890746 - Panels should have a visual way to close them

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Add-on SDK Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Erik Vold [:erikvold] (please needinfo? me)]

In my opinion there should be an 'x' at the top right of every panel.  There are currently 3 ways that I can think of to close a panel:

1. focus on an element outside of the panel
2. press esc
3. open another panel

Since #1 can lead to mistakes (clicking things by mistake) or useless steps (opening a window in order to close a panel), and #2 isn't obvious and it is well known that many users prefer to use mouse only navigation (Aza mentioned this about Chinese users in a Ubiquity blog post a while back), and #3 doesn't help when you want to hide all panels, I propose this option #4 a close button, the most obvious and easiest to learn and use.

Comment 1

[Wes Kocher (:KWierso) (Not reading bugmail; email directly if needed)]

Lets get some UX feedback on this.

Comment 2

[Stephen Horlander [:shorlander]]

#1 is how we handle most panels in Firefox currently and the way almost every other implementation of panels works e.g. OS X, Windows, iOS, Facebook/the Web, etc.

We did put a close icon on notification panels because those panels are asking the user to make a choice. I actually think we should remove it there also.

There is also another way to close a panel, and that is to click on the anchor again.