826196 - Improve Add-on interface by adding back and forward buttons in tab (see comment #9)

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Add-Ons: General, enhancement)

Description

[zemcik]

Attachment: screenshots.zip

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.11 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/23.0.1271.97 Safari/537.11

Steps to reproduce:

Start up-to-date Thunderbird on Windows 7 - one tab (#1) with messages is opened automatically

Open Add-ons Manager from Menu (Tools / Add-ons), it opens in a new tab (#2), BACK/FORWARD navigation buttons are shown in the left column (see screenshot Clipboard01)

Type something (e.g. "button") in the "search all add-ons" edit field and hit ENTER

Click "See all 237 results" in the last row or results which opens a web page in a new tab (#3). There are no navigation buttons available.

Click any link in the window, e.g. "Register" at the top of the page. The new webpage is shown in the current tab (#3).




Actual results:

Now, it is impossible to navigate back to search results in tab #3, since there are still no navigation buttons (or menu items) available (see screenshot Clipboard02). Moreover, using mouse (Microsoft Wireless Laser 7000) with additional button set for BACK command (which works with any browser) does not work either.


Expected results:

Navigation buttons should be visible/available when browsing webpages in Thunderbird tabs at all times.

Comment 1

[Vasilica Tamas, QA [:vtamas]]

I suspect that those navigation buttons are displayed only for Add-ons Manager tab.
Or maybe we should get rid of them also from Thunderbird, because there is a while since those arrows have been removed from Firefox. 


Andy, what’s your opinion related to this?

Comment 2

[Andy McKay]

Attachment: Screenshot 2016-11-14 08.56.09.png

Comment 3

[Andy McKay]

I'm not sure, it would probably be a question for the Thunderbird team. 

If I read the bug report correctly, the problem is that the add-ons manager is linking over to a website (in this case addons.mozilla.org, but it could be conceivably any site) and opening up that website pages in a new tab. A content page is being shown, but it has no back, forward navigation.

Perhaps that might be related to bug 1314917 and the reason for those arrows. But it would only work if the new pages opened in the same page. 

Further, any link you then click on AMO then opens Firefox which if I was a Thunderbird user I would find rather confusing.

Comment 4

[Vasilica Tamas, QA [:vtamas]]

Moving this bug to Thunderbird -> General since the Thunderbird team might have a solution/decision for this issue.

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

ISTR we have other bugs about this?

Comment 6

[Benjamin Flanagin]

Well I can confirm that the back and forward buttons aren't there in 0.60.8. There is this bug 1426817 which is about adding hotkeys for forward and back but not one for visual buttons.

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Perhaps I am thinking of something else :(

Comment 8

[Benjamin Flanagin]

Alessandro,

What's your take on this issue? It does lead to some UX issues when you're searching through add-ons within TB.

Comment 9

[Alessandro Castellani (:aleca)]

Indeed, if we allow to navigate the add-ons website inside a Thunderbird Tab, we should have at least the back and forward navigation.

Maybe it could be worth showing the URL bar with the Navigation Buttons, and a non-writable URL field so the user can copy the address if he wants to open it in the browser.
Using a stripped down UI from Firefox to not reinvent the wheel.