The new context menu structure is inconsistant. Text on a page is conceptually at the same context level as images on that same page. Therefore, the navigation commands (Back, Forward, Reload, Stop) should either appear on both or none. Otherwise, the user interface quickly becomes frustrating -- see bug #135331. This applies to the selection context menu (bug #135813) and others as well. I personally prefer having the navigation commands always available (see bug #136665, about making this an option) but there's a lot of resistance to that. Having an inconsistant UI is worse than having commands available or not based arbitrarily on the length of the resulting menu. Therefore, the navigation commands should never appear on context menus.

RESOLVED WONTFIX. The arguments given above are not the only way of looking at this. Specifically, while the context may be viewed as being the same for both images and boring parts of the page, the possible options are more numerous in the first case and therefore sacrifices need to be made regarding which groups of items are shown so as to keep the menus at manageable sizes. See bug 135331 comment 75.

I'm not sure you read my whole description -- as I said, the difference of menu length seems arbitrary and irrational. If menu shortness is of such paramount importance that navigation commands must be removed, they need to be removed everywhere or else you end up with an inconsistant interface. Clicking on menus shouldn't be a surprise. Images are not, as a class, "more interesting" -- on many many web pages, there's little hidden spacer images all over, making the act of hunting down a place that's safe to click for navigation very frustrating.

Menu length is paramount, as accepted industry standards on UI will tell you that the usefulness of a context menu decreases dramatically for even small increases to the length of the menu. Ask mpt if you want references. That the menu is inconsistent is arguable. If you take that line of thought to its extreme, you end up with huge 30+ item context menus where the majority of the items are disabled, just for the purpose of consistency. As I understand it (although I do not pretend to be a UI expert) the consistency argument is less important than the length argument. I suggest you take further discussion on the subject of context menu principles to the newsgroup netscape.public.mozilla.ui and cc marlon@netscape.com.

Removing the navigation commands would make the menus both more consistant *and* shorter -- seems like a double win. I'm serious about this -- the inconsistancy in bug #135331 bothers me almost as much as the inconvenience, and I didn't file this just as a rhetorical bug. In any case, I'm done hashing this out here or in the newsgroup, and I'm sure marlon (and you, for that matter) have better things to do and things you'd rather be doing.

You could remove all the menu items together and then the menu would be at its shortest! :-) The navigation menu items are useful, no-one is denying that, all that is being denied is that it is more critical than the image-specific items of image context menus.

v