77502 - Display title attribute in the status bar

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(SeaMonkey :: UI Design, enhancement)

Description

[Henri Sivonen (:hsivonen)]

I suggest the title attribute be displayable in the status bar. If there is also
a href attribute to display, I suggest the title be displayed first followed a
space and the href attribute in parenthesis.

Text in the status bar is visible immediately--you don't have to wait for the
tooltip to appear. Displaying the title attribute in the status bar and
displaying it as a tooltip don't have to be mutually exclusive.

Comment 1

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Tooltips (or help balloons) can expand in two dimensions (they can get both 
wider and taller), whereas the status bar cannot expand at all. Long TITLEs 
would easily cause the link URI to fall off the right end of the status bar 
completely, defeating the purpose of including the URI in the status bar in the 
first place. I think that's the biggest problem with this proposal.

Comment 2

[Henri Sivonen (:hsivonen)]

The main point of this bug is to provide a solution to these issues:
* I (and likely others) move the mouse cursor fast and don't like waiting for 
  tooltips to pop up. The usefulness of title attributes is significatly 
  reduced, if I can't see the title immediately when I want to.
* Displaying tooltips immediately would be intrusive and annoying. Consider 
  moving the cursor, having a link list on its path and having tooltip pop 
  up all over the window.

I think this could be done using the status bar if
* The progess meter goes out of the way (bug 47909)
* The component bar and the on/offline indicator can be zapped as a pref
  (I know some people use them, but I don't. They only make my status bar 
  shorter.)
* Smart truncation is used. The simple rules in the case of too long combined 
  length of title and href:
  - If the URL contains the character '?', truncate shortly after '?' and 
    display an ellipsis.
  - If the combined length is still too much, truncate the title and display 
    an ellipsis.

Also, the visibility of the href attribute is a non-issue in the case of <abbr>
and <acronym>.

mpt, do you have an alternative solution?

Comment 3

[Blake Ross]

--> UI Design for response to Henris' last inquiry.

Comment 4

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

My alternative solution is the solution which Mozilla uses now -- tooltips. 
Responses to Henri's points, in order:
1.  Methinks Henri is ascribing more usefulness to the title attribute than it
    actually has. Waiting a second for the tooltip to appear is quite
    reasonable, I think, for `advisory information' about an element.
2.  We're not showing tooltips immediately, so the annoyance or otherwise of
    that behavior is moot.
3.  Showing/hiding the component bar is bug 83059.
4.  Putting the title of a link in the status bar would *still* result in
    reduced usability from shortening of the URL (for A elements) in the status
    bar.
5.  Truncating the title in the status bar, as well as the URL (for A
    elements), would defeat the point of including *either* of them in the
    status bar.

Comment 5

[Tobias]

I agree that the usability problems far outweigh the possible benefits. For
normal users the tooltips are absolutely sufficient. If you're a power user that
doesn't want to wait for the tooltips to show up why don't you use a user
stylesheet doing something like that:

* {
content: " (" attr(title) ")";
}

This will output the title of any element immediately after the element
containing the title.

Comment 6

[Ross Shannon]

The visual disconnect created by moving the title down to the status bar reduces
usability. Opera does this (at least in version 5), and it's awkward and
unfamiliar. Moving the title's contents will also clutter the statusbar
unecessarily. This should be WONTFIXed.