June 9th, 2010
Firefox UX Team update: Mac & Windows themes, add-ons manager & home tab idea gathering
What the Firefox UX team is up to this week
The Firefox UX team posts weekly updates on what we’re up to. Instead of only posting individual after-the-fact updates, we also try to post more about what we’re about to do — which is usually a bit more interesting and higher-level, as well as gives you the chance to engage with us while we’re “in-process.” It will hopefully also give you a bit more insight into how we do our work. Our current focus areas can be found at UX priorities for the next Firefox release.
Status reports on current UX priorities:
Notifications
Alex Faaborg:
- (Faaborg is returning on Wednesday, updates below are from team members)
- Gavin has a patch for the new notifications, he’s hoping it’ll land later this week.
- Still unclear when the new default styling will come into play.
- The first implementation of the new notification panel style/approach is used for geolocation.
Firefox menu
Alex Faaborg:
- (Faaborg is returning on Wednesday, updates below are from team members)
- Dão is starting to implement it as a button on the toolbar, so we can start without the ability to draw in the title bar.
Site identity
Alex Faaborg:
- (Faaborg is returning on Wednesday, updates below are from team members)
- We know what the basic appearance looks like.
- We do not know what the new controls in the "identity notification panel" will look like yet.
Home tab & App tabs
Alexander Limi:
- Met with Blair and gave him a basic overview of the interactions we’re going to encounter
- There are tryserver builds available.
- Had a good discussion on the technicalities, we might be able to move the app tab from one window to another if we’re worried that having two instances of the same app tab won’t work for the user.
- Do we want App Tabs to persist through all windows?
- Do we expect App Tabs to be singletons or multiple instances across multiple windows?
- Still need to wireframe some of the edge cases and suggest a couple of alternate approaches to handling multiple instances of the same app tab.
Download Manager
Alexander Limi:
- This is still an opportunistic project, we’ll land independent pieces when we have resources for it.
- Mehdi Mulani (intern) has 3 interconnected bugs that need to be approved and landed, then we’ll have downloads in the Library window & icons that represent the type of file that was downloaded.
- Comment from Beltzner: The next self-contained high-value aspect could be to reflect deletion and file system state in the history.
HTML5 form controls
Alexander Limi:
- Met with Tantek Çelik to clarify priorities and overall approach.
- There’s a wiki page that is the central point for all things HTML5 — of particular interest is the Input page.
- Now unblocked, following up with main developer.
“Paper Cuts”
Alexander Limi:
Paper cut overview bug is here.
- Frank Yan (intern) has posted patches for two tab-related papercut bugs:
- “Bounce” caused by spurious input from trackpads when scrolling the tab bar.
- Replacing the tab arrows with smart resize/positioning of overflow tabs.
- More visibility via blog posts this week.
Main window refresh
Stephen Horlander:
- Broke out new tab bug into smaller bugs by request.
- Dão should be able to start working on the Firefox menu.
- All Windows mock-ups are updated.
- Marco is picking up bookmarks widget improvements.
- Unowned: Combined Stop/Reload/Go button.
- On Mac, all the patches looks good, and Markus should be able to land them.
- Will know more about Firefox button on Linux soon.
- If you have multiple windows, Aero Peek now has a way to show tabs within a window.
- Felipe will be starting to help on Windows API bugs, Jim was a bit resource-constrained.
In-content page design
Stephen Horlander:
- Posted In-Content UI Visual Unification, feedback was overwhelmingly positive.
- We should put together a list of the things we want to apply the new design to — Limi will help out with this.
- We’ll need to do something for the add-ons manager in any case — see below.
Jetpack & the Extension Bar
Jennifer Boriss:
- Recommending API added to jetpack to launch a panel for interactive content.
- Need to explore possibility of re-styling buttons to match theme work when add-on icons moved.
- Need to file bugs to allow add-on icons to be moved to different areas of the UI — who to talk to?
- It’s OK for us to invent new API for indicating intermediate states — e.g. active, but not visible.
- Design session on Wednesday.
Add-ons Manager
Jennifer Boriss:
- Final in-content mockups being worked on this week, want feedback in a design session on Wednesday.
- Remaining bugs being squashed, some edge cases appearing that needs handling.
Privacy
Jennifer Boriss:
- Comfortable with using Faaborg’s initial wireframes as the base.
- Dan’s sandboxed third-party cookie implementation landed, but there’s discussion around the specifics.
TabCandy
Aza Raskin:
- Not present, comments below are from Beltzner:
- Got feedback from Dão about the code.
- Removing jQuery and getting it ready for a trunk landing.
- Need to figure out how we’re going to start talking about it and setting expectations.
Post-Firefox 4 Home Tab
John Wayne Hill: (UX intern)
- Ran a Design Lunch last week, it went really well. Good ideas came out and lots of people participated.
- Will be sketching up some initial explorations this week based on the feedback.
Other topics covered
- John Wayne Hill: Speed Tests — Will be creating some charts to better understand the speed test videos that Faaborg created. Have raw data ready (shared via email).
- Alexander Limi: Ideas for the Science Fair & Summit in general — maybe do a quick brainstorm when Faaborg is back later in the week?
- Jennifer Boriss: Design session for Add-ons Manager this Wednesday? Also have a Privacy design session with Mehdi later today.
- Stephen Horlander: Bookmarks menu/panel behavior — Marco is picking it up — in-content UI: bug 425749
- Mike Beltzner: Improve shipping criteria for beta milestones. Create a list of what these are.
- Mike Beltzner: General discussion around when to get product approval for design changes: If we change the way the way the browser interacts with web content, make sure to communicate broadly first and involve the product team: Beltzner, Jay — and if they’re not available: Johnath and Shaver.
About the meetings
The UX meetings are open to people from outside Mozilla — if you want to listen in, use the numbers for our conference call system and join conference room number 268 every Monday at 14:30 PST. We post agendas to dev.planning and dev.usability before these meetings.
For people at Mozilla: We are scheduling regular work sessions at 13:00 PST on Wednesdays every week — as part of this we also accept drop-in visits if you want to get assistance with any user experience task. Contact us a bit in advance to coordinate.
Is there anything that you think can be improved in these updates? How is the new project-centric format working out for you? Send feedback to limi@mozilla.com.
