865483 - Increase Bookmark Toolbar Button Dropdown Marker Width to regain Hit Target Efficiency for Menu Actions

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 855805

(Firefox :: Theme, defect)

Description

[(mostly gone) XtC4UaLL [:xtc4uall]]

Attachment: Screenshot exposing the Hit Area Difference

With Bug 748894's "make 1 out of 2 Attempt" there's a Usability Regression (don't know how to express it differently) with Regard to using the Button for invoking the Menu (Actions).

The Hit Target Area of the Drop-down Marker Part has likely 2/5th the Width of the old stand-alone Button and makes it a tough Experience not accidentally hitting the Star Area; actually I have to *aim* on my 1366x768px Notebook :-/

PS. this is apart of a obvious "It's new, I will/have to get used to it" Feeling/Experience the Merge itself presents for long-time Fx Users.

Comment 1

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

That you need to aim in order not to hit the star might have more to do with muscle memory than with the width of the dropdown.

Data point: with 21 pixels the dropdown is only one pixel narrower than the old in-location-bar star button.

Comment 2

[(mostly gone) XtC4UaLL [:xtc4uall]]

(In reply to Dão Gottwald [:dao] from comment #1)
> That you need to aim in order not to hit the star might have more to do with
> muscle memory than with the width of the dropdown.

I don't think so since I put the combined Button at the same Location the former Bookmark Menu Button was; i.e. the Way of Movement of the Mouse is the same before <-> after.

So the only Difference for me is the decreased Target Size for the Dropdown Area as the Menu Button's Substitute.

Else I have a different Definition of the Term "Muscle Memory".

> Data point: with 21 pixels the dropdown is only one pixel narrower than the
> old in-location-bar star button.

I don't understand this "Data Point's" Relevance. Can you explain?

Comment 3

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to XtC4UaLL [:xtc4uall] from comment #2)
> (In reply to Dão Gottwald [:dao] from comment #1)
> > That you need to aim in order not to hit the star might have more to do with
> > muscle memory than with the width of the dropdown.
> 
> I don't think so since I put the combined Button at the same Location the
> former Bookmark Menu Button was; i.e. the Way of Movement of the Mouse is
> the same before <-> after.
> 
> So the only Difference for me is the decreased Target Size for the Dropdown
> Area as the Menu Button's Substitute.
> 
> Else I have a different Definition of the Term "Muscle Memory".

Previously you could hit the icon to open the menu, now that's a different action, which I think is breaking muscle memory if you regularly clicked the button to open the menu.

> > Data point: with 21 pixels the dropdown is only one pixel narrower than the
> > old in-location-bar star button.
> 
> I don't understand this "Data Point's" Relevance. Can you explain?

It means that unless you also had problems hitting the in-location-bar star (or other similarly small targets), the "too small hit target" argument doesn't make much sense.

Comment 4

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

Before landing the change I indeed spent some time increasing the dropdown area, since it was indeed too narrow and an hard to click area. Currently it's large as other UI pieces, so it looks targetable, or we'd have further issues to solve.
I agree with Dao, that is very likely you may first target the star icon, cause that is what you were doing before the change, and then you find yourself aiming at the dropmarker to fix the action. That makes the dropmarker look like an hard target.
We may surely evaluate increasing the dropmarker area even more, provided it's found to be a global issue with the menu-button widgets. Do you have the same targeting problem in the Web console menu-buttons?

Comment 5

[Dave Garrett]

Personally, I think part of the issue is that the dropdown marker icon is very small. It's sort of a small visual target, even if the actual clickable space might be adequate.

Comment 6

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

Attachment: Windows dropdown marker

As far as I can tell, all Windows dropdown markers are the same, the star button one has also a larger clickable area compared to the system ones.
If the dropmarker icon is wrong, I wonder if you should file a bug against Microsoft since I don't think we want to introduce our own dropmarkers that are non-native.

Comment 7

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

AIUI the updated plan for the new version of this icon is to replace the dropmarker with an actual icon? Can you dupe this to the bug where that's happening?