From discussions on the .ui newsgroup: Peter Trudelle wrote: > > Sebastian Spaeth wrote: > > > > > The sidebar sucks, how do I get rid of it? > > > > I really wonder why people are asking this all the time? I personally > > think is not so difficult to find and View->Sidebar(checked/unchecked) > > is pretty intuitive, isn't it? > > If people are asking this all the time, that pretty much answers your second > question. This is probably why MS put an 'X' close button on theirs. > So it seems like it would be a good idea to add a close box somewhere so that it's more intuitive.

Yes. Ideally it should use an OS-specific overlay; so it can appear as a cross on the right side of the sidebar header in Windows, and a square on the left side of the sidebar header in MacOS.

QA Assigning non-confidential New/Assigned User Interface: Design Feedback bugs to Matthew Thomas (mpt@mailandnews.com). Matthew Thomas is now the QA owner for the User Interface: Design Feedback component. (Bugs that involve UI issues in the Netscape-branded Mozilla browser should continue be QA assigned to elig@netscape.com.)

It's a good thing to have, and pretty much universal in sidebar-type things today (which is why so many people expect that to be the way to close the thing), but the sidebar overlay isn't really designed around this idea. The problem being the "Tabs >" (formerly "New >") menu[bar/button] on the right side. This makes putting another button on the right slightly crazy, and putting one between the title and "Tabs" is even more so. I can think of a few placements: --put a down arrow on the "Tabs" button and then put the quick close button wherever we want --an X close button on the left side. That way everyone should understand what it's for. (Even poor inflexible win/mac users.) --make "Tabs" into "Menu", and include "Close sidebar" among the choices. Not exactly the asked-for feature, but close. I like the middle one, and I could implement this pretty easily (with a little help from the skin designers.)

Or, make the menu title `My Sidebar', instead of using a separate menu.

Marking this a duplicate of bug 33420, which has a lot more discussion in it. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 33420 ***

Verified dup. (Hmmm, should have spotted that earlier.)