[Tickets #12802] Re: Limit max width of compose textarea in dynamic view

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Ticket URL: http://bugs.horde.org/ticket/12802
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  Ticket             | 12802
  Updated By         | horde at headbank.co.uk
  Summary            | Limit max width of compose textarea in dynamic view
  Queue              | IMP
  Version            | 6.1.4
  Type               | Enhancement
  State              | Rejected
  Priority           | 1. Low
  Milestone          |
  Patch              |
  Owners             |
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horde at headbank.co.uk (2013-11-01 16:52) wrote:

OK; judgement accepted. What follows is just a couple of points I feel  
worth making for the record (with a view to your point about future  
readers) to clarify, as it seems to be necessary, what I was really  
trying to say with this ticket. You can therefore stop reading here if  
you desire.

> I wasn't being combative.  I was trying to explain the difference,  
> as I understand it, between transport and presentation.  To make my  
> point, I tend to use a lot of emphasis (must be my teaching  
> background).
>
It was never really about transport, though I'll admit my wording  
didn't help: that one word "anti-socially" mischaracterised the  
message hugely, I now see (and my second post was largely *me* being  
combative and getting off the original point).

My true focus was usability for me, the person composing. If, for  
whatever reason, that textarea is rendered wider than your UI team  
intended (by making the compose popup window the size it is), then I  
am typing lines so long that usability suffers, for me, right there  
and then. I can't read it back to myself comfortably.

> So what I get out of this is that this is a UI issue.  I'm not  
> convinced that any sort of action is necessary on our end.  Locally,  
> you can always use CSS to size the window as you see fit.  Just  
> remember that what you see on the screen is not necessarily what  
> will be seen on the receiving end, so that should not be the focus  
> of any UI change.

Correct, it's a UI issue. It pertains, however, to parts of the UI  
that you do have at least partial control over. That, I assert, is why  
your UI code pops the compose window at this particular width: because  
we (mostly) don't like writing text in lines the full width of our  
desktop screen.

Where the webmaster has control is in hacking on your UI code if that  
scenario is likely among his users; this is what I currently do, by  
adding the CSS max-width declaration to the textarea.

Where the user has control (assuming they fully control the browser)  
is choosing whether or not popup dimensions in javascript are  
respected (which is a global setting so it affects their use of every  
site); or, as is the case with Firefox and IE at least, manually  
resizing the textarea to a bearable width.

I chose max-width because it is unobtrusive: users who don't overrule  
your UI team's chosen dimensions for the popup will never know the  
difference, nor will people with a screen that's narrower than that  
width (eg smartphone users demanding the desktop UI for whatever  
reason). Only if they have a virtually microscopic default font-size  
can I see anyone else being affected -- and if you like text that  
small, you might want the textarea a little narrower anyway...!

So that's what I was getting at. Where *you* have control is in doing  
what the webmaster does above, to extend your UI choices, which of  
course are made in the name of the best usability for most/all Horde  
users, to a few corner cases you otherwise don't reach. Transport,  
recipient-end display: not part of it.

If I could have predicted a reason for rejection of this ticket, it  
would have been that the corner-case was too obscure to be worthy of  
the work; to which I'd reply that I think there might be quite a few  
of us who don't like giving all websites the power to hit us with any  
size of popup they like (I'm sure in your years you have seen that  
power abused often enough by the bad guys). Nevertheless, if that's  
the basis of the rejection, then I'm okay with it.