941683 - [Australis] Need toolbar item that won't be pushed out into a "Chevron" dropdown

Status: VERIFIED INVALID

(Firefox :: Toolbars and Customization, defect)

Description

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

We are creating an extension that shows the number of new emails in a badge of a toolbar button. Upon click, you can go to inbox, and it has a dropdown to do more things (addressbook etc.). The primary reason why people install this product is to be notified about new mail.

We've taken great pains to be customizable toolbar buttons, because we want to give advanced users a choice.

Now, with Australis, the customizable area is overflowed into a "Chevron", a dropdown button that shows a list of buttons that didn't "fit" in the toolbar, by some measure. One problem is that this happens very quickly, I can't even see the bookmark button, much less others, so I filed bug 940814 about that.

However, in our usecase, we can't *ever* be put into the Chevron. It defeats the whole purpose of the button: to show new mails. If it's not directly visible, it can't show new mails. Therefore, it's useless when put in the Chevron. It can never be in the Chevron.

* We need an official way to prevent a toolbar item to ever be put in the Chevron.
* Once other items like the search bar are hidden, there is more space.
* If the toolbar is still too crowded, the user needs to make a choice and remove some buttons, either by toolbar customization or by uninstalling less wanted extensions. But having the button *automatically* hidden and still active is not an option.
* We would, however, still like to be customizable, because we don't want to take user freedom away. In fact, the purpose is to give the user what he wanted.

What I propose is to make a new XUL attribute <toolbaritem autohide="false"> which prevents the automatic hiding, but still allows the toolbar item to be dragged around or removed by the end user.

Comment 1

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

You can set overflows="false" on your toolbaritem to make it not overflow in to the chevron. Please reopen if that doesn't work for you.

Comment 2

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Yeah, I just saw this on https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/australis-add-on-compat-draft

> If your item should never be overflowed, set an overflowable attribute to false on the item.

Sorry for the invalid bug, and thanks for having added this!

VERIFIED "I didn't do my homework" INVALID

Comment 3

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

Heh, I'm just happy that we already had a solution for this :)