit there, wasting precious tag title space.
Kindly revert this no-brainer decoration.

Comment 1

[Cork]

That rectangle is the replacement of the olde empty page acting as a placeholder for the pages favicon. So reverting it would mean switching to the old icon.

Comment 2

[Siddhartha Dugar [:sdrocking]]

(In reply to Cork from comment #1)
> That rectangle is the replacement of the olde empty page acting as a
> placeholder for the pages favicon. So reverting it would mean switching to
> the old icon.

This bug aims to remove the generic icon, instead of reverting it to anything. Use this style until then - http://userstyles.org/styles/49060/ff3-hide-blank-tab-favicon

Comment 3

[Dan Jacobson]

Yes, no need for 'reserved parking spaces' wasting space.

Comment 4

[:Margaret Leibovic]

If the icon is hidden after the page finishes loading, the title will need to suddenly shift over to occupy that empty space, which seems like it would be pretty jarring. Even if we add a transition for that, I think it would draw too much attention to the tab, when the user really wants to be looking at the page that just finished loading.

Comment 5

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to Margaret Leibovic [:margaret] from comment #4)
> If the icon is hidden after the page finishes loading, the title will need
> to suddenly shift over to occupy that empty space, which seems like it would
> be pretty jarring. Even if we add a transition for that, I think it would
> draw too much attention to the tab, when the user really wants to be looking
> at the page that just finished loading.

This is a concern, but I'm not sure how jarring it really would be. I suspect it would be more jarring with a transition.

On the positive side, this would make tabs without icons more recognizable by showing more of their titles.

Comment 6

[Dan Jacobson]

(In reply to Margaret Leibovic [:margaret] from comment #4)
Hahahaha "jarring". Don't worry, nobody will notice one more jar amongst the million, at least on my system.

Comment 8

[Stephen Horlander [:shorlander]]

The popping when the loading icon is finished and the broken tab consistency feels kind of gross but that might just be my "OMG Change!" reflex kicking in.

It does feel cleaner without all the placeholder icons though.

Comment 9

[Lukas Blakk [:lsblakk] use ?needinfo]

Attachment: screenshot of default favicons on bookmarks toolbar

related: the default favicon takes up unnecessary space in my bookmark toolbar too, it would be great to nothing there if there's no favicon (or a config setting to turn them off in the toolbar?)

Comment 10

[:Margaret Leibovic]

(In reply to Lukas Blakk [:lsblakk] from comment #9)
> Created attachment 564324 [details]
> screenshot of default favicons on bookmarks toolbar
> 
> related: the default favicon takes up unnecessary space in my bookmark
> toolbar too, it would be great to nothing there if there's no favicon (or a
> config setting to turn them off in the toolbar?)

This would require a separate fix -- would you mind filing a new bug in Bookmarks & History?

Comment 11

[Lukas Blakk [:lsblakk] use ?needinfo]

> This would require a separate fix -- would you mind filing a new bug in
> Bookmarks & History?

done. bug 691594

Comment 12

[adamcox82]

This should be looked at urgently for the next release.

The decision made in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=648668 was a very misguided interface mistake, as evidenced by the hundreds of users complaining about this:
https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/search?w=2&a=1&created=0&created_date=&updated=0&updated_date=&sortby=0&asked_by=&answered_by=&num_voted=0&num_votes=&q_tags=&q=favicon+8

The new "dotted rounded square" is an unsuitable replacement for the "blank document" icon, because it incorrectly implies a missing or broken element where there is none (since favicons are entirely optional). At the very least, this should have been implemented as a user-selectable interface option.

Visual change for its own sake is illogical. Remember:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2005/08/the-user-interface-is-the-application.html

Comment 13

[Peter E. Humphries]

Is this a different bug than the dotted square replacing favicons that do, in fact, exist, and were working in FF7 but are now "missing" in FF8?

It appears that this is a more complex bug than simply bad / unexpected UI design.  Take this page, for instance: in the title bar, the Bugzilla favicon appears ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/extensions/BMO/web/images/favicon.ico ), but on the tab is the dotted box.  Even Google Canada's favicon is missing; although it is not coded in the HTML, it is sitting in the expected spot ( http://www.google.com/favicon.ico ).

Comment 14

[Peter E. Humphries]

I have discovered that the favicon will appear in the address bar (for sites that have one, whether coded with rel="icon" or in the default root location) after clicking on the "blank" icon beside the address.  (Moving the tab may have the same effect; I am sure that it happened, once, but I have not been able to reproduce it!)

The favicon does not persist, however.  Once the page is reloaded or after clicking a link to another page on the same site, the behaviour repeats ("blank" favicon until clicked).

I have not discovered any way to force the favicon to display on the tab.

I have tested pages that do not have the rel="icon" instruction but do have a default favicon.ico in the site's root, pages that have both a (different) default favicon and a rel="icon" direction, pages that change icons as the site is navigated (different favicons for different pages) and a variety of capitalization ("Icon" "ICON" &c) in the rel="icon" (or rel="shortcut icon") instruction.

Perhaps this is a bug that is deeper than just the change in the picture used for sites without favicons.

Comment 15

[R. Glass]

Previous versions were fine, but this week's update to v 8.0 effectively removed the favicons from my bookmarks as well as the location bar. Being a visual learner this is a real disappointment to me. I know the favicons are on the servers because some of them are from my own websites.

Comment 16

[Peter E. Humphries]

The favicon also does not appear in the Page Info / Media preview until you click on another picture and then click back on the favicon entry.

This has no effect on the address bar or tab display, and the favicon sometimes persists and sometimes does not when you exit the Page Info window and open it, again.  I have not figured out if there is any pattern to this latter behaviour.

Comment 17

[:Margaret Leibovic]

This bug is only about removing the new placeholder icon when a page does not have a favicon.

Valid favicons disappearing is a separate (and bad) bug that somehow managed to get through Aurora and Beta without being filed.

R. and Peter, it sounds like you guys are experiencing bug 701297. If so, could you comment in there with steps to reproduce.

Comment 18

[Peter E. Humphries]

Thanks, Margaret.  I will post these over in that bug; I did not find it when I was looking, earlier.

Comment 19

[Jennifer Morrow [:Boriss] (UX)]

You're entirely right that the current dotted-border favicon isn't working very well.  It's a bit too small of field to really merit a marching-ant-style marquee.  However, I don't think just showing nothing is the way to handle this problem, but rather improving the placeholder icon.  After all, showing nothing could just suggest that the favicon has not loaded yet, rather than the page has none.  You'd end up with a tab bar which had some favicons and some empty spaces, making it visually jarring and seemingly taking longer to load ("how long must I wait for this favicon to appear?".  I'm going to close this bug, since we don't want some tabs to simply have no favicon, but improving that icon should certainly be another bug.

Comment 20

[Forest]

For the record, I disagree. The only use I have for favicons is to identify a particular web site, or distinguish it from its neighbors in a list, faster than I can read its title. A generic icon would not accomplish this, serving instead only to add clutter and (in the case of horizontal lists like to bookmark bar) to waste space. For sites with no favicon, and for other kinds of bookmark (e.g. bookmarklets), showing no icon is *exactly* what I want.

Also, I would certainly not sit around wondering how long I must wait for a favicon to appear. It's a favicon, not my email. I don't care if it takes a while to load, and I'm perfectly aware that not all sites have them.

If you're really bent on wasting space with icons that have no purpose, I hope you'll at least make it a configurable option.

Comment 21

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Boriss, according to your explanation, this is a typical WONTFIX rather than WORKSFORME. See <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=fields.html#status>.

Comment 22

[Dick Boogaers]

@dao: 
However, what you could do, is make the icon more looking like: "hé this icon is missing" in stead of "what kind of bug does firefox have now, with these dotted boxes".

I installed the Silvermel 1.4.4 (http://www.silvermel.net/) theme. It solves this problem by showing the icon of a bookmark for these cases. Looks beautiful and does the job well of revealing that the site doesn't have an icon of its own.

So, WONTFIX should not mean: "we'll never look at this again", in stead it should mean: "we'll never look at this again, unless someone comes along with a very good idea".

Comment 23

[Gergely]

(In reply to Forest from comment #20)

> If you're really bent on wasting space with icons that have no purpose, I
> hope you'll at least make it a configurable option.

Forest, for the record, I totally agree with you.

Comment 24

[Stephen Horlander [:shorlander]]

Discussed with Boriss and we want this for the current Australis theme work.

Comment 25

[u428464]

The default blank favicon should all the same be updated for bookmarks (Chrome do a pretty good job concerning this as in many other UI area).

Comment 27

[u428464]

It's not completely related but all Firefox in-content pages should have a favicon (maybe before landing this). I'm especially thinking about the new tab page ( http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/files/australis-design-specs/images/Australis-i01-DesignSpec-InContentUI-Dashboard-%28NewTab%29.jpg ).

Comment 28

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Attachment: Patch v1

Comment 29

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Need to test this on Linux and OSX first, and then I'll request review.

Comment 30

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Attachment: Patch v1.1

As per UX request, the tab labels have been re-centered on OSX.

Testing Linux next, and then I'll huck up some screenshots.

Comment 31

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Attachment: Patch v1 on OSX

Comment 32

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Attachment: Patch v1 on Ubuntu Linux

Comment 33

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Attachment: Patch v1 on Windows 7

Comment 34

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Attachment: Patch v1 on Windows XP

Comment 35

[Forest]

Can you add screen shots showing how sites without favicons look in the Bookmark Toolbar?  I'd love to be rid of those stupid placeholder icons that appear next to my bookmarklets.

Comment 36

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

(In reply to Forest from comment #35)
> Can you add screen shots showing how sites without favicons look in the
> Bookmark Toolbar?  I'd love to be rid of those stupid placeholder icons that
> appear next to my bookmarklets.

At this point, I'm only concerned about the placeholder favicons in the tabs, as this is a potential blocker for the Australis theme changes.

Comment 37

[u428464]

(In reply to Forest from comment #35)
> Can you add screen shots showing how sites without favicons look in the
> Bookmark Toolbar?  I'd love to be rid of those stupid placeholder icons that
> appear next to my bookmarklets.

See bug 747620.

Comment 38

[Stephen Horlander [:shorlander]]

Comment on attachment 738650 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch v1.1

Review of attachment 738650 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Looks good!

Comment 39

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Comment on attachment 738650 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch v1.1

If you're overloaded Matt, let me know and I'll redirect the review request.

Comment 40

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Comment on attachment 738650 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch v1.1

>--- a/browser/base/content/browser.css	Fri Apr 12 18:33:01 2013 -0400
>+++ b/browser/base/content/browser.css	Wed Apr 17 14:18:35 2013 -0400
>@@ -51,16 +51,17 @@ tabbrowser {
>   max-width: 0.1px;
>   min-width: 0.1px;
>   opacity: 0 !important;
>   transition: min-width 200ms ease-out,
>               max-width 250ms ease-out,
>               opacity 50ms ease-out 180ms /* hide the tab for the last 20ms of the max-width transition */;
> }
> 
>+.tab-icon-image:not([src]):not([pinned]),
> .tab-throbber:not([fadein]):not([pinned]),
> .tab-label:not([fadein]):not([pinned]),
> .tab-icon-image:not([fadein]):not([pinned]),
> .tab-close-button:not([fadein]):not([pinned]) {
>   display: none;
> }

These rules are about tab animations, which your selector has nothing to do with. You should add it here at line 44: http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/annotate/d8202613aaea/browser/base/content/tabbrowser.css#l44

>--- a/browser/themes/osx/browser.css	Fri Apr 12 18:33:01 2013 -0400
>+++ b/browser/themes/osx/browser.css	Wed Apr 17 14:18:35 2013 -0400

>+.tab-text {
>+  margin: 0;
>+}

.tab-label

>--- a/browser/themes/shared/tabs.inc.css	Fri Apr 12 18:33:01 2013 -0400
>+++ b/browser/themes/shared/tabs.inc.css	Wed Apr 17 14:18:35 2013 -0400

>+.tab-throbber,
>+.tab-icon-image {
>+  width: 16px;
>+  height: 16px;
>+  list-style-image: url("chrome://mozapps/skin/places/defaultFavicon.png");
>+}

defaultFavicon.png doesn't make sense for .tab-throbber. This is particularly confusing because you put this in tabs.inc.css while leaving the .tab-throbber specific rules in the individual browser.css files.

Comment 41

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Attachment: Patch v1.2 (ui-r+'d by shorlander)

(In reply to Dão Gottwald [:dao] from comment #40)
> Comment on attachment 738650 [details] [diff] [review]
> Patch v1.1

Hey Dão, thanks for the drive-by!

> 
> >--- a/browser/base/content/browser.css	Fri Apr 12 18:33:01 2013 -0400
> >+++ b/browser/base/content/browser.css	Wed Apr 17 14:18:35 2013 -0400
> >@@ -51,16 +51,17 @@ tabbrowser {
> >   max-width: 0.1px;
> >   min-width: 0.1px;
> >   opacity: 0 !important;
> >   transition: min-width 200ms ease-out,
> >               max-width 250ms ease-out,
> >               opacity 50ms ease-out 180ms /* hide the tab for the last 20ms of the max-width transition */;
> > }
> > 
> >+.tab-icon-image:not([src]):not([pinned]),
> > .tab-throbber:not([fadein]):not([pinned]),
> > .tab-label:not([fadein]):not([pinned]),
> > .tab-icon-image:not([fadein]):not([pinned]),
> > .tab-close-button:not([fadein]):not([pinned]) {
> >   display: none;
> > }
> 
> These rules are about tab animations, which your selector has nothing to do
> with. You should add it here at line 44:
> http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/annotate/d8202613aaea/browser/base/
> content/tabbrowser.css#l44
> 

Good call - thanks. Fixed.

> >--- a/browser/themes/osx/browser.css	Fri Apr 12 18:33:01 2013 -0400
> >+++ b/browser/themes/osx/browser.css	Wed Apr 17 14:18:35 2013 -0400
> 
> >+.tab-text {
> >+  margin: 0;
> >+}
> 
> .tab-label
> 

Alright, switched. Although, for my own education, why the preference for .tab-label over .tab-text?

> >--- a/browser/themes/shared/tabs.inc.css	Fri Apr 12 18:33:01 2013 -0400
> >+++ b/browser/themes/shared/tabs.inc.css	Wed Apr 17 14:18:35 2013 -0400
> 
> >+.tab-throbber,
> >+.tab-icon-image {
> >+  width: 16px;
> >+  height: 16px;
> >+  list-style-image: url("chrome://mozapps/skin/places/defaultFavicon.png");
> >+}
> 
> defaultFavicon.png doesn't make sense for .tab-throbber. This is
> particularly confusing because you put this in tabs.inc.css while leaving
> the .tab-throbber specific rules in the individual browser.css files.

Fixed!

Comment 42

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to Mike Conley (:mconley) from comment #41)
> Alright, switched. Although, for my own education, why the preference for
> .tab-label over .tab-text?

.tab-label is tabbrowser specific, whereas .tab-text applies to all XUL tabs in the window.

Comment 43

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Comment on attachment 741433 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch v1.2 (ui-r+'d by shorlander)

You don't seem to be setting defaultFavicon.png anymore. It's still needed for pinned tabs.

Comment 44

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Attachment: Patch v1.3 (ui-r+'d by shorlander)

Ah, good call. Does this cover all of the bases?

Comment 45

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Thanks Dão!

Landed on UX as https://hg.mozilla.org/projects/ux/rev/fd26cf8fc03a

Comment 46

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Landed on Jamun as https://hg.mozilla.org/projects/jamun/rev/8bf747097b31

Comment 47

[Siddhartha Dugar [:sdrocking]]

Will this land on Nightly before Australis lands (like the separate bookmarks button did)?

Comment 48

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

(In reply to Siddhartha Dugar [:sdrocking] from comment #47)
> Will this land on Nightly before Australis lands (like the separate
> bookmarks button did)?

Hey Siddhartha,

This will land when Australis lands.

-Mike

Comment 49

[rexyrexy2]

there should at least be an about:config entry on whether to show the placeholder or not. for if some people want to get it without user script hacks

Comment 50

[:Gijs (he/him)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/8bf747097b31

Comment 51

[LafinJack]

(In reply to rexyrexy2 from comment #49)
> there should at least be an about:config entry on whether to show the
> placeholder or not. for if some people want to get it without user script
> hacks

Agreed. When using vertical tabs the text of non-favicon tabs doesn't line up with other tabs.

Comment 52

[Omar]

Why is this bug marked "fixed"? The problem still exists in the latest versions of Firefox

Comment 53

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

(In reply to Omar from comment #52)
> Why is this bug marked "fixed"? The problem still exists in the latest
> versions of Firefox

Can you please post a screenshot of the icon you're seeing?f

Comment 54

[Omar]

Hi there, sorry for the delay. This might give you a better idea of the use case for blank bookmark icons: http://imgur.com/a/wkODp … it helps save space in the bookmark bar as well for sites without favicons. It's how Firefox used to work originally, but somewhere along the line things changed. I noticed when I had a fresh OS X install that removed the original Firefox configuration I had (from version 8 or something … I had been running a continuous install of OS X since Tiger).

Comment 55

[Omar]

Attachment: Why bookmark icons should be blank without favicon.png

This shows the use case for blank favicon bookmarks, which work better without the icon