923738 - Move the Awesomebar dropdown marker to the right of the go/stop/reload button.

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Theme, defect)

Description

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

alex_mayorga brought this up in bug 594050, comment 31, and it sounds like an idea worth considering:

The dropdown marker next to the go/stop/reload button suggests that the Awesomebar is like a combobox, but the fact that it's not immediately at the end of the bar kind of breaks that idiom.

The heatmap study from 2012 (https://blog.mozilla.org/ux/2012/06/firefox-heatmap-study-2012-results-are-in/) suggests that the dropdown marker is interacted with by ~38.4% of users vs the go/stop/reload button which is interacted with by 40.1% of users (split over 3 buttons). This suggests that users might find this button more useful than the individual go/stop/reload buttons, and perhaps we can give it more prominence by anchoring it to the end of the Awesomebar.

Also of note that one of the reasons to keep the go/stop/reload button at the end of the Awesomebar (that being that these buttons can be separated out via customization magic) is going away by default with Australis, so we can get away with tucking them one level deeper into the bar.

Totally open to argument here, but alex_mayorga has a gun to my head and is making me type this in at Moz Summit 2013 (Toronto). :)

(Also this is a super easy fix if it's one we're gonna roll with).

Comment 1

[u428464]

AFAIK the plan was to remove it completely (bug 712602).

Comment 2

[alex_mayorga]

Just clarifying I didn't carry any firearms into Canada and would certainly never point a weapon to such an awesome Canadian as Mr. Conley =)

Hope this gets fixed as I think it makes a lot of sense.

Hope based on the heat map data bug 712602 would be WONTFIXed.

Comment 3

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

I seem to recall both shorlander and gavin being on board with this. Marking as a good-first-bug. I'd be happy to mentor this one.

Comment 4

[Siva]

Hi, I want to take this as my first bug and work on it.Can you please help me to get started with this.
Thanks.

Comment 5

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

(In reply to Siva from comment #4)
> Hi, I want to take this as my first bug and work on it.Can you please help
> me to get started with this.
> Thanks.

Hey Siva,

This bug is already assigned, sorry! Maybe take a look at some of the other bugs on this list: http://www.joshmatthews.net/bugsahoy/?ff=1

-Mike

Comment 6

[Siva]

Hi Mike,
Thanks for the reply. No problem. I will look at the bugs in the list.

Thanks,
Siva

Comment 7

[alex_mayorga]

mconley,

So I followed https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Simple_Firefox_build and now have a spanking new copy of mozilla-central

What to do now?

Writing down the recipe for my future reference just in case:

wget https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/raw-file/default/python/mozboot/bin/bootstrap.py && python bootstrap.py
git clone git://github.com/mozilla/mozilla-central.git
cd mozilla-central
./mach build

Comment 8

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

I believe the next step is to alter the urlbar XBL binding[1] so that toolbarbutton children of the urlbar go before the dropmarker.

Open browser/base/content/urlbarBindings.xml. The first binding there is the urlbar binding (it has id="urlbar").

Inside its content node, you'll notice that the last child of that node is a <children includes="toolbarbutton"/> node. This is where toolbarbuttons (in this case, the stop, reload and go buttons) get inserted.

I believe what you want to do is move that node just before the dropmarker node two nodes above.

Once that's done, save the file, and rebuild with this:

./mach build browser/base

And then run with:

./mach run

And test your changes.

If that works, please produce a patch and attach it to this bug[2].

Note that Australis has called for a UI freeze while we iterate, so while you may complete this patch, it is possible that this patch might not land until after Australis has been released. Just a heads up on that.

Thanks for working on this, Alex!

[1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/XBL
[2]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Developer_Guide/How_to_Submit_a_Patch

Comment 9

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

So I was wrong about shorlander being on board with this - it was darrin who was in the room with gavin, alex_mayorga and myself.

I think I want shorlander's input on this before we let it drive forward.

Comment 10

[Stephen Horlander [:shorlander]]

I don't think this is something we want to do. Even though I understand the rationale I don't think it makes sense to swap these controls at this point.

Comment 11

[Jim Jeffery not reading bug-mail 1/2/11]

I would vote against this change as well.  The drop-arrow is in the right place as when its pressed I want it to be next to the items in the list.  Moving it further away will, at least to me, seem like a disconnect, and lead to confusion as to why its there.

Comment 12

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

It's starting to sound like this is better add-on material, as we don't have buy-in from UX.

Comment 13

[Matt Brubeck (:mbrubeck)]

Marking as WONTFIX based on comment 10.  Also, this would conflict with the theming changes in bug 1040804.