Firefox Image Toolbar

Just had an idea for some better image resizing UI in Firefox. While viewing and zooming on some images in Firefox i remembered showing a friend an image that was too big and had been auto-resized to fit the window, but they didn’t know, and complained that it looked funny like the thumbnail they had clicked to it from. I had to explain the whole “click on it to zoom” thing. The only way to know an image has been resized is to check the title bar or see if you get the magnifying glass cursor when hovering over the image. And, apparently, a lot of people don’t pay attention to either. I had filed a bug about better feedback of resized images a while ago, but i guess it didn’t really get any attention. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but i thought it was better than the existing one.

So anyway, the idea. Add an Image Toolbar on the bottom of the window (like the Find Toolbar) when images are viewed. For a slight sacrifice in vertical screen real estate, you could have image details (size, format, etc.), resize feedback, and controls for zooming and other functions (like copying and saving). Being on the bottom would work out perfectly, since there’s no reason to have the Find Toolbar come up while viewing an image (which i just tried, and is apparently another bug).

[Save Image][Copy Image] [Set As Wallpaper] [Fit In Window] JPEG Image, 630x1200 - Scaled 53%

I’m going ahead and writing this now before i even check if it’s already been suggested so i at least get the idea down. Searching through bmo and the forums can be an arduous task. And i haven’t done it in a while. I’ll check back in after i get a chance to dig around a bit. Hmm, maybe this could be something i could tinker with as an extension. Would probably be easier than a frequent links toolbar with all its history messiness.

Apparently there’s been an Image Toolbar extension for a while now, which mimics Internet Explorer’s behavior. Though it has a few of the same features (Save, Copy) it doesn’t really solve the problem of resizing. And i personally never really liked that little floating toolbar anyway. May be able to borrow/learn some code from it. I don’t think there’s really enough overlap to make my idea worthless, but now i have to come up with a different name. That’s fine, though, “Image Toolbar” was a little to plain and obvious for my tastes anyway. Onward.

Might be able to glean more from the Image Zoom extension. Though i’d like mine to use the stock functions as much as possible. This sounds like it does some of its own zooming stuff, like incrementally zooming in and out, instead of just 100% and fitting to the window. Though that may be something to consider—zoom in/out. But that would probably get scrapped in favor of simplicity. I’m going for something that might actually be included in a Firefox release.