Ben Bucksch wrote:
>
> Matthew Thomas wrote:
> >
> > Whether or not they are provided by the same application, the Web
> > and e-mail are often used at the same time.
>
> No, at least not for me.
So remove the button from your Navigator toolbar, then! Replace it with
a Style button (a pulldown menu for choosing your style sheet, with an
icon indicating the availability of multiple author style sheets), or a
Text Size button, or whatever takes your fancy.
>...
> You have a point only if users are on dialups paid by time. (This user
> group is constantly decreasing - it'd guess, by today, the majority of
> users is permanently connected.)
This discussion was not about whether Navigator's UI should contain a
biff icon at all -- *it already does*. This discussion was about where
that button should go.
>...
> > mailto: links are given in Web
> > pages. URLs are provided in e-mail messages. And other information
> > provided in one application is copied by users for use in the other.
> > The same applies, albeit to a lesser extent, for instant messaging.
>
> The same applies for *all* internet apps. Even for FTP (URLs in
> READMEs). More and more apps are interconnected. At some point, all
> apps are. (Heck, even Word can display network-based content.) So, do
> you want to clobber them all together in one suite,
Eventually, yes. Or, alternatively, organize applications so that it is
not obvious when you are switching from one to the other. (The
distinction between these two approaches is a technical one only.) Users
should not have to care which application they are using at any given moment.
>...
> > which suffers from the various UI problems
> > of menus in Windows generally,
>
> We are not here to heal the world. We provide internet software. We
> cannot fix shortcommings of the OS.
If that was true, then we wouldn't be bothering to implement Mozilla
Navigator on Windows at all, since Windows comes with its own integrated
Web browser already. That Web browser is better than Mozilla Navigator
in most respects, but it suffers from two major shortcomings: (1) it's
not free, and (2) it's not standards-compliant. Mozilla serves to fix
these shortcomings.
As a second example, take the existence of XP Toolkit. Whatever you
think about the merits or otherwise of Mozilla having its own UI
toolkit, it does allow us to avoid the bugs and other shortcomings in
the native toolkits -- such as the awkward selection of submenus in
Windows, the scrolling bug in Mac OS native single-line text fields, the
wrapping bug in Windows multi-line text fields, and of course the lack
of transparency, styling, and event handling abilities which prompted
the creation of the toolkit in the first place.
It is quite reasonable for Mozilla to implement things which its host OS
does poorly or not at all. If the mountain won't come to Mozilla, then
Mozilla must come to the mountain.
>...
> > So any always-on-top application switcher provided by the OS -- such
> > as the Application Switcher in Mac OS 8/9, or the taskbar in Windows
> > 9x -- has to be (and is) too small for comfortable use in order to
> > be small enough to be out of the way.
>
> Don't tell me that 16x16 (or were it even 32x32?) pixels are not
> enough for an "you have new mail" icon, especially when there is also
> sound.
Yes. It is too small to show you the number of new messages, or whether
any of those messages are of high priority -- all it shows you is a
boolean indicator, yes you have new mail or no you do not.
> You make an interesting point: "out of the way". If the taskbar would
> take away too much space, why would it be better, if the icon were
> onthe top of the screen (in the navigator toolbars).
Because the Navigator toolbar is higher than the Navigator taskbar (or
the Windows taskbar, or the Apple menu bar), so the icon can be larger.
> Ah, yes, that's less bad, because you only read mail while you browse.
> Not.
`Not' indeed. I didn't say that at all.
> If we really moved the biff from the taskbar into Navigator, how would
> I see new mail while I do not browse? Do you want to have 2 biffs?
>...
On Windows and Mac OS, we already do. Remember, this discussion is just
about where to put one of them.
--
Matthew `mpt' Thomas, Mozilla user interface QA
