August 3rd, 2010
Firefox UX Team update: Goals for Firefox 4 beta 4
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.
Goals for beta 4
The current list is what we’re working on for Firefox 4 beta 4 on the UX team:
- Overall theme stuff, especially get the word out that we need assistance with the Linux side of things, Stephen will blog about this.
- Location bar + progress bars needs to be well underway by this beta — Stephen will drive the changes outside of notification work & account manager.
- Tabs in title bar (shorlander)
- Limi is going to work with Paul & Dolske on Session Restore improvements.
- Locally hosted home page needs follow-up, Limi to coordinate with Beltzner on this.
- App Tabs — first iteration is in, needs better spec for next steps and capabilities, Limi is on this.
- Sync: Faaborg working on a new iteration to make it clearer that you can create your own key (“favorite song lyric”, etc) & possibly an indicator when you are “cryptographically secure.” Also note that we can not help you recover your password if you forget it.
- Boriss will coordinate to get site-specific preferences working, testable, layout as close to final as possible.
- Tab Candy is aiming to be in beta 4.
Status reports on current UX priorities:
Notifications
Alex Faaborg:
- Mockups in progress.
Firefox menu
Alex Faaborg & Jennifer Boriss:
- i5 mockups done, bugs all triaged. Work tracked in bug 583386.
Site identity
Alex Faaborg:
- No progress outside of notification and account manager.
- Lots of progress on site-specific preferences - plan to have working, testable by beta 4.
- Needs icons, but layout in UI should be fairly close to end goal.
Account Manager
Alex Faaborg:
- Talking with Dan about registration, looks like it will be handled by content.
Firefox Sync
Alex Faaborg:
- Need to update mockups based on feedback.
Home tab & App tabs
Alexander Limi:
- Working on a better specification for app tab behaviors this week; talking to Beltzner about teh locally hosted home tab.
Download Manager
Alexander Limi:
- Paolo has posted some patches in bug 564934, we’ll keep iterating on it.
HTML5 form controls
Alexander Limi:
- Nothing new on the UX side of things this week.
“Paper Cuts”
Alexander Limi:
Paper cut overview bug is here.
- Lots of progress, multi-monitor issues fixed, and web page can no longer steal focus from the UI. Summary update coming next week.
Main window refresh
Stephen Horlander:
- On vacation last week.
In-content page design
Stephen Horlander:
- On vacation last week.
Add-ons Manager
Jennifer Boriss:
- Windows mockups done, finishing up Mac.
- Dividing into components, Blair will be working on the styles.
Jetpack & the Extension Bar
Jennifer Boriss:
- No change, Dietrich is in Japan, should find out this week what’s left to implement
Privacy
Jennifer Boriss:
- Mehdi has continued improving the site-specific prefs.
TabCandy
Aza Raskin:
- We are working on landing parts of Tab Candy:
- Work continued on App Tabs integration.
- Goals for this week:
- Continue getting Ts regression to below 2% and figuring out plan for 0%.
- Create more unit tests.
Post-Firefox 4 Home Tab
John Wayne Hill: (UX intern)
- Prototype built, but very buggy. This has and will continue to allow me to better understand the experience of Home Tab.
Startup performance & perception
Alexander Limi & John Wayne Hill
- Mostly focused around dirty profiles & session restore; Shawn is starting analysis on the profiles this week, session restore & cascading loading work starting as soon as Sync lands.
Mobile
Madhava Enros:
- Not present.
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 & 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? Send feedback to limi@mozilla.com.
