Changing the Sidebar option on the View menu to My Sidebar keeps better consistency (as the title of the actual frame that opens is "My Sidebar") and is also a bit UI friendlier in terms of the average-Joe.

Reassigning to German.

Confirmed bug. German?

My preferred option would be to rename the sidebar itself from `My Sidebar' back to `Sidebar', as that would be less patronizing. And in many cases, including using someone else's computer, using kiosks, and going to Internet Cafes, it's not going to be `my' sidebar anyway, but someone else's. But I defer to German's judgement on this one ...

I thought about that, changing My Sidebar to Sidebar. In favor of "My Sidebar": First of all, it would entail a bunch of changes, esp. on NS's site - they've plastered "My Sidebar" all over their NSPR1 release notes and dev docs. That wouldn't be such a big deal though. Second, the title "My Sidebar" suggests more customization and personalization to the average user who doesn't know any better. Then again, My Sidebar reminds me strongly of Windows' "My Music," "My Pictures," and "My Documents" folders (and My Computer) -- all of which I hate. For advanced users, it just seems silly and somewhat childish to precede everything with "My". Also, My Sidebar only really fits if you have a whole theme of "My"s, like Windows has. As an example, if Moz had My Mail, My News, My Toolbar, etc. (and please shoot me when that day comes), My Sidebar would make more sense. As it stands now, though, I have to agree that My Sidebar does seem pretty awkward, being the only "My", and out of place. Still, I can't imagine it being changed to Sidebar for the official NS 6 release..."My Sidebar" is just more marketable to the general computer user, and sounds more commercial than plain ol' "Sidebar" In any case, the original problem still exists - no matter what you're going to call it, the item on the View menu and the actual name of the Sidebar aren't the same (updated summary to reflect this).

Bottom line - the name of the feature is "My Sidebar", and should always be that - should *never* be just "sidebar". I understand the patronizing point, but we have done research and have various reasons why we chose "My Sidebar" as the name. If you would like to know why, contact me. Reassigning to Don Melton (to assign to his team) and setting for M17

On second thought, the Customize... dialog of the Sidebar should also reflect the "My Sidebar" title, i.e. use "Customize My Sidebar" as the header (?)

Move to M20 target milestone.

don: you said m20 but you targetted m21. retargetting to 21

er...meant retargetting 20

The fix for bug 41614 provides all the more reason that it needs to be View | My Sidebar. One menu over, in the Search menu, we use "My Sidebar Search Tab". So why the heck are we just plainly saying "Sidebar" in the View menu? Taking this, german or johng let me know what the deal is for changing to View | My Sidebar.

timeless, if you don't mind, I'm reassigning to you since I know you have a patch for this anyways...

Gladly accepting.

I agree with Matthew Thomas. There is one sidebar and it should be "Sidebar".

I agree also it should be sidebar, but Netscape's marketing department has apparently done 'extensive testing and usability research' that shows that people just can't live without the "My". (translation: Windows has My Pictures, My Documents, My Music, and so forth. We need something My also) So we need to at least be consistent.

There is not one sidebar, and this menu item does not control it. This menu item controls My Sidebar. If you open mailnews in the view where the folder pane is in the same area as my sidebar and select this infamous `Sidebar` menu, My Sidebar disappears, the folder pane does not. This is a reasonable behavior. [Now i'll upload the patch]

With approval from Brendan, I checked this in. Jennifer, Sol: this change will also affect the View menu of MailNews. The item now reads "My Sidebar" instead of "Sidebar," however, the spec (http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/specs/threepane/MailMenusM.html) designates that the item should read "Sidebar" -- Do you guys have any problems with this change? Let me know, and I'll change it back and we'll work something out. Otherwise, it would be helpful if you'd update the spec. Thanks!

Beth, Kathy: the same goes for Composer. Do y'all have any problem with this?

You left "Customize Sidebar". Was that intentionally?

I'm marking 41259 as blocking this bug so people can follow the relationship between this bug and the one where Daniel Bratell's request is already covered. Personally, if I were to make another change it would be replacing My Sidbar's `Add` with `Options`. Customize Sidebar is used at least three times, and probably has a spec somewhere. I think that you could argue that `Customize Sidebar` blocks the full implementation of this bug, but I would prefer to leave this one as closed.

Blake, The View menu across all apps should use consistent wording. The MailNews menu spec should be updated to reflect this ("My Sidebar"). Thanks for catching that.

Jennifer: I figured as much, just wanted to doublecheck. However, this introduces another problem in mail (and, I suspect, a problem in composer) -- My Sidebar now globally uses the access key "M" but this conflicts with "Messages" in the mail View menu, which you had set to use "m" I would agree that M for Messages would be more commonly intended than M for My Sidebar in this context, but we want it to be globally consistent. Any suggestions?

If there are no objections, can we underline the "b" in "My Sidebar" as the accelerator key globally? (http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/specs/threepane/MailMenusM.html)

I object. I intend to make it M. And have my reasons. I'm working on a complete access key patch for the Mail system, there are a bunch of bugs in the UI spec wrt to duplicate and confusing access keys. I'm going to propose `Message`>`Message &Preview` or something of that sort `&Preview Message` `&View Message`... That leaves `Messages` but there's a simple solution which I like: replace View>`Toolbars` w/ View>`Show` or something, and move My Sidebar and Message Preview, Folders and other stuff there. I was actually hoping we could replace Panels with Tabs [I know they need not look like tabs] actually how about Columns? I haven't settled on Show, but for various reasons i want to replace Toolbars since T can be used by Translate and Threads.

The trouble with `View' > `Show' is that it's tautological, which makes it about as intuitive as a wet sock (this is a problem in 4.x too). When bug 43797 is fixed (abolishing the taskbar), quite a few components -- such as the address book, for instance -- will have only one toolbar; so they'll logically have just a `View' > `Toolbar' menu item, instead of having a `View' > `Toolbars' (or `View' > `Show') submenu. W.r.t. `View' > `Message', I see a major usability bug in Jennifer's spec -- it has a `View' > `Message' item, and a `View' > `Messages' submenu. These are inevitably going to be confused. How about a `View' > `Panes' submenu which has `Folders Pane', `My Sidebar', `Thread Pane', and `Message Pane' items?

*** Bug 44605 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Reopening to change to "My Sidebar" in: (1) The menu that pops up when you click Tabs > in the sidebar (2) The text in the titlebar of the dialog that appears when you click Tabs > Customize... (3) The title text of the first titledbox in Prefs > Navigator > Smart Browsing

Regarding Comment from Blake Ross 2000-09-28 19:46 Item 1 seems to be fixed. timeless, will you be able to fix items 2 and 3?

adding keywords. looking for reviewers. Very sorry about not doing this earlier.

r=blake to check the my sidebar changes into the trunk. What's the diff for dumpDOM.js doing in there? Also, you don't need to update all the various localizations.

a=ben@netscape.com for the text changes. timeless says the dump is not part of this patch and won't be committed.

Fix checked in.

Chaning the qa contact on these bugs to me. MPT will be moving to the owner of this component shortly. I would like to thank him for all his hard work as he moves roles in mozilla.org...Yada, Yada, Yada...

*** Bug 69437 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

See also bug 77819, "My Sidebar" should be "Sidebar" (fixed).