Firefox/UX index: Difference between revisions

An overview of the areas where we are looking at improving the user experience, and where we already have directions and decisions.

* [[Firefox/Projects/3.7 and 4.0 Theme and UI Revamp|New Theme]] for Windows, OS X, Linux (shorlander + everyone)

* Safari parity: reload unsuccessful pages when network returns

; Caps Lock indicator in password field: Similar to the Mac OS X login screen, we should indicate whether caps lock is enabled in password fields.

; File upload indicators: We should supply a standard way of showing progress on file uploads via forms, people are using Flash to do this right now, and it sucks.

; Saving web pages in a way that doesn't suck: Receipts, offline reading (“read later”), backup of bookmarks (faaborg)

; Better missing plugin experience: Shorter path from "there is a missing plugin on this page" to working content, the browser taking more work away from the user (boriss)

; Better add-on installation and upgrade experience: Better indicators of the state of addons (upgrade available, out of date, etc), no restarting if possible, better "first run" addons experience which makes it clear where addon lives and what has changed.  Less loose dialog boxes relating to addons appearing, more notices in content space (boriss)

; Better out-of-date addons dialog with Firefox upgrade: Possibly check for updates, don't mention if addon still works, make sure first message & interaction after upgrade isn't a bad experience (boriss)

; Volume per tab: Some way to indicate "which tab is making noise" indicator (boriss)

; Home tab: Replace the home button with a more functional Home Tab. (faaborg, limi, boriss)

; Thumbnail view on page “media” tab: ? (shorlander)

; Improve installer experience on the Mac: Currently, a lot of people launch FF from the disk image. [http://limi.net/articles/improving-the-mac-installer-for-firefox/ Blog post], {{bug|516362}} (limi)

; Visual design of the update dialog: (faaborg)

; Don't import the standard bookmarks: We currently import bookmarks from IE (Windows Marketplace, Windows Update, etc) that aren't even usable from Firefox, and that the user didn't add. Filter these out when importing.

; Native OS X: <select>, dropdown menu should look like OSX dropdown menus rather than windows (shorlander)

; Mac unified toolbar improvements: Doesn't scale gracefully currently (shorlander)

; New Mac default theme: (shorlander)

; Eliminate unneeded windows: We have a lot of dedicated windows that add complexity for window management. Downloads, View source, etc should be rendered as tabs, then you can pull them out as dedicated windows if you want, and we should remember this decision. (limi)

; [[Preferences rethink]]:  Preferences card sort + revisit how things are grouped and handled (Mike: “I don't want a cookie manager, I want one location that manages everything related to a site — cookies, geolocation settings, etc”). Also: Why do we have separate add-ons window? (limi)

; [[Firefox/Projects/Eradicate Startup Dialogs]]: Startup dialogs significantly impact the amount of time it takes users to get on the Web and retrieve a piece of information or complete a task, which is Firefox's primary purpose. (faaborg)

; [[Improved download manager]]: Eliminate separate easily-lost download window & put in place a download manager that's both non-distracting and easily trackable. Possibly a download tab for in-depth handling of downloads (search, sorting, clear logs, stats, etc) (limi, boriss)

; Fix default behaviours to optimize for common actions: e.g. downloading a zip, playing an mp3, open a PDF

; Better indication of file type: Show the file type you're about to download in the cursor icon when hovering over binary downloads + PDFs (“the land mines of the internet”, no surprises when navigating) (faaborg + limi on the download side)

; Visible “Feedback” button: We should add a very visible feedback button in the alpha/beta releases. (limi)

; A Labs tab in Prefs:  On nightly builds that gives you features that are experimental, and advertises what other builds are available (e.g. Taskfox). (faaborg)

; History as a parallel timeline: Better indication in human terms and navigation of sites in history ([http://weizhou.wordpress.com/2008/07/07/prototype/ wei's sprint] [http://weizhoudesign.com/browserin2015.swf wei's video] [http://www.simile-widgets.org/timeline/ Simile Timeline] [http://www.slifelabs.com/ Slife] (limi)

; Can't edit “Smart” bookmark folder: (shorlander)

; Vista/Win7 explorer-like interface for navigating favorites: (faaborg, limi)

; In-browser PDF display: Duh. It's 2009 already. (boriss)

; Better progress indicator: Better indicator for how much of a page is downloaded, maybe even separate indicator for page vs resources on the page? (limi)

; Visual improvements to “find text in page”: (boriss)

; Combine URL and search bar: We should make common actions available in the location bar. [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=taskfox Bugs] (limi)

; Improve custom search creation: Attach “add custom search” onto search form completion dropdowns (possibly with threshold, detect search fields, 3rd time etc) (limi)

; Share link in location bar: Move the "Send Page" to the URL bar with a share icon, rename to "Share" (email, Facebook, etc) (faaborg, limi)

; Web page quick look: User-triggered way to get an idea of where a link will go, possibly show a preview or some information about where a link leads (limi)

; [http://limi.net/articles/resource-packages Resource Packages]: Provide alternative to CSS sprite insanity and make browsers faster by packaging resources in a .zip + manifest file. (limi)

; about;perf: Locally log UI performance metrics, button to submit information (faaborg)

; Make notifications more readable, larger text: “Oops, this is embarrassing” is insanely small (shorlander)

; No umprompted dialogs: Don't interrupt the users' workflow by introducing notifications, updates, etc  (faaborg)

(do this as part of Weave?)

; Better management of logins: What is my username? What accounts do I have here? Do I have a passwords saved? How can I change what is saved for this site? (boriss)

; RTS scroll model for fullscreen: (faaborg)

; Ability to define certain sites as using the IE6 rendering engine for Enterprise deployments: (limi)

; Expose platform-native widgets for web apps that work like client apps + Prism'''

; Flick navigation with UI feedback: (for fullscreen?) (faaborg)