Visual/Ergonomic enhancements to the FindBar

[Quisquose]

My FindBar buttons keep jumping around from left to right depending on whether the matches counter is currently displaying info or not. It's quite jarring and distracting.

Could you please find a way to keep the icons still?

I guess it either means leaving sufficient space between the Findbar text box and the icons, or putting the match text after the icons.

60 would also be a solution (assuming users could position elements as they like).

Thanks!

[Quicksaver]

If you mean with the find bar on top, I already plan on making a few changes to how this happens (I also don't like how my buttons keep moving). So hopefully in a future version this won't be a problem anymore.

[Quisquose]

Actually, my find bar is at the bottom and the buttons still bounce around left and right.

The issue is due to the matches counter text appearing and disappearing rather than the position of the find bar itself.

If the matches text was placed to the right of the buttons then it wouldn't push the buttons around. Or, a dedicated space could left for the matches text to occupy,

[Quicksaver]

Oh right, I forgot they changed that in the latest Nightly.

[Drugoy]

+1 to that request. It is especially annoying when options "Move to the top of the browser" and "Place to the right" are enabled: then even the text field bounces.

Specifically for the top right position I'd recommend changing the order of items: put match info to the left of toolbar, then the input field and then the buttons.

EDIT: Oh, and you can change the order of items on a toolbar with the help of "-moz-box-ordinal-group" CSS attribute, this is quite easy.

[Quicksaver]

It is especially annoying when options "Move to the top of the browser" and "Place to the right" are enabled: then even the text field bounces.

I had never considered this, inverting the items in this case seems like the best approach of course.

And yeah -moz-box-ordinal-group "works", but it kills the tab key, as in the tab key still focuses the next button in the DOM tree, and not necessarily the next visible button. I will add this feature, but not through that CSS property. ;)

[Drugoy]

Well, I suggested to move only the match info to the left from text field, so there shouldn't be any problems with switching focus between toolbar items. Well, anyways, I just offered a way out, but of course it's up to you how to fix the issue itself :)

[Quicksaver]

It's true, just for the matches info that would be enough. But there are so many changes that I still need to make to the find bar that I'd rather actually change the DOM tree and make sure everything stays where it should.

[Drugoy]

If you're going to change DOM tree, then could you, please, also modify matches info to make it's data more compact for top right findbar? I percept findbar at top right as "mini" version and I think it should be as ergonomic, as possible.

1. Text "Phrase not found" is not even needed to be shown: red background in text field is already a good indicator of that.
2. Text "25 of 28 matches" can be shortened to just "25/28", which is ~11 chars more ergonomic.
3. If you'd add (as a separating setting) the feature I requested in issue #129 - then you could also make enabling that feature hide next/prev buttons from the "mini" version of findbar, since they would be made obsolete by scroll down/up.
4. The buttons seem fine, but please consider removing margins/paddings between them, so they'd be closer to each other.

[should I move all these request into a separate ticket?]

[Quicksaver]

[should I move all these request into a separate ticket?]

No, they're fine here, I always read the entire issue before closing it, to make sure I don't miss anything. ;)

And all of those are interesting, I'll see about adding those features too, at least to see how they would work. Except maybe for the buttons margins, I remember toying with those at one point and they would be too close together to look as if they were buttons (but maybe that's changed lately with the new find bar redesign, so I'll check that out as well).

[Drugoy]

Awesome :)

[Quicksaver]

My FindBar buttons keep jumping around from left to right depending on whether the matches counter is currently displaying info or not.

Hasn't happened for a few Firefox versions now, so no longer valid.

Specifically for the top right position I'd recommend changing the order of items: put match info to the left of toolbar, then the input field and then the buttons.

Done in #186, although not exactly as suggested.

Text "Phrase not found" is not even needed to be shown: red background in text field is already a good indicator of that.

I'm not sure I will add an option to remove this, at least not this directly. It's still a valid way to show that there are no matches found, and it doesn't really interfere all that much. I still have it in my to-do list, but it's not very high up.

Text "25 of 28 matches" can be shortened to just "25/28", which is ~11 chars more ergonomic.

I thought about this a bit lately, and I don't think it's really necessary, it wouldn't really save that much space anyway, and "x/y" can be a bit harder to read at first.