Closed Bug 48704 Opened 24 years ago Closed 24 years ago

Put print button back on navigator toolbar

Categories

(SeaMonkey :: General, defect, P3)

Product:
SeaMonkey
Component:
General
Type:
defect

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED FIXED

People

(Reporter: german, Assigned: nbhatla)

Details

(Whiteboard: [nsbeta3+]) 

After hearing all the arguments, listening to users in the lab I have come to 
the opinion that it is in our best interest to add the print button to the 
browser toolbar. However in adding it to the toolbar, we should take great care 
of not disturbing the simplicity of the 4 navigation buttons. Therefore the 
recommended place for the print button will be to the right of the search 
button. 
The decision needs to be made quickly as tol not further delay changes to the 
XUL structure of the product. 
I'd like to get this in a shortly as possible, in order to give the design some 
exposure inhouse to confirm that it works. Therefore nominating nsbeta3 and ue1
Keywords: nsbeta3, UE1
Marking this as nsbeta3+
Whiteboard: [nsbeta3+]
Target Milestone: --- → M18
I vote against this.  Wasn't this already hashed out like a year and a half ago?
If we must have this print button, are you sure that adding it to the 
navigation toolbar is the best solution?  Once you do that, it stops being the 
navigation toolbar and turns into the 4.x 'general, all-purpose' toolbar.
If it needs to go anywhere, I recommend at least putting it in with Home in the 
personal toolbar so people who want their navigation toolbar to be strictly 
navigation (how shocking!) can also be appeased...

Making this nsonly.
Keywords: nsonly
If you're interested I can talk to you about some of the user feedback.
It should most definitely not go into the personal toolbar, as app type 
functionality has no place there. By moving it out on the right I believe we 
can solve the sensible problem of not making the layout loose its clarity and 
simplicity.
Lets impliment this and live with it for a certain amount of time, and we will 
be able to shake out any concerns when we actually see and use it.
It's up to you, since this is netscape.  I agree that personal toolbar is a bad 
place for it, but then, Home doesn't belong there either...interesting that we 
have Print in the Navigation toolbar and Home in the personal toolbar.  My 
concern is that I see little room to the right for a print button...
I share your concerns but I think from what I have seen this is a preferences 
of the majority of our users and therefore the right thing to do. I want to be 
open to reverse the decision when we see that a convincing design solution wrt 
placement cannot be found.
You must be looking at the modern skin.  There is no room for an additional 
Print button in the Classic skin.
I agree that the Print button should be on the main toolbar -- `How do I print 
this?' is the #1 question I get asked in the cafe, where IE doesn't have the 
Print button on (our customized version of) the toolbar.

But if you add anything more to the combined Command/Location toolbar, the 
location bar will just be *too* short. Since 1994, Mozilla's location bar has 
been getting shorter while URLs have been getting longer, and that is not a 
good thing.

So I think it's time to say `Ok, it was a nice try, but it won't work -- we 
can't have the Command Toolbar and the Navigation Toolbar welded together any 
more'. There's just too much stuff that should be on the Command Toolbar -- 
including Print, Home, and the Style and Text Size menus.

If we had horizontally arrangable toolbars, then users would be able to put the 
Command Toolbar and the Location Toolbar alongside each other as they are now, 
and expose as many Command Toolbar buttons as they liked at the expense of 
length of the location bar (depending on their usual Navigator window size). If 
they just wanted Back and Forward, they could have that. Make the Location 
Toolbar a bit shorter, and they'd get Back, Forward, Reload, Stop. A bit 
shorter, and they'd get Back, Forward, Reload, Stop, Home. A bit shorter: Back, 
Forward, Reload, Stop, Home, Print. And so on.

I don't understand why this is nsonly.
Maybe so, but I think it's too late in the game to add another toolbar now (and
considering the personal toolbar is on by default, I think it's a bad idea...too
many toolbars is a bad thing).  Draggable and rearrangable toolbars aren't
coming any time soon.  I don't see why Text Size or Style belongs on a toolbar.
 How often do you need to change either of those?  (I will agree that I'm not
sure welding the command and navigation toolbars in the first place was a good
idea, but at this point...)

This is nsonly at the moment because the request was made by Netscape marketing
based on usability research conducted by Netscape marketing on Netscape
customers, and I've seen little (no) indication that Mozilla users want another
button cluttering up their toolbar.
Note that I'm not necessarily against the addition of a Print button, but if we
are going to add it, I think a major restructuring of the toolbar is required
(as Matthew suggested).  On my 17" monitor, 800 x 600 screen resolution, there
is absolutely no room for a Print button in either skin.  (And a Print button
doesn't really belong in a Navigation toolbar.)  If we are going to put the URL
bar in its own toolbar (like 4x and Mozilla), I think the personal toolbar needs
to be off by default (how many toolbars can we give the user at one time!?)  And
somehow I doubt Netscape is going to agree to that, so we have a dilemma here.
Keywords: nsonly
I think we should try this out to see what response we get. 

I agree that the urlbar is getting cramped at 800x600 (try switching your 
machine to that and see for yourself) but I don't know of a better solution. I 
like that the navigation bar has a single, simple purpose. I am against 
introducing any more non-removable buttons to the personal toolbar (especially 
given this bug's former ns-only status) 
Submitted this.  There is now a print button in the browser navigation 
toolbar, on both modern and classic.  Marking FIXED.
FIXED
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 24 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
"I think we should try this out to see what response we get."

Yuck! especially at lower resolution.  
yeah! is there a bug on the placement problem?
This is without a doubt the ugliest rendition of Modern this year.  The Print
button looks completely duct taped.  Also why is the search button the only
thing that deserves the special dispensation of being rectagular?
Don't worry aboout the actual look of the print button in modern.  Modern is in 
the process of being redesigned anyway, so it will look better.  In fact, we're 
planning on landing pieces of the new modern skin late this week or early next 
week.  Our main concern here is whether the print button "fits" there in terms of 
usability, not whether the icon looks good.

personally, i think the placement is terrible. it's very out of place way over 
there by itself (and no, don't put other buttons there to keep it company!)

I beleie that this makes the toobar look cluttered. Also it looks as though the
stop button X has been moved off center. Please take away the print button and
leave the poor search button by itself in solitude
I'll also add a vote for "no" - my use of printing in a web browser is extremely
infrequent (like once a month), so selecting it from the file menu is no great
burden.  Additionally the print button is stealing valuable horizontal space
from the already squeezed urlbar.

I've been using web browsers for six years, and I think I can still count the
number of times that I've intentionally used a print button on my fingers.  I've
hit it accidentally far more times than on purpose.  IMO, it's a waste of
paper.  I don't think a Print button should be on the toolbar for the same
reason that an Exit button shouldn't be there -- it's too easy to hit by
accident.

I also don't think a Print feature deserves a top-level button.  I think there
are lots of other features that are used more often.

Finally, considering our toolbars don't wrap and the URL bar is part of the
navigation toolbar, I think we really need to conserve space so that we can see
at least some of the URL.
I don't think the print button makes much sense for several reasons:
1) the purpose of a toolbar is for quick access for the things that you do 90% 
of the time. Very few people print with the same frequency as hitting the back 
bar so why add the extra clutter? Clutter just slows things down
2) Buttons are for one step functions. (I could never understand button menus 
such as Bookmarks. buttons should act like buttons-not menus) You click a button 
and that's it-the action is done. On the other hand printing is a several step 
process-when you click the button you get another dialog. You want it to be a 
multi-part process with preview,etc because there are many things that need 
tweaking in order to get a decent result.
3) A print icon in the _navigation_ toolbar doesn't make sense. I can understand 
a Home button because that is the center of navigation for many users but 
printing has nothing to do with navigation.
I agree with people who argue that Print isn't oft-used enough to warrant a button. 
Moreover, the arrangement with the Print button makes the location field too short. I 
actually filed bug 49201 without being aware of this bug.
I agree that the placement is extremely sub-optimal.

Realise however that feedback from real users suggested that this is a feature 
they wanted. I don't print often myself, but can understand that there would be 
many cases in which I would, if my surfing habits were more 'conventional':

- printing product comparisons and reviews
- maps
- printing documents to read offline when using a dialup connection on a single 
phoneline or in locales where internet charging is time-based.
I agree with Ben.  Never in my life have I used the Print button, because I 
always use the keyboard shortcut, as I'm sure some of you do too.  But then 
again, we (developers) are not the average users.

On another note, scrunching the URL bar by a few more pixels may not be such a 
bad thing.  After all, the average user probably types 
"www.[insert_company_here].com" into the bar, and that's about it.  Subsequent 
surfing may yield enormously long an ugly URLs, but those are really of no 
concern to the user.  I'll bet that the average user doesn't ever type anything 
more after the ".com".  And remember that having the URL bar embedded in the 
navigation bar frees more vertical space for html content than in 4.x, a great 
benefit.  

You're just waving your hands when you say "I bet [this]", "probably [that]". 
The only real way to get this information is to observe the users using the
product for whatever tasks they want to use it for.  Note that asking the users
for their opinions yields notoriously poor results.  Observation is the key.

Having said that, my only observation is of myself, and my wife.  We print so
seldom, that we certainly wouldn't miss the print button.  In fact I have it
turned off via .Xdefaults i NN 4.74.

I'd really love to see the rate that users are observed in the wild using the
print function, versus the rate at which they use forward, back, reload, and the
URL input.  I speculate the dprint/dt << dnavigate/dt.
I am violently against adding a print button, at least to the Navigation toolbar.

Paper is a left-over from the old days and doesn't fit into the internet area.
Agreed, we are in a migration phase, but I sincerely doubt that printing is such
a frequent action to justify a button. And some users who don't know how to use
menu are not a valid reason for adding a button for all.

(BenG, please don't take my comments personally.)
> printing product comparisons and reviews

For what? To take it into a physical shop? Doesn't Netscape want to push e-commerce?

> - maps

Agreed, but infrequent.

> printing documents to read offline when using a dialup connection on a single
> phoneline

SaveAsFile. So, let's add a button for that, too.

> I'll bet that the average user doesn't ever type anything more after the
> ".com".

That's not the point. The current URL is very important status information. E.g.
it shows the source of the information (while the hostname is not always
sufficient, see personal homepages like
"members.geocities.com/community/1234/"). It also gives some orientation on
poorly designed pages (of which exist many).

> Observation is the key.

A Netscape employee said on .ui that NS doesn't do long-term UI studies. The
stduies they do are only to show problems. This has already been done (see
inital description), I just disagree with the solution.

The *backgrounds* for icons on right side of URL bar (the circles) shifted
upwards when printer icon was added. Leaving < > ^ X  all "off center".

If the circles were smaller in height it could fix off-centered look AND leave
room for bigger history arrows. Looking forward to new checkins :) (And hoping
search-button is replaced with looking-glass icon, in the style of the other
buttons.)
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...
QA Contact: mpt → zach
Keywords: UE1
Component: User Interface Design → Browser-General
Product: Browser → Seamonkey
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