Suggested Improvement for Title Text Display
| Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mozilla Firefox |
Fix Released
|
Unknown
|
|||
| firefox-3.0 (Ubuntu) |
Won't Fix
|
Wishlist
|
Unassigned | ||
| firefox-3.5 (Ubuntu) |
Triaged
|
Wishlist
|
Unassigned | ||
Bug Description
Binary package hint: firefox-3.0
Suggested Improvement for Title Text Display
=======
During the transition from Firefox 2 to 3, the display of title text (as in: <A href="URL" title="page description">) is no longer truncated, bringing Firefox into line with Internet Explorer. This is a most welcome addition. Thanks guys!
The trouble is, Firefox now suffers the same problem that IE does: if the page author puts a large amount of text in the title string, the user doesn't have time to read it. The current title text display model works something like this:
1. User moves mouse pointer over object and then holds still;
2. After something less than one second of no pointer motion, the title text is displayed, wrapping if necessary;
3. A display timer is started;
4. Providing no event or pointer movement occurs, the text displays for a maximum of five seconds;
5. The displayed text disappears and redisplay is disabled;
6. When the pointer next moves, text redisplay is enabled, subject 2 above.
From the end-user perspective, this translates as:
1. Move pointer over object, hold still, wait for title text to appear;
2. Read as much as you can before the five-second timer cuts in;
3. If you finished reading it, you're done!
4. If you didn't, move pointer slightly, hold still, wait for title text to reappear;
5. Quickly find where you left off reading previously and repeat as many times as needed from step 2.
This can be a frustrating experience, so I'd like to suggest two possible display models by way of improvement. The first would be very simple to do, but still only an approximation of what should occur; the second is the proper way to do it:
Alternative 1
-------------
Instead of displaying the title text for a fixed time period of five seconds, display it for four seconds (say) plus some function of the title text length. Through experimentation, the display time could roughly match the time taken for a slow-to-average reader to read the title. For different languages, this would be an approximation.
From the end-user perspective, this would translate exactly as above, but with greater likelihood of being able to read the title text first time through.
Alternative 2
-------------
With the existing model, text display is triggered by zero pointer motion for a fixed time period. Maintain this, but also use pointer movement as the event trigger to vanish the text, disabling redisplay until the pointer moves off the object (moving back over the object would re-enable display).
From the end-user perspective, this would translate as:
1. Move pointer over object, hold still, wait for title text to appear;
2. Read as much of the title text as you want to (ah!);
3. Read something else, or if the title text is obscuring something, move the pointer slightly to make it disappear.
The advantage of the latter is it puts the user back in control of his browsing experience -- just as it should be -- instead of the browser making arbitrary decisions on his behalf. Another advantage is that sometimes, after reading the title text, you don't actually want it to reappear. This solves that. From the user perspective, it would be simpler and rather intuitive too.
Of the two suggested, I would greatly prefer and recommend the latter, but either would be an improvement over the current model and IE.
Hope you can take this one up.
Dave Jakeman
ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon May 5 12:46:50 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
NonfreeKernelMo
Package: firefox-3.0 3.0~b5+
PackageArchitec
ProcEnviron:
PATH=/
LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: firefox-3.0
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-16-generic i686
| Dave Jakeman (davejakeman) wrote | #1 |
| Martin Mai (mrkanister-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount) wrote | #2 |
| Changed in firefox-3.0: | |
| importance: | Undecided → Wishlist |
| status: | New → Confirmed |
| Dave Jakeman (davejakeman) wrote RE: [Bug 226898] Re: Suggested Improvement for Title Text Display | #3 |
| Changed in firefox: | |
| status: | Unknown → Confirmed |
| Martin Mai (mrkanister-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount) wrote | #4 |
| Changed in firefox-3.0: | |
| status: | Confirmed → Triaged |
| Dave Jakeman (davejakeman) wrote | #5 |
| Changed in firefox: | |
| status: | Confirmed → Fix Released |
| Micah Gersten (micahg) wrote | #6 |
| Changed in firefox-3.5 (Ubuntu): | |
| importance: | Undecided → Wishlist |
| status: | New → Triaged |
| Changed in firefox-3.0 (Ubuntu): | |
| status: | Triaged → Won't Fix |
| Micah Gersten (micahg) wrote | #7 |
Since this is a feature request, you should file a bug about this on https:/