948043 - Re-Introduce custom toolbar

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Toolbars and Customization, defect)

Description

[Florian Bender]

With Australis, the option to add a custom toolbar was dropped, mainly because the usage number was very low. Australis also removed the addons bar which by itself is a change I welcome. 

However, many people are complaining about the missing addons bar. With the removal of a custom toolbar, people need to install addons that add toolbars. 

In the interest of customization, and to avoid FUD like "Australis killed customization", I propose to reintroduce the custom toolbar option. Either: 

A) Add a "Add toolbar" button to the customize screen which simply does what it says, or

B) add a toolbar widget than can be dragged to either top or the bottom of the content area (which is just below the main toolbar resp. at the bottom of the window). (This is more in line with the current UX but still different, i.e. it does not make sense to drag a custom toolbar to the existing customization targets. It also only allows one custom toolbar which should be enough for most use cases.)

My personal favorite, however, is option:

C) Add new customization targets just below the main toolbar (but above the bookmarks toolbar) and/or the bottom of the window (spanning the full width of the window). When any item is added to these areas, a new toolbar automagically appears, and is hidden again when the last item is removed from these customization targets. (This is probably the most obvious solution, UX-wise.)


Notes regarding A & B:

The toolbar acts as a customization target. It should have a close button (only in customize mode to avoid accidental closing) which removes the toolbar and places all its content back to the customization palette. 

Optionally, the toolbar has a hide/collapse button (the close button should morph into the hide/collapse button once you leave the customize mode) which removes the toolbar from the visible area. This may also need a new widget that toggles the visibility of the custom toolbar. If this widget is neither in the main toolbar nor the menu when the custom toolbar is hidden, it's automatically added to the main toolbar. 


Notes regarding C:

There is no "close" button, though there may be a "Hide toolbar" option on right-click. In customization mode, the toolbar is never hidden, and on leaving customization mode, the "Hide toolbar" option is reset. 


I will send a message to firefox-dev shortly to discuss this bug.

Comment 1

[Charles Evans]

To save others some search time: 
Some add-ons that workaround this regression:
"The Addon Bar (restored)"
"Vertical Toolbar"
"Classic Theme Restorer"
Use all 3 to get 3 bars.

Comment 2

[Charles Evans]

FYI: Several add-ons were broken by the removal of the add-on bar; 
some have not been updated for years, but work fine in ff27b9.
AFAIKT none of the add-ons that create a so-called add-on bar (comment 1)
fix any of them.

I hope that while fixing this bug, someone can find a way to designate a new or existing toolbar to be used by them as they used the old add-on bar.
so far,
broken: HttpFox, Tabcounter, Open Tab Count, Timetracker
partly broken but useable: 
Nosquint, Back to Top, Memory Restart, Show Profile, Cipherfox
as of nightly
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:29.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/29.0 ID:20140126030203 CSet: 611698b4a246

Several add-ons used large spaces on the add-on bar, and while some still
work, there is not enough room for them: 
Memchaser (works)  Timetracker (broken)
Cipherfox and Show profile have options that if used can take up much space.
and many many more...

see also:
" What's the reason in making nearly all add-ons unusable?"
"If you find addons that do not work with Australis it may be worth
    Mentioning them in this thread. "
Add-on bar not with Australis Nightly
Address : <https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/978015>

Comment 3

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

We have no intent to reintroduce the custom toolbar. Addons can provide this functionality.

Comment 5

[Darren Salt]

(In reply to Charles Evans from comment #1)
> To save others some search time: 
> Some add-ons that workaround this regression:
> "The Addon Bar (restored)"
> "Vertical Toolbar"
> "Classic Theme Restorer"
> Use all 3 to get 3 bars.

That puts most things back as they should be regarding which bars are where, but customisation is still needed to put the toolbar content right. (It doesn't fix the tabs position, unfortunately.)

Comment 6

[Darren Salt]

I've found what I wanted: “Tabs On Bottom”. (Mentioning it here so that the add-ons are listed together.)

Comment 7

[Darren Salt]

… never mind that – looks like Classic Theme Restorer does all that's needed to fix the UI.

Comment 8

[Georgi]

(In reply to Justin Dolske [:Dolske] from comment #3)
> We have no intent to reintroduce the custom toolbar. Addons can provide this
> functionality.

Yea, but if you have a lot of add-ons they slow down the browser as well!
Adding empty toolbars should be not so difficult to implement lol!


Regards,
Georgi

Comment 9

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

(In reply to Georgi from comment #8)
> (In reply to Justin Dolske [:Dolske] from comment #3)
> > We have no intent to reintroduce the custom toolbar. Addons can provide this
> > functionality.
> 
> Yea, but if you have a lot of add-ons they slow down the browser as well!
> Adding empty toolbars should be not so difficult to implement lol!
> 
> 
> Regards,
> Georgi

Adding bloat to the browser also slows it down. It also slows us down because we have to test and maintain that feature.

> Adding empty toolbars should be not so difficult to implement lol!

You're right - and this is why several people have taken it upon themselves to write add-ons to re-introduce this behaviour. I invite you to try one, for example:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer

Comment 10

[Georgi]

Hello,

I already use Classic Theme Restorer + Classic Toolbar Buttons + the new version of Status-4-Evar and I was able to customize the browser to look like the previous version but however Classic Theme Restorer can only add 1 addition toolbar and this is not enough for me..I need at least 6 to have the full personas theme displayed properly. 

I found 2 add-ons (like Googlebar Lite and LinkExtend which could be customized to be empty but I feel that they slow down my browser too much) so I removed them and cleaned the prefs.js manually and defragged the SQLite database to boost the performance.

There are another two add-ons (like Facebook Toolbar and More Bookmarks Toolbar) but they can't be fully customized  using "Customize Firefox" feature...

It will be great then if someone can create an add-on which allow adding of empty toolbars. :)
Thanks!


Regards,
Georgi