July 19th, 2010
Firefox UX Team update: Getting ready for Firefox 4 Beta 2
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.
New & noteworthy
Firefox 4.0 Beta 2 is being released this week — or early next week — and adds tabs-on-top for Mac, as well as the first iteration of App Tabs. There’s also an expanded Test Pilot study included in this beta to help us get more data on how people use the new menu and other elements of the redesign.
With one week disappearing to the Mozilla Summit, and with Firefox 4 betas being on a two-week release schedule, this beta release lands a few important milestones, but not a lot more on the UI side. Lots of exciting stuff on the infrastructure side:
- Retained Layers — which, among other things, makes scrolling a page very smooth,
- JS performance improvements,
- CSS transitions & transforms,
- & a fix for the bug that was causing multiple dock icons on OS X when plugins are running.
Status reports on current UX priorities:
Start page video for the new UI
Alex Faaborg:
- New video is coming for beta 2, waiting until freeze happens. Also would like to do the captures on OS X.
Notifications
Alex Faaborg:
- Low priority right now, but we need to get the panel stuff done (for instance geolocation is still styled as as tooltip on windows, and the combo button looks like a drop down control)
Firefox menu
Alex Faaborg:
- Lots of work completed over the weekend, spec of intended design, tracking how commands are migrating over, and a projected heatmap of usage that also got some nice attention in the press.
Site identity
Alex Faaborg:
- Need to discuss planned changes with the UX team before we propose anything more officially
- Need to get mockups done for Frank of the different states
Firefox Sync
Alex Faaborg:
- Top priority now.
Home tab & App tabs
Alexander Limi:
- First iteration of App Tabs have landed! Just in time for beta 2. Doesn’t support drag operations yet, but is available from the context menu on tabs for now.
Download Manager
Alexander Limi:
- No changes this week, but plan to get in touch with Paolo, who I talked to about this at the Summit.
HTML5 form controls
Alexander Limi:
- Had some conversations with Tantek, he has expanded & updated the HTML5 wiki page.
“Paper Cuts”
Alexander Limi:
Paper cut overview bug is here.
- We’re arranging a “Paper Cuts” hacking session this Thursday in Mountain View for Mozilla employees, and anyone that wants to follow along on IRC.
- If successful, we’ll try to do this at the end of every week for the developers that are interested.
Main window refresh
Stephen Horlander:
- Most of the major pieces are in.
- Still need progress bar on tabs and combined stop/go/reload.
- Focus on Windows/Mac on refinement bug fixing.
- Need to evaluate Bookmarks Menu Button feedback.
- Next major thing is going to be theming the Window frames/controls for non-Aero configurations — XP, Aero Basic, Classic.
In-content page design
Stephen Horlander:
- Will wait until add-ons redesign has a first implementation ready.
Add-ons Manager
Jennifer Boriss:
- Still on track — “Personas” has officially changed to “Backgrounds”, so making new mockups to incorporate the change
- Mock-ups still need a few tweaks. Working on these now.
- Talk of combining plugins and extensions into a single category — what does the UX team think?
- Disable/ask about extensions on first-run — Boriss to ask add-ons team about what data we have that can inform this. (e.g. do we know when extensions were first installed, which extensions have binary components, &c.
Jetpack & the Extension Bar
Jennifer Boriss:
- No change from last week.
- Action: contact Dietrich and ask about what state it’s currently in.
Privacy
Jennifer Boriss:
- Mulani still working on the implementation of the site-centric prefs.
TabCandy
Aza Raskin:
- We are in the process of getting review. Missed beta 2.
- We’ve created a Reviewer’s Guide for those wanting to get into the code.
- Starting to look at doing a video intro for the first-run experience.
- Need to do a deep-dive on app-tabs + TabCandy.
- Need help with deciding keyboard shortcuts — a veritable bikeshed factory.
Post-Firefox 4 Home Tab
John Wayne Hill: (UX intern)
- Continuing to work on details of concepts in between startup experience stuff, put new sketches online, working on higher fidelity ones
- think more about notifications from add-ons, non-Firefox installed add-ons, &c.
Startup performance & perception
Alexander Limi & John Wayne Hill
- Startup Experience overview page is up.
- Filed all necessary bugs.
- Got some champions for bugs.
- Need to get champions for newly filled bugs, prioritized the list in terms of effort and value.
- We’ll bring the list to Tuesday’s developer meeting.
Mobile
Madhava Enros:
- Not present.
Feedback session
Quick feedback and/or blockers; for in-depth discussions, we do design sessions on Wednesdays.
Other topics covered
Focus for next beta:- Location bar improvements
- Meta bug for the location bar improvements
- Frank is on the combined stop/reload/go improvements.
- Design session on Wednesday, also talk about privacy indicators in Larry etc + Privacy Icons + Firefox Menu.
- Protocol removal/improvements: as early as possible, Frank wants to look at this after stop/go/reload.
- URL hover design/implementation.
- AwesomeBar results — visual design improvements.
- Home/App tabs: dragging + chromeless + right-click to bring controls back + app tab behavior in multiple windows (limi)
- Doorhanger notifications: not landing in time for next beta, probably later (1-2 betas out)
- Startup Experience:
- Meta bug for Startup Experience issues.
- Run it by Vlad, dbaron or Stuart, identify biggest wins, prioritize.
- Drawing the window all at once needs to be nominated for blocking the final release — it looks really broken if we only draw part of the bottom half with the top missing with the new glass theme.
- Ask on startup, not shutdown for session restore.
Questions for the Firefox Development Meeting
- Startup Experience prioritization & feedback on feasibility for Firefox 4.
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.
