8034 - [FEATURE] Sidebar should have only one scroll bar

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: Sidebar, defect, P1)

Description

[Steve Lamm]

The individual panels should not have scrollbars there should only be one
scrollbar for the entire sidebar.

Before I make this change it is important that users can change the height of
the panels either by the "more..." button or by dragging.

Comment 1

[don]

Upgrade to "FEATURE" and set target milestone to M8.

Comment 2

[don]

Move to M9 because of dependency issues ...

Comment 3

[johng]

Moved to M10 because of dependencies (OKed by slamm).  Also, UI is looking at
this.

Comment 4

[Matthew Thomas, usability weenie]

Perhaps this should be changed to `sidebar should not have nested scrollbars'.

If you limit the sidebar to one scrollbar, you can't resize the various panels
in it -- you can only have them minimized or maximized, so to speak (because if
you could resize them, you'd have to be able to scroll them). This might be
unnecessarily restrictive.

The overarching scrollbar for the whole sidebar, though, isn't that useful. A
user is far more likely to have one or two panels in the sidebar open (the rest
minimized) than to have panels open to the extent that they are scrolling out of
the sidebar. (Am I making sense?)

Getting rid of the outside scrollbar, then, would involve limiting the total
heights of the panels to the height of the sidebar. Enlarge one, and you
diminish the others -- just like what happens when you resize the table columns
in mail/news, address book, history, etc.

-- mpt

Comment 5

[Steve Lamm]

The plan was to get rid of the individual panel scrollbars (with
overflow:hidden). If the panel content is taller than what is visible, then a
little "more..." would appear at the bottom of the panel. Clinking on "more..."
would grow the panel to the full height needed. You can also change the height
of a panel by dragging the title on the panel beneath it.

Comment 6

[Matthew Tuck [:CodeMachine]]

Maybe a vertical splitter?

Comment 7

[Matthew Thomas, usability weenie]

But I might want to scroll through one side panel, looking for something which

matched what I had open in another slide panel ... For example: viewing a list of

possible holiday destinations in one panel, while scrolling through the `Today's

world weather' panel to see the current conditions in each destination.



In this case, I would *not* want my manipulation of one panel to make the other

disappear. Ergo, separate scroll bars for each. But the scroll bar for the whole

sidebar is unnecessary, if the total height of all sidebars is limited (using

vertical splitters) to the height of the browser window (modulo toolbars etc).



-- mpt

Comment 8

[german]

Will will actually seperate out the main app area (e.g mail folders) from the

customizable panels area, since that one needs to be visible at all

times.Concerning this customizable panels area the need to have one overall

scrollbar outweighs the need for indivdual panel scrollbars, since we will not

have both in the final product. You will still get to access all the content that

way.

Comment 9

[Matthew Tuck [:CodeMachine]]

Why is there a need for just one scroll bar?

Comment 10

[Matthew Thomas, usability weenie]

Because scroll bars inside scroll bars are confusing. (Haven't you ever had that
problem with pages containing long TEXTAREA elements, where you move the wrong
scroll bar by mistake? ...)

Comment 11

[Matthew Tuck [:CodeMachine]]

No, one scroll bar = not one per pane.

Comment 12

[Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email)]

I had a thought (heh):

what if you have a large panel, and you click "more" to expand it, and its
content still doesn't fit in the vertical space? (e.g a long bookmarks list)

I agree with mpt in that global scrolling sidebar content is somewhat less
useful, the convenience of the sidebar being offset by having to scroll around
to find what I want. That said, the proof is in the pudding, and I'm interested
to see the implementation of German's spec.

btw: I am still an advocate of the ability to maximise one panel and hide all
others, a la NavCenter in earlier Classic builds.

Comment 13

[Steve Lamm]

The sidebar does only have one scrollbar now because with switched to a
single-panel-at-a-time UI.

Marking fixed.