888745 - Visually separate links without icons in bookmarks toolbar

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Theme, defect)

Description

[andershol]

Attachment: Screenshot of the toolbar with some bookmarklets

When you have links without icons (e.g. bookmarklets) in the bookmarks toolbar, it seems to me that the toolbar buttons should be separated visually in some way so it is more clear where one button stops and where the next begins.

In the attached screen shot there are five toolbar buttons ("Google", "zap plugins", "+", "English", "todo").

I believe that the toolbar buttons without an icon was previously shown with a default icon or placeholder.

Comment 1

[Siddharth]

I can confirm this bug.  But as a workaround, you can hover over the links.  This highlights the buttons.

Comment 2

[u428464]

May be related to bug 734326

Comment 3

[bhavana bajaj [:bajaj]]

Flagging UX/Dao here to help understand if this if this is shipping blocker from UX perspective for firefox given the decision made in Bug 691594 .

Comment 4

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to bhavana bajaj [:bajaj] from comment #3)
> Flagging UX/Dao here to help understand if this if this is shipping blocker
> from UX perspective for firefox given the decision made in Bug 691594 .

Yes, I think we should back it out.

Comment 5

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

fixed by backing out bug 691594

Comment 6

[Caspy7]

I see this bug was fixed by the backout of bug 691594.  However that bug was reopened rather than wontfixed. So, on the chance that there would be another similar approach as before I wanted to point out another side effect. 
I had a bookmarklet named "DR" whose width was halved with the icon removal and clicking it suddenly became some sort of mouse-eye dexterity test.
For kicks I renamed it to "i" and the hover width became 9 pixels.  This seems like a clear UX issue to me.

I just wanted to make sure the width would be a part of discussions if there would be a future approach to removing the placeholder.

Comment 7

[Petruta Horea [:phorea], Desktop QA]

Verified as fixed on Firefox 24 beta 7 (BuildID: 20130829135643).
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/24.0

Comment 8

[Forest]

(In reply to Caspy7 from comment #6)
> I see this bug was fixed by the backout of bug 691594.  However that bug was
> reopened rather than wontfixed. 

Thanks a lot, Caspy7. Now bug 691594 is marked as WONTFIX, effectively saying "tough luck, suckers" to all of us for whom the space-wasting placeholder icons cause trouble.

Rather than fixing your problem by pushing for a long-standing bug to be set in stone, how about looking for a solution to both? I can think of three right off the top of my head:

- Use the same policy for separating bookmark toolbar items that is used for menu toolbar items. This would make the UI consistent.
- If a visible separator must be forced on everyone, at least make it narrow, like the separator lines used everywhere else in the menus and toolbars.
- Improving on that idea, make the use of a visible separator configurable, so those of us using bookmarkelts don't have them pushed off the edge of the browser window.

A group of students has chimed in on bug 691594 volunteering to tackle it. How about letting them do it instead of calling for a rather short-sighted WONTFIX?

Comment 9

[Forest]

Another idea:
- Define a minimum width for toolbar items. Simple. Probably easy. Doesn't screw other people.