New FoxyProxy context menu

The current FoxyProxy context menu (i.e. the one accessible from the Firefox context menu and statusbary icon/label of FoxyProxy) is, IMHO, not very useful and a bit bloated. It contains alot of stuff which I believe people do not use frequently (e.g. enable/disable patterns for specific proxies, change wheter the statusbar icon is animated, most stuff in the expanded "more" menu etc.). The only useful feature currently is to choose whether to use patterns or a specific proxy for all URLs or patterns. But that functionality could easily be moved into a single menu.

Now, I really like the context menu of NoScript (especially how to add patterns to it) and I think it is very suitable for FoxyProxy too, and that many people are fimiliar with it (a big selling point for this).

I propose a context menu that looks something like this:

Main FoxyProxy context menu:

• Options opens the options dialog, plain and simple.
• Choose Proxy (*) -> opens an expandable menu (see below), and "(*)" indicates which of that menu's items that is chosen, i.e. if one uses the pre-defined patterns or a specific proxy for all URLs, so "(*)" could look like "(Patterns)" or "(ProxyX)".
• QuickAdd is just like pressing the QuickAdd keyboard shortcut. As anadditional feature, it would be cool if a popup showing the Generated pattern for the current URL appears if one hoovers the mouse pointer over this entry for some short time (~1 sec), ot that the resulting pattern is shown in the menu, like: "QuickAdd [Generated pattern]".
• Temporary QuickAdd, just like the QuickAdd option above + see my other feature request.

All other options that are in the context menu of the current version of FoxyProxy but not in my proposal are deemed (by me at least) as not used very frequently and are more appropriatley accessed through the options dialog the few times they are needed.

The Choose Proxy option from the FoxyProxy context menu expands into the following menu:

So in this menu one of the options is marked as being used (the same one as indicated by "(*)" in the new context menu, described above).

Also, I think that both the left and right mouse buttons should bring forth the FoxyProxy context menu when pressing the statusbar icon/label, just like NoScript. Currently, left click opens the FoxyProxy options, but it is already easily accessible from the context menu.

Thanks for the great suggestions. Before I comment, are you aware that FoxyProxy has two different context menus? There is the "simple" and "advanced", switchable from Global Settings->Miscellaneous->Use Advanced Menus. I have more to say, I just want to make sure you knew about this when you wrote your post?

Ah, no I wasn't aware of that. I was using the advanced menu.

Then my suggestion could be as simple as to add a QuickAdd (and Temporary QuickAdd) thing to the context menu (both simple and advanced), and change the mouse button behaviour. My expanding menu proposal for the proxy choice isn't really much different than the current behaviour of the simple menu. But the expaning menu would make the context menu more minimalistic for all that's worth.

All in all, what I would like to see is similar (or almost identical) user interfaces for FoxyProxy, NoScript and CS Lite (it seems CS List only open the menu for adding patterns on left-click). I believe quite a lot of people use them together, so making them work the same way would be great for the users.

One more thing to consider is how to handle a site that contains stuff from several different domains. NoScript does that beautifully by listing all of them, bolding the text of the entry for the current site.

But if that behaviour is added to FoxyProxy, we are starting to assume stuff about how people use it. FoxyProxy's QuickAdd is not necessarily domain oriented like NoScript, as the special strings provide more expressional power than that. However, I believe that for most users, a domain oriented approach would be what makes most sense for this use of QuickAdd.

Let's say that we are visiting a web page on domain D1. That page also contains stuff from domains D2 and D3. The menu would then look like:

So when using QuickAdd in this way, it's only possible to add patterns based on the domains of the content involved. Possibly the main site (D1) could be the whole URL of the current web page, as FoxyProxy operates right now.

I know this is a major shift in how FoxyProxy operates, going from being current-URL oriented to current-URL + content oriented. There are probably more design and implementation issues than what I have come up with in the above (plus, I haven't looked on the current code of FoxyProxy, so I have no idea on what assumptions you are making which possibly could make this change too big), but I think this functionality would be pretty nice, especially for us Tor users.

You can already do this. You need to explore the Global Settings page some more. You've missed the Advanced Menu item (which is OFF by default, so you must have seen it and clicked it without realizing), and now it's clear you've missed the Toolbar Activation and Statusbar Activation sections on that tab.

I do like the idea of adding QuickAdd to the context-menu (both temporary and regular), but to keep the context-menu simple I'll most likely add this to the Advanced Context Menu.

I don't use NoScript and CSLite, although I have tried them both. I'll take another look at their context-menus for some ideas. I know FoxyProxy can improve its interface.

Keep those ideas coming!

Correction: [...] and change the default mouse button behaviour.