854087 - [New Tab Page] Suggest to make size of thumbnail matrix configurable.

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 752841

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[John Kitz]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:19.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/19.0
Build ID: 20130307023931

Steps to reproduce:

I have FF setup to display the newtab page, which by default shows a matrix of 3 x 3 screenshots.


Actual results:

FF displays the thumbnail matrix as expected and it looks just fine with a screen size of 1280 x 1024, but with a larger screen size the ratio between width and height of a single thumbnail looks a bit strange to me.

In addition IMHO on a larger screen size there probably is room for a bigger matrix of e.g. 4 wide by 3 high.


Expected results:

I therefor ask you to consider to either make the size of the matrix a user configurable item or auto scaling depending on the size of the window in which FF operates.

With the latter probably being the better option size in that case the result is likely to look good with different physical display sizes as well as when the FF window is manually being re-sized.

Comment 1

[Tim Taubert [:ttaubert] (inactive)]

This is already supported. Go to about:config and change 'browser.newtabpage.rows' and 'browser.newtabpage.columns' to your needs.

Comment 2

[John Kitz]

(In reply to Tim Taubert [:ttaubert] (at the Performance work week, may not respond until Mar 25th) from comment #1)
> This is already supported. Go to about:config and change
> 'browser.newtabpage.rows' and 'browser.newtabpage.columns' to your needs.
> 
> *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 752841 ***

Thanks for the prompt update with brief tutorial. Apologies for the duplicate, didn't come up in the search results prior to creating this ticket or have missed it if it did.

Please consider still consider the auto scaling as opposed to manual configuration.

Comment 3

[Tim Taubert [:ttaubert] (inactive)]

(In reply to John Kitz from comment #2)
> Thanks for the prompt update with brief tutorial. Apologies for the
> duplicate, didn't come up in the search results prior to creating this
> ticket or have missed it if it did.

No worries. We file duplicate bugs all the time, it's just part of the process :)

> Please consider still consider the auto scaling as opposed to manual
> configuration.

We considered it in the design phase but discarded the idea rather early. If you want to know why, lease read:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven%2C_Plus_or_Minus_Two

Comment 4

[John Kitz]

(In reply to Tim Taubert [:ttaubert] from comment #3)
> (In reply to John Kitz from comment #2)
> > Thanks for the prompt update with brief tutorial. Apologies for the
> > duplicate, didn't come up in the search results prior to creating this
> > ticket or have missed it if it did.
> 
> No worries. We file duplicate bugs all the time, it's just part of the
> process :)
> 
> > Please consider still consider the auto scaling as opposed to manual
> > configuration.
> 
> We considered it in the design phase but discarded the idea rather early. If
> you want to know why, lease read:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven%2C_Plus_or_Minus_Two

Thanks for the link to a interesting, albeit rather disturbing, article for those that frequently process small chunks of information since it seems to imply a relationship between perceived achievement and the size of the typical chunk one processes.

I fail to understand how it relates to deciding against auto-scaling though, but this trouble ticket is hardly the forum to redo a discussion, or parts thereof, that most likely preceded that decision.