Always show icon thumbnail in hover menu

[pne]

Title:
Always show icon thumbnail in hover menu

Area:
UI

Summary:
Hover menus should, for consistency, always include the thumbnail of the user's default icon (and it should be a link to the user's icon page).

Description:
Dreamwidth uses a hover menu in at least two situations: when hovering the pointer over the "userhead" of a <user name="example"> tag, and when hovering the pointer over a user's icon. This hover menu includes things such as whether you subscribe to or give access to them, links to their profile, etc.

It also includes a reduced-size version/thumbnail of the user's icon -- *except* when the hover is over the user's default icon.

Specifically, the thumbnail will always appear when hovering over the userhead, and it will always appear when a specific icon was chosen by keyword (presumably even if that specifically-chosen icon also happens to be the current default). But it will be absent if hovering over a default icon.

This means that there was no consistent way to get to the user's "all icons" page, which is IMO a useful thing to be able to do -- you couldn't count on this link being present in every hover.

Now (http://dw-news.dreamwidth.org/19003.html) icons themselves link to the "all icons" page, but I still think it would be good, for consistency, for the link to be present in all hover menus, including over icons, including over the default icon.

I suspect that this will be small change, and that it will likely involve *removing* code which specifically checks for the case of the default icon, rather than writing new code.

I don't envision any drawbacks other than (a) a slight increase in CPU and bandwidth for showing thumbnails where there were previously none and possibly (b) annoyance among users who relied on the presence or absence of a thumbnail in the hover to determine whether a given icon was a user's default.

An alternative, equally consistent but (to me) less optimal way would be to have the thumbnail present in all userhead hovers but no icon hovers -- presuming the thumbnail serves the main purpose of linking to the "all icons" page, which icons now have themselves. But then it couldn't fulfill the additional purpose of identifying a user (who might have many different icons) visually through their default icon.

Poll #2573 Always show icon thumbnail in hover menu

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 38

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
18 (47.4%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
2 (5.3%)

(I have no opinion)
17 (44.7%)

(Other: please comment)
1 (2.6%)

Comments

[ratcreature]

I dislike the minimized icons, they look often ugly, unrecognizable and/or pixellated to me, so I'm not really keen on having them in the hover thing in the first place. But to have the minimized icon crop up when you hover over the very same icon seems silly to me.

[afuna]

But to have the minimized icon crop up when you hover over the very same icon seems silly to me.

Hm, you know I bet this was the original reason that the icon doesn't show up when you're already hovering over the default icon.

[ratcreature]

Yes, that's what I thought. It didn't seem inconsistent behavior at all.

[triadruid]

Is THAT why it doesn't show up at times?!? That's been bugging me for months...