GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 333957
image actions should not be shown in the contextual menu when right-clicking on text
Last modified: 2012-10-08 02:17:37 UTC
When right clicking anything in a common web page, the context menu show all kinds of actions related to images. I was told that this was only if the website has a background image. However, roughly 9 websites out of 10 has a background image. This behavior would be correct if I was clicking an image, or clicking an "empty" space on a webpage. However, when I am right clicking text or a <a href="foo">whatever!</a>, I don't want this to show up. I was told that "the clicked element has a background, it's the way to access that background", but I believe you very rarely want to actually save the background of a web page. That goes against the goal of making epiphany a "simple" and "clean" browser for GNOME if you show actions that are not relevant to the context and are just cluttering 99% of time. I found myself clicking that "save image" function when I actually wanted to save the link target (to download some .tar.gz for example), pretty frustrating. What is worse, I actually copied the background image's address countless times when I just wanted to send a link's target to someone through chat. Please, make those options appear only when the right-click was done on a) an image b) an empty space (no text)
Not an unreasonable request, given that the Page Info extension also gives access to all images including the background.
I happen to use this quite a bit, as the Page Info does not show where in page those images are. This looks like a good example of direct manipulation to me, which I believe to be a good thing.
Victor, I perfectly understand that some (maybe a bunch!) of people might actually like this feature, but I still believe it annoys the big majority (just a guess, I can't provide statistics here ;). The thing being that the chances to want to save a BACKGROUND image when you click on TEXT are a bit slim compared to the fact that you could just click "off the text" to do that, but it 99% of time is a genuine willingness to "save a link" by clicking on it, and having a 11 items menu show up is way overkill (meaning your eyes have to read every element in it to make sure you don't have the reflex to choose the options at nearest the edge of the menu, which is in fact saving the background image). What I suggest is making this an option that can be toggled in about:config or, if a lot of people want it, in the preferences (but I'm not sure that goes with the philosophy of keeping the user interface simple and uncluttered)
The problem is that websites abuse this, e.g. they put the image as background for regular images, instead of using <img>, and there's no way to know which is which, image or real background...
Clarifying that it's a background image would eliminate a lot of confusion. "Copy Background Image Address" "Save Background Image..." would be clearer. It's so strange to have "Save Image" appear when right-clicking in what seems to be empty space.
I agree with Aredridel an chpe, I have found sites that doesn't know of the existence of <img>. The menu entry should be more specific also.
Well I agree with Aredridel's suggestion to rename the feature, but please please, do not make it appear with hyperlinks nonetheless! Make it work only when the user clicks on regular text or other elements, but not on <a href="foobar">bleh</a>'s