[Bug 226898] [NEW] Suggested Improvement for Title Text Display

[Dave Jakeman]

Public bug reported:

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
NonfreeKernelModules: fglrx
Package: firefox-3.0 3.0~b5+nobinonly-0ubuntu3
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: firefox-3.0
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-16-generic i686

** Affects: firefox-3.0 (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New


** Tags: apport-bug

-- 
Suggested Improvement for Title Text Display
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/226898
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